Listen to the Best Full Audiobooks in Fiction, LGBTQ+

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/659639 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Let Us Descend: A Novel

Author: Jesmyn Ward

Narrator: Jesmyn Ward

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

Release date: October 24, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.05 of Total 20

Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 8

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • Instant New York Times Bestseller • Named one of the best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, Time, The New Yorker, and more. “Nothing short of epic, magical, and intensely moving.” —Vogue • “A novel of triumph.” —The Washington Post • “Harrowing, immersive, and other-worldly.” —People From “one of America’s finest living writers” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “heir apparent to Toni Morrison” (LitHub)—comes a haunting masterpiece about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War that’s destined to become a classic. Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Annis leads readers through the descent, hers is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation. From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this “[s]earing and lyrical…raw, transcendent, and ultimately hopeful” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/666372 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Let the Dead Bury the Dead: A Novel

Author: Allison Epstein

Narrator: Katia Kapustin

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 11 minutes

Release date: October 17, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

An urgent, immersive alternate history set in an imperial Russia on the brink of disaster, following a surprising cast of characters seeking a better future as Saint Petersburg struggles in the wake of Napoleon’s failed invasion. Saint Petersburg, 1812. Russian forces have defeated Napoleon at great cost, and the tsar's empire is once again at peace. Sasha, a captain in the imperial army, returns home to Grand Duke Felix, the disgraced second son of the tsar and his irrepressibly charming lover, but their reunion is quickly interrupted by the arrival of Sofia, a mysteriously persuasive figure whose disruptive presence Sasha suspects to be something more than human. Felix, insisting that Sasha's old-fashioned superstitions are misplaced, takes Sofia into his confidence—a connection that quickly becomes both personal and political. On her incendiary advice, Felix confronts his father about the brutal conditions of the common people in the aftermath of the war, to disastrous results, separating him from Sasha and setting him on a collision course with a vocal group of dissidents: the Koalitsiya.  Meanwhile, the Koalitsiya plan to gridlock Saint Petersburg with a citywide strike in hopes of awakening the upper classes to the grim circumstances of the laboring people. Marya, a resourceful sometimes-thief and trusted lieutenant of the Koalitsiya, also falls under Sofia's spell and, allied with Felix and her fellow revolutionaries, she finds herself in the middle of a battle she could never have predicted. As Sofia’s influence grows and rising tensions threaten the tsar’s peace, Sasha, Felix, and Marya are forced to choose between the ideals they hold close and the people they love.  Allison Epstein combines cleverly constructed plot with unforgettable characters in this exuberant historical page-turner, intercut with fractured retellings of traditional Eastern European folk stories that are equal parts deadly dark and slyly illuminating. Vividly written and emotionally intense, Let the Dead Bury the Dead reminds us that the concerns of the past aren't quite as far behind us as we like to believe.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/660495 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Moon in the Mango Tree

Author: Pamela Binnings Ewen

Narrator: Elizabeth Evans

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Release date: October 17, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 2 of Total 2

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

From Pamela Binnings Ewen, bestselling author of The Queen of Paris and Émilienne, The Moon in the Mango Tree is a lush historical novel set in the 1920s. It is a dazzling decade, and Barbara Bond is a beautiful young singer torn between her fierce desire for independence and her deep, abiding love for her husband, a brilliant doctor. She has trained for years to sing grand opera, but soon after her marriage to Harvey Perkins, she learns that he has accepted an assignment as a medical missionary in the country of Siam. Suddenly Barbara is forced into the duty of a “good wife'—to support her husband’s career, not her own. As resentment slowly grows, she travels with Harvey first to the jungles of Siam, then to the capital city of Bangkok, where he is now physician to the royal court. As she struggles with the secrets straining their marriage, Barbara wonders if she has made the right choice. At last, leaving her husband in Bangkok, she flees to Paris, then Rome, where she can finally sing on stage. If Harvey loves her, the risk is worth it for a chance to have it all—her husband and her career. Why should she be forced to choose? And, if she chooses, must the other be lost forever?

