Bahni Turpin has narrated 249 audiobooks on Listento.it by 241 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 7,522 ratings. The most-rated is The Hate U Give.

249 audiobooks
Cover art for The Sun Is Also a Star

The Sun Is Also a Star

77 ratings

Summary

Now a major motion picture starring Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton! The number one New York Times best seller and National Book Award finalist from the best-selling author of Everything, Everything will have you falling in love with Natasha and Daniel as they fall in love with each other.  Natasha: I'm a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I'm definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is 12 hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won't be my story.  Daniel: I've always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents' high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store - for both of us.  The Universe:  Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?  A 2017 Michael L. Printz Honor Book A New York Times Notable Book A BuzzFeed Best YA Book of the Year A POPSUGAR Best Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A Booklist Editor's Choice A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens Recipient of the John Steptoe New Talent Award A Walter Award Honor Book' "Beautifully crafted." (People Magazine) "A book that is very much about the many factors that affect falling in love, as much as it is about the very act itself...fans of Yoon’s first novel, Everything Everything, will find much to love - if not, more - in what is easily an even stronger follow up." (Entertainment Weekly) "Transcends the limits of YA as a human story about falling in love and seeking out our futures." (POPSUGAR.com)

©2016 Nicola Yoon (P)2016 Listening Library

Author: Nicola Yoon
Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection

Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection

73 ratings

Summary

Think superheroes are tough? Try having one for a boss, or co-worker. That’s the predicament Andrea Vernon finds herself in as the heroine of Alexander C. Kane’s debut audiobook. Drowning in debt, and forced to move back into her parents’ Queens apartment, Andrea starts looking for a job. Luckily for her, she finds herself recruited—well, really kidnapped—by the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection (C.U.P.), an organization that deploys superheroes. Suddenly Andrea must contend with co-workers who can shoot lightning from their fingertips, face the imminent destruction of humanity, and juggle a fledgling romance with a giant lumberjack. It’s all in a day’s work for the would-be novelist turned superstar secretary. Audible Hall of Fame narrator Bahni Turpin is perfectly cast as a normal person finding herself in abnormal circumstances. Turpin brings to life an entire cast of quirky characters, along with their heroically funny antics in the cubicle next door. If you’ve ever wondered what a genetically altered rhinoceros sounds like, or needed to take a break from your own office drudgery, this is the comedy for you.  

©2017 Alexander C. Kane (P)2017 Audible Originals, LLC.

Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Kitchen House

The Kitchen House

55 ratings

Summary

Orphaned during her passage from Ireland, young, white Lavinia arrives on the steps of the kitchen house and is placed, as an indentured servant, under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate slave daughter. Lavinia learns to cook, clean, and serve food while guided by the quiet strength and love of her new family. In time Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master's opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous yet protective son. She attempts to straddle the worlds of the kitchen and big house, but her skin color will forever set her apart from Belle and the other slaves. Through the unique eyes of Lavinia and Belle, Grissom's debut novel unfolds in a heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of class, race, dignity, deep-buried secrets, and familial bonds.

©2010 Kathleen Grissom (P)2017 Simon & Schuster

Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Transcendent Kingdom

Transcendent Kingdom

50 ratings

Summary

A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick!  Instant New York Times best seller Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.  Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief - a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut. 

©2020 Yaa Gyasi (P)2020 Random House Audio

Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Author: Yaa Gyasi
Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Find Me

Find Me

47 ratings

Summary

2019 Vogue Magazine Best Books of the Year 2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year "[Narrator Michael Stuhlbarg's] elegant performance and Aciman's sensitive writing keep things touching without ever being sentimental. Wonderful listening." (AudioFile magazine, Earphones Award winner) This program is read by Michael Stuhlbarg, the actor who played Professor Samuel Perlman in Luca Guadagnino's critically acclaimed film Call Me by Your Name. A bonus conversation between Michael Stuhlbarg and André Aciman is included at the end of the program. In this spellbinding exploration of the varieties of love, the author of the worldwide best seller Call Me by Your Name revisits its complex and beguiling characters decades after their first meeting.  No novel in recent memory has spoken more movingly to contemporary listeners about the nature of love than André Aciman’s haunting Call Me by Your Name. First published in 2007, it was hailed as “a love letter, an invocation...an exceptionally beautiful book” (Stacey D’Erasmo, The New York Times Book Review). Nearly three quarters of a million copies have been sold, and the book became a much-loved, Academy Award-winning film starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduate student with whom he falls in love.   In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami’s plans and changes his life forever.   Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.    Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the emotional nuances that are the substance of passion. Find Me brings us back inside the magic circle of one of our greatest contemporary romances to ask if, in fact, true love ever dies.

