Behind the Mic With Kirkus Reviews

With a story set against the backdrop of 1960s Berlin and the height of the Cold War, narrator Jonathan Davis helps build the tension, creating a dark atmosphere of suspicion and suspense. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Robin Whitten discuss Davis’s versatile narration of Joseph Kanon’s latest thriller. This audiobook features Martin Keller as he takes part in a spy swap and is moved from an English...

Author and narrator Stacey Vanek Smith provides listeners with a playbook for women to succeed in today’s workplace. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Robin Whitten discuss her advice—Vanek Smith reaches back to the 1500s—to Machiavelli—to set the context and build lessons for contemporary working women. She has a fast-paced, conversational tone to deliver helpful strategies for women to carry out nego...

Positive and genuine, writer Amy Bloom’s husband, Brian, sounds like someone anyone would love to know. Sadly, in 2019 he received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis and called on Bloom’s support as he chose to end his life before the disease could. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Robin Whitten discuss Bloom’s memoir, which moves between anecdotes of the past and the journey to Switzerland for the couple’s fin...

Narrator Orlagh Cassidy uses her talents with accents and voices to draw listeners into the world of the indomitable Maisie Dobbs. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Robin Whitten discuss the latest historical mystery from Jacqueline Winspear. In addition to masterfully delivering the diverse personalities of the returning characters, Cassidy provides a convincing voice for the visiting American First L...

Narrator Deepti Gupta is a wonderful choice for Anjali Enjeti’s powerful historical novel about the violent partition of India. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Robin Whitten discuss the moving narration that earned Gupta the honor of Best Female Narrator at the 2022 Audie Awards. Through her delivery, listeners feel sympathy for young Deepa, who is caught in a moment of personal and national confusio...

Zura Johnson and Caitlin Kelly’s dual narration captures Zhanna Slor’s story of the challenges of immigrant life and the complexities of family. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Alan Minskoff discuss the way the two narrator’s voices portray two sisters of an immigrant Russian Jewish family. Johnson reads Masha, called home from Israel to help find her younger sister Anna, played by Kelly, w...

Actor Hugh Quarshie is a gifted mimic, and he reads with a measured pace that provides this sad historical novel with a sense of inevitably. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Alan Minskoff discuss Quarshie’s skill narrating Nadifa Mohamed’s work, which is based on real events in Cardiff, Wales, in 1952. Quarshie’s Somali-inflected English and his reading of Arabic offer the protagonist, Mahmo...

Bob Odenkirk’s timing and comic persona animate this inward-looking memoir. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Alan Minskoff discuss Odenkirk’s narration of his story, where his Chicago accent and whip-smart sense of humor permeate his reading. He narrates and writes his work with a self-conscious wit, and his audiobook is a candid story of “try, try, and try again” told with panache and a boa...

Narrated with clarity and poise by Gilli Messer and Allen Rickman, this audiobook takes more than 35 hours but is worth it. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Alan Minskoff discuss Polish Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s sprawling historical novel set in the eighteenth century. Both Messer and Rickman capture the tonality of the language and the author’s elegant writing, and the novel teems wit...

Dawnie Walton’s engaging audiobook is narrated with energy and style by a full cast. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Alan Minskoff discuss this 2022 Audie Award winner in Fiction, a well-imagined take on the music scene of the 1970s. Janina Edwards, who plays central character S. Sunny Curtis, is convincing, thoughtful, and measured. Both Bahni Turpin (Opal) and James Langston (Nev) give their idiosy...

AudioFile’s Michele Cobb sat down with author Malcolm Gladwell to talk about audiobooks, podcasts, and where the two meet. Listen to their conversation for Gladwell’s insights into creating immersive audiobooks, his thoughts on where the podcast and audiobook worlds are heading, and more.  Malcolm Gladwell is the host of the podcast Revisionist History and the author of several New York Times best...

Imani Jade Powers narrates the bulk of this tale set in 1940s Vichy France, inspired by the true story. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Sandi Henschel discuss Meg Waite Clayton’s captivating story of Nanné Gold, gutsy American heiress, who serves as a French Resistance postmistress, delivering messages to artists and writers hiding from Nazis. In contrast, Graham Halstead adopts a gritty, s...

Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Sandi Henschel discuss Maria Tucci’s terrific reading of this examination of the life of Greta Garbo. The author and narrator are husband and wife—he, Robert Gottlieb, is an esteemed writer and editor; she’s an accomplished actor. As a star biography, this is simply one of the best, most entertaining and most insightful. By the end of the biography, we unders...

Eleanor Reissa, a prominent actress and singer in Jewish theater, delivers an intimate account of her journey into her parents’ past. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Sandi Henschel discuss Reissa’s mellifluous narration and her quest to make sense of her parents’ lives before her birth, and the Holocaust. After her mother died, Reissa discovered a cache of letters written by her father just...

Avuncular, husky-voiced George Guidall as the 5-year-old protagonist of Stephen Harrigan’s audiobook seems an unusual choice—until you hear his engaging performance. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Sandi Henschel discuss this story inspired by a true event, where a leopard escaped the Oklahoma Zoo in 1953. The 70-year-old Grady McClarty relates the story from the point of view of his 5-year...

A top-notch narration by Vikas Adam transforms the iconic 1940s detective Philip Marlowe into a 21st-century PI. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Sandi Henschel discuss this new work by Joe Ide and the fun of listening to Adam’s terrific characterizations of all of the characters. Detective Marlowe is thrust into a story filled with violence, family drama, humor, romance, and clever dialogue...

Join host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb as they celebrate a night full of audiobook excellence at the 2022 Audie Awards! Hear all about the big event, and celebrate the winners of the big prizes for Audiobook of the Year, Best Male and Best Female narrators, and more. If you missed this year’s event, never fear! You can still watch it online and catch the fun of the virtual celebrations. Vi...

Narrator Anniwaa Buachie’s talent is phenomenal; her flexibility and skill match the storytelling skill of the author, resulting in a tour-de-force audiobook. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb discuss Buachie’s musical pacing as she narrates the story of Esi, a Nigerian-Ghanaian girl growing up in the 1960s. Esi’s mother disappeared when she was young, and she is trying to find herself in...

Ruairi Conaghan is a great fit for telling the story of Luke O’Neill, an Irish researcher, author, and science journalist who became a media darling during the pandemic. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb discuss the audiobook that makes for an intimate view into the first year of the pandemic, through the perspective of an immunologist. Conaghan narrates in his Irish accent, capturing the...

Bahni Turpin is the perfect narrator for this YA coming-of-age story about love and revolution from Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb discuss this prequel to PET. Seventeen-year-old Bitter finally feels safe at her boarding school for artistic teenagers. She’s initially wary of joining her friends’ protests, but when she calls a terrifying angel out of her dr...

Natalie Simpson gives a dynamic performance of Nikki May’s fast-paced drama about a trio of Anglo-Nigerian friends in London. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb discuss this story of three women whose lives are disrupted by a new friend, Isobel, and Simpson’s skill at conveying the emotion and intensity of the story. She skillfully switches among British, Nigerian, and French accents, smoot...

Narrator Edoardo Ballerini masterfully conveys the unrelenting stress on 17-year-old Cristian Florescu, who lives in Bucharest, Romania in the winter of 1989. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb discuss Ballerini’s smooth and youthful narration that conveys all the tension of Ruta Sepetys’s story. Cristian agrees to take on an informer role in exchange for medicine to save his ailing grandfa...

Kristen Ariza’s warm and lively narration suits a sweet and funny story of a “patchwork family” learning to live together in Harlem. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Emily Connelly discuss this latest delightful middle-grade audiobook from Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, which will appeal to young readers interested in baking, animals, music, stories of summertime adventures, and more! Eleven-year-old...

Narrator Thomas Quastoff’s voice has a musicality perfectly suited to this rich alphabet book with a symphonic score. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Emily Connelly discuss the joy of hearing the orchestra come alive through lyrical poems by Lera Auerbach and Marilyn Nelson, narrated beautifully by Quastoff. His German-accented baritone moves through alliterative phrases, describing singing piccolos,...

Narrator Danice Cabanela’s energetic voice welcomes listeners back to Shady Palms in this second delicious installment of the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen cozy mystery series. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Emily Connelly discuss the lively narration Danice brings to Mia P. Manansala’s fun mystery. Lila’s got a lot on her plate—opening a new cafe, judging her town’s teen beauty pageant, two handsome men int...