Audio File Episode 10: Membership to Thrill

Hello everyone and welcome to Audio File, a Camrose Public Library podcast series. On this podcast, we recommend audiobooks that are truly music to the ears and available right here at CPL. Today’s episode will be focusing on adult fiction thrillers. These picks are designed to keep you on the edge of your seat and keep you guessing as the mystery unfolds. Let’s get to it!

Transcript

Narrator 0:03
Hello everyone and welcome to Audio File, a Camrose Public Library podcast series. On this podcast, we recommend audiobooks that are truly music to the ears and available right here at CPL. Today’s episode will be focusing on adult fiction thrillers. These picks are designed to keep you on the edge of your seat and keep you guessing as the mystery unfolds. Let’s get to it!

Our first pick is In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead. Six friends. One college reunion. One unsolved murder. Ten years after graduation, Jessica Miller has planned her triumphant return to her southern, elite Duquette University, down to the envious whispers that are sure to follow in her wake. Everyone is going to see the girl she wants them to see-confident, beautiful, indifferent. Not the girl she was when she left campus, back when Heather Shelby's murder fractured everything, including the tight bond linking the six friends she'd been closest to since freshman year. 

But not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone left Duquette ten years ago, and not everyone can let Heather's murder go unsolved. Someone is determined to trap the real killer, to make the guilty pay. When the six friends are reunited, they will be forced to confront what happened that night-and the years' worth of secrets each of them would do anything to keep hidden. Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession, and ambition, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is an addictive, propulsive story.

In My Dreams I hold a Knife was an Amazon Best Book of the Month, an Apple Best Book of the Month, one of Library Journal’s Best Debuts of 2021, and one of Kobo’s Best Mysteries & Thrillers of 2021. Ashley Winstead holds a Ph.D. in contemporary American literature from Southern Methodist University and a B.A. in English and Art History from Vanderbilt University. She lives in Houston, TX, where she drinks red wine and dreams up novels. 
To quote the New York Journal of Books’ review of this pick: “A twisty, dark puzzle...Fans of books such as The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl will find this book captivating, as will anyone who enjoys being led down a winding, frightening path. Highly recommended.” 

The 2022 Tantor Media production of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is read by Vanessa Johansson. Vanessa Johansson is a film/theater actress and voice-over artist who graduated from Carnegie Mellon and later trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. An AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, she has worked on approximately sixty audiobooks. Her training and work as an actress bring a richness to her narration and character work. Vanessa's pleasant, mid-range voice is very agile, and she has narrated many different genres of audiobooks, including mystery, young adult, romance, memoir, chick-lit, and books for children. A native New Yorker, she lives in Greenwich Village but loves to travel whenever she has the opportunity.
If you’re looking for a dark academia read filled with tension, try In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead. 

Our next pick is Rock, Paper, Scissors by Alice Feeney. Think you know the person you married? Think again...
Things have been wrong with Mr. and Mrs. Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can't recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.

Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts—paper, cotton, pottery, tin—and each year Adam's wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn't randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn't want them to live happily ever after.

Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.
Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. Her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie, was an international bestseller and has been translated into over twenty languages. His & Hers, another of her novels, is being adapted for screen by Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films. Rock Paper Scissors is her fourth novel and is also being made into a TV series for Netflix by the producer of The Crown. Rock Paper Scissors has a 3.99 star rating out of roughly 130,000 votes on the Goodreads website with over 16,000 reviews. To quote the Kirkus Review of Rock Paper Scissors: “This complicated gothic thriller of dueling spouses and homicidal writers is cleverly plotted and neatly tied up.”

The 2021 Macmillian Audio Production of Rock Paper Scissors is read by Richard Armitage and Stephanie Racine. Richard Crispin Armitage is an English actor most known for his role as Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit films. He studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and started his voice-acting career in 2006. Born in Singapore to British/German parents, Stephanie Racine has an undergraduate and Masters degree from the University of Warwick and is an acting graduate of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She lives and works in London. Alongside her stage, screen and radio drama work, Stephanie is a Carleton Hobbs winner, has voiced a Sony Award winning campaign for the BBC, and has voiced numerous New York Times, US and UK Bestselling Audiobooks.

To quote the Audio File review of Rock Paper Scissors: “Racine's unpretentious Amelia is frustrated by her husband's indifference toward her and hero worship of a mystery writer for whom he's written screenplays. Armitage's egotistical and distant Adam belittles his wife and shows warmth only for their dog. As they settle into their bitterly cold room, endless surprises and shocks begin. Both Racine and Armitage affectingly create unreliable narrators. . .”
If you’re looking for a domestic thriller with a twist, try Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney. 

Our third pick is The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins. Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name.

But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates' most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can't help but see an opportunity in Eddie––not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she's always yearned for.

Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie's heart before her past––or his––catches up to her?

