Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/778243 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Blackbirds of St Giles: 'The novel Dickens didn't write, but should have done'

Author: Lila Cain

Narrator: Paterson Joseph

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 14 hours 5 minutes

Release date: January 30, 2025

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

‘Readers are in for a true treat … Dazzling’ PATERSON JOSEPH ‘This powerful story is steeped in truth and resonates with humanity. It’s a gritty thriller and a whirlwind adventure, but most of all it’s a tale of love and hope. A beautiful, original and heart-stopping read’ JANICE HALLETT Some things are earned. Some things are worth fighting for…  It’s 1782, Daniel and his sister Pearl arrive in London with the world at their feet and their future assured. Having escaped a Jamaican sugar plantation, Daniel fought for the British in the American War of Independence and was rewarded with freedom and an inheritance.   But the city is not a place for men like Daniel and he is callously tricked and finds himself, along with his sister Pearl, in the rookeries of St Giles – a warren of dark and menacing alleyways, filled with violence and poverty.   The underworld labyrinth is run by Elias, a man whose cruelty knows no bounds. But under his dangerous rule is a brotherhood of Black men, the Blackbirds of St Giles, whose intention is to set their people free.   Can Daniel use his strength, wit and the fellowship of the other Blackbirds to overthrow Elias and truly find the freedom he fought for…?  ‘The novel Dickens didn’t write, but should have done. Simply magnificent’ SEAN LUSK ‘Equally thrilling and informative, a journey you won’t forget!’ AJ WEST ‘Full of twists and turns, peopled with characters to care about and shining a light on a little-known area of history’ FRANCES QUINN ‘Brava! A charismatic cast. A plot to stir your heart’ ESSIE FOX ‘Bringing Black Georgian London to life, this is a dark and wonderful tale of a brother and sister finding their feet in an unfriendly city’ LOUISE HARE

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/775561 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: A Secret in the Family

Author: Nancy Revell

Narrator: Janine Birkett

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 8 minutes

Release date: January 30, 2025

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Brought to you by Penguin. 1945, Sunderland. Ida Boulter makes the heart-wrenching decision to leave her five children behind as she escapes her husband and moves to London to start afresh with the love of her life. 1953, County Durham. Ida’s children have since built a new life in the beautiful home of Cuthford Manor – looked after by their eldest sibling Angie and her husband. But their world is about to be rocked once again when their mother turns up out of the blue for the first time in eight years. She has come back bearing a secret she can no longer keep from her family. Will telling the truth cause more harm than good? Only their love for one another will carry them through the turbulent times ahead. Praise for Nancy Revell: 'An epic follow-up to the bestselling Shipyard Girls series' Peterborough Telegraph 'Nancy Revell knows how to stir the passions and soothe the heart!' Northern Echo 'Stirring and heartfelt storytelling' Peterborough Evening Telegraph ‘A well-written story with vivid characters’ Anna Jacobs ‘An uplifting read with a very satisfying conclusion’ Rosie Goodwin © Nancy Revell 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/778215 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Legend of Meneka: A Novel

Series: #1 of The Divine Dancers Duology

Author: Kritika H. Rao

Narrator: Sharmila Devar

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Release date: January 21, 2025

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

“Sensual and thought-provoking, a romantic fantasy unlike any other.” — Shannon Chakraborty “Utterly intoxicating . . . whisking you off to a dreamlike world where every corner glitters with magic, and the sensual and the sacred collide.” — Thea Guanzon Seduction is her weapon. Love is her destiny.  Kritika H. Rao weaves a luscious, exhilarating fantasy inspired by one of the most famous romances in Hindu mythology— the story of a celestial dancer tasked with seducing a human sage, but when she finds herself falling for her mark, she will be forced to choose between loyalties and being true to herself. Across the mortal and immortal realms, celestial dancers known as apsaras are revered for their beauty, allure, and enchanting magic. But Meneka knows that is not all they are. Trained as a weapon—a warrior—Meneka despises leaving each of her marks in thrall to her potent illusions. With every seduction Lord Indra, king of heaven, demands of her for his political gain, she craves her freedom more and more. When a mortal sage’s growing powers threaten Indra’s supremacy in his own realm, Meneka seizes a rare opportunity. She strikes a deal—if she can seduce this dangerous man, Indra will allow her to forgo future missions. But upon meeting the sage, Kaushika, Meneka finds herself captivated by his energy, ignited by his empathy and passion, even though he challenges everything she’s ever known. Can she overthrow the man who is—little by little—stealing her heart, or is Kaushika seducing her instead? As war looms in the skies, Meneka must choose between her duty to protect her home, and the sage who is showing her what true love can mean.  Romantic, spellbinding, and empowering, The Legend of Meneka breathes new life into Hindu mythology to weave a lustrous tale of a woman discovering the cosmic power within herself. Perfect for readers of Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Kaikeyi, and Circe, this first book in the Divine Dancers duology is a completely unputdownable adventure for lovers of romantasy and myth retellings. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/778303 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Ace, Marvel, Spy: A Novel of Alice Marble

