Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/564543 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Sheltering Sky: A Novel

Author: Paul Bowles

Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 9 minutes

Release date: May 14, 2024

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Audio edition of the landmark of 20th Century literature, by acclaimed author Paul Bowles “The Sheltering Sky is one of the most original, even visionary, works of fiction to appear in the twentieth century.” —Tobias Wolff ''It stands head and shoulders above most other novels published in English since World War II.” —New Republic In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend other cultures--and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the dessert.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/566833 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Black Shield Maiden

Author: Willow Smith, Jess Hendel

Narrator: Willow Smith

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 14 hours 23 minutes

Release date: May 7, 2024

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

From Willow Smith and Jess Hendel comes a powerful and groundbreaking historical saga about an African warrior in the world of the Vikings. “Intimate, tender, and fiercely epic.”—Tomi Adeyemi, author of Children of Blood and Bone Lore, legend, and history tell us of the Vikings: warrior kings on epic journeys of conquest and plunder. But the stories we know are not the only stories to tell. There is another story, one that has been lost to the mists of time: the saga of the dark queen. This saga begins with Yafeu, a defiant yet fiercely compassionate young warrior who is stolen from her home in the flourishing Ghānaian empire and taken to a distant kingdom in the North. There she is thrust into a strange, cold world of savage shield maidens, tyrannical rulers, and mysterious gods. And there she also finds something unexpected: a kindred spirit. She comes to serve Freydis, a shy princess who couldn’t be more different from the confident and self-possessed Yafeu. But they both want the same thing: to forge their own fate. Yafeu inspires Freydis to dream of a future greater than the one that the king and queen have forced upon her. And with the princess at her side, Yafeu learns to navigate this new world and grows increasingly determined to become one of the legendary shield maidens—to fight not only for her freedom but for the freedom of others. Yafeu may have lost her home, but she still knows who she is, and she’s not afraid to be the flame that burns a city to the ground so a new world can rise from the ashes. She will alter the course of history—and become the revolutionary heroine of her own myth.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/560488 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Wonder of It All

Author: Barbara Taylor Bradford

Narrator: Joan Walker

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 44 minutes

Release date: November 9, 2023

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

James Falconer returns in the third House of Falconer historical novel from multi-million copy bestseller Barbara Taylor Bradford. The Somme, 1916. James Falconer, once a barrow boy on a London market, stands in the trenches, awaiting the command to go over the top. Away from his business empire in London, he is simply a soldier, war the great leveller. But, unlike his men, and unknown to them, deep down, Falconer doesn’t care if he lives or dies. When a face from the past offers James the chance to repair his fractured relationship with his estranged daughter, Leonie, he must decide if he can hold different things dear – and make space in his life for love. But the war has left terrible scars, both personal and professional, and swept huge changes through the glittering world he once inhabited. James must weather myriad storms as he attempts to right past wrongs and build a new life. 'Bradford’s tale is enriched by dynamic characters, especially James, who heroically persists in his effort to rebuild his life. It’s a satisfying culmination to a richly drawn historical series' Publishers Weekly

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/569373 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Shakespeare's Sword

Author: Alan Judd

Narrator: John Telfer

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 3 hours 56 minutes

Release date: August 17, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 5

Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

From the author of Legacy, now a major BBC Film, comes a brilliant new historical crime novella for fans of Antonia Hodgson and CJ Sansom. ‘To Mr Thomas Combe my sword.’  These six words in Shakespeare’s will tell us that Shakespeare had a sword. Did he wear it?  Did he use it?  What sort was it?  When and why did he get it?  What happened to it?  Might it – does it – still exist?   These questions plague Simon Gold, an antiques dealer.  He believes he has identified the sword as belonging to a customer, an unworthy owner indifferent to cultural icons and uninterested in history.  Simon is desperate to acquire the sword, but how?  How far is he prepared to go to get it?  In alliance with Charlotte, his customer’s attractive and disaffected wife, Simon finds himself going farther than he had intended - and finds, too, that Charlotte is rather more than she appears. Praise for Alan Judd: 'Judd has an infallible grasp of intelligence' Spectator 'Wonderful. One of the best spy novels ever' Peter Hennessey on Legacy  'Plotting in the best le Carré tradition' Mail on Sunday 'Belongs to the classic tradition of spy writing' Guardian

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/561779 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Complete Short Stories

Author: Patrick O’brian

Narrator: David Rintoul

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 20 hours 52 minutes

Release date: April 27, 2023

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

The Complete Short Stories is the most comprehensive collection of O’Brian’s short fiction ever published. An essential volume, certain to enchant O’Brian admirers as well as readers who are fortunate enough to be journeying with him for the very first time. Patrick O’Brian is acclaimed as one of the greatest historical novelists of the twentieth century, celebrated throughout the world for his masterful roman fleuve, the Aubrey‒Maturin series. But he was also a prolific writer of short stories, and it is in this form that he first made his mark. Encompassing stories written in his unvarnished youth to tales told by a seasoned traveller, this is the most comprehensive collection of O’Brian’s short fiction ever published. It is a treasure chest, overflowing with riches, containing more than sixty tales, including rarities, uncollected works, and forgotten jewels that have been out of print for decades. These are stories of friendship, travel, adventure and the wonders of the natural world. Some are enchantingly funny, others exciting, terrifying, passionate. All of them prove Patrick O’Brian to be a true master of the form.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/570906 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Weyward

