Author Archives: Kylie Conner

About Kylie Conner

Kylie’s favorite reads are usually horror/thrillers, which matches her taste in films as well. When she’s not cracking bad jokes she can often be found curled up with a cup of coffee and her cat, Gideon.

Enhance Your March Break With Audiobooks

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When I was a kid and March Break rolled around, everyone else in my class was going away somewhere exotic or even just on week-long road trips. Since my mom was always on the hunt for a good deal, she would never book our trips during these busy vacationing times, so the majority of my March Breaks were trying to find something to fill my time while my peers were exploring the world.

Enter books, my saviors and boredom defeaters. Instead of enduring my little brother kicking the back of my seat during a road trip, I got to explore Panem thanks to Katniss, feel the second-hand embarrassment of Georgia Nicolson, and learn about the dangers of drug use from the Crank series. And all of this was happening from the comfort of my living room couch.

People always say that traveling and seeing the world really changes you, and I agree, but there’s something about being able to listen (or read) a new book and have your perspective changed. With every book I read as a kid, there was always a feeling of self-reflection, and I believe that every book, no matter how deep and moving it was, contributed to who I am as a person today.

As I mentioned before, yes, I did tear through the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series. The title of the first book is Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, which I’m sure my mom loved. From the outside, this series might’ve just seemed like a silly book for teens, but it kind of was like my own teenage version of Bridget Jones. I related to the characters and they were going through a lot of the same things I was at the time.

So, if you or your kids are entering March Break and are looking for ways to stay entertained during your staycation, just pick up a book and escape for a while. You never know how it may change you.

Did you binge-read on March Break too?

Which books do you remember reading as a kid?


New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!

Audiobooks.com Interview with Deb Olin Unferth, Author of Barn 8

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Have you ever sat on a beach in deep thought about the mysterious lives of chickens and what will come of them in the future? Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8, certainly has. Best known for her novel Vacation and her recent collection of stories, Wait Till You See Me Dance, Unferth is now back with her latest creation, Barn 8 — a witty yet philosophical political drama, which has been praised, saying, “If this novel isn’t a movement, it has enough heart to start one.”

Audiobooks.com: What can readers gain from listening to the audiobook version of Barn 8 that they might not necessarily get from reading the print version?

Deb Olin Unferth: I love audiobooks. I listen to about thirty a year. I’ve been listening to them since you had to check them out of the library in a big box of numbered cassette tapes and lug them home on the train.

Brittany Pressley, who reads Barn 8, has so much personality in her voice. She’s so playful and has a terrific range. Barn 8 is told from several points of view and she switches between them with ease, making them come to life. It’s almost like listening to a radio drama.

Audiobooks.com: How involved were you in the narrator casting process and what do you look for in an audiobook narrator?

Deb Olin Unferth: I was given several options to choose from. I wanted someone who would bring a lot of energy and be able to handle the different points of view, [and] see it as a fun artistic challenge. Pressley jumped out right away, and she has an impressive list of books to her credit, too. A lot of range.

Generally what I look for in an audiobook narrator varies. For memoir, I prefer the author read it. I want to feel like I’m spending the afternoon with them over coffee and they’re confiding in me. I listened to Michelle Obama read her book, Becoming, and I swear I felt like she and I were hanging out, talking about the old days in Chicago, laughing about the antics in the White House, raging about politics, discussing exercise routines. It made me so happy!

For novels I prefer a professional reader who isn’t afraid to take someone else’s words and bring it to life with their own personal take. Most authors aren’t great at reading their own work, I’ve found, though there are exceptions. Nicholson Baker is an amazing reader of his own work. I could listen to him read his own books forever.

Audiobooks.com: Your novel touches on some very important but seldom talked about issues surrounding egg farming. What was your impetus for writing Barn 8? 

Deb Olin Unferth: Well, no one likes factory farming! No one wants chickens to live squashed in cages in giant barns. But it’s hard to think about, hard to face. As I learned about egg-layer chickens and the conditions they live in, I kept having this image of them all leaving the barns. It was such a relief just to imagine it. I decided to go ahead and make that feeling real, on the page.

Audiobooks.com: What research did you have to do for Barn 8 so that you could portray the hen’s perspectives as well as predict what might happen to them in the future?

