Hola Audiophiles!
Know what time it is? Time for more new audiobooks! Here are the new releases for the second half of May as promised. Read up then listen in, and tell me what your faves are!
I also want to check in with you and get your feedback. Is there any specific kind of audiobook content that you’d like to see covered? Let a girl know! Yo soy here to serve.
Ready? Let’s audio.
Sponsored by the audiobook edition of The Guest Book by Sarah Blake
Moving through three generations and back and forth in time, The Guest Book asks how we remember and what we choose to forget. It shows the untold secrets we inherit and pass on, unknowingly echoing our parents and grandparents. Sarah Blake’s triumphant novel tells the story of three generations of the Milton’s, their family home on an island in Maine, and a country that buries its past in quiet, until the present calls forth a reckoning. The audiobook is read by Orlagh Cassidy, who won an AudioFile Earphones Award for her narration of Blake’s previous audiobook, The Postmistress.
New Releases (publishers descriptions in quotes)
Let Me Hear a Rhyme by Tiffany D. Jackson, narrated by Korey Jackson, Nile Bullock, Adenrele Ojo, Adam Lazarre-White (May 21)
This one is giving me major On the Come Up vibes with the throwback to 90s hip hop. Here for it! Know what else I’m here for? Representation. Damn, it feels good to read about black and brown kids.
“Brooklyn, 1998. Biggie Smalls was right: Things done changed. But that doesn’t mean Quadir and Jarrell are cool letting their best friend Steph’s music lie forgotten under his bed after he’s murdered – not when his rhymes could turn any Bed-Stuy corner into a party.
With the help of Steph’s younger sister, Jasmine, they come up with a plan to promote Steph’s music under a new rap name: the Architect. Soon, everyone wants a piece of him. When his demo catches the attention of a hotheaded music label rep, the trio must prove Steph’s talent from beyond the grave.
As the pressure of keeping their secret grows, Quadir, Jarrell, and Jasmine are forced to confront the truth about what happened to Steph. Only, each has something to hide. With everything riding on Steph’s fame, they need to decide what they stand for or lose all they’ve worked so hard to hold on to – including each other.”
How to Forget: A Daughter’s Memoir by Kate Mulgrew, narrated by the author (May 21)
I came to love Kate Mulgrew through her performance in Orange is the New Black as I’m sure many of you have too! This is her memoir and it sounds like we’re all going to need some tissues.
“They say you can’t go home again. But when her father is diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer and her mother with atypical Alzheimer’s, New York-based actress Kate Mulgrew returns to her hometown in Iowa to spend time with her parents and care for them in the time they have left.
The months Kate spends with her parents in Dubuque – by turns turbulent, tragic, and joyful – lead her to reflect on each of their lives and how they shaped her own. Those ruminations are transformed when, in the wake of their deaths, Kate uncovers long-kept secrets that challenge her understanding of the unconventional Irish Catholic household in which she was raised.
Breathtaking and powerful, laced with the author’s irreverent wit, How to Forget is a considered portrait of a mother and a father, an emotionally powerful memoir that demonstrates how love fuses children and parents, and an honest examination of family, memory, and indelible loss.”
Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini, narrated by Hannah Melbourn (May 21)
Whew, child. This sounds like the kind of book that will open your eyes and boil your blood. I don’t think I knew that eugenics were still a thing.
“After the horrors of the Nazi regime in WWII, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. But a worldwide network of unrepentant eugenicists quietly founded journals and funded research, providing the kind of shoddy studies that were ultimately cited in Richard Hernstein’s and Charles Murray’s 1994 title, The Bell Curve, which purported to show differences in intelligence among races.
If the vast majority of scientists and scholars disavowed these ideas, and considered race a social construct, it was still an idea that managed to somehow make its way into the research into the human genome that began in earnest in the mid-1990s and continues today. Dissecting the statements and work of contemporary scientists studying human biodiversity, most of whom claim to be just following the data, Saini shows us how, again and again, science is retrofitted to accommodate race. Even as our understanding of highly complex traits like intelligence, and the complicated effect of environmental influences on human beings, from the molecular level on up, grows, the hope of finding simple genetic differences between ‘races’ – to explain differing rates of disease, to explain poverty or test scores, or to justify cultural assumptions – stubbornly persists.
At a time when racialized nationalisms are a resurgent threat throughout the world, Superior is a powerful reminder that biologically, we are all far more alike than different.”
The Organs of Sense by Adam Ehrlich Sachs, narrated by Andrew Wincott (May 21)
I thought this was a historical fiction piece with a dash o’ mystery but I’ve seen it referred to as a comic fable. Either way, it sounds downright delightful.
“In 1666, an astronomer makes a prediction shared by no one else in the world: at the stroke of noon on June 30 of that year, a solar eclipse will cast all of Europe into total darkness for four seconds. This astronomer is rumored to be using the largest telescope ever built, but he is also known to be blind – both of his eyes were plucked out under mysterious circumstances. Is he mad? Or does he, despite this impairment, have an insight denied the other scholars of his day?
These questions intrigue the young Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – not yet the world-renowned polymath who would go on to discover calculus but a 19-year-old whose faith in reason is shaky at best. Leibniz sets off to investigate the astronomer’s claim, and in the three hours before the eclipse occurs – or fails to occur – the astronomer tells the scholar the story behind his strange prediction: a tale that ends up encompassing kings and princes, family squabbles, insanity, art, loss, and the horrors of war.”
The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz, narrated by Rory Kinnear (May 28)
Mwaahahaha, I’m so excited! I’ve been a Horowitz fan since devouring Magpie Murders in a day last year. I really enjoyed The Word is Murder, his take on the Holmes/Watson dynamic made modern; The Sentence is Death picks up where that left off.
“’You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late….’
