Audiobooks are a fantastic way to read — and listening to an audiobook is reading, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! When you combine a great story and a great narrator, something truly special happens, you get a storytelling experience that no other art form can quite match. Beaverdale Books is thrilled to partner with Libro.fm, an audiobook service that works with independent booksellers to make buying, gifting, and listening to audiobooks as easy as possible. Unlike other audiobook services, however, rather than supporting a giant corporation, when you purchase audiobooks from Libro.fm, you’re directly supporting the independent booksellers they work with… which, in this case, means you’re supporting Beaverdale Books!
Here are some of our absolute favorite audiobooks available right now through Libro.fm. But you don’t have to take our word for it (come on, you really thought you were gonna get out of this post about stories read aloud without getting a Reading Rainbow joke?), we’ve also included reviews and notes from an audiobook connoisseur and a literal member of the Beaverdale Books family — Hunter’s grandmother, Corinne!
Matrix
Lauren Groff
Narrated by Adjos Andoh
8 hrs, 51 min
Penguin Random House Audio
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?
Corinne: I was shocked that Lauren Groff would transport me from the known comfort of cynical contemporary (Fates and Furies) and steamy short stories in Florida to the dark and dismal Middle Ages during the second crusade. From literary shards and obscure bits of fact, Groff imagines the world in the mind and words of a pious, brilliant girl who revives a starving nunnery into a successful enterprise. The power of female ambition drives Marie de France and leads to heretical ideas. For shame! Male characters are absent and those killed by the nuns in bloody battle were unnamed. Dare I say it’s a mistress piece. The narrator’s light British accent is clear and easy to follow.
Demon Copperhead: A Novel
By Barbara Kingsolver
Narrated by Charlie Thurston
21 hours
HarperAudio
Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It’s the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
Corinne: I have read many Barbara Kingsolver novels over many years and think it likely many of you have too. We know she’s an inventive storyteller herself, for this tale she chose to cloak the grim first person account of child abuse and addiction in the sentimental appeal of Charles Dicken’s classic David Copperfield. Raised in rural Kentucky, Kingsolver knows the cadence and vocabulary of the neighborhood and its characters. How she can channel the words and mind she created is the wonder. Beginning in the voice of a young child and growing into manhood, the narrator Charlie Thurston brings vibrant life to the boy with a nuanced Andy Griffin drawl.
Klara and the Sun: A Novel
By Kazuo Ishiguro
Narrated by Sura Siu
10 hours
Penguin Random House Audio
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
Corinne: Ishiguro again playfully probes for the source of the compelling nature of duty. Told in the first person, the delightfully candid robot Klara, an AF Artificial Friend brings an insightful naïveté technologically and emotionally to her efforts to learn how to be a best friend to Josie. Her observations of light are particularly creative. In the looming gloom of the outside world, Klara seeks the sun’s energy and strives to grasp what is a better human being. Ishiguro says he wants to leave the reader guessing and wondering. He left me wanting more and wondering what is human. The narration is a bit mechanical, beautifully light and simple. I still carry a haunting feeling that reminds me of Never Let Me Go. I love it.
How Much of These Hills is Gold
by C Pam Zhang
Narrated by Catherine Ho, Joel de la Fuente
9 hrs, 8 min
Penguin Random House Audio
Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future. Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and re-imagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.
Corinne: I wish I could join a book club discussion about this book. It is so inventive and askew from the Western myths we know while raising universal dilemmas. Zhang was born in Beijing and immigrated here with family, going to Brown and Cambridge. Her exquisite prose covers the gritty story of loss and loneliness with a film of embroidered silk. The author brings a new spice to the complexity of America’s racist stew. Although I hadn’t noticed until it was pointed out, Zhang uses no pronouns in reference to the sexually ambiguous character Sam. The narration is excellent. I felt she was my personal storyteller.
Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Narrated by Chloe Cannon
9 hrs 45 min
Kalorama
Ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet’s torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi’s systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump’s relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is—and by valuing one another as he is unable to do—can we stop him, now and in the future.
Corinne: At Drake, in Ruth Hoffman’s sociology course on Race and Religion; Prejudice and Discrimination, I was introduced to the “authoritarian personality.” In Strongmen, Ruth Ben-Ghiat helpfully cherry picks through books and documents, comparing the techniques and play- books of authoritarian behaviors by a global (less Asia) panoply of despots. No women in the line-up? Margaret Thatcher and Indira Ghandhi, however strong, were not set on destroying democracy. Ben-Ghiat offers somewhat optimistic guides for self correction.
