Heroine by Mary Jane Wells, Read by the Author

Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens.

Mary Jane Wells wrote and performed Heroine, a play-turned-audiobook based on the life of Danna Davis, US soldier, veteran, and survivor of military sexual trauma during the Iraq War. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb talk about this moving audiobook, originally performed as a play at the Kennedy Center. Wells vocally becomes this ten-year veteran with vibrant and graphic, disturbing accounts of battles and other military experiences, PTSD, and bouts of grief interspersed with healing. Her voice is primary, and she is backed by a small cast with sounds effects and music to heighten the tension. Read the full review of the audiobook on AudioFile’s website.

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On the day we remember William Shakespeare, it is fitting to recognize an author Shakespeare inspired: Herman Melville. The Great American Novel Moby Dick draws on both Biblical and Shakespearean myths. Just as Macbeth and Lear subvert the natural order of things, Ahab takes on Nature in his determination to kill his prey…doomed from the start (The Guardian). Visit the Naxos Spoken Word Library to hear William Hootkin’s Audie and Earphones Award winning presentation!