The Most Anticipated Audiobooks of October

Each month, our friends at AudioFile Magazine share a curated list of the best audiobooks for your literary listening pleasure.

*

OCTOBER FICTION

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan | Read by Michael Crouch
[Random House Audio | 15.75 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

Golden Voice Narrator Michael Crouch brings his expert skills to this complex historical drama. While WWII still rages in the Pacific, a secret spanning generations begins in Bonhomie, Ohio. Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt, who are married to other people, share a kiss in a hardware store upon the news of victory over Germany, and this starts a massive trickle-down effect throughout generations of their two families. Mixed with heartfelt moments and heartbreak, Crouch’s performance breathes life into a saga set in small-town America.

What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown | Read by Peter Ganim, Helen Laser
[Random House Audio | 11.75 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

Helen Laser is outstanding as Jane, a teenager who is living off the grid in Montana with her father. Jane’s voice shifts from that of a naïve girl to that of a capable young woman as Laser traces her path out of the wilderness. Peter Ganim pulls no punches as he portrays Jane’s father. The result is an audiobook whose surprises will keep listeners engaged and that will inspire deeper thoughts about how we live in today’s world.

Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan | Read by Victoria Villarreal
[Hachette Audio | 11.5 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

Narrator Victoria Villarreal elevates this ghostly mystery with her impressive vocal range. Malamar Veracruz has never escaped the shadow of her sister, Elena, who disappeared when they were teenagers. With no choice but to mature quickly, she raised her baby brother in a fractured home. Now a single mother of two young adult daughters, Malamar begins having terrifying visions of La Siguanaba, a horse-headed spirit woman from local folklore. Villarreal shifts smoothly between characters, weaving an atmosphere of dread and wonder that lingers long after listening.

People Like Us by Jason Mott | Read by JD Jackson, Ronald Peet, Jason Mott [Note]
[Penguin Audio | 9.5 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

This account of two Black writers makes for a memorable audiobook. Both narrators are masters of cadence and pace. The unnamed first-person protagonist, portrayed expressively by Golden Voice Narrator JD Jackson, wins a National Book Award. Ronald Peet eloquently portrays the writer Soot. Both writers are wounded—one by a knife and the other by loss. In an autobiographical endnote, author Mott reveals the novel’s backstories.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang | Read by Morag Sims, Will Watt
[Harper Audio | 18.5 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

Morag Sims and Will Watt provide fittingly erudite performances of this layered audiobook. Cambridge is home to a top-tier academic Magick program. When an esteemed professor is killed, star graduate students Alice and Peter embark on a quest to rescue him from hell. The satire on higher education is rich, yet the larger themes about one’s purpose and ideas are gripping. Sims handles the majority of the work. Her voice captures studious yet vulnerable Alice, while Watt provides a foil in Peter, an academic star with secrets.

*

OCTOBER NONFICTION

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt | Read by Edoardo Ballerini
[Recorded Books | 9.75 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

Many listeners will recall Edoardo Ballerini’s lucid narration of Stephen Greenblatt’s 2013 audiobook, The Swerve. Author and narrator match again in this insightful biography of Shakespeare’s predecessor and early model, playwright Christopher Marlowe. Little is known for certain about Marlowe’s life, or more mysteriously, his murder at age 29. His sparse biography is fleshed out and enriched by a marvelous evocation of Elizabethan theater before and during his brief career—and his impact on a string of his contemporaries, particularly Shakespeare.

The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb by Garrett M. Graff | Read by Edoardo Ballerini and a Full Cast, Garrett M. Graff [Note]
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 20.25 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

This oral history of the Manhattan Project and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is dramatically made aural, thanks to the talents of some 30 narrators, plus the author. Like its predecessor, When the Sea Came Alive, this audiobook features snippets of first-person accounts of those who lived the history. Artfully arranged into a cohesive whole, they vocalize the excitement of the development of the atomic bomb and the horror it wrought.

Little Alleluias: Collected Poetry and Prose by Mary Oliver, Natalie Diaz [Fore.] | Read by Kimberly Farr, Natalie Diaz [Fore.], Niyati Patel [Acknowledgements]
[Hachette Audio | 6.25 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

Golden Voice narrator Kimberly Farr reflects the shimmering light of Mary Oliver’s poetry and amplifies the meaning in her appealing prose. Farr simply gets Oliver’s nuance and grace and sound; as narrator, she has a gift for pace and knows just how to intensify and heighten the language. This extraordinary collection of two volumes of poems and a third of prose shows the empathy, intuition, and exquisite use of the natural world that make Oliver the heiress of Emerson and Thoreau.

Parallel Lives: A Love Story from a Lost Continent by Iain Pears | Read by Richard Attlee
[Recorded Books | 7.75 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

Actor Richard Attlee has the rare ability among audiobook narrators of extracting full value from each word and syllable while seeming to do nothing at all. Art historian Pears’s richly detailed, expertly written “Love Story from a Lost Continent” comes from firsthand acquaintance with a Russian woman and a British man who, after vastly different pasts, met and fell in love in Venice in 1962. Their immediate affinity, set at the very height of the Cold War, represents a common European culture based on reading and the arts that defied borders and ideologies.

The Carpool Detectives: A True Story of Four Moms, Two Bodies, and One Mysterious Cold Case by Chuck Hogan | Read by Gabra Zackman
[Random House Audio | 9 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award

Gabra Zackman’s performance effectively demonstrates a kind of narration multitasking. In one way, she’s conveying a diabolical true-crime mystery, complete with myriad details and dead ends. In Los Angeles, the mysterious death of a wealthy couple in an apparent car accident appears to be suspicious. Zackman also captures the human need for connection. Zackman’s delivery connects at all levels, making this a riveting listening experience.