Tag Archives: Fiction

Audiobooks to Help You Celebrate Pride Month: Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Listens for Littles

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This year, for Pride Month, some areas are easing back into normal life while other places are still in lockdown. So if you’re looking for a safe way to celebrate this month, why not pick up a new LGBTQIA+ audiobook! Keep reading to see some of the best listens to press play on for Pride or check out our full lists by clicking the applicable link: The Best LGBTQ+ Fiction, The Best LGBTQ+ Non-Fiction, LGBTQ+ Must-Listens for Kids and Teens.


Fiction

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters, narrated by Renata Friedman

Publisher Summary:

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn’t hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn’t happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames’s boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she’s pregnant with his baby—and that she’s not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he’s been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can’t reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.

Read more and sample the audio →


On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, narrated by Ocean Vuong

Publisher Summary:

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born—a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam—and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

Read more and sample the audio →


Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, narrated by Ramon De Ocampo

Publisher Summary:

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius-his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn’t always diplomatic.

Read more and sample the audio →


Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, narrated by Moira Quirk

Publisher Summary:

Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Her characters leap off the page, as skillfully animated as arcane revenants. The result is a heart-pounding epic science fantasy.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will be become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die. Of course, some things are better left dead

Read more and sample the audio →


Non-Fiction

The Pink Line by Mark Gevisser, narrated by Vikas Adam, Mark Gevisser

Publisher Summary:

More than five years in the making, Mark Gevisser’s The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers is a globetrotting exploration of how the human rights frontier around sexual orientation and gender identity has come to divide—and describe—the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the twenty-first century. No social movement has brought change so quickly and with such dramatically mixed results. While same-sex marriage and gender transition is celebrated in some parts of the world, laws are being strengthened to criminalize homosexuality and gender nonconformity in others. A new Pink Line, Gevisser argues, has been drawn across the world, and he takes readers to its frontiers.

In between sharp analytical chapters about culture wars, folklore, gender ideology, and geopolitics, Gevisser provides sensitive and sometimes startling profiles of the queer folk he’s encountered on the Pink Line’s frontiers across nine countries. They include a trans Malawian refugee granted asylum in South Africa and a gay Ugandan refugee stuck in Nairobi; a lesbian couple who started a gay café in Cairo after the Arab Spring, a trans woman fighting for custody of her child in Moscow, and a community of kothis—“women’s hearts in men’s bodies”—who run a temple in an Indian fishing village.

Eye-opening, moving, and crafted with expert research, compelling narrative, and unprecedented scope, The Pink Line is a monumental—and vital—journey through the border posts of the world’s new LGBTQ+ frontiers.

Read more and sample the audio →


The Other Mothers by Jennifer Berney, narrated by Xe Sands

Publisher Summary:

Jenn Berney was one of those people who knew she was destined for motherhood-it wasn’t a question of if, but when. So when she and her wife Kelly decided to start building their family, they took the next logical step: they went to a fertility clinic. But they soon found themselves entrenched in a medical establishment that didn’t know what to do with people like them. With no man factoring into their relationship, doctors were at best embarrassed and at worst disparaging of the couple.

Soon Jenn found herself stepping outside of the system determined to disregard her. Looking into the history of fertility and the LGBTQ+ community, she saw echoes of her own struggle. For decades queer people have defied the patriarchy and redefined the nuclear family-and Jenn was walking in their footsteps.

Through the ups-and-downs of her own journey, Jenn reflects on a turbulent past that has led her to this point and a bright future worth fighting for. With clarity, determination, and hope, The Other Mothers gives us a wonderful glimpse into the many ways we can become family

Read more and sample the audio →


The Bold World by Jodie Patterson, narrated by Jodie Patterson

Publisher Summary:

In 2009, Jodie Patterson, mother of five and beauty entrepreneur, has her world turned upside down when her determined toddler, Penelope, reveals, “Mama, I’m not a girl. I am a boy.” The Pattersons are a tribe of unapologetic Black matriarchs, scholars, financiers, Southern activists, artists, musicians, and disruptors, but with Penelope’s revelation, Jodie realizes her existing definition of family isn’t wide enough for her child’s needs.
 