©2019 André Aciman (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station

40 ratings

Summary

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none - not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory. Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger. While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger - and more consuming - by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon, and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes. A magnificent fantasy rife with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and wonderfully realized characters, told in a storytelling style in which Charles Dickens meets Neal Stephenson, Perdido Street Station offers an eerie, voluptuously crafted world that will plumb the depths of every reader's imagination.

©2003 China Mieville (P)2009 Random House Audio

Available on Audible
Cover art for My Own Words

My Own Words

37 ratings

Summary

The first book from Ruth Bader Ginsburg since becoming a Supreme Court Justice in 1993 - a witty, engaging, serious, and playful collection of writings and speeches from the woman who has had a powerful and enduring influence on law, women's rights, and popular culture. My Own Words is a selection of writings and speeches by Justice Ginsburg on wide-ranging topics, including gender equality, the workways of the Supreme Court, being Jewish, law and lawyers in opera, and the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US Constitution. Throughout her life Justice Ginsburg has been (and continues to be) a prolific writer and public speaker. This book contains a sampling selected by Justice Ginsburg and her authorized biographers, Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams. Justice Ginsburg has written an introduction to the book, and Hartnett and Williams introduce each chapter, giving biographical context and quotes gleaned from hundreds of interviews they have conducted. This is a fascinating glimpse into the life of one of America's most influential women. This audiobook features archival original recordings of Justice Ginsburg’s speeches and bench announcements.

©2016 Ruth Bader Ginsberg (P)2016 Simon & Schuster

Available on Audible
Cover art for Dread Nation

Dread Nation

33 ratings

Summary

New York Times best seller, six starred reviews At once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, Dread Nation is Justina Ireland's stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar - a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet. Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever. In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities - and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It's a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations. But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston's School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies.  And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems. "Abundant action, thoughtful world-building, and a brave, smart, and skillfully drawn cast entertain as Ireland illustrates the ignorance and immorality of racial discrimination and examines the relationship between equality and freedom." (Publishers Weekly, "An Anti-Racist Children's and YA Reading List") 

©2018 Justina Ireland (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Everything, Everything

Everything, Everything

32 ratings

Summary

This innovative, heartfelt debut novel tells the story of a girl who's literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she's ever known. My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically I'm allergic to the world. I don't leave my house, have not left my house in 17 years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He's tall, lean, and wearing all black - black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly. Maybe we can't predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It's almost certainly going to be a disaster.

©2015 Nicola Yoon (P)2015 Listening Library

Author: Nicola Yoon
Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Crown of Feathers

Crown of Feathers

31 ratings

Summary

An Ember in the Ashes meets Three Dark Crowns in this lush debut fantasy novel about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to join a secret group of warriors who ride phoenixes into battle. I had a sister once.... In a world ruled by fierce warrior queens, a grand empire was built upon the backs of Phoenix Riders - legendary heroes who soared through the sky on wings of fire - until a war between two sisters ripped it all apart.  I promised her the throne would not come between us. Sixteen years later, Veronyka is a war orphan who dreams of becoming a Phoenix Rider from the stories of old. After a shocking betrayal from her controlling sister, Veronyka strikes out alone to find the Riders - even if that means disguising herself as a boy to join their ranks.  But it is a fact of life that one must kill or be killed. Rule or be ruled. Just as Veronyka finally feels like she belongs, her sister turns up and reveals a tangled web of lies between them that will change everything. And meanwhile, the new empire has learned of the Riders’ return and intends to destroy them once and for all.  Sometimes the title of queen is given. Sometimes it must be taken. Crown of Feathers is an epic fantasy about love’s incredible power to save - or to destroy. Interspersed throughout is the story of Avalkyra Ashfire, the last Rider queen, who would rather see her empire burn than fall into her sister’s hands.

©2019 Nicki Pau Preto (P)2019 Simon & Schuster

Available on Audible
Cover art for Yellow Crocus

Yellow Crocus

29 ratings

Summary

Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come. Though Lisbeth leads a life of privilege, she finds nothing but loneliness in the company of her overwhelmed mother and her distant, slave-owning father. As she grows older, Mattie becomes more like family to Lisbeth than her own kin and the girl’s visits to the slaves’ quarters - and their lively and loving community - bring them closer together than ever. But can two women in such disparate circumstances form a bond like theirs without consequence? This deeply moving tale of unlikely love traces the journey of these very different women as each searches for freedom and dignity. Revised edition: This edition of Yellow Crocus includes editorial revisions.

