Hopefully by this point in the summer, with all of those steamy days practically made for parking yourself by the ocean (or at least an atmospheric air conditioner), you’ve been able to make a solid dent in your TBR pile. Might we suggest tacking on a few more listens? Kick your feet up and soak in these last weeks of the season through your earbuds.
For the families who live on in Washington DC in the summer of 1959, life is still defined by what one did during WWII. When a rare, scorpion-like vinegaroon is discovered and sequestered for museum study, our young narrator John, and his best friends Ivan, Max, and Beatriz hatch a risky midnight plan to steal the poisonous creature for their own devious purposes. Fueled by punch the crew doctors with a jug of Brazilian rum at a backyard party, the adults in their lives let down their defenses until Ivan’s glamorous aunt Elena roars off with a stranger on his motorcycle. What happens next will change John’s life forever.
Zee is nobody’s fairy tale princess. Almost six-foot, with a redhead’s temper and a shattered hip, her list of worries is long. Gentry, on the other hand, is an actual knight, complete with sword, armor, and a code of honor. Two years ago the voices he hears called him to be Zee’s champion. Both shy and autistic, he’s barely spoken to her since, but he has kept watch, ready to come to her aid. When an abduction tears Zee’s family apart, she turns to Gentry (the last person she ever imagined) and sets in motion a chain of events that will change both of their lives, and bind them forever in this heartfelt audiobook read by a full cast.
Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman awaiting the return of the men in her life—her husband, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her elder sons, who have vanished after an explosive argument. Meanwhile, Lurie is a former outlaw and a man haunted by ghosts. He sees lost souls who want something from him, and he finds reprieve in a momentous expedition across the West. The way in which Lurie’s death-defying trek at last intersects with Nora’s plight is the surprise and suspense of this brilliant audiobook from the author of The Tiger’s Wife.
Julia Summers seems to have it all: a sprawling Upper East Side apartment, a successful husband, and two adorable children attending the best private school in the city… but her star appears to be fading, and she is on the hunt for what will put her back on top of the social ladder. Enter the new boutique gym in her neighborhood, complete with the naïve instructor Tatum, who Julia is determined to fix up. But rebranding Tatum as a trendy guru proves hard work, and Julia’s triumphant comeback at summer’s end doesn’t quite go as planned in this entertaining audiobook.
Scarlett and David have known each other all their lives in small-town Graceville, Colorado, where David is just another mountain in the background, until, one day, he is suddenly so much more than part of the landscape. David is a gravitational force. And Scarlett, welcomes the whirlwind he brings even as she resists it. Moving between the present and the past, this is the story of a seemingly grounded girl who’s pulled into a lightning-strike romance with an electric-charged boy, and the enormity of the aftermath.