Author: Jenni L. Walsh

Narrator: Gail Shalan

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

Release date: January 14, 2025

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

'Jenni L. Walsh captures the thrill of being on the court in a vivid and detailed portrayal of Alice Marble's rise to sporting greatness, as well as her struggles to fulfill her dreams both on and off the court. Ace, Marvel, Spy is a smashing success!' --Billie Jean King, sports icon and equality champion 'All's fair in love and war--and tennis!--in Jenni L. Walsh's latest page-turning historical novel . . . Readers can't help but be inspired by this unflinching portrayal of a true American icon.' --Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times Bestselling author of A Happier Life Trailblazer, superstar, activist, and spy: Alice Marble is a true American icon. Alice strives to have it all. At seventeen, Alice Marble has no formal tennis skills and no coach. What she does have is an ability to hit the ball as hard as she can and a strong desire to prove herself. With steadfast determination and one sacrifice after another, Alice plays her heart out on the courts of the rich and famous, at national tournaments, and—the greatest of them all—at Wimbledon, rising to be one of the top-ranked players in the world. But then her world falls apart. With the outbreak of war with Germany, Alice’s tennis career and life come to a screeching halt, and for the first time, she is forced to confront who she is without tennis. As she seeks to understand her new place in the world and how she can aid in the war efforts, a telegram arrives with devastating news from overseas. Heartbroken and lost, she feels like she can only watch as the war wreaks havoc in every area of her life. Until an unexpected invitation arrives. Alice is given the chance to fight back when the US Army sends her a request: Under the guise of playing in tennis exhibition games in Switzerland, she would be a spy for them. Alice aches for nothing more than to avenge what the war has taken from her and to prove herself against this new opponent. But what awaits her might be her greatest challenge yet. From her start as a promising athlete with worn-out shoes to her status as a glamorous international star, Alice Marble’s determination to control her own life and destiny fuels a story of achievement, discipline, loss, and love. Jenni L. Walsh’s Ace, Marvel, Spy brilliantly showcases the life of Alice Marble, a real-life tennis sensation known for her extraordinary talent and indomitable spirit. This fast-paced and action-packed historical novel spans multiple international settings and is perfect for fans of Carrie Soto Is Back or any book by Kate Quinn.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/774194 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Queen of Diamonds: A Novel

Series: #3 of Queen of Thieves

Author: Beezy Marsh

Narrator: Rachel Atkins

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 23 minutes

Release date: January 14, 2025

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Peaky Blinders—but with women! In the thrilling final installment of Beezy Marsh’s riveting crime trilogy about a real-life London gang that began with Queen of Thieves, we go back to crime queen Alice Diamond’s bold beginnings in 1920s Soho. London, 1922. Orphan girl Alice dreams of more than toiling long hours in Pink’s jam factory. Inspired by stories about the legendary Queen of Thieves, Mary Carr, who terrorized the streets of Victorian London, Alice decides to set up her own gang: the Forty Thieves. She has an accomplice too: sly seamstress Kate Felix from Whitechapel persuades Alice they’d make the perfect team. Before long, the pair are making headlines in the glitzy world of 1920s Soho, known for their daring heists and for the row of heavy diamond rings that Alice uses like brass knuckles in her frequent brawls. What Alice soon discovers is that a life of crime makes her powerful enemies, including some who are closer to home than they’d like. Alice must sacrifice