The Most Anticipated Audiobooks of February
The Month to Come in Literary Listening, Via Audiofile
Each month, our friends at AudioFile Magazine share a curated list of the best audiobooks for your literary listening pleasure.
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FEBRUARY FICTION
The Voyage Home: The Women of Troy, Book 3 by Pat Barker| Read by Kristin Atherton
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 9.5 hrs.]
Kristin Atherton delivers a powerhouse performance of the final volume in Booker Prize novelist Pat Barker’s trilogy reimagining the Trojan War from a female perspective. This book is told mostly by Ritsa, a Trojan healer who is enslaved to Cassandra, who is herself the slave-concubine of King Agamemnon.
The war is over, the seas perilous, egos fragile, prophesies unkind, and in Mycenae Clytemnestra plots revenge.
The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn| Read by Gail Shalan
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Macmillan Audio | 10 hrs.]
In the sequel to Korn’s Yours for the Taking, narrator Gail Shalan captures the desperation of two women as each works to survive in a world changed by politics and climate. Shalan’s compelling pacing works well with the range of emotions and nuances she provides for the characters and storylines—including a child-abusing cult leader, repressed lovers, and the search for a stolen child.
We Do Not Part by Han Kang, E. Yaewon, Paige Aniyah Morris [Trans.]| Read by Greta Jung
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 7.75 hrs.]
Greta Jung performs Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s latest novel, a haunting story focused on the friendship of two women. Kyungha receives an urgent request from her friend, Inseon, to come see her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon asks Kyungha to care for her bird, Ama, at her home on Jeju Island, and Kyungha arrives just as a snowstorm consumes the island.
Jung’s wistful narration evokes the dreamlike prose and wintery atmosphere.
Life Hacks for a Little Alien by Alice Franklin| Read by Sally Phillips
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Hachette Audio | 7.5 hrs.]
Sally Phillips’s heartfelt performance of this novel has perfect pacing and inflection. From Little Alien’s first attempt at language, listeners sense something extraordinary about her.
The story’s narrator, an analytical linguist, breaks down Little Alien’s sentences with empathy, while Phillips’s detached tone and well-timed pauses emphasize the complexities of English and the narrator’s snarky undertones.
Waiting for the Long Night Moon: Stories by Amanda Peters| Read by Megan Tooley, Ussani Taylor
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Recorded Books | 9.25 hrs.]
Megan Tooley and Ussani Taylor deliver moving performances of Amanda Peters’s short stories, which explore the Indigenous experience throughout American history. Tooley performs most of the stories, using a sweet lilting voice, gentle delivery, and subtle shading of personality to help listeners delight in a girl’s first traditional dance and be brave during a group’s environmental protest.
Taylor, who reads four deeply moving, emotionally difficult pieces, gives a tough and perceptive performance.
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FEBRUARY NONFICTION
Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel’s Messiah by Charles King| Read by Juliet Stevenson
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 10.75 hrs.]
Golden Voice Juliet Stevenson skillfully builds and shapes this unexpectedly compelling history of the world’s most performed piece of music. How Handel’s Messiah came to be is a story with many twists, but it provides a focus for the broader story of an era, a society, and a string of history-altering events.
This satisfying popular history will appeal to a broad range of listeners.
Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History’s Greatest Arctic Rescue by Buddy Levy| Read by Will Damron
[Macmillan Audio | 12 hrs.]
Will Damron transports listeners to the cold of the Arctic as polar explorers attempt to reach the North Pole by airship instead of by dog and sled. The story includes triumph and failure, as well as big personalities, fraudulent history, and new media communication directly from the airships.
Damron expresses the thrill of Roald Amundsen reaching the North Pole in 1926 in his airship, the Norge.
Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History by Olivia Campbell| Read by Cassandra Campbell
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Harlequin Audio | 10.25 hrs.]
Cassandra Campbell’s outstanding narration makes this history of Nazi efforts to eliminate Jewish and female academic opportunities in Germany an accessible and completely absorbing listen. While this subject is challenging, Campbell’s investment in relaying the historical details of Nazi actions to eradicate women’s roles in public professions and, indeed, in all aspects of public life, is one that will mesmerize listeners.
The narrative focuses on the lives of four female German physicists—Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Spooner, and Hildegard Stucklen.
No One Gets to Fall Apart: A Memoir by Sarah LaBrie| Read by Sarah LaBrie
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Harper Audio | 6.5 hrs.]
Sarah LaBrie, a successful television writer based in Los Angeles, narrates her gripping memoir of family trauma in a calm, sweet voice that keeps listeners engaged. Throughout LaBrie’s childhood her mother ricocheted from one psychiatric episode to another, terrifying and caring ineptly for the girl.
With hard work and luck, LaBrie made it to an Ivy League college. There, a Black woman in a predominantly white school, she encountered new challenges.
How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music by Alison Fensterstock [editor.], Ann Powers [Intro.], National Public Radio| Read by Alison Fensterstock, Ann Powers, et al.
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Harper Audio | 10.75 hrs.]
Alison Fensterstock and Ann Powers deliver an ambitious, sprawling, almost overwhelming project. That’s by design. The history of music traditionally revolves around men and their recordings, with women as afterthoughts.
This audiobook is not just about inclusion. It’s a corrective recentering. It’s exhilarating to hear Dolly Parton, Nina Simone, and Queen Latifah in the mix, giving listeners this mosaic of music history. The impact is undeniable.