In The Bold World, we witness Patterson reshaping her own attitudes, beliefs, and biases, learning from her children, and a whole new community, how to meet the needs of her transgender son. In doing so, she opens the minds of those who raised and fortified her, all the while challenging cultural norms and gender expectations. Patterson finds that the fight for racial equality in which her ancestors were so prominent helped pave the way for the current gender revolution.
 
From Georgia to South Carolina, Ghana to Brooklyn, Patterson learns to remove the division between me and you, us and them, straight and queer—and she reminds us to celebrate her uncle Gil Scott Heron’s prophecy that the revolution will not be televised. It will happen deeply, unequivocally, inside each and every one of us. Transition, we learn, doesn’t just belong to the transgender person. Transition, for the sake of knowing more and becoming more, is the responsibility of and gift to all.

Read more and sample the audio →


How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones, narrated by Saeed Jones

Publisher Summary:

Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence—into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another—and to one another—as we fight to become ourselves.

An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that’s as beautiful as it is powerful—a voice that’s by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.

Read more and sample the audio →


Kids and Teens

She’s Too Pretty to Burn by Wendy Heard, narrated by Frankie Corzo, Bailey Carr, Stephen Dexter

Publisher Summary:

The summer is winding down in San Diego. Veronica is bored, caustically charismatic, and uninspired in her photography. Nico is insatiable, subversive, and obsessed with chaotic performance art. They’re artists first, best friends second. But that was before Mick. Delicate, lonely, magnetic Mick: the perfect subject, and Veronica’s dream girl. The days are long and hot—full of adventure—and soon they are falling in love. Falling so hard, they never imagine what comes next. One fire. Two murders. Three drowning bodies. One suspect… one stalker. This is a summer they won’t survive. Inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, this sexy psychological thriller explores the intersections of love, art, danger, and power.

Read more and sample the audio →


Baby & Solo by Lisabeth Posthuma, narrated by Nick Walther

Publisher Summary:

Seventeen-year-old Joel Teague has a new prescription from his therapist: a part-time job, the first step toward the elusive Normal life he’s been so desperate to live ever since The Bad Thing happened. Lucky for Joel, ROYO Video is hiring. It’s the perfect fresh start-he even gets a new name. Dubbed “Solo” after his favorite Star Wars character, Joel works his way up the not-so-corporate ladder without anyone suspecting What Was Wrong With Him. That is, until he befriends Nicole “Baby” Palmer, a smart-mouthed coworker with a chip on her shoulder about… well, everything, and the two quickly develop the kind of friendship movie montages are made of. However, when Joel’s past inevitably catches up with him, he’s forced to choose between preserving his new blank slate persona and coming clean-and either way, he risks losing the first real friend he’s ever had. Set in a pop-culture-rich 1990s, this remarkable story tackles challenging and timely themes with huge doses of wit, power, and heart.

Read more and sample the audio →


You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson, narrated by Alaska Jackson

Publisher Summary:

Liz Lighty has always believed she’s too black, too poor, too awkward to shine in her small, rich, prom-obsessed midwestern town. But it’s okay—Liz has a plan that will get her out of Campbell, Indiana, forever: attend the uber-elite Pennington College, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor.
But when the financial aid she was counting on unexpectedly falls through, Liz’s plans come crashing down… until she’s reminded of her school’s scholarship for prom king and queen. There’s nothing Liz wants to do less than endure a gauntlet of social media trolls, catty competitors, and humiliating public events, but despite her devastating fear of the spotlight she’s willing to do whatever it takes to get to Pennington. The only thing that makes it halfway bearable is the new girl in school, Mack. She’s smart, funny, and just as much of an outsider as Liz. But Mack is also in the running for queen. Will falling for the competition keep Liz from her dreams… or make them come true?

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Between Perfect & Real by Ray Stoeve, narrated by Mw Cartozian Wilson

Publisher Summary:

Dean Foster knows he’s a trans guy. He’s watched enough YouTube videos and done enough questioning to be sure. But everyone at his high school thinks he’s a lesbian—including his girlfriend Zoe, and his theater director, who just cast him as a “nontraditional” Romeo. He wonders if maybe it would be easier to wait until college to come out. But as he plays Romeo every day in rehearsals, Dean realizes he wants everyone to see him as he really is now—not just on the stage, but everywhere in his life. Dean knows what he needs to do. Can playing a role help Dean be his true self?

