The last time I did a big Quick Lit-style roundup of not just the good books but good listens I’ve enjoyed lately was late summer, when I shared 18 audiobooks […] The post 18(!!!) audiobooks I’ve enjoyed this fall...
The last time I did a big Quick Lit-style roundup of not just the good books but good listens I’ve enjoyed lately was late summer, when I shared 18 audiobooks I’d enjoyed recently. That’s an unusual and specific number, and it’s entirely coincidental that today’s fall round-up also includes 18.
It’s obvious that I’m continuing to listen to audiobooks at a brisk clip, for all the same reasons I shared in that post, including that I typically listen while I’m walking the dog, folding laundry, watering houseplants, doing dishes, and even when I’m working out, if the pacing is right. That adds up to many hours of listening time each week.
My recent audiobook listens have been overwhelmingly fiction, including the longest audiobook I’ve listened to in a while. (That would be Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, which as you’ll see below tops 26 hours.) Several of my recent listens have been quite short, coming in at under five hours (or twice, closer to three). Most hover around the twelve-hour mark.
There is much variety within those fiction titles: a healthy mix of backlist and brand new releases (including several from our recent Fall Book Preview, which is still available), lots of historical fiction, family fiction, Irish fiction, biographical fiction, fiction with a touch of magic, road trip romance, emotionally resonant fiction, dystopian fiction, Dark Academia, even a spy thriller.
I’m sharing twelve recent reads below that I haven’t yet told you about here on the blog. With our MMD audiophiles in mind, I also chose to include fall audiobook listens that I shared throughout the season in Quick Lit, so those great-on-audio books would appear in one place. I want these posts to be good resources for finding your next audiobook when it’s time to see what’s on Libby or spend a new credit.
As always, I’m tracking my reading in the My Reading Life book journal, which makes it easy to see and share what I’ve been reading lately. I know these are audiobook listens because I jot “audiobook” in the margin.
I hope you find something that looks intriguing for your TBR on this list (and in these comments!), and I look forward to browsing your recent audiobook winners below. Thanks in advance for your recommendations: they’re extremely helpful when it comes to choosing my next listen!
New-to-the-blog audiobook listens
I opted to read these books on audio because I suspected they’d be particularly good in that format, and they did not disappoint.
As featured in our 2023 Fall Book Preview. I read this on the enthusiastic recommendation of a favorite indie bookseller; she read the print but I'm so glad I opted for the audiobook: the Scottish accents were perfection, as voiced by Sara Vickers. This suspenseful tale features the historical woman who inspired the character of Lady Macbeth. (I had no idea there was any such woman!) This woman is named Gruoch, and her grandmother's early prophecy that she would one day be queen strongly influences the decisions she makes to love and wed and advise those in her circle. Much of the story's tension springs from the fact that as readers, we know the fate of Lady Macbeth. Strongly reminiscent of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy and Signe Pike’s The Lost Queen. 12 hrs 16 mins. More info ?
Mara Wilson's cheeky narration of this road trip romance made for fun and easy listening. After a bad breakup, twenty-something, once-upon-a-time child actor Millie found solace in spending time alone in her apartment, and soon became best friends with her elderly neighbor Mrs. Nash. When Mrs. Nash died, she left Millie with a story and a last wish—that Millie travel to Key West with her ashes to reunite her with the true love she hasn't seen in decades. When a cancelled flight wrecks Millie's plans, she hitches a ride south with a handsome grump she once met at a reading for her horrible ex's MFA program. Cue all the romance tropes: grumpy meets sunshine, peculiar airbnb with only one bed, and more. The sapphic 1940s love story unspooled in alternating chapters lent meaning and perspective to events in the present day timeline. I don't expect this to prove to be a particularly memorable read, but it made the time fly as I walked the dog and folded laundry. Open door. 9 hrs 28 mins More info ?
I own books by the Nobel- and twice-Booker winner Coetzee on my shelf (largely because I collect these orange penguin editions) but this short novel is first I've read from the South African author. Listening to this book felt like an intellectual exercise: the Pole of the title is an aging pianist who visits Barcelona to perform works by Chopin. While there he meets Beatriz, a middle-aged socialite who volunteers with the Concert Circle, the organization that hosts the Pole. (They call him "the Pole" because the Spaniards of the Concert Circle don't even try to correctly pronounce all the consonants in the man's Polish name.) Beatriz and the Pole converse only briefly, and in English—which neither of them speaks fluently—so Beatriz is stunned when, months after his departure, she receives a flirtatious message from the man. And as a reader I was likewise stunned to see the two enter into an affair—though that isn't really what the story is about. I feel like a literature seminar could spend a semester unpacking everything this book has to say about place, language, translation, and love—and Dante and his Beatrice. Narrated by Colin Mace. 3 hrs 31 mins. More info ?