©2014 by Laila Ibrahim. (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Trilobyte

Trilobyte

28 ratings

Summary

The machines brought society to its knees. Now, the last remaining humans fight for survival - and to take back what's theirs. Junior, a robotics expert, tinkers quietly underground. With dozens of machine kills under his belt, he knows the enemy inside and out.  Alpha0verride, a reclusive black hat hacker, uses the skills acquired over a life of shady activity to outwit the hyper-intelligent machines swarming in on her.  Brick, a special forces operator and one of the few Pentagon survivors, fights his inner demons to embark on the most important mission of his life.  Together they are humanity’s last, best hope - if they can only find each other in time.  Leveraging his decades of active military and intelligence community service, Trilobyte is the techno-thriller only J. L. Bourne could write.

©2019 J. L. Bourne (P)2019 Audible Originals, LLC.

Available on Audible
Cover art for Andrea Vernon and the Superhero-Industrial Complex

Andrea Vernon and the Superhero-Industrial Complex

26 ratings

Summary

Back by popular demand! The further, fearsome, and funny adventures of Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection - written by Alexander C. Kane and performed by Bahni Turpin, 2018 Audie Award winner for Best Female Narrator. More than a year after she helped save the world from the Sparnaxian invasion, Andrea Vernon is in a good place. Her boss is giving her greater responsibility and she’s getting to travel a lot (although her fill-in is hopeless at making coffee); things could be getting even more serious with her 8’ 4” superhero boyfriend, The Big Axe; and she has a really fun new BFF, Never More.  Small issue, though, with that last item - Never More is a supervillain bent on world domination, and it looks as if nothing can stop her. Especially since Congress is determined to bring the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection and all of “Big Supe” under government control.  Even with mankind’s greatest heroes fighting back, will it fall on Andrea to save the day - again?

©2019 Alexander C. Kane (P)2019 Audible Originals, LLC.

Available on Audible
Cover art for American Spy

American Spy

26 ratings

Summary

“American Spy updates the espionage thriller with blazing originality.” (Entertainment Weekly)  “There has never been anything like it.” (Marlon James, GQ)  “So much fun.... Like the best of John le Carré, it’s extremely tough to put down.” (NPR)  Named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year By Chicago Tribune and One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • Esquire • BuzzFeed • Vulture • Real Simple • Good Housekeeping • The New York Public Library  What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love?  It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young Black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes.  Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Sankara is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving the mysterious death of her sister, whose example led Marie to this career path in the first place. Yes, even though a furious part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent. In the year that follows, Marie will observe Sankara, seduce him, and ultimately have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American. Inspired by true events - Thomas Sankara is known as “Africa’s Che Guevara” - American Spy knits together a gripping spy thriller, a heartbreaking family drama, and a passionate romance. This is a face of the Cold War you’ve never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice. Nominated for the NAACP Image Award  Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize “Spy fiction plus allegory, and a splash of pan-Africanism. What could go wrong? As it happens, very little. Clever, bracing, darkly funny, and really, really good.” (Ta-Nehisi Coates) “Inspired by real events, this espionage thriller ticks all the right boxes, delivering a sexually charged interrogation of both politics and race.” (Esquire)  “Echoing the stoic cynicism of Hurston and Ellison, and the verve of Conan Doyle, American Spy lays our complicities - political, racial, and sexual - bare. Packed with unforgettable characters, it’s a stunning book, timely as it is timeless.” (Paul Beatty, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout)

©2019 Lauren Wilkinson (P)2019 Random House Audio

Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Plain Truth

Plain Truth

25 ratings

Summary

From the best-selling author of My Sister's Keeper comes the riveting story of a murder that shatters the picturesque calm of Amish country - and tests the heart and soul of the lawyer defending the woman at the center of the storm. The discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster County to its core. But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure: Circumstantial evidence suggests that 18-year-old Katie Fisher, an unmarried Amish woman believed to be the newborn's mother, took the child's life. When Ellie Hathaway, a disillusioned big-city attorney, comes to Paradise, Pennsylvania, to defend Katie, two cultures collide - and for the first time in her high-profile career, Ellie faces a system of justice very different from her own. Delving deep inside the world of those who live "plain", Ellie must find a way to reach Katie on her terms. And as she unravels a tangled murder case, Ellie also looks deep within - to confront her own fears and desires when a man from her past reenters her life.