Deb Olin Unferth: I did a huge amount of research for Barn 8! I wrote a long investigative piece on the egg industry for Harper’s Magazine. I interviewed undercover investigators, farmers, animal lawyers, all sorts of people.

And I spent a huge amount of time reading books and articles about chickens, visiting them on farms, big and small. I sat in hen houses and just watched them. I recorded their voices and listened to them on my headphones at night. This went on for years. I remember one night on vacation, sitting on the beach and contemplating all that I had learned and all that was still unknown to anyone about chickens. The image of them far into the future came to me.

Audiobooks.com: Do you find it hard to toe the line between conveying such a serious message while also injecting your sense of humor and lightheartedness into the novel? 

Deb Olin Unferth: Yes, I did. I had to keep taking out material that was too dark, and then putting it back in when I could couch it in enough humor or other kinds of emotion. I do feel like I see the world both darkly and lightheartedly at once anyway. It was a matter of getting the audience to follow along with me.

Audiobooks.com: Can you share with us what you’re working on next?

Deb Olin Unferth: Sure! I’m working on a sort-of sci-fi novel. Part of it takes place on Mars, part of it is on Earth at the end of civilization. Are there animals in it? Yes, there are! Is it funny? You bet.∎


New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!

Audiobooks.com Interview with Cara Black, Author of Three Hours in Paris

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Who among us hasn’t had the odd daydream or two about picking up and jetting off to France and just living like a Parisian for a while? We might browse wistfully through flights, but never take the plunge. Meanwhile, Cara Black, author of the Aimee Leduc series, has penned 20 novels that are set in this cultural hotbed including her latest standalone, Three Hours in Paris (releasing April 2020).

We were lucky enough to catch up with Black to chat about her latest listen, audiobook narrators, and what inspires her writing.

Audiobooks.com: What can readers gain from listening to the audiobook version of Three Hours in Paris that they might not necessarily get from reading the print version?

Cara Black: Both versions have so much to offer. However, in the audiobook version there’s the immediacy of the spoken word and the reader’s intonation and nuances of feeling that enhance listening to the story. Also you can listen to the story anywhere hands-free.

Audiobooks.com: How involved are you in the narrator casting process and what do you look for in an audiobook narrator?

Cara Black: I felt it was important to go with a new voice to distinguish Three Hours in Paris from the Aimée Leduc series. I liked the sample from Elisabeth Rogers—her voice, intonation, expression, and how she puts emphasis on phrases. She’s good! So I decided to go with Elisabeth Rogers, a new reader, and I feel so happy she is Kate’s “voice.”

Audiobooks.com: This is your first standalone novel. How did it feel to venture away from your Aimée Leduc Investigation series?

Cara Black: I felt compelled to write Three Hours in Paris. It was a story I had to tell, and it came from a footnote in history. I’d been writing bits while I wrote the Aimée Leduc series, but these pieces didn’t fit in an Aimée story so I saved them. I had only written series novels, which I love to do and will continue, so it was a leap to write a standalone. It was time to flex my writing muscles and this story had high stakes in a time of incredible history. With a new setting and era in history, it gave me freedom and a chance to explore other voices and viewpoints.

Audiobooks.com: All of your Aimée Leduc Investigation novels as well as Three Hours in Paris are set in France. After writing 20 books set in France do you find that you’re still learning new things about the country and the culture? Do you ever see yourself writing a novel set outside of France?

Cara Black: Definitely. I’m always learning new things about the French and France. I love the history, the traditions, the slower pace of life, its culture of living well, and the charming, contradictory Parisians I come across. If I ever figure them out, the mystery will be over. Yes, I’ve got a few ideas for a novel outside of France.

Audiobooks.com: In your author’s note, you mentioned the idea for Three Hours in Paris grew from anecdotes that you encountered on your research trips to Paris. When you travel, are you always picking up tidbits and saving them for future inspiration?

Cara Black: There’s a saying about writers, “everything is fodder.” So, I’m always jotting down a word overheard, a color that catches my eye, or a saying that encapsulates a feeling. And I always try to use what I find in France on the page.

Over the years researching, I was lucky and honored to meet several female Résistants who were in the underground during WW2. They told me stories and shared their experiences. Also, many of my friend’s parents had been schoolchildren in Paris during the war, and it was incredible to hear firsthand accounts of what they remembered: daily life and privations that didn’t make it in the history books.