My print copy has been languishing on my bookshelf since before its summer 2022 release, but when an MMD Book Club member raved about the full-cast audiobook narration I decided to listen. The story is indeed well-suited to that format, as it's told in news articles, emails, and podcast transcripts. (I love how the podcast host sounds like NPR's Steve Inskeep!) The titular Violet Volk was a popular magician and cultural icon who disappeared mid-act nearly ten years ago and hasn't been seen since. No one knows what happened or where she went, not even her beloved sister Sasha. As the ten year anniversary approaches and a podcaster pesters the family for exclusive interviews, Sasha is forced to reckon with her ever-present grief, her unavoidable public connection to her larger-than-life sister, and the strange sleepwalking incidents she's suffering with greater and greater frequency. This is a good pick for fans of sibling stories, realistic tales with a touch of magic, and stories where podcasting plays a big role. 11 hrs 9 mins. More info ?
Long before I became an urban planning nerd, I was obsessed with books about top-tier chefs and their restaurants, which is why listening to this book (narrated by the author) reminded me of what my reading life regularly looked like ten to fifteen years ago. Guidara has spent years working in the NYC fine dining scene, including taking Eleven Madison Park to the #1 restaurant in the world and playing a critical role at Shake Shack. (I've only been to one of those restaurants; I'll let you guess which one.) I enjoyed the dishy behind-the-scenes stories of how Guidara persistently strove to delight customers by going above and beyond in an era when that wasn't how things were done in the biz: I do love a detailed story about a hot dog or coat check or menu fail. I was also delighted to realize at book's end that Guidara is married to Christina Tosi (founder of Milk Bar)—I had no idea! 8 hrs 37 mins. More info ?
Ally Carter is a bestselling YA author; this is her action-packed adult debut featuring a spy with amnesia, a gruff and handsome co-conspirator, a variety of European settings, and banter galore. The story opens when our spy protagonist wakes up in Paris and realizes she’s in big, big trouble because it seems a whole lot of people want her dead, which is confusing, because she is NOT a spy. She quickly realizes this is an unfortunate case of mistaken identity: the bad guys are confusing her for her identical twin, a spy who's seemingly gone rogue and is certainly nowhere to be found. To stay safe, she has to disappear—and for that she needs the help of a very grumpy, very handsome secret agent. I zoomed through this fun and frothy audiobook, as narrated by Emily Ellet and Andrew Eiden. This would be a great one for fans of Alias Emma. 9 hrs. More info ?
Shearer's heartfelt debut traces a formerly enslaved woman's journey to be reunited with her five children in 1830s Barbados and beyond. Rachel is a newly free woman when she flees the plantation where she has labored for years, desperate to find the five children who she believes to be alive but who were sold away from her. Her travels take her from Barbados to British Guiana and then on to Trinidad, and at every stop she seems to encounter someone who can offer a glimmer of information about her children's fate and whereabouts. I listened to this steadily over the course of several weeks, and appreciated the immersive quality of Debra Michaels's narration. 10 hrs 35 mins. More info ?
As featured in our 2023 Fall Book Preview. I devoured this dystopian follow-up to Zhang's debut How Much of These Hills Is Gold; I happened to get my hands on Eunice Wong's narration early and LOVED it in that format. In this urgent and moody tale, the end of the world arrives in the form of encroaching smog that begins in Iowa and slowly spreads to choke out the sun, so that humanity—or at least most of us—are forced to subsist on a bland and gritty flour for our nutrients. Our protagonist in this dour world is a chef—so when she is offered a position that will allow her to prepare meals for the über-wealthy at a hidden bunker for the elite using choice ingredients like strawberries, crème fraîche, and chicken, how can she refuse? She doesn't even try, and soon becomes thoroughly entangled in the lives of her wealthy employer, his beautiful daughter, and their morally dubious quest to preserve the life we once knew—at a cost. Scintillating and sensual, especially (but not only) when it comes to descriptions of the food. More info ?
I'm discussing this Booker-shortlisted book further in Friday's Industry Insights bonus episode about literary awards for our What Should I Read Next patreon community. This book also made me realize that I've listened to quite a few Irish novels recently (including The Rachel Incident, shared below). This has been purely by accident, though I do LOVE an Irish novel on audio! I found the publisher's descriptions to be quite misleading here: expect a multi-generational family saga about the unrelenting and unending troubles and demise of the Barnes family. Audio isn’t my best reading format for discerning style and structure, but it’s still easy to see that character development, structure, and symbolism are all brilliantly done; the multiple POVs for the four nuclear family members served the story well and, if you can believe it, made 700 pages feel like a page-turner closer to half that long, all the way up to the jaw-dropping ending. This is a book that would well reward a re-read, if you can bear it. Please note countless content warnings, plus the extra-long length for this multi-cast narration: a whopping 26 hrs 10 mins. More info ?