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/656417 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Christmas Wishes for the Railway Girls: The new feel-good and festive WW2 historical fiction (The Railway Girls Series, 8)

Author: Maisie Thomas

Narrator: Julia Franklin

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

Release date: October 12, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Brought to you by Penguin. The eighth, heartwarming instalment in the much-loved Railway Girls series! This will be a Christmas to remember for the railway girls. . . Little Max is growing day by day and Joan is adjusting to her new life. But in her heart of hearts, she is desperate to return to work on the railways. Margaret's job in the engine shed is demanding. But when a friend finds herself in crisis, she knows she must do everything she can to help her. Alison is overjoyed at the prospect of organising a Christmas wedding until a long-held secret is revealed. Knowing the truth, can she find the strength to forgive those she holds most dear? As war rages on, the railway girls must also battle with matters of the heart. Can they overcome their troubles in time for Christmas? Readers LOVE the Railway Girls: 'Make yourself a cuppa and find a comfy spot on the sofa because you are not going to be able to put this down' 'I simply cannot wait for the next one - I am hooked!' 'Gives a vivid picture of women's lives in wartime Manchester' ©2023 Maisie Thomas (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/666325 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Shoot the Moon

Author: Isa Arsén

Narrator: Kristen Sieh

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 58 minutes

Release date: October 10, 2023

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

How far would you travel for love? Intelligent but isolated recent physics graduate Annie Fisk feels an undeniable pull toward space. Her childhood memories dimmed by loss, she has left behind her home, her family, and her first love in pursuit of intellectual fulfillment. When she finally lands a job as a NASA secretary during the Apollo 11 mission, the work is everything she dreamed, and while she feels a budding attraction to one of the engineers, she can’t get distracted. Not now. When her inability to ignore mistaken calculations propels her into a new position, Annie finds herself torn between her ambition, her heart, and a mysterious discovery that upends everything she knows to be scientifically true. Can she overcome her doubts and reach beyond the limits of time and space? Affecting, immersive, and kaleidoscopic, Shoot the Moon tells the story of one singular life at multiple points in time, one woman's quest to honor both her head and her heart amid the human toll of scientific progress.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/655145 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Queen Hereafter: A Novel

Author: Isabelle Schuler

Narrator: Sara Vickers

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 16 minutes

Release date: October 10, 2023

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

“A bruising tale of passion, ambition, power, vengeance, and desire . . . a stunning retelling.” —Entertainment Weekly, Most Anticipated Books of Fall “Suspenseful, atmospheric and full of twists and turns, I loved the brutal, backstabbing world that Isabelle Schuler conjures up where only the most ruthless can survive. A thoroughly enjoyable read!”—Jennifer Saint, bestselling author of Ariadne and Elektra An instant international bestseller: a suspenseful, sweeping historical epic for readers of Natalie Haynes and Madeline Miller, which boldly reimagines the origin story of the woman who inspired one of Shakespeare’s most iconic characters, Lady Macbeth. She will be Queen. Whatever it takes . . . Daughter of an ousted king, descendant of ancient druids, Gruoch (GREW-ock), has grown up believing that she will be crowned queen of Alba and reclaim the lands of her Pictish kin, a prophecy seemingly fulfilled by her betrothal to Duncan, the heir-elect. Determined never to be powerless again, she leaves behind her home, her family, and her close friend MacBethad, and travels to the royal seat at Scone to embrace her new position. But Duncan’s court is rife with sly words and unfriendly faces, women desperate to usurp her position, and others whose motives are shrouded in mystery. As her coronation approaches, a deadly turn of events forces Gruoch to flee Duncan and the capital. Alone and at the mercy of an old enemy, her hope of becoming Queen all but lost, Gruoch must make a fateful choice: live a long, quiet life in the shadows, or seize vengeance and a path back to the throne. A stunning literary reclamation of an iconic character, Queen Hereafter is a gripping story of female ambition, power, history, desire, hate, and vengeance set against the backdrop of early medieval Scotland.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/666835 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Roaring Days of Zora Lily

Author: Noelle Salazar

Narrator: Jesse Vilinsky, Natalie Duke

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 13 hours 55 minutes

Release date: October 3, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

“Noelle Salazar captures the hazy, liquor-soaked days of the Jazz Age in this mesmerizing tale . . . of family, ambition, love, and self-discovery.” —Entertainment Weekly “Beautifully written and vividly drawn . . . [a] dazzling and sexy, dangerous and inspiring journey through the speakeasies of the jazz age to the glamour and darkness of Hollywood.” —Jillian Cantor, USA Today bestselling author of Beautiful Little Fools The discovery of a hidden label on a famous gown unearths the story of a talented young seamstress in this glittering novel of family, love, ambition, and self discovery by the USA Today bestselling author of The Flight Girls. 2023, The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History: A costume conservator is preparing an exhibition featuring movie costumes from the 1920s to present day. As she gingerly places a gown once worn by Greta Garbo on a mannequin, she discovers another name hidden beneath the designer's label, leaving her to wonder—who is Zora Lily? 1924, Seattle: Poverty-stricken Zora Hough spends her days looking after her younger siblings while sewing up holes and fixing hems for clients to bring in extra money, working her fingers to the bone just to survive. But at night, as she lies in the bed she shares with one of her three sisters, she secretly dreams of becoming a designer like Coco Chanel and Jeanne Lanvin. When her best friend gets a job dancing in a club downtown, Zora is lured in by her stories of music, glittering dresses and boys. She follows her friend to the underground speakeasies that are at once exciting and frightening—with smoke hanging in the air, alcohol flowing despite Prohibition, couples dancing in a way that makes Zora blush and a handsome businessman named Harley. It’s a world she has only ever imagined, and one with connections that could lead her to the life she's always dreamed of. But as Zora's ambition is challenged by tragedy and duty to her family, she'll learn that dreams come with a cost.  Don't miss Noelle Salazar's next sweeping story, THE LIES WE LEAVE BEHIND, where a fearless nurse must leave love behind when duty calls her back to the front... More from Noelle Salazar: - The Angels of Resistance - The Flight Girls

