My spring audiobook recommendations tilt toward the mystery-thriller genres, but you’ll also find historical fiction and an inventive literary work on the list. All of the audiobooks I like have strong stories, good writing and terrific narration with voices you don’t mind having in your head. The creaky women’s voices popular today distract me and seem hard to understand. Full disclosure here: I return a lot of books. That’s something you can do for free on Audible.
I rejoice and settle in for a great listen when I hear women like the actors in There There, the first novel by Tommy Orange. The clever writing, sharp storytelling and excellent narration made it a spring audiobook standout. The New York Times and the Washington Post put the book on their lists of bests for 2018.
Orange, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, takes us into the world of the urban Indian, or “Native,” as many of his twelve characters say. Each speaks in the present tense and tells funny, heartbreaking, maddening stories about their struggles with life and identity. We also get a sweeping sense of history and the lingering affects of the colonizers’ drive against Native Americans. At first the characters and their stories seem disconnected and you wonder where Orange will take you. But he twists and turns and keeps you in suspense, laughing and frightened as he weaves his magic and pulls the characters together as they all head for the Big Oakland Powwow. I won’t spoil it. But the meaning of home and the city of Oakland, California, play central roles.
The book’s title comes from a Gertrude Stein quote. A character describes how most people get it all wrong. Stein wasn’t panning Oakland, he explains. Stein’s family moved to Oakland in 1880 when she was six. She left at 17 but came back to give a talk in 1935. She looked around and saw her family home, farm and orchard replaced by dozens of houses. She reflected, in her autobiography, with all beautiful things she remembered gone, for her in Oakland “there is no there there.” It is very much “there” for Orange and his characters.
Narrators Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Ceurvo and Kyla Garcia do an outstanding job making the characters into real people.
I admit that I was queasy about reading a book about a man who tattooed numbers on Jews for the Germans. But the story The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris, with narration by Richard Armitage, won me over quickly. I listened to this harrowing love story rooting for the optimism and charm of the hero. The story is based on the true story of Slovakian Holocaust survivor Ludwig, or Lale, Sokolov.
In the novel Lale Eisenberg finds himself in Auschwitz forced to tattoo others, and to do much more, to stay alive. Armitage gives a low-key performance as Lale, his love Gita and all the other characters. His work won him, and the book, the 2019 Best Fiction Audi Award from the Audiobook Publishers Association (APA).
Be prepared. The history, the story and the evil cruelty infuriates, frustrates and keeps you worrying about Lale and Gita’s chances for survival. Ultimately, one comes away in awe of how human beings can survive in a senselessly savage, inhumane world.
Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith, narrated by Robert Glennister, is the second book in the Cormoran Strike series written by J.K. Rowling. For some reason I listened out-of-order and enjoyed The Silkworm first. But no matter, it is perfect for the spring audiobook list. If you like a good complicated plot that delivers at every turn and features compelling characters, you’ll like Career of Evil.
Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot hunt for a killer who sends body parts to their London office. The search will keep you on edge and nervously jiggling your legs. Almost everything seems surprising. The story plays out agains the backdrop of the personal struggles of Strike and Robin. He’s a former Royal Army military police officer, who lost part of a leg to an IED in Afghanistan. Robin struggles with uncertainty about her upcoming marriage and she and Strike dance around the sexual tension between them.
The body parts pile up as police join the hunt for the Shaklewell Ripper and the appealing characters find themselves at risk repeatedly. Through the harrowing story tinged with romance, Robert Glennister inhabits the characters and creates a believable world.
Lethal White, also by Robert Galbraith and narrated by Robert Glenister, came at just the right time. When I finished Career of Evil, I jumped at the opportunity to remain in the Cormoron Strike world and downloaded Lethal White. It’s the fourth and most recent book in the series.
J.K. Rowling, using the Galbraith pseudonym, builds another multi-layered story. This one revolves around corrupt members of Parliament, opportunistic socialists and a greedy, dysfunctional upper class family. The 2012 Olympics in London serve as the backdrop as MPs try to use the Olympics to their advantage.
It begins when Billy Knight, an unstable young man, bursts into Strikes’ office and tells him he thinks he witnessed a murder when he was a child. He infers the killer was his brother Jimmy, an anti-Semitic radical socialist.
When Billy disappears, Strike and Robin Ellacot, now his partner, try to find him. At the same time they launch an investigation for a Conservative member of Parliament.
Strike’s success as a detective has made him too famously recognizable to play an open role in the case. So Robin goes undercover to work for MP Jasper Chiswell and finds evidence that the husband of the sports minster, in the office next door, is blackmailing Chiswell. At the same time, Robin struggles with her failing marriage and symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder she suffers as result of their last investigation.
Class and the culture wars underpin the plot. Billy Knight’s memory of the killing leads Strike to his parliamentary client’s estate. There the greedy, spoiled, dysfunctional Chiswell family contrasts sharply with the working class people who live on their property. There’s also tension between the MP’s children, daughters called Izzy and Fizzy, their nutty stepmother Kinvara, and half-brother Raf, the child of an Italian mother. And then there is a murder.
Robert Glennister, again, does a perfect job keeping the characters living and breathing through the labyrinth of the plot. He also does a fine job keeping the sexual tension between Robin and Strike simmering.
The Punishment She Deserves, by Elizabeth George and narrated by Simon Vance, also won an Audi Award for best mystery. Lethal White and Robert Glennister were finalists in this category and I would have chosen Glennister.
Nevertheless, fans of the Lynley novels will enjoy the nuanced, quick-paced mystery that takes Barbara Havers and Chief Inspector Isabel Ardery to Shropshire to investigate the suicide, or possible murder, of a popular deacon. Ardery investigates while she struggles with alcohol as she tries to prevent her ex-husband from taking her sons to live in Australia. Havers struggles to keep her job with the Met, but discovers that Ardery’s eagerness to get the case finished and return to London leaves questions unanswered. Enter Lynley who with Havers begins a thorough investigation that will solve the case.
Familiar characters like Simon St. James and his wife Debra make late appearances in the book. Winston Nkata also turns up and Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier continues his political manipulation and efforts to advance himself.
Simon Vance doesn’t really sound like the Lynley that I imagine, but he does do a great job with the other characters including the townspeople in the middle of a culture war and the villains who hide in plain sight.
Here’s a bit of self-promotion. But first a couple of reviews that appear on Audible. “The narrator did an excellent job!!! “I liked it! And another. “The narration was great and kept you entertained.”
Of Shame and Joy, by Lawrence Block and narrated by Barbara Nevins Taylor. Here’s one of mine. Lawrence Block, the mystery writer, also writes in a variety of genres using different names. He wrote this coming-of-age love story in 1960 and brought it out of retirement as an audiobook. It’s billed as erotic. But it’s not really. It has all the hallmarks of a classic romance. It just happens to be between two women.
Enjoy what suits you on the Spring audiobook list and let me know what you think.
And here are some other audiobook suggestions.