Read more and sample the audio →


Related Articles

• 9 LGBTQ+ Memoirs For Pride Month

• 13 #OwnVoices Audiobooks to Diversify Your Shelf

• Interview with ‘Soar, Adam, Soar’ author, Rick Prashaw and narrator, John Dickhout

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!

Interview with Ben Dolnick, Author of ‘The Wolf’s Mother Speaks’

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Interview courtesy of Recorded Books

In The Wolf’s Mother Speaks, Ben Dolnick takes listeners on an unforgettable, hauntingly funny journey alongside a mother whose love takes many forms. A mother (Joyce) finds out a secret about her estranged adult son, namely that he regularly turns completely into a wolf. No, not a werewolf half-man half-wolf creature, but a full-on actual wolf. It’s out of his control when it happens, and he’s done some terrible things. Once Joyce finds out, she goes to great lengths to help her beloved son. But as the novel unfolds, the narrative explores ideas not only of survival and murder and familial devotion in the face of the most challenging and unbelievable circumstances, but also of mental illness if not actual insanity. The result is a thrill ride with a lot of bumps and a substantial body count. Here Ben talks about his new audiobook!

1. In The Wolf’s Mother Speaks, the main character Joyce is dealing with a painful estrangement from her son, which seems very realistic, and then things take a turn into the supernatural. Where did the inspiration for The Wolf’s Mother Speaks come from?

I think the first inkling I had of this book was when, years ago, I read a story about a serial killer being arrested at his house in Kansas. This was one of those situations in which the killer has a wife, a family, neighbors who think they know him, the whole domestic scene. And I was so fascinated, particularly by his family members—what did they know? What did they think of him now? 

But I knew that I didn’t want to write a standard serial killer book—I love a good serial killer novel (Red Dragon is one of the more compelling books I’ve ever read), but I didn’t want to write something with forensics, FBI agents, etc; I was after something weirder. 

So, I handed those inputs—some murder, some family dynamics, some strangeness—to the mysterious mental organ where novels gestate, and out popped this book!

2. Was the writing process different for this book from how it was for your previous novels (The Ghost Notebooks, Zoology, You Know Who You Are, and At the Bottom of Everything)?

This was a much more “spoken” book than those—which is to say that the vast majority of the book is actually purporting to be transcribed speech. That made this book lots of fun to write—I love nothing more, as a writer, than doing various voices—but it also made for various narrative challenges. People tell stories very differently than they write them—there was no room for literary tricks, or elegant descriptions, or anything like that. It’s a much more compact and slangy sort of writing.  

3. You’re an avid audiobook listener, which we love to hear! What is it about audiobooks that speaks to you, both in your personal listening, and as a writer?

Yes, audiobooks are the best! I’ve always thought of writing, despite the silence in which it takes place, as fundamentally an auditory medium. When I walk into a library where everybody’s quietly reading in their little carrels or whatever, I see it like one of those weird silent raves, where everybody’s wearing headphones and quietly thrashing around in ecstasy. This person is hearing Vonnegut, this person is hearing Toni Morrison, this person is hearing Murakami—and all that hearing is taking place entirely internally.

So audiobooks just make that aural quality of writing even more tangible. I spent a lot of the quarantine so far—55 hours of it, in fact!—listening to War and Peace, and I don’t think I could have gotten through it, certainly not with such pleasure, if I had just been reading it. Each character, however long it had been since I’d heard from them, was immediately identifiable by their voice. It felt even more intimate than reading, in a way. My eyes can skim or rush in a way that my ears usually don’t. 

4. What was it like hearing your previous novels in audiobook form for the first time? 

It was amazing! I was so used to hearing the books in my head—by the time a book is published, you can all but recite it—but here it was actually taking form in space, in the sound of a stranger’s voice. And it was fascinating to hear the little choices the readers made, both at the sentence-level and in terms of character. It was kind of a bittersweet thing, like (I imagine) watching a kid go off to college—you’ve worked so hard on this thing and off it goes to lead an independent existence, no longer under even the illusion of your control.

