Friday, April 10, 2015

New Audiobooks!

A number of new audiobooks have recently been added to the library's collections.  We have a number of mysteries and thrillers by such authors as James Lee Burke, Carol Higgins Clark, Harlan Coben, Robert Crais, Tony Hillerman, Stephen King, Phillip Margolin, Michael Palmer, Ridley Pearson, and John Sandford.  There are also quite a few audiobooks by the late Terry Pratchett, narrated by Stephen Briggs.  Here are a few other new additions:

Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan, call number AV-Audio PS3608 .O725 U53 2013, is about Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife, Fanny Van De Grift Osbourne.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, call number AV-Audio PS3573 .A4722834 B43 2012, is an intricate story that  moves between 1962, in a tiny coastal village in the Cinque Terre area of the Italian Riviera, and 2012 in Hollywood.  The narrator of this audiobook, actor Edoardo Ballerini, won a well-deserved 2013 Audie Award for Solo Narration - Male; and the audiobook was also a nominee for the award for Fiction and for Audiobook of the Year.
The Bees by Laline Paull, call number AV-Audio PR6116 .A87 B44 2014, is an incredible book that anthropomorphizes bees (and other insects) and their lives in the hive.  Debut novelist Paull got the idea for the book when she learned about the unusual laying worker bee, which is the main "character," Flora 717.  Actress Orlagh Cassidy is an outstanding narrator who truly "performs" this book.

China Dolls by Lisa See, call number AV-Audio PS3569 .E3334 C47 2014, is historical fiction set in 1938 in San Francisco's Chinatown. Three Asian-American women bind - more from necessity than friendship - in a novel that spans the next ten years, with an epilogue 40 years later.  As is usual with Lisa See's novels, this one is rich from research, and incorporates some real people into the story.

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, call number AV-AudioPS3611 .I44 I58 2014, is set in the early 1800s.  This historical fiction novel has two alternating first-person narrators - the real Sarah Grimké, and a fictional family slave, Hetty "Handful" Grimké.  Sarah was, in her time, a famous - and infamous - abolitionist and early feminist, along with her younger sister Angelina.  The audiobook has two narrators:   Jenna Lamia is perfect as Southern-bred Sarah, while Nigerian-American actress Adepero Oduye voiced Handful.

You can find these, and all our audiobooks, on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library in the Audiovisual Collection. 

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