Lessons From the Edge
Marie Yovanovitch
Narrated by the author
17 hrs 10 min
Harper Audio
By the time she became US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch had seen her share of corruption, instability, and tragedy in developing countries. But it came as a shock when, in early 2019, she was recalled from her post after a smear campaign by President Trump’s personal attorney and his associates—men operating outside of normal governmental channels, and apparently motivated by personal gain. Her courageous participation in the subsequent impeachment inquiry earned Yovanovitch the nation’s respect, and her dignified response to the president’s attacks won our hearts. She has reclaimed her own narrative, first with her lauded congressional testimony, and now with this memoir.
Corinne: I was living in Washington DC when Marie Yovanovich testified at the first impeachment about President Trumps’s successful campaign to remove her as ambassador to Ukraine. Her words and demeanor emanated truthfulness and captured the nation’s attention. My neighborhood friend Cynthia knew Marie from Foreign Service training and told me of her dedication.Marie reads her memoir and touched my heart with her extraordinary patriotism . After her career is destroyed and she’s betrayed by Secretary of State Pompeo she has the very ordinary task of caring for her aged mother who lives with her. She offers an insightful background to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think you’ll like Marie.
The Lincoln Highway
Amor Towles
Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland & Dion Graham
16 hrs 38 min
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York.
Corinne: I felt like I tricked myself into reading The Lincoln Highway. Amor Towles earlier book, A Gentleman in Moscow was such an imaginative wonder and I had enjoyed him on the AVID stage in 2020. So I was eager go along with him on the coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway, which in Iowa tracks old Highway 30. Immediately Amor drops me into a world of white-trash hoodlums and a big blue Studebaker. I did not want to be here. I was just along for the ride. But I ended up loving it. The Lincoln Highway’s structure lends itself for audio presentation with characters voicing their own chapters, and viewpoints.
Washington Black
Esi Edugyan
Narrated by Dion Graham
12 hrs 18 min
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self.
Corinne: I chose to read Washington Black because of my daughter’s enthusiastic praise, knowing only that the author was a Canadian daughter of Ghanian immigrant academics. I realized I did have expectations – of the struggles of a African slave boy entrapped on a Barbados sugar plantation – but Ms Esi had a other plans. No less than a global plan that begins in a hot-air balloon, with roots in the wild and wonder-filled world of African storytelling. The outrageous adventures and spectacular characters tested my wariness of fantasy fun, but soon I was fully along for this ride with Washington Black. The narrator speaks for Wash and tell his story to the listener in a pleasant intimate manner.
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
Stacy Schiff
Narrated by Jason Culp
14 hrs 14 min
Hachette Audio
Thomas Jefferson once asserted that “for depth of purpose, zeal, and sagacity, no man in Congress exceeded, if any equaled, Sam Adams.” John Adams called him “the most elegant writer, the most sagacious politician, and celebrated patriot perhaps of all.” But in spite of his celebrated status among America’s founding fathers as a revolutionary leader, Samuel Adams’ life and achievements have been largely overshadowed in the history books. Now, in The Revolutionary Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff brings her masterful skill as historian and storyteller to the life of Samuel Adams, examining his transformation from the listless, failing son of a wealthy family into the tireless, silver-tongued revolutionary who rallied the likes of John Hancock and John Adams behind him.
Corinne: Every now and then I like to dig into America’s history. “Hamilton” gave us awareness of the importance of what happened behind closed doors. Samuel Adams was the political genius who set the agenda for the great decisions that shaped the nation. Yet surely Samuel is the superhero of under-achievers who are nice guys and good fathers. Schiff has combed diaries and records in more detail than I needed but this is an exciting adventure story. The narration is enthusiastic and pleasant.
Horse: A Novel
Geraldine Brooks
Narrated by James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, Katherine Littrell & Michael Obiora
14 hrs 5 min
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
Corinne: I’m thinking Geraldine Brooks is my favorite contemporary author. so was predisposed to love Horse. And I did.. All of you who skip over or even object to historical fiction should read Horse. Geraldine (I feel we’re on a first-name basis) is a journalist who covered the Middle East for The Christian Science Monitor and she knows fact from fiction. The afterword, read by Geraldine with her Aussie accent, sorts that out. She’s so good, skillfully fictionalizing the fact-based story lines. I was fascinated to learn about equine painting and the Turf press, the inside workings of the Smithsonian research and museums, the 1950’s New York art world and, most powerfully, the life of a slave as the Civil War changed his world. Geraldine loves horses and if you do too, enjoy. The listening is easy to follow with characters narrated by actors.