5. What do you personally like to read or listen to?

Everything! Lately I’ve been listening to classics—I’m moved onto Proust, after finishing War and Peace—but I also listen to lots of Buddhist stuff (Already Free by Bruce Tift is a recent favorite). And reading-wise I’m all over the place. I read a lot of thrillers — police procedurals (Ed McBain is great), supernatural stuff (Dracula, Frankenstein), espionage (Eye of the Needle is truly amazing). Lately I’ve been reading some more experimental fiction—Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, a bunch by Mark Leyner, some Gerald Murnane. My bedside table is basically a perpetual avalanche of things I’m halfway through.

6. If you could curate a shelf for The Wolf’s Mother Speaks to sit on, what other books would be on it?

It would have to be an eccentric shelf! I think I’d love to put it somewhere between the funny, experimental, voice-obsessed books of, say, George Saunders and David Foster Wallace, on one side—and then on the other side I’d like to have the plotty, efficient novels of Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby, Stepford Wives, etc.). Oh, and let’s put some Alice Munro on that shelf too! She is hands-down the best at all things related to families—and she’s got quite a way with plot too. That would be a shelf where my book would live very, very happily.

7. What’s your favorite scary story?

I think Ira Levin’s [The] Boys from Brazil is my favorite of the moment. It’s tense and strange and brilliantly told. The whole last third—which I feel like I can’t describe at all without spoiling it—is just hilariously compelling. He’s able to do that Hitchcock thing of making you hold your breath for minutes at a time while the characters walk a tightrope over a flaming pit. ∎


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!

The Best Audiobooks for Less

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Fall is creeping in, which means it’s time to bust out the sweaters and start doing cute autumnal activities. You know what I’m talking about: fall hikes, apple picking, baking cookies or pies (or anything pumpkin), and cozying up inside. “And how could we make those activities even better?” You ask. Simple, add an audiobook to the mix.

From now until September 21, 2020 we’re running our Fall Sale, which features tons of audiobooks for under $8 (£7 in the UK). On the hunt for something mysterious to listen to? Or are you in the mood to swoon over a new romance audiobook? Either way, we have something you’ll love.

We’ve rounded up a few of our fave picks from the sale below, but to browse the full sale list click the appropriate link below:

United States & Canada – click here

United Kingdom – click here


Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson, narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Now: $8.00 Was: $14.95

These days, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Neil deGrasse Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in digestible chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day. While waiting for your morning coffee to brew, or while you’re in the car commuting or on a road trip, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.

Read more and sample the audio →


Moral Compass by Danielle Steel, narrated by Dan John Miller
Now: $7.99 Was: $19.99

Saint Ambrose Prep is a place where the wealthy send their children for the best possible education. Traditionally a boys-only school, Saint Ambrose has just enrolled one hundred and forty female students for the first time. While most of the kids on the campus have all the privilege in the world, some are struggling. One day after the school’s annual Halloween event, a student lies in the hospital, her system poisoned by dangerous levels of alcohol. Everyone in this sheltered community—parents, teachers, students, police, and the media—are left trying to figure out what actually happened. Steel’s Moral Compass illuminates the dark side of one drunken night, with its tragic consequences, from every possible point of view. As the drama unfolds, the characters will reach a crossroads where they must choose between truth and lies, between what is easy and what is right…

Read more and sample the audio →


Naked in Death by J. D. Robb, narrated by Susan Ericksen
Now: $8.00 Was: $19.99

Go back to the beginning with the very first installment of the In Death series! Eve Dallas is a New York police lieutenant hunting for a ruthless killer. In over ten years on the force, she’s seen it all. And she’s going against every warning telling her not to get involved with Roarke, an Irish billionaire—and a suspect in Eve’s murder investigation. But passion and seduction have rules of their own, and it’s up to Eve to take a chance in the arms of a man she knows nothing about.

Read more and sample the audio →


Paradise Valley by Robyn Carr, narrated by Therese Plummer
Now: $7.99 Was: $24.99

Wanting to read the books before watching the show? Jump into the Virgin River series. This entry in the series tells the heartwarming lesson of second chances, rekindled love, and new hope.

Paradise Valley follows Rick Scudder, who joined the Marine Corps with high hopes, but left with a broken spirit and a shattered body. He’s been pushing away everyone close to him, including his father, Jack, and his longtime girlfriend, Liz. Now, Rick must find the strength to let Liz back into his heart.