Author: Emilia Hart

Narrator: Nell Barlow, Helen Keeley, Aysha Kala

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 50 minutes

Release date: February 2, 2023

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

PRE-ORDER EMILIA HART'S STUNNING NEW BOOK THE SIRENS NOW THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER OVER 700,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE As seen on BBC’s BETWEEN THE COVERS ‘Humming with a sly, exhilarating magic’ BRIDGET COLLINS ‘A much-heralded epic’ OBSERVER ‘Empowering’ GLAMOUR Three women, five centuries, one spellbinding story In the present day, Kate flees a traumatic relationship to the Cumbrian cottage she inherited from her great-aunt; but the cottage hides secrets of its own. In 1942, Violet rebels against her father’s ideas of a ‘proper young lady’ . . . until he takes matters into his own hands. In 1619, Altha is on trial for witchcraft, implicated in the gruesome death of a local man. Three women they tried to cage – but Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed… Weyward was a Times bestseller w/e 18-02-2023.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/563789 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Scatterlings: A Novel

Author: Resoketswe Martha Manenzhe

Narrator: Christel Mutombo

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

Release date: December 13, 2022

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 2.75 of Total 8

Ratings of Narrator: 3.5 of Total 2

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

A BEST NEW BOOK from *Vanity Fair *The Root *Vulture *People *The Washington Post *Christian Science Monitor *Los Angeles Times *Essence A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice Pick! A New Yorker Best Book of the Year! A lyrical, moving novel in the spirit of Transcendent Kingdom and A Burning—and the most awarded debut title in South Africa—that tells the story of a multiracial family when the Immorality Act is passed, revealing the story of one family’s scattered souls in the wake of history. In 1927, South Africa passes the Immorality Act, prohibiting sexual intercourse between “Europeans” (white people) and “natives” (Black people). Those who break the draconian new law face imprisonment—for men of up to five years; for women, four years. Abram and his wife Alisa have their share of marital problems, but they also have a comfortable life in South Africa with their two young girls. But then the Act is passed. Alisa is black, and their two children are now evidence of their involvement in a union that has been criminalized by the state. At first, Alisa and Abram question how they’ll be affected by the Act, but then officials start asking questions at the girls’ school, and their estate is catalogued for potential disbursement. Abram is at a loss as to how to protect his young family from the grinding machinery of the law, whose worst discriminations have until now been kept at bay by the family’s economic privilege. And with this, his hesitation, the couple’s bond is tattered. Alisa, who is Jamaican and the descendant of slaves, was adopted by a wealthy white British couple, who raised her as their child. But as she grew older and realized that the prejudices of British society made no allowance for her, she journeyed to South Africa where she met Abram. In the aftermath of the Immorality Act, she comes to a heartbreaking conclusion based on her past and collective history – and she commits her own devastating act, one that will reverberate through their entire family’s lives. Intertwining her storytelling with ritual, myth, and the heart-wrenching question of who stays and who leaves, Scatterlings marks the debut of a gifted storyteller who has become a sensation in her native South Africa—and promises to take the Western literary world by storm as well.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/565939 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Darlings of the Asylum

Author: Noel O’reilly

Narrator: Madeleine Leslay

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 51 minutes

Release date: December 8, 2022

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

To marry is madness. To escape is impossible. ‘The Darlings of the Asylum by Noel O’Reilly grips like a vice’ Nicola Cornick In 1886, a respectable young woman must acquire a husband. But Violet Pring longs to be a professional artist and live on her own terms. When she turns down a desirable marriage proposal from an eligible Brighton gentleman, her family have had enough of her independent streak. Against her wishes, they lock her away in Hillwood Grange Lunatic Asylum. Now at the mercy of the sinister Dr Rastrick, she must keep her wits about her if she has any hope of escaping. This tantalizing Gothic novel from Noel O’Reilly tells a thrilling story of duty and desire, madness and sanity, truth and delusion from within a Victorian asylum. Praise for The Darlings of the Asylum: ‘Always engaging and readable’ Sunday Times ‘The narrative rattles along irresistibly all the way to its suitably gothic climax’ Readers’ Digest ‘This darkly atmospheric psychological thriller oozes menace’ Women’s Own ‘Wow! I have been on the edge of my seat with this one! The Darlings of the Asylum… grips like a vice’ Nicola Cornick, author of The Winter Garden ‘Gripping’ Alison Stockham, author of The Cuckoo Sister

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/565938 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: A Quality Street Christmas

Series: #4 of Quality Street

Author: Penny Thorpe

Narrator: Sherry Baines

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 21 minutes

Release date: November 24, 2022

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Everything is changing at the Quality Street factory, can the plucky girls in the line make this a Christmas to remember? The Quality Street girls are gearing up for Christmas, but with the factory now making gas masks, as well as the nation’s favourite chocolate sweets, it’s anything but normal. They’re having to make other adjustments too. Reenie is in the doldrums after being demoted at work, while Mary has got her hands full getting used to married life and a ready-made family. New girl, Ada, isn’t sure she fits into factory life at all. Then, just as the Christmas party season gets into full swing, Toffee town gets a shock, and soon it isn’t just Christmas cheer that’s in short supply. Can the Quality Street girls save Christmas once again?

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/565937 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Boy with the Suitcase

Author: Cathy Sharp

Narrator: Hamish Lloyd Barnes

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

Release date: November 24, 2022

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Torn apart by war – a promise will hold them together… As the shadows of the Blitz hang over London, young Davey finds himself the man of the house when his father leaves to fight in the war. Trying his best to support his mum and to protect his sister, Davey’s good intentions find him mixed up with the wrong crowd. To keep him safe, and out of trouble, Davey is sent away from everything he has ever known, to a new life far away in Canada. He has always craved adventure and a place to fit in, though it could mean losing his family forever. Starting on his new journey will take all of Davey’s courage, but he also made a promise to see his precious little sister again, and he’ll need to be fearless if he is to keep it … Reader’s love Cathy Sharp ‘Had me gripped’ 5* Amazon reviewer ‘Absolutely brilliant’ 5* Goodreads reviewer