©2000 Jodi Picoult (P)2000 Simon & Schuster

Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Gravity of Us

The Gravity of Us

24 ratings

Summary

Teen boys find love when their parents' NASA mission uproots their lives in this sweet debut perfect for Adam Silvera fans. As a successful social media journalist with half a million followers, 17-year-old Cal is used to sharing his life online. But when his pilot father is selected for a highly publicized NASA mission to Mars, Cal and his family relocate from Brooklyn to Houston and are thrust into a media circus. Amidst the chaos, Cal meets sensitive and mysterious Leon, another "Astrokid", and finds himself falling head over heels - fast. As the frenzy around the mission grows, so does their connection. But when secrets about the program are uncovered, Cal must find a way to reveal the truth without hurting the people who have become most important to him. Expertly capturing the thrill of first love and the self-doubt all teens feel, debut author Phil Stamper is a new talent to watch. Narrated by Michael Crouch The Shooting Stars TV show is brought to life with a full cast featuring: Jonathan Davis as Josh Farrow Gabra Zackman as StarWatch announcer January LaVoy as Grace Tucker Angelo Di Loreto as Mark Bannon Chris Andrew Ciulla as Calvin Lewis, Sr. Dorothy Dillingham Blue as Donna Szleifer Cynthia Farrell as Ariana Rogers Soneela Nankani as Halima Ali Sullivan Jones as Leon Tucker Bahni Turpin as Kat Tucker Author's Note read by Phil Stamper Includes an About the Audiobook conversation between Phil Stamper and producer Diane McKiernan

©2020 Phil Stamper (P)2020 Listening Library

Available on Audible
Cover art for Long Way Down

Long Way Down

23 ratings

Summary

Jason Reynolds’s Newbery Honor, Printz Honor, and Coretta Scott King Honor–winning, number-one New York Times best-selling novel Long Way Down is now a gripping, galvanizing graphic novel, with haunting artwork by Danica Novgorodoff. Will’s older brother, Shawn, has been shot. Dead. Will feels a sadness so great, he can’t explain it. But in his neighborhood, there are THE RULES:  No. 1: Crying. Don’t. No matter what.  No. 2: Snitching. Don’t. No matter what.  No. 3: Revenge. Do. No matter what.  But bullets miss. You can get the wrong guy. And there’s always someone else who knows to follow the rules....

©2017 Jason Reynolds (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Available on Audible
Cover art for Hum If You Don't Know the Words

Hum If You Don't Know the Words

23 ratings

Summary

Perfect for fans of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, a perceptive and searing look at Apartheid-era South Africa, told through one unique family brought together by tragedy. Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robin's parents are left dead and Beauty's daughter goes missing. After Robin is sent to live with her loving but irresponsible aunt, Beauty is hired to care for Robin while continuing the search for her daughter. In Beauty, Robin finds the security and family that she craves, and the two forge an inextricable bond through their deep personal losses. But Robin knows that if Beauty finds her daughter, Robin could lose her new caretaker forever, so she makes a desperate decision with devastating consequences. Her quest to make amends and find redemption is a journey of self-discovery in which she learns the harsh truths of the society that once promised her protection. Told through Beauty's and Robin's alternating perspectives, the interwoven narratives create a rich and complex tapestry of the emotions and tensions at the heart of Apartheid-era South Africa. Hum If You Don't Know the Words is a beautifully rendered look at loss, racism, and the creation of family.

©2017 Bianca Marais (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Red at the Bone

Red at the Bone

23 ratings

Summary

Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2019 by LitHub and The Millions. Called one of the Top 10 Literary Fiction titles of Fall by Publishers Weekly.  An extraordinary new novel about the influence of history on a contemporary family, from the New York Times best-selling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming. Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative 10 times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.  As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of 16-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony - a celebration that ultimately never took place.  Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class, and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives - even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be. Read by Jacqueline Woodson, with Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Sabe), Peter Francis James (Po’Boy), Shayna Small (Iris), and Bahni Turpin (Melody)

©2019 Jacqueline Woodson (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Available on Audible
Cover art for If You Want to Make God Laugh

If You Want to Make God Laugh

21 ratings

Summary

From the author of the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words comes a rich, unforgettable story of three unique women in post-Apartheid South Africa who are brought together in their darkest time and discover the ways that love can transcend the strictest of boundaries. In a squatter camp on the outskirts of Johannesburg, 17-year-old Zodwa lives in desperate poverty, under the shadowy threat of a civil war and a growing AIDS epidemic. Eight months pregnant, Zodwa carefully guards secrets that jeopardize her life.  Across the country, wealthy socialite Ruth appears to have everything her heart desires, but it's what she can't have that leads to her breakdown. Meanwhile, in Zaire, a disgraced former nun, Delilah, grapples with a past that refuses to stay buried. When these personal crises send both middle-aged women back to their rural hometown to heal, the discovery of an abandoned newborn baby upends everything, challenging their lifelong beliefs about race, motherhood, and the power of the past.  As the mystery surrounding the infant grows, the complicated lives of Zodwa, Ruth, and Delilah become inextricably linked. What follows is a mesmerizing look at family and identity that asks: How far will the human heart go to protect itself and the ones it loves?

©2019 Bianca Marais (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
Available on Audible