Read more and sample the audio →


The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown, narrated by Kirsten Potter
Now: $4.99 Was: $20.00

Three sisters have returned to their childhood home, reuniting the eccentric Andreas family. Here, books are a passion and TV is something other people watch. Their father—a professor of Shakespeare who speaks almost exclusively in verse—named them after the Bard’s heroines. It’s a lot to live up to.

These sisters have a hard time with communication and they are now finding that when confronted with their parents’ frailty and their collective disappointment of how their lives turned out, not even a good book can help them now.

Read more and sample the audio →


Stars of Fortune by Nora Roberts, narrated by Saskia Maarleveld
Now: $7.00 Was: $19.99

To celebrate the rise of their new queen, three goddesses of the moon created three stars: one of fire, one of ice, one of water. But then they fell from the sky, putting the fate of all worlds in danger. And now three women and three men join forces to pick up the pieces.

Read more and sample the audio →


Open Season by C. J. Box, narrated by David Chandler
Now: $7.99 Was: $19.99

This thrilling listen features Joe Pickett, a game warden in Wyoming who finds his life in danger after he looks into a murder investigation and discovers a conspiracy involving an oil pipeline and its threat to an endangered species.

Read more and sample the audio →


Where Good Girls Go To Die by Holly Renee, narrated by Kelly Pruner, Rex Anderson
Now: $6.00 Was: $15.99

If you’re on the hunt for a new romance series, why not start with Where Good Girls Go To Die. This listen follows Livy, who knows she shouldn’t get involved with Parker James, her brother’s best friend, but she can’t resist. After having her heart broken, she runs.

Four years later, she runs into him again and he’s still just as she remembered him. Guarding her heart from him is top priority because Parker James is where good girls go to die. Unfortunately for him, Livy wasn’t a good girl anymore.

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!

Audiobooks for Every Mom This Mother’s Day

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Mother’s Day will be a bit different this year, with many people not being able to celebrate in person. But you can still connect with Mom on this special day through audiobooks. Listen together, start a virtual book club, or gift Mom her next favorite listen. Either way, we’ve got you covered. 

Since every mom is totally unique, we’ve put together the ultimate list of top audiobooks for everyone’s tastes. From spooky mysteries to warm and fuzzy memoirs, we’ve got the perfect audiobook for every mom to enjoy this Mother’s Day. 

Want to let Mom pick her own audiobooks? When purchasing a prepaid subscription for Audiobooks.com, you give Mom the gift of listening for 1, 3, 6, or 12 months. And this year, all Mother’s Day subscription purchases will be entered to win a bonus 2 free audiobooks, one for you and one for Mom! Learn more here.

Fiction

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez, narrated by Alma Cuervo

The author of In the Time of the Butterflies, with more than one million copies in print, is back with a tour de force.

Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. 

Read more and sample the audio →

It’s Not All Downhill from Here: A Novel by Terry Mcmillan, narrated by Terry Mcmillan

Loretha Curry’s life is full. A little crowded sometimes, but full indeed. On the eve of her sixty-eighth birthday, she has a booming beauty-supply empire, a gaggle of lifelong friends, and a husband whose moves still surprise. True, she’s carrying a few more pounds than she should be, but Loretha is not one of those women who think her best days are behind her—and she’s determined to prove wrong her mother, her twin sister, and everyone else with that outdated view of aging wrong. It’s not all downhill from here.

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The Wedding Dress by Danielle Steel, narrated by Todd Mclaren

In Danielle Steel‘s epic new novel, the lives of four generations of women in one family span fortune and loss, motherhood, tragedy, and victories. From the glamorous San Francisco social scene of the 1920s, through war and the cultural changes of the 60s, to the rise of Silicon Valley today, this extraordinary novel takes us on a family odyssey that is both heartbreaking and inspiring, as each generation faces the challenges of their day.

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Truths I Never Told You: A Novel by Kelly Rimmer, narrated by Sarah Mollo-Christensen, Piper Goodeve, Jean Ann Douglass

From the bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say comes a poignant post-WWII novel that explores the expectations society places on women set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything once believed to be true.

With her father recently moved to a care facility, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it…

Read more and sample the audio →

Mystery & Thriller

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica, narrated by Jeremy Arthur, Piper Goodeve

Propulsive and addictive, and perfect for fans of  You, The Other Mrs. is the twisty new psychological thriller from Mary Kubica, the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl.

Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to small-town Maine when their neighbor Morgan Baines is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie.

Read more and sample the audio →

The Wives by Tarryn Fisher, narrated by Lauren Fortgang

Thursday’s husband, Seth, has two other wives. She’s never met them, and she doesn’t know anything about them. She agreed to this unusual arrangement because she’s so crazy about him.

But one day, she finds something. Something that tells a very different—and horrifying—story about the man she married. What follows is one of the most twisted, shocking thrillers you’ll ever read.

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If It Bleeds by Stephen King, narrated by Will Patton, Steven Weber, Danny Burstein

From #1 New York Times bestselling author, legendary storyteller, and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary collection of four new and compelling novellas.

The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films. If It Bleeds is a uniquely satisfying collection of longer short fiction by an incomparably gifted writer.

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Something She’s Not Telling Us: A Novel by Darcey Bell, narrated by Pete Simonelli, Carly Robins, Nancy Peterson, Vivienne Leheny

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Simple Favor comes an electrifying domestic thriller of how one woman’s life is turned upside down when her brother brings his new girlfriend to visit—and no one is telling the truth about who they really are.

From its very first page, Something She’s Not Telling Us takes hold of readers’ imagination in a harrowing, unforgettable thriller that dives deep into the domestic psyche and asks the question: Is anyone ever really who they say they are?

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Biography & Memoirs

More Myself: A Journey by Alicia Keys, narrated by Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Clive Davis, Alicia Keys, America Ferrera, Bono, Swizz Beats, Terri Augelo, Craig Cook, Dj Walton, Jay-Z , Krucial , Leigh Blake

An intimate, revealing look at one artist’s journey from self-censorship to full expression.

As one of the most celebrated musicians in the world, Alicia Keys has enraptured the globe with her heartfelt lyrics, extraordinary vocal range, and soul-stirring piano compositions. Yet away from the spotlight, Alicia has grappled with private heartache—over the challenging and complex relationship with her father, the people-pleasing nature that characterized her early career, the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships, and the oppressive expectations of female perfection.

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Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life by  Ali Wong, narrated by Ali Wong

Ali Wong’s heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters (the two she put to work while they were still in utero) cover everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mom in a male-dominated profession, and how she trapped their dad.

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Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner, narrated by Anne Glenconner

An extraordinary memoir of drama, tragedy, and royal secrets by Anne Glenconner—a close member of the royal circle and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret.

A unique witness to landmark moments in royal history, Maid of Honor at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, and a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret until her death in 2002, Anne‘s life has encompassed extraordinary drama and tragedy. In Lady in Waiting, she will share many intimate royal stories from her time as Princess Margaret’s closest confidante.

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Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman, narrated by Rachel Botchan

Now a Netflix original series! Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author.

Remarkable and fascinating, this tense and unforgettable coming-of-age story is one you won’t be able to put down.

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Uplifting Listens

Untamed by Glennon Doyle, narrated by Glennon Doyle

For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice—the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances.

Soulful and uproarious, forceful, and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. 

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Find Your Path: Honor Your Body, Fuel Your Soul, and Get Strong with the Fit52 Life by Carrie Underwood, narrated by Cara Clark, Carrie Underwood, Eve Overland

Carrie Underwood believes that fitness is a lifelong journey. She wasn’t born with the toned arms and strong legs that fans know her for. Like all of us, she has to work hard every day to look the way that she does! In Find Your Path she shares her secrets with readers, with the ultimate goal of being the strongest version of themselves, and looking as good as they feel. 

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You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero, narrated by Jen Sincero

Bestselling author, speaker, and world-traveling success coach Jen Sincero cuts through the din of the self-help genre with her own verbal meat cleaver in You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. In this refreshingly blunt how-to guide, Sincero serves up twenty-seven bite-sized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, life-changing insights, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word.

By the end of You Are a Badass, you will understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can’t change, how to change what you don’t love, and how to start living the kind of life you used to be jealous of.