With delicious suspense, incisive wit, and a fresh, feminist sensibility, The Wife Upstairs flips the script on a timeless tale of forbidden romance, ill-advised attraction, and a wife who just won't stay buried. In this vivid reimagining of one of literature's most twisted love triangles, which Mrs. Rochester will get her happy ending?

The Wife Upstairs is a New York Times and USA Today Bestseller. To quote the EW review of this pick, it’s, "Compulsively readable...a gothic thriller laced with arsenic." It’s also one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 by: Newsweek, Vulture, PopSugar, Parade, BuzzFeed, E!Online, TimeOut, Woman's Day, Goodreads, She Reads, Good Housekeeping, CrimeReads, Frolic, Hello!, Mystery and Suspense, January 2021 Indie Next Pick and #1 LibraryReads Pick. The Wife Upstairs is a reimaging of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, though it differs from the source material quite a bit. 

The 2021 Macmillan Audio production of the Wife Upstairs is read by Lauren Fortgang, Emily Shaffer, and Kirby Heyborne. Lauren Fortgang lives in NYC where she currently works as an actor and voiceover artist. Born in Wilmington, DE she spent her early years in rural towns throughout northern California. Following training at A.C.T.’s Young Conservatory in San Francisco, she attended Fordham University College at Lincoln Center, where she majored in theater. Emily Shaffer was born in Clarksburg, West Viriginia. Since getting her acting start on HBO's How To Make It in America, she has appeared on television shows such as Covert Affairs, Unforgettable, Chicago Fire and its spinoff, Chicago Med. Her narration work includes Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy and Bloodlines series, and her debut novel, That Time of the Month, was released in June 2012.

Kirby Heyborne is an American musician and actor. After graduating from the University of Utah with a degree in economics, he received critical acclaim for his starring role in the award-winning World War II drama Saints and Soldiers. He is well known for his narration and voice work on several audiobooks. In addition, he can frequently be found touring the country with his singing and songwriting act. Together, this trio bring The Wife Upstairs to life and ensures that you are sucked right into the story. 

If you’re looking for a book that pairs Southern Charm with atmospheric suspense, try The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins. 

Up next, we have The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian. Tanzania, 1964. When Katie Barstow, A-list actress, and her new husband, David Hill, decide to bring their Hollywood friends to the Serengeti for their honeymoon, they envision giraffes gently eating leaves from the tall acacia trees, great swarms of wildebeests crossing the Mara River, and herds of zebras storming the sandy plains. Their glamorous guests—including Katie’s best friend, Carmen Tedesco, and Terrance Dutton, the celebrated Black actor who stars alongside Katie in the highly controversial film Tender Madness—will spend their days taking photos, and their evenings drinking chilled gin and tonics back at camp, as the local Tanzanian guides warm water for their baths. The wealthy Americans expect civilized adventure: fresh ice from the kerosene-powered ice maker, dinners of cooked gazelle meat, and plenty of stories to tell over lunch back on Rodeo Drive.

What Katie and her glittering entourage do not expect is this: a kidnapping gone wrong, their guides bleeding out in the dirt, and a team of Russian mercenaries herding their hostages into Land Rovers, guns to their heads. As the powerful sun gives way to night, the gunmen shove them into abandoned huts and Katie Barstow, Hollywood royalty, prays for a simple thing: to see the sun rise one more time. A blistering story of fame, race, love, and death set in a world on the cusp of great change, The Lioness is a vibrant masterpiece from one of our finest storytellers.

Author Jodi Picoult described The Lioness as, “The best possible combination of Hemingway and Agatha Christie — a gorgeously written story about the landscape and risks of Africa, whose edge-of-your-seat plot makes it impossible to put down.” Publisher’s Weekly said, “Bohjalian does a superb job of judiciously rolling out information of how past transgressions may have led to the heart-stopping episodes of chaos and carnage as the shocking, twist-filled plot builds up to the revelation of ‘the real reasons for the safari nightmare.’ This brilliant whydunit is not to be missed.” It also happens to be a New York Times bestseller if that sweetens the prospect at all.

The 2022 Books on Tape production of The Lioness is read by January LaVoy, Grace Experience, and Gabrielle De Cuir. An Audiofile Magazine “Golden Voice” since May 2019, January LaVoy has an extensive body of work in both narration and commercial voiceover.  With hundreds of audiobook titles to her credit, she has received more than thirty Earphones Awards, eighteen Audie Award nominations (including seven wins), and was named Publishers Weekly's "Audiobook Narrator of the Year" for 2013. 

Grace Experience studied acting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She has performed onstage in New York and New England, and most recently appeared on the HBO Max series The Flight Attendant. She is also an award-winning narrator for Penguin Random House Books. She has been called "One of our finest young actresses" by The Armenian Weekly and "Simply Hilarious" by The Boston Globe. 

Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award.  She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and often works on projects for film. Together, these ladies perform excellently with skill and passion. As their accolades suggest, they are veterans of the industry and know how to work an audiobook, which makes for a great listen.

If you’re looking for a historical thrill ride, try The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian. 

Our fifth pick is A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham. When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, her own father had confessed to the crimes and was put away for life, leaving Chloe and the rest of her family to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.
Now twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. While she finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she's worked so hard to achieve, she sometimes feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. So when a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, seeing parallels from her past that aren't actually there, or for the second time in her life, is Chloe about to unmask a killer?

A Flicker in the Dark is Stacy Willingham’s debut novel, and thanks to it, she is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Before turning to fiction, Willingham was a copywriter and brand strategist for various marketing agencies and earned her BA in magazine journalism from the University of Georgia and MFA in writing from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work is currently being translated in over 30 countries. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Britt, and Labradoodle, Mako, where she is always working on her next book. Author Karin Slaughter praised A Flicker in the Dark by saying it’s, “A smart, edge-of-your-seat story with plot twists you’ll never see coming. Stacy Willingham’s debut will keep you turning pages long past your bedtime.”

The 2022 Macmillan Audio Production of A Flicker in the Dark is read by Karissa Vacker. Karissa is an Audie Award Finalist and AudioFile Earphones award-winning narrator based in Los Angeles by way of Texas.  She is a classically trained actor with credits from major regional theaters and also enjoys a career in film and TV. Karissa has narrated over 100 books in-studio for Penguin Random House, Hachette, Brilliance, Tantor, Dreamscape, Harper Collins and Scholastic, among others.  She excels at narrating YA fiction, women's fiction, and suspense/thrillers. Vacker’s performance here is crisp and engaging, making for a great listen. It is, after all, an Earphones Award-winning performance. 
If you’re looking for mystery from a new face in the thriller game, try A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham.  

Our last pick is The Lost Summers of Newport by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Wilig, and Karen White. 2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America's most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort of America's gilded class—famous for the lavish "summer cottages" of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia "Lucky" Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion's ruined boathouse.

1899: Ellen Daniels has been hired to give singing lessons to Miss Maybelle Sprague, a naive young Colorado mining heiress whose stepbrother John has poured their new money into buying a place among Newport's elite. John is determined to see Maybelle married off to a fortune-hunting Italian prince, and Ellen is supposed to polish up the girl for her launch into society. But the deceptively demure Ellen has her own checkered past, and she's hiding in plain sight at Sprague Hall.

1958: Lucia "Lucky" Sprague has always felt like an outsider at Sprague Hall. When she and her grandmother—the American-born Princess di Conti—fled Mussolini's Italy, it seemed natural to go back to the imposing Newport house Nana owned but hadn't seen since her marriage in 1899. Over the years, Lucky's lost her Italian accent and found a place for herself among the yachting set by marrying Stuyvesant Sprague, the alcoholic scion of her Sprague stepfamily. But one fateful night in the mansion's old boathouse will uncover a devastating truth...and change everything she thought she knew about her past.

All three authors of The Lost Summers of Newport are New York Times Bestselling authors with impressive bibliographies in their own right. United, they are a force to be reckoned with. It should come as no surprise that The Lost Summers of Newport is also a New York Times Bestseller. Good Morning America called it “"An engrossing and sumptuous tale” then going on to say that, “this novel is a fantastic spring read." Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and said, “Three stories elegantly intertwine in this clever and stylish tale of murder and family lies...This crackerjack novel offers three mysteries for the price of one." 

The 2022 Harper Audio production of The Lost Summers of Newport is read by Saskia Maarleveld, Brittany Pressley, and Lisa Flanagan. Saskia Maarleveld is an AudioFile magazine Earphones Award–winning narrator living in New York City. Working full-time in the voice-over world, Saskia has recorded over 160 audiobooks. She switches seamlessly between accents and can often be heard speaking in British, Australian, New Zealand, and various European accents, in addition to her own American accent. 

Brittany Pressley is another AudioFile magazine Earphones Award–winning narrator. She is also an accomplished singer-songwriter and voice actress. Her voice can be heard on national and international TV and radio commercials, as well as in several animated series and video games. Lisa Flanagan is an award-winning narrator, voice actor, stage director, improviser, opera librettist, and classical singer. Her voice-over work includes animation, video games, and commercials. Lisa has received multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, Voice Arts Awards, and was the 2019 Audie Award winner for the Fantasy category. She has cats and lives in Brooklyn, NY. The three distinct voices of the authors are illustrated perfectly in the three narrators, making the listening experience vivid and satisfying. 

If you’re looking for something that’s part history, part mystery, with some thrills, try The Lost Summers of Newport by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Wilig, and Karen White. 

That’s it for this episode of Audio File. All the audiobooks discussed are available at Camrose Public Library in audio CD or downloadable audio format at the time of this recording. Thanks very much for listening and remember to stay curious.