It’s not that elementary school teacher Nora Eldridge’s life has gone particularly wrong, it’s that it hasn’t gone particularly right. She sold out her artistic dreams for success and stability, and become angry and full of self-loathing somewhere along the way. But when a young student, Reza Shahid, and his family enter her life, Nora finds herself changing as she is drawn into the Shahids’ world. Cassadra Campbell’s narration is pitch-perfect. She shifts back and forth between the different characters, lending all of them unique voices that capture their complexity. Her first-person narration is a delightful blend of restraint and emotion that will keeps listeners slightly anxious at all the right moments. By striking this balance, she captures the hard edge of Nora—and of the text—in a way that will resonate with listeners. A Knopf hardcover. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

Thurlow Dan is the founder of Helix, a prominent cult that promises a cure for loneliness. But Dan has a problem: he is lonely—for his covert CIA agent ex-wife, Esme, who has spent much of her life spying on Dan in an effort to shield him from the police. But when one of Esme’s surveillance missions goes awry, Dan starts taking hostages. Maazel’s novel is enhanced by narrator Bernadette Dunne’s winning performance in this audio edition. With an older voice and slight rasp, Dunne offers up clear, clean narration. Equally important, her reading is well paced and demonstrates great timing. A Graywolf hardcover. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

David Sedaris’s newest essay collection is rife with familiar Sedaris themes: oddities in his travels (a visit to a London taxidermy shop), the ridiculousness of his adult life (an exploration of getting scoped), and his family. Sedaris is, as always, the ideal reader of his own work. He is the master of the deadpan delivery, something that is particularly fitting for his brand of black humor. Of course, Sedaris isn’t all irony. When he wants to get serious, he uses subtle tonal inflections—e.g., when he describes a particularly low, directionless moment in his youth. As good an essayist as Sedaris is, his words are elevated in audiobook form. Even some of the less effective pieces, or the ones that rehash familiar themes, take on new life through Sedaris’s amusing narration. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

All the messy, complicated issues of family relationships, trying to be a grownup, and trying to be a parent are on display in Close’s novel about three grown children who, after major life setbacks, end up back under their parents’ roof for one tumultuous year. Martha, a nurse, has a nervous breakdown due to the stress of her job. Claire is suffering after a broken engagement and is troubled by financial woes. College student Max accidentally gets his girlfriend pregnant. Meanwhile, Weezy, the mother, worries about them all, and Will, the father, assumes they’ll figure it out on their own. Rebecca Lowman skillfully narrates this audio edition and subtly portrays the book’s many characters—most amusingly Martha, a bossy know-it-all who tries to control everyone else’s life but can’t handle her own. A Knopf hardcover. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

This charming story from George Saunders follows a fox named Fox 8 as he teaches himself to speak the human language (known as “Yuman”) by listening intently outside of their windows while children are told bedtime stories. But when a development plan for a new shopping mall threatens the food supply, Fox 8 must work to help his pack. As a narrator of his own work, Saunders hands in a reading that is straightforward and wonderfully underplayed. His tone has a youthful quality about it, and his narration is confident, making the story all the more endearing. A standout audiobook that will please listeners of all ages—from the youngest to the oldest members of any pack. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

In this tale about three seemingly separate murders committed years apart, Jan Maxwell’s skillful narration ranges from intimate (when detailing the characters’ backstories) to cold and clinical (when describing the characters’ bad behavior). Since the novel, set in New York, involves murder in triplicate, the cast is extraordinarily large—with some characters connected to the long-ago disappearance of a young waitress, some to the not-so-long-ago drowning of a social worker, and still others to a more recent explosion at protagonist Hannah Connelly’s family-owned furniture store. That explosion took the life of former employee Gus Schmidt and left Hannah’s sister Kate in a coma. Maxwell carefully provides each character with a unique voice. For example, Hannah’s initially quiet speech takes on a gradually increasing edginess the closer she comes to uncovering the identities of the villains and revealing her family’s secrets. Gus’s aged widow has just enough of a Germanic accent to suggest her European roots. The rest of the players are given fully imagined voices, from Hannah’s self-centered father, whose florid bombast is often slurred by drink, to a homeless Vietnam vet whose native New York accent is spoken with a thick tongue and inflected by mental and physical illness. A Simon & Schuster hardcover. (April)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

Killough-Walden’s vampire novel—which is connected to her Big Bad Wolf series—forces narrator Antony Ferguson to plunge right into the action: the book opens in medias res, with a female author named Evie injured and trapped by a romantic rival in a cold basement. How Evie got there, and how vampire king Roman D’Angelo threw her life into turmoil, is unraveled gradually, allowing Ferguson to draw the listener into the myth slowly and deliberately. The narrator’s steady pacing works well here, as the book contains much information about Killough-Walden’s imagined universe, and a more hurried delivery would risk losing those details. Ferguson proves himself equally adept at rendering dialogue and action scenes—and the result is a fun listen for fans of the genre. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

Brothers Jim and Bob, both lawyers, revisit their roots when sister Susan beckons them back to Shirley Falls, Maine, to help deal with her son’s legal shenanigans. But returning home means stirring up all the issues and emotions that the three siblings have worked to ignore for years. Cassandra Campbell uses rich narration, stellar timing, and a knack for emphasizing just the right words at the right moments to squeeze every ounce of dramatic tension from Strout’s novel. She modulates her tone and pace to keep listeners engaged, creating believable and distinguished character voices. Finally, Campbell invokes Maine accents sparingly—using them only when the text demands it and successfully avoiding the trap of caricature. A Random House hardcover. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers are brought to life in this full-cast production with sound effects and a musical score. Based on a performance at the 2012 Oregon Shakespeare Festival, this adaptation of the classic play is set in California in the 1840s. It skillfully blends regional accents and expressions into the script, making the dialogue suit the setting. The ensemble cast delivers an expert performance, ably capturing characters and their moods and intentions with nothing but shifts in tone, emphasis, and cadence. Still more impressive, the actors deliver lines in ways that make their meanings clear to listeners—even those who have trouble understanding Shakespeare. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink

Fans of horror fiction laced with laughs are likely to be tickled by this droll audio edition that kicks off Tufo’s new series centering on the eponymous canine. To realize the author’s concept—seeing the zombie apocalypse through the eyes of an American Bulldog—narrator Sean Runnette (who performed Tufo’s equally funny Zombie Fallout series) needs to pull off a plausible first-animal narration. He does this and more—convincingly voicing a terrier and a cat, as well as various humans. And listeners won’t find it difficult to differentiate Ben-Ben, the “little pain in the ass Yorkshire Terrier,” from Riley. The story wastes no time rolling up its gory sleeves and getting into the action—and Runnette ably transitions from humorous canine antics to savagery (e.g., when Riley rips the face off a family friend turned zombie), successfully blending horror and humor. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2013 | Details & Permalink