These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine – a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth £3,000, to be precise.
Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed?
Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who’s really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.
But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realizes that these secrets must be exposed – even at the risk of death…”
The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild by Thomas D. Seeley, narrated by William Hope
WE MUST SAVE THE BEES! That is all. Continue.
“Humans have kept honey bees in hives for millennia, yet only in recent decades have biologists begun to investigate how these industrious insects live in the wild. The Lives of Bees is Thomas Seeley’s captivating story of what scientists are learning about the behavior, social life, and survival strategies of honey bees living outside the beekeeper’s hive – and how wild honey bees may hold the key to reversing the alarming die-off of the planet’s managed honey bee populations.
Seeley, a world authority on honey bees, sheds light on why wild honey bees are still thriving while those living in managed colonies are in crisis. Drawing on the latest science, as well as insights from his own pioneering fieldwork, he describes in extraordinary detail how honey bees live in nature and reveals how this differs significantly from their lives under the management of beekeepers. Seeley presents an entirely new approach to beekeeping – Darwinian Beekeeping – which enables honey bees to use the toolkit of survival skills their species has acquired over the past 30 million years, and to evolve solutions to the new challenges they face today. He tells beekeepers how to use the principles of natural selection to guide their practices, and he offers a new vision of how beekeeping can better align with the natural habits of honey bees.
Engaging and deeply personal, The Lives of Bees reveals how we can become better custodians of honey bees and make use of their resources in ways that enrich their lives, as well as our own.”
Rebel (Women Who Dare) by Beverly Jenkins, narrated by Kim Staunton (May 28)
I’ve been meaning to read Beverly Jenkins for some time and she keeps giving me more and more reasons to start! Her latest is the first in a new series following a Northern woman south in the aftermath of the Civil War. And that cover… Dios mio!
“Valinda Lacey’s mission in the steamy heart of New Orleans is to help the newly emancipated community survive and flourish. But soon, she discovers that here, freedom can also mean danger. When thugs destroy the school she has set up and then target her, Valinda runs for her life – and straight into the arms of Captain Drake LeVeq.
As an architect from an old New Orleans family, Drake has a deeply personal interest in rebuilding the city. Raised by strong women, he recognizes Valinda’s determination. And he can’t stop admiring – or wanting – her. But when Valinda’s father demands she return home to marry a man she doesn’t love, her daring rebellion draws Drake into an irresistible intrigue.”
Into the Jungle by Erica Ferencik, narrated by Jayme Mattler (May 28)
In the mood for a thriller? This one takes place in the isolated river towns of Bolivia and involves a jaguar, some missionaries, and some shamans with an axe to grind. Well okay then!
“Lily Bushwold thought she’d found the antidote to endless foster care and group homes: a teaching job in Cochabamba, Bolivia. As soon as she could steal enough cash for the plane, she was on it.
When the gig falls through and Lily stays in Bolivia, she finds bonding with other broke, rudderless girls at the local hostel isn’t the life she wants either. Tired of hustling and already world-weary, crazy love finds her in the form she least expected: Omar, a savvy, handsome local man who’d abandoned his life as a hunter in Ayachero—a remote jungle village—to try his hand at city life.
When Omar learns that a jaguar has killed his four-year-old nephew in Ayachero, he gives Lily a choice: Stay alone in the unforgiving city, or travel to the last in a string of ever-more-isolated river towns in the jungles of Bolivia. Thirty-foot anaconda? Puppy-sized spiders? Vengeful shamans with unspeakable powers? Love-struck Lily is oblivious. She follows Omar to this ruthless new world of lawless poachers, bullheaded missionaries, and desperate indigenous tribes driven to the brink of extinction. To survive, Lily must navigate the jungle–its wonders as well as its terrors—using only her wits and resilience.”
From the Internets
“As we goooo on, we remeeeember!” Be glad you didn’t have to hear me belt out that Vitamin C diddy that always reminds me of my eighth grade graduation. Tis the season for graduations and Penguin Random House recommends these audiobooks for recent grads.
Summer is all like, “Hey, I’m on way!” and for many that means a summer vacation. If you’re the road trippin’ sort, check this list of 20 great audiobooks for extra long road trips from Country Living.
Over at the Riot
Are you a Hoopla user? If you haven’t tried out this awesome library lending platform, now is a good time to start! Resident mystery expert Jaime Canaves has rounded up a collection of 21 mysteries and thrillers available on Hoopla now. She cool.
That’s all I got today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with audiobook feedback & questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the In The Club newsletter, peep the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Friday too!
Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa
Polly Spencer is single and turning thirty, but seriously, she’s fine. Even if she’s still stuck at Posh! magazine writing about royal babies and the chances of finding a plus one to her best friend’s summer wedding are looking worryingly slim. But it’s a new year, and Polly’s determined that over the next 365 days she’ll remember to shave her legs, drink less wine, and get her s**t together. Her latest piece is on the infamous Jasper, Marquess of Milton, undoubtedly neither a plus one nor ‘the one.’ She’s heard the stories—there’s no way she’ll succumb to his charms…
You know I love me a little do-gooding with my book club, si? For bonus points, read the sister comic Ricanstruction: Reminiscing & Rebuiliding Puerto Rico. It’s an anthology that teams up La Borinqueña with popular comics characters such as Batman and Wonder Woman! Its hefty list of contributors includes Rosario Dawson, Gabby Rivera, and Greg Pak, but the best part? Proceeds from Ricanstruction go towards relief and recovery efforts aimed at rebuilding the island.
Santa Madre, as my mother would say: long live Elizabeth Acevedo! 
Remember a long time ago when I said I was going to listen to 
One minute your book is selling moderately. The next it winds up in the hands of Reese Witherspoon and BOOM! The game is changed. Such was the case for 