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/666326 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The MANIAC

Author: Benjamin Labatut

Narrator: Eva Magyar, Gergo Danka

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 51 minutes

Release date: October 3, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.6 of Total 5

Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 4

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Named One of the 10 Best Books of 2023 by The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023 • A National Bestseller • A New York Times Editor's Choice pick • Nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction “Captivating and unclassifiable, at once a historical novel and a philosophical foray . . . Labatut is a writer of thrilling originality. The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty.” —The Washington Post   “Darkly absorbing . . . A brooding, heady narrative that is addictively interesting.” —Wall Street Journal From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale. A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake. The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control. A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/663107 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Refugee Ocean

Author: Pauls Toutonghi

Narrator: Suehyla El-Attar Young, Ali Andre Ali, Jackie Sanders

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 23 minutes

Release date: October 3, 2023

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Two refugees find that their lives are inextricably linked—over time and distance—by the perils of history and a single haunting piece of music in this “breathtaking and simultaneously heartbreaking” (The Montecito Journal) story. Born in Beirut in 1922, Marguerite Toutounghi lives a life of loss and sacrifice. She dreams of traveling Europe and studying music at the Conservatoire de Paris but her family—and her society—hold her back. When she meets the son of a Cuban tobacco farmer at a formal dance, love transforms her life. Together with him, she flees across the Atlantic Ocean. She’s hoping for a new beginning, she finds revolution and chaos. Over fifty years later, Naïm Rahil is a teenage refugee from Aleppo, Syria. A former piano prodigy who struggles to thrive in America—and who has lost part of his hand in the war—he dreams of a simple normal life. Moving from Aleppo on the brink of civil war, to Lebanon in the late 1940s, to Havana during the Cuban Revolution, to the suburbs of Washington, DC, The Refugee Ocean “is an exquisite…poignant, and layered novel” (Eleanor Shearer, author of River Sing Me Home) that grapples with what it means to be an immigrant, shows how wounds can heal, and highlights the role of music and art in the resilience of the human spirit.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/659859 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Prospectors: A Novel

Author: Ariel Djanikian

Narrator: Samara Naeymi, Jorjeana Marie

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 13 hours 49 minutes

Release date: October 3, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

A sweeping rags-to-riches story of survival and greed across American history following a family transformed by the Klondike Gold Rush. “Told in glimmering prose and rich with historical detail, The Prospectors immerses us in the Yukon Gold Rush so deeply, you can feel the grit on your hands.”—Celeste Ng ''Smart, surprising, and epic: the sort of adventure that brings to life both a nineteenth-century gold rush and a twenty-first century fight for the family riches that remain.''—Chris Bohjalian The middle daughter of struggling California fruit farmers, Alice Bush is accustomed to feeling inferior and destitute. But when her elder sister’s husband strikes a vein of gold in the Yukon Territory, Alice finally seizes control of her destiny by joining a wave of white settlers making the dangerous trek to the Klondike. What follows is an awakening of ambition for the quietly opportunistic Alice, who, by luck and circumstance, becomes tightly intertwined in her sister and brother-in-law’s newfound fortune, as well as the beginning of a generations-long family quest for wealth that unfolds against the icy Canadian wilderness and the booming oilfields of California. One hundred years later, in 2015, Alice’s great-great-granddaughter Anna must grapple with moral conflict and questions of justice as she travels to the Klondike to bequeath her would-be inheritance to the First Nations peoples who paid the price for its creation. Bringing the Klondike and turn-of-the-century California to vivid life, Ariel Djanikian weaves an ambitious narrative of claiming the American Dream and its rippling effects across generations. Sweeping and awe-inspiring, The Prospectors is an unforgettable story of family loyalties that interrogates the often-overlooked hostilities and inequities born during the Gold Rush era. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.