I reached for this 2020 novel when I was craving backlist emotionally resonant literary fiction, and it was NOT what I expected. I have a little bit of a flying phobia, and put too much stock in the numerous reader comments that said this "isn't truly a plane crash story" and "the crash is only the inciting incident" and "is really about how a young boy rebuilds his life after a great tragedy." Friends, I ultimately enjoyed this book but make no mistake: this is a plane crash story! 12-year-old Edward Adler is the sole survivor of a crash that killed his brother, parents, and every other passenger on board their flight headed from Neward to L.A. In the aftermath he goes to live with his aunt and uncle and must, somehow, learn how to move forward. But alternate chapters of the book are set on the plane during the flight, right up till the moment the pilot loses control of the plane over Colorado. I blew through this in just a couple of days, urged along by Cassandra Campbell's urgent yet gentle narration. 11 hrs 36 mins. More info ?
Confession: I haven't been to New York City's renowned Morgan Library (yet), and before this book's publicity campaign I knew nothing of the woman crucial to its existence and current collection. Belle da Costa Greene was born Belle Marion Greener to a prominent African American family; her father was Harvard's first Black graduate and a noted attorney and activist. When her parents separated, Belle's mother Genevieve moved Belle and her siblings to New York City, where the family decided to pass as white and changed their last name to Greene. (Belle added “de Costa” to her professional name, to substantiate the family's claim that they were of Portugese ancestry.) This was the backdrop for Morgan's hiring Belle as his "personal librarian," where she enjoyed great and nearly unprecedented power as curator of his precious personal art collection, which became the public Pierpont Morgan Library in 1924. (Belle served as Director until 1948.) This is gripping, fast-paced biographical fiction, narrated by fan favorite Robin Miles (which definitely influenced my opting for the audiobook). This is our February selection for MMD Book Club,; its flight pick is Belle Greene by Alexandra Lapierre, translated by Tina Kover. 12 hrs 23 mins. More info ?
I decided to pick up Rum's 2019 debut after enjoying her sophomore novel Evil Eye, which we featured in our 2023 Fall Book Preview. This family drama unfolds in two timelines, depicting three generations of women in a Palestinian-American family and the secrets that haunt them. In the 1990s, Isra reluctantly marries young and moves to Brooklyn to join her new husband Adam and his family. Two decades later, Isra's 18-year-old daughter Deya, now orphaned from a supposed car crash that killed both her parents, dodges her grandmother's attempts to find her a husband and then makes a discovery that causes her to question everything she's been told about her family history. Heads up for numerous content warnings; I listened to some painful scenes on 2x speed to get through them faster. This felt almost like a thriller, as voiced by Ariana Delawari, Dahlia Salem, and Susan Nezami. 10 hrs 15 mins. More info ?
Great-on-audio books that have previously been featured on MMD this summer
For your convenience, I’ve gathered my audiobook-specific recommendations from this fall’s Quick Lit posts here in one place. Happy listening!
This one's from October 2023 Quick Lit: I've had Beanland's historical debut novel waiting for me in Libro.fm since its 2020 release; I bumped it to the top of my queue after enjoying her April 2023 release The House Is on Fire. This book is NOT what I expected: it's no spoiler to say that on page 14 the vivacious 20-year-old swimmer Florence drowns on a training swim in the Atlantic Ocean, and the book is truly about her Jewish family's elaborate attempt to conceal the truth from Florence's hospitalized sister, who they fear will go into premature labor if she learns of the tragedy. Beanland explains in her author's note that much of the story is based on her own Jewish family's history in 1930s Atlantic City, and teases out what is fact and what is fiction for her readers. I loved this on audio, narrated by a full cast including Jesse Vilinsky and Gabra Zackman. 10 hrs 48 mins. More info ?
More from October Quick Lit: Our recent team and MMD Book Club discussions about Dark Academia inspired me to listen to this 2022 novel about a recent college graduate with a tragic past who travels from Washington state to New York City to take a summer job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When she arrives, she finds she is no longer needed—but is rescued by a curator at The Cloisters who has an opening. This outsider quickly falls in with the enigmatic group of curators and support staff at the museum, and becomes absorbed in their dangerous extracurricular pursuits involving rare artifacts and tarot cards. When those pursuits turn deadly, they all face terrible decisions in the aftermath. If you need characters you can root for this isn't the book for you, but I loved it for its intriguing setting, strong sense of place, and moody fall vibes. Emily Tremaine's narration was serviceable and perfectly listenable, but I wouldn't say it enhanced the reading experience. (If this sounds good, don't miss Ginger's post featuring 20 Dark Academia novels for moody fall reading.) 10 hrs 16 mins. More info ?