Audiobooks.com: Can we expect more stories about Kate Rees in the future?

Cara Black: I wrote this as a standalone novel. But we end in 1940 when the war is in the early stages, and I left Kate’s trajectory open-ended, so it’s a possibility. ∎


New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!

Celebrate Black History Month with These Audiobooks

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It’s February, which means it’s time to celebrate Black History Month. Whether you’re looking for an informative historical listen, a powerful memoir, or even a notable fiction audiobook, we’ve got something for you. Click here to see our full booklist for Black History Month.


The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, narrated by Colson Whitehead, JD Jackson 

From Colson Whitehead, author of the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning novel, The Underground Railroad, comes his heartbreaking follow-up, The Nickel Boys.

Whitehead is at the height of his powers in The Nickel Boys, as he brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

Read more and sample the audio →


I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, narrated by Maya Angelou

If you’re looking for a listen that is joyous and painful, and as mysterious and memorable as childhood itself, look no further. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is an American classic that is beloved worldwide. It captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right.

Read more and sample the audio →


The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, narrated by Bahni Turpin

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas became a #1 bestseller and was the Goodreads Choice 2017 Winner. Not only that, but Bahni Turpin also won Best Female Narrator at the 2018 Audies for her narration of the audiobook.

Thomas’ debut novel follows sixteen-year-old Starr Carter as she moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Read more and sample the audio →


The Great Stain by Noel Rae, narrated by Steven Crossley 

Noel Rae weaves firsthand accounts together in The Great Stain to create a narrative from an intensely consequential chapter in human history: the transatlantic slave trade.

Rae has provided all viewpoints to eliminate any historical blindspots, and to ensure that the full story is told. The Great Stain tells of good and evil, of greed and kindness, and of a civilization as it develops, evolves, and continues to move toward the future. Full of in-depth research, this audiobook is an important work of history that is relevant to the world today.

Read more and sample the audio →


Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, narrated by Shvorne Marks 

Named by both The Times and NPR as one of the 100 Best Books of the Year, Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world.

In Queenie, we meet the relatable Queenie Jenkins — a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places. As she continues to make questionable decisions, she tries to quiet the noise from the outside world as she discovers who she really is and what she really wants.

Read more and sample the audio →


New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!

Book Clubbin’: 10 Discussion Questions for Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

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Welcome to our monthly blog feature, Book Clubbin’!

Sometimes life can get so hectic that you’re lucky if you find time to grab a shower let alone read your book club book in time. If your New Years’ resolution is to read more but you can’t find the time, audiobooks are the answer! So, press play on this month’s pick during your commute, while you’re cooking dinner, or before bed!

January’s pick is Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, narrated by Nicole Lewis. This new release has drummed up a lot of buzz in anticipation of its release, that’s for sure! Not only has it become an instant bestseller, but it is also Reese Witherspoon’s January pick for her Hello Sunshine book club. Such a Fun Age tackles the issues of race and privilege through the perspectives of the babysitter, Emira, and her employer, Alix Chamberlain.

Don’t miss this striking debut novel. Check out our discussion questions below, but beware, spoilers ahead.

So take a peek at our questions, and as always, remember there MAY be some spoilers in here!

—————MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!————

1) Such a Fun Age is told from the perspectives of Alix and Emira. How did these different narrators affect your reading/listening experience?

2) Why didn’t Emira want to share the video from the grocery store?

3) Why do you think Alix is so set on becoming close friends with Emira? Is this linked to guilt she holds from the past?

4) What did you think of Kelley when he was introduced? Were you suspicious of his intentions?

5) After discovering Emira and Alix are linked by someone unexpected, did it change your opinion of either character?

6) Do you think that what happened in high school affected Alix and Kelley differently? Did it leave a lasting impression that carried over to the rest of their lives?

7) How did the events that unfolded in Such a Fun Age ultimately lead to Emira finding her path into a career?

8) How do you think the title, Such a Fun Age, relates to the story?

9) This novel touches on important topics such as: race, classic, identity…etc. Did you notice any other prevalent themes? Did the exploration of any of these themes change your opinions at all?

10) Were you satisfied with how the novel ended? Were you hoping for a different resolution?


New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!