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Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love by Jonathan Van Ness, narrated by Jonathan Van Ness

Over the Top uncovers the pain and passion it took to end up becoming the model of self-love and acceptance that Jonathan is today. In this revelatory, raw, and rambunctious memoir, Jonathan shares never-before-told secrets and reveals sides of himself that the public has never seen. JVN fans may think they know the man behind the stiletto heels, the crop tops, and the iconic sayings, but there’s much more to him than meets the Queer Eye.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll come away knowing that no matter how broken or lost you may be, you’re a Kelly Clarkson song, you’re strong, and you’ve got this.

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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 Ask Again, Yes

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Welcome to our new blog feature — Book clubbin’! We know that many of you (and us in the Audiobooks.com office!) are in book clubs, and so it seemed an obvious thing to blog about.

In the clubs I’m in (Yes, plural. I have a bit of an addiction) a lot of us are busy parents, have challenging jobs, or just have generally hectic lives, so listening to audiobook versions of the novel can be really useful. You can squeeze your book club choices into your commute, listen while you work, or even when your baby is napping (HAH!).

Every month we’ll pick a popular book club pick, and set up some discussion questions to get you and your book club going. This month, we’ve got questions for Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, which was recently voted the Tonight Show Annual Summer Book Club Read. This is a really intense and awesome listen, with in-depth characters, and a lot to talk about. So here are our Ask Again, Yes book club questions!

—————MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!————

1. This novel has been described as a “Domestic” novel. Do you feel that’s the right genre for this novel? Why or why not?

2. Ask Again, Yes is told from the perspective of many different characters (Kate, Peter, Francis etc.). How do you think this adds to the development of the story?

3. The title Ask Again, Yes references the discussion Kate and Peter have at the end of the book. Do you feel that it applies to any other characters?

4. How are mental health and addiction issues portrayed in the novel? Do the characters’ experiences differ due to the era they grow up in?

5. Who do you think is the most sympathetic character in the book? Who is the least likable?

6. When Francis discovers Anne at Peter and Kate’s house, are you surprised at how calm he is? Or is this in line with his character?

7. The theme of history repeating itself is central to this novel. Which characters most fall into these patterns? Are there characters that don’t?

8. Kate, Lena, and Anne are very different women. How is the role of the traditional wife and mother portrayed in this novel?

9. The shooting changes the lives of almost everyone in the novel. How different do you think the following relationships would have been had it never happened? i) Kate and Peter ii) Lena and Francis iii) Anne and Brian.

10. What do you think the future holds for Kate and Peter?

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!

STAFF PICK: City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Title: City of Girls
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Narrator: Blair Brown

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert is my first foray into the author’s fiction and what a first experience it was. This book is everything you could want and more. There is tension, sex, subtlety; there is despair, there is realness, and there is life.

Gilbert’s narrator is Vivian, an old (in age only) woman who is looking back at her life with clear eyes and telling her story in all its gritty glory. Blair Brown’s performance as Vivian is steadfast yet spunky, capturing perfectly the airs that Vivian exudes as she shares her stories. We are transported back to the world of the New York theatre in the 1940s with such depth and layers that you feel the fabrics, people, and joie de vivre of the era.

Vivian is 19 when she is sent to live with her eccentric Aunt Peg in New York City after she failed out of Vassar College. She is self-assured in the sense that she knows who she isn’t and is open to who she is about to become. She throws herself into the life of the theater and she puts her sewing skills to good use. Through parties and engaging with nightlife, Vivian ends up perfecting a few other skills as well. This lifestyle, however, doesn’t last for long. As we have the benefit of Vivian telling her story from old age, we get to see how she moves past scandals, the war, and the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s.

The first two-thirds of the book are upbeat, carefree, and almost flippant. But it’s the last part that drew me in the most. Vivian in her middle age is a true treasure. She continues to live by her own rules but does so with such poise and determination that you can’t help but cheer her on and wish she could impart more life lessons on you.

Gilbert expertly transports you to another time and place, and they consume you as Vivian’s story unfolds. Don’t be disheartened by the switch in the pace of the book. It is here in the slowness that we truly see the beauty of a woman building her life, her values, and her family. And it is here that we are treated to perhaps the most endearing part of Vivian’s life. It is here that she offers the best of herself to us, dear reader: she offers a reminder of the value in the love of friendship.

New to Audiobooks.com? Get 2 free audiobooks 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!