by Barbara Nevins Taylor
If you’re looking for seriously good audiobooks, I’ve got a some solid recommendations to keep you interested and entertained. My list of audiobooks runs from good contemporary literature to detective and thriller novels, and the audiobooks I recommend have excellent narrators who help turn the books into movies in the mind.
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan deservedly sits atop many best book lists of 2018. The audiobook, narrated by Dion Graham, lifts it to another level. The story of George Washington Black, born a slave, begins in Barbados and the terror and cruelty of slavery will make you wince. Yet there is always something hopeful about Washington, even as the truly evil master and life itself seem to conspire against him. Ultimately this is a story of a boy, a young man finding himself and his gifts against all odds, but I won’t give the plot away or spoil the story as it unfolds for you. Dion Graham gives a deeply felt performance as Washington and the many characters who inhabit his life. If you listen to one good book, choose “Washington Black“.
The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith — actually J.K. Rowling — and narrated by Robert Glenister got me hooked on the British detective Cormoran Strike. I’m late to this party. The first book was published in 2013 and it was so good that critics and fans tried to figure out who this writer Galbraith was.
Rowling says on her website that she wanted to establish Galbraith as a credible crime writer in “his own right.” She accomplished that right off the bat. The intricate plot, great characters and good writing make it an addictive listen.
Her hero Cormoran Strike, a former military police officer, lost part of his leg in Afghanistan. When we meet him in the first book in the series, he is beginning a new chapter in his life. Almost immediately, we feel lucky to have discovered his company. Robert Glenister’s thick Cornish accent takes a bit of adjusting, but it sounds just right pretty quickly.
Strike and his new assistant, Robin Ellacott, share a sizzle that they try to ignore. The rich backstories of both characters make them likable people who pop from the page. But there is so much more. The plot and the investigation into the death of a supermodel in The Cuckoo’s Calling take unexpected turn after turn. Just when you think you might have figured it out, there is the surprise.
I liked The Cuckoo’s Calling so much that I wanted more, so I downloaded The Silkworm and quickly found myself gripped by another intricate plot. The Silkworm, again narrated by Robert Glenister, takes us into the world of contemporary publishing. When a fantasy writer disappears, his wife calls upon Strike to help find him. Strike continues to work against the odds and the relationship with Robin gets better and better. But she has a fiancé and the tension there continues.
In the meantime, the plot moves in and out of the literary world filled with egocentric characters and almost everything that happens seems surprising.
Wrecked: An IQ Novel, by Joe Ide and narrated by Sullivan Jones, is distinctly American, unique and entertaining. It’s the third novel in the series about Isiah Quintabe, a brainy young detective who takes payment from his cash-poor Long Beach, California neighbors in casseroles and ugly hand-knitted sweaters.
The set-up to the plot, which involves former U.S. soldier-torturers from Abu Ghraib prison in Afghanistan, is funny in the twisted way that makes Carl Hiassen’s Florida books great. Ide’s stories are California all the way and Sullivan Jones does a brilliant job. His Isiah is as a real as a guest on a Trevor Noah show, and all the other characters sound and feel like contemporary Americans.
Warlight, by Michael Ondaatjie, the author of The English Patient, pulls you into the life of a family in 1945 post-World War II London, just as the parents are about to disappear. The mother and father are off to Singapore for a reason that’s not clear to 14-year-old Nathaniel Williams, who tells the story, and his sister, 16-year-old Rachel. A man, a friend of their mother, will stay with them in their house and supervise.
The children think he and the friends who populate the house at night, in a dim half-light, are criminals and they’re right. They nickname their guardian “The Moth.” His friend, who fixes greyhound races, they call “The Darter.”
Steve West narrates the atmospheric prose perfectly as the story explores memory and Nathaniel’s coming of age. I found myself listening compulsively on this journey of discovery with Nathaniel who learns no one is quite who they say they are. Turns out, his mother Rose worked as a spy, and his parents didn’t go where they said they were going, or maybe his mother didn’t. A harrowing manhunt for Rose puts the children in danger and your heart beats faster as you try to escape with them and figure out what’s happening.
In the second half of the book, Nathaniel, now 28, tries to piece together the bits of his mother’s life. His journey and research turn up surprises that keep you with him. “No one really understands another’s life or even death,” Nathaniel realizes. That is something that those of us who’ve tried to figure out a parent’s mysterious life will understand.