Audiobooks.com Interview with Dani Shapiro, Author of Inheritance

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Have you ever uncovered a secret about your family that changed the way you look at both your life and your family in general? This happened to Dani Shapiro, author of the bestselling memoirs Hourglass, Slow Motion, Devotion, and her latest, Inheritance.

We were lucky enough to interview Shapiro and pick her brain on the topics of audiobooks, memoirs, and her podcast Family Secrets.


Audiobooks.com: How do you prepare before narrating your own memoirs? 

Dani Shapiro: I try to put myself all the way into the book so I can be living, breathing, the book during the hours I’m narrating. It’s such an intimate experience to narrate my own memoirs, and I want to impart that same sense of immediacy and intimacy to the reader.


Audiobooks.com: What do readers gain from listening to Inheritance or your other memoirs that they might miss out on by reading the print versions?

Dani Shapiro: That intimacy I’m talking about – I think that’s very particular to great audiobooks. After all, we listen alone – often with ear buds in place, or alone in a car. We’re receiving the voice of the narrator in an unmediated way. What emotion is being conveyed through the voice? We talk a lot about “voice” when it comes to literature, but when we’re talking about an audiobook, we’re literally talking about a voice and all it can contain.


Audiobooks.com: How has uncovering the truth about your paternity shaped how you tell your own story?

Dani Shapiro: Oh, my goodness. How has it not? One of the most interesting aspects of uncovering the truth about my paternity is how, in a way, it was always hiding in plain sight in my creative process. My themes, as a novelist, always revolved around family secrets. As I write in Inheritance, I always knew there was a secret. What I didn’t know: the secret was me. And so I’ve always, always supplied narratives to my own story in an attempt to piece it together, to understand. But it wasn’t until I discovered that something as fundamental as my identity has been kept from me that I was able to hold it all, see it all, understand it all.


Audiobooks.com: Your podcast, Family Secrets, gives listeners the platform to share their personal stories about secrets they’ve kept and those that have, in turn, been kept from them. Why were you compelled to create this podcast, and how have other people’s stories influenced how you think about your own experiences with your family?

Dani Shapiro: The podcast grew organically out of having written Inheritance. After I finished the final draft of the book, I was on the phone one afternoon with a friend, an early reader – the great Buddhist mindfulness teacher Sylvia Boorstein – and reading Inheritance prompted Sylvia to tell me a riveting story of her own family secret. She’s a great storyteller, and as she was talking, I found myself wishing I was recording her. And then I had the thought: hey, what about a podcast? I had no idea what I was doing, at first. I had a lot of help. But what I quickly learned is that storytelling is storytelling. I absolutely love the form of Family Secrets. I love sitting down with my guests and guiding them through their stories – “holding” their stories is the way I think of it, by writing scripts that allow their stories to be their most coherent and powerful.


Audiobooks.com: How does recording a podcast differ from recording an audiobook? Did your experiences with narrating your own memoirs help with the process of creating your podcast?

Dani Shapiro: Recording the podcast is quite different from recording an audiobook, in that it’s a conversation. A highly-produced conversation, but nonetheless, it’s a dialogue. The one similarity is that I’m using my speaking voice – an instrument I had never really paid much attention to before. It turns out I have a good voice for this sort of thing – not something I’d ever considered.


Audiobooks.com: Since creating the podcast, have you enjoyed taking a step back from your writing or are you itching to get behind the keyboard again?

Dani Shapiro: Between touring for Inheritance and the podcast, I haven’t had much time for my own writing, and for right now, that’s okay. I’ll know when it no longer feels right. These have been huge changes in my creative life, and as I always tell my students, when you’re a writer, you are your own instrument. We have to be respectful of that instrument, and the way it changes over time.


Audiobooks.com: What can we expect from season 3 of Family Secrets?

Dani Shapiro: I’m almost finished recording season 3 which will launch in early February! We have some absolutely amazing guests this coming season. I feel like the stories keep deepening, evolving, and becoming more nuanced. Finding great guests is shockingly easy. ∎


New to Audiobooks.com? Get your first book free, PLUS a bonus book from our VIP selection when you sign up for our one-month free trial. Digital audiobooks make audible stories come to life when you’re commuting, working out, cleaning, cooking, and more! Listening is easy with our top-rated free audiobook apps for iOS and Android, which let you download & listen to bestselling audiobooks on the go, wherever you are. Click here to get your free audiobooks!