Lauren Groff: In Her Own Voice

Exploring Kathryn Stockett’s The Calamity Club

bit.ly/audiobooksoffer Sign up for Audiobooks.com 30-day free trial and get your first 3 audiobooks free! On this special sponsored episode of Behind the Mic, Kirkus’ Michele Cobb is joined by Amy Metsch, associate publisher and director of audio programming at Spiegel & Grau, to talk about Kathryn Stockett’s highly anticipated new novel, The Calamity Club, narrated by the powerhouse team of January LaVoy and Jenna Lamia. Stockett’s new novel, her first since The Help in 2009, is about female friendship, rising to the occasion in the face of constant adversity, and some of the darker parts of our collective history. Michele and Amy discuss the creation of the audiobook and how Lamia and LaVoy bring to life two distinct narrative voices, 11-year-old Meg and 24-year-old Bertie.   Audiobook Discussed: The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett, read by January LaVoy & Jenna Lamia (Spiegel & Grau by Spotify Audiobooks)   This episode of Behind the Mic is brought to you by Spiegel & Grau Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Three Very Different Roads Through Fiction

bit.ly/audiobooksoffer Sign up for Audiobooks.com 30-day free trial and get your first 3 audiobooks free! From haunted New Jersey suburbs to melancholy Irish landscapes to the contested wilds of the American West, Alan Minskoff joins host Jo Reed to discuss three sharply different works of fiction in audio. Tom Perrotta’s Ghost Town, narrated by Robert Petkoff, blends grief, adolescence, and the supernatural through Petkoff’s nuanced character work, while Derbhle Crotty and Darragh Shannon bring quiet emotional precision to The News From Dublin, evoking the atmosphere of longing and displacement in Colm Tóibín’s story collection. The conversation closes with Taylor Brown’s Wolvers, read by Ramiz Monsef, whose vivid performance captures the tensions between ranchers, militias, environmentalists, and wolves in the modern West. These audiobooks may share little besides the genre of fiction, but each narrator creates a fully realized world listeners can step into and stay with long after the final chapter.   Support for Behind the Mic comes from HarperCollins Focus [http://www.harpercollinsfocus.com] and HarperCollins Christian Publishing [http://www.harpercollinschristian.com], publishers of some of your favorite audiobooks and authors, including Reba McEntire, Bob Goff, Savannah Guthrie, Max Lucado, Lysa TerKeurst, and many more.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Working Lives in Three Audiobooks

bit.ly/audiobooksoffer Sign up for Audiobooks.com 30-day free trial to get your first 3 audiobooks free! Contributor Stephen Cummings joins host Jo Reed to talk about David Pogue’s Apple: The First 50 Years, which Pogue narrates with the confidence and curiosity of a longtime tech journalist, weaving in archival clips and company lore. They turn to Noam Scheiber’s Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, where André Santana’s restrained and intelligent narration underscores the frustrations of workers organizing at companies like Starbucks, Amazon, and Apple. Finally, Woody Brown’s Upward Bound employs a strong cast led by T. R. Knight to explore life inside an underfunded adult day program, giving its central character a vivid and deeply affecting inner voice. All three audiobooks look closely at ambition, labor, and the gap between how work is imagined and how it’s lived. Audiobooks Discussed: Apple: The First 50 Years [https://www.kirkusreviews.com/audiobook-reviews/david-pogue-2/apple/] written and read by David Pogue (Simon & Schuster Audio)   Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class [https://www.kirkusreviews.com/audiobook-reviews/noam-scheiber/mutiny/] by Noam Scheiber,  read by André Santana (Macmillan Audio)   Upward Bound [https://www.kirkusreviews.com/audiobook-reviews/woody-brown/upward-bound/] by Woody Brown, read by T.R. Knight, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Alex Edelman, Pete Holmes, Midori Francis, Carlos Miranda, Brandon Flynn, and Nikki M. James (Random House Audio) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Mothers, Memory, and the Search for Self

bit.ly/audiobooksoffer Sign up for Audiobooks.com 30-day free trial and get your first 3 audiobooks free! Host Jo Reed talks with contributor Leslie Fine about three audiobooks that circle around questions of identity, family, and belonging. In Kin by Tayari Jones, dual narrators Angel Pean and Ashley J. Hobbs give distinct voices to two lifelong friends shaped by maternal absence as well as the racial and class realities of the 1950s South. Boy From the North Country, written and read by Sam Sussman, blends autofiction and grief as a son returns home to his dying mother, while My Other Heart by Emma Nanami Strenner, narrated by Joy Ozymanski, follows two teenagers navigating questions of heritage, class, and family. Three very different audiobooks, each asking—through story and performance—how we come to understand where we belong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Three Stories, Many Points of View

bit.ly/audiobooksoffer Sign up for Audiobooks.com 30-day free trial and get your first 3 audiobooks free! Host Jo Reed is joined by Michele Cobb to look at three audiobooks that use multiple narrators to tell stories from distinct perspectives. In Joan Silber’s Mercy, a cast of voices traces how an experience reverberates across lives and decades, with narration providing the emotional throughline. Rachel Hawkins’s The Storm leans into suspense and atmosphere, with strong performances sharpening a layered, true-crime-tinged mystery. And in Craig Thomas’s That’s Not How It Happened, four narrators bring clarity and texture to the story of a family and the uneasy overlap between private life and public storytelling. Three very different books, each shaped by shifting perspectives—and in each case, it’s the narration that makes the whole story cohere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]