About Michelle

Michelle loves books, travelling and her adopted cats, Grizzly and Oats. When she's not reading, she can be found hiking.

Listen to The Shape of Water, best picture winner at the 90th Academy Awards

I can think of no better way to spend a Sunday than celebrating great storytelling, munching on popcorn, and discussing the importance of diversity and representation. In other words, the 90th Academy Awards did not disappoint — especially when the winner for best picture was announced.

In addition to winning best picture, The Shape of Water, an intricate and powerful story that seamlessly weaves fantasy, horror, and romance together, also took home awards for best director, best original music score, and best production design. The Shape of Water is set in Cold War-era Baltimore at the Occam Aerospace Research Center, which recently received its most sensitive asset ever: an amphibious man captured in the Amazon. What follows is an emotional romance between the asset and one of the janitors at the center, a mute woman who uses sign language to communicate with the sea creature.

Developed from the ground up by visionary storyteller Guillermo del Toro and celebrated author Daniel Kraus, The Shape of Water is not merely a film novelization, nor a film adaptation: they are separate mediums for telling the same engrossing story. The idea was born on an Iowa tennis court when Kraus was just 15-years-old. Nearly three decades later, he vividly remembers coming up with a story about a creature locked in a lab and a janitor that tries to break it out. The idea played out in his mind for years, and came to life years later as an already successful author after having breakfast with del Toro in Toronto.

The Shape of Water novel publishes today, and beloved narrator Jenna Lamia makes the story even more mesmerizing through audio. Read more and sample the audio.

February’s Top 10 Audiobooks.com Member Downloads

Listen to this month’s roundup of the top fiction and non fiction titles downloaded by Audiobooks.com members.

Fiction

1. The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, narrated by Julia Whelan

The Wife Between Us.When you listen to this audiobook, you will make many assumptions. You will assume you are listening to a story about a jealous ex-wife. You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.
Read more and sample the audio.

 

2. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle, narrated by Hope Davis

Wrinkle In Time.

Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a “tesseract,” which, if you didn’t know, is a wrinkle in time. Read more and sample the audio.

 

 

3. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, narrated by Sean Crisden and Elisa Davis

An American Marriage.Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. 
Read more and sample the audio.

 

 

 

 

4. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, narrated by Wil Wheaton

Wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut-part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.
Read more and sample the audio.

 

 

5. Still Me by Jojo Moyes, narrated by Anna Acton

Still Me.

Louisa Clark arrives in New York ready to start a new life, confident that she can embrace this new adventure and keep her relationship with Ambulance Sam alive across several thousand miles. She is thrown into the world of the superrich Gopniks: Leonard and his much younger second wife, Agnes, and a never-ending array of household staff and hangers-on.
Read more and sample the audio.

 

 

Non Fiction

1. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Leif Babin and Jocko Willink, narrated by Jocko Willnick

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead And WinIn Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin share hard-hitting, Navy SEAL combat stories that translate into lessons for business and life. With riveting first-hand accounts of making high-pressure decisions as Navy SEAL battlefield leaders, this book is equally gripping for leaders who seek to dominate other arenas. Read more and sample the audio.

 

 

2. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, narrated by Mike Chamberlain

Power of Habit.Named one of the best books of the year by The Wall Street Journal Financial Times and New York Times Bestseller. A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.
Read more and sample the audio.

 

 

3. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance, narrated by J. D. Vance


From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class, Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis, that of white working-class Americans.
Read more and sample the audio.

 

 

 

4. All-American Murder: The Rise and Fall of Aaron Hernandez, the Superstar Whose Life Ended on Murderers’ Row by James Patterson, narrated by Alex Abramovich

All-American Murder.Football coaches, players, and fans called Aaron Hernandez unstoppable. His four-year-old daughter called him Daddy. The law called him inmate #174594. He was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later a Super Bowl veteran. Aaron Hernandez’s every move as a professional athlete played out in the headlines, yet he led a secret life-one that ended in a maximum security prison.
Read more and sample the audio.

 

5. Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, narrated by Holter Graham and Michael Wolff

Fire and Fury.With extraordinary access to the Trump White House, Michael Wolff tells the inside story of the most controversial presidency of our time. The first nine months of Donald Trump’s term were stormy, outrageous-and absolutely mesmerizing. Read more and sample the audio.

 

Page to Screen in March 2018

Before you head to the movies this month, make sure you listen to the books they were based on first!

 

1. Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews, narrated by Jeremy Bobb
Expected release date: March 2

Red Sparrow.

A gripping, highly commercial espionage thriller written with the delicious insider detail and up-to-the-minute insight, only known to a veteran CIA spook. In today’s Russia, dominated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, state intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence.

Read more and listen to a sample.

 

2. Death Sentence (Film Adaptation: Death Wish) by Brian Garfield, narrated by Brian Holsopple
Expected release date: March 2

Paul Benjamin was an ordinary New Yorker until a gang of drug addicts killed his wife and raped his daughter. When the police proved helpless, Benjamin bought a gun and found his own vengeance, methodically tracking the addicts and killing them one by one. Now he is in Chicago, and the cycle of violence is about to begin anew.

Read more and listen to a sample.

 

 

2. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle, narrated by Hope Davis
Expected release date: March 9

Wrinkle In Time.

Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a “tesseract,” which, if you didn’t know, is a wrinkle in time. 

Read more and listen to a sample.

 

 

4. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, narrated by Michael Crouch
Expected release date: March 16

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business.

Read more and listen to a sample.

 

 

5. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, narrated by Wil Wheaton
Expected release date: March 29

Ready Player One.

Wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut-part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

Read more and listen to a sample.

FICTION FRIDAY: The Best Kind of Fiction

Title: The Best Kind of People
Author: Zoe Whittall
Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

On the surface, the Woodbury’s are the quintessential American family.

George, an award-winning teacher, once saved their small town elementary school from a gunman seeking revenge.  His doting wife, Joan, and overachieving daughter, Sadie, are well known and liked in their community. Their circle of friends is vast, but soon, a shocking accusation against George shakes the town and the once tightknit family to its core.

Throughout the novel, both Joan and Sadie grapple with the fact that George may be guilty of unthinkable crimes against those who trusted him, and ask a series of questions throughout the novel not reserved for fiction. Do you truly know your own family? Who can you trust? And, perhaps most timely of all, is it possible to love someone who has done terrible things?

Overflowing with shocking twists and turns intensified by narrator Cassandra Campbell, The Best Kind of People is the kind of book that left me lying to myself by saying, “Just one more chapter before bed” until the very last word. Despite being fiction, The Best Kind of People is relevant to the #MeToo era that so heavily relies on the bravery of women who share their stories.

The Best Kind Of People.

Listen to a sample and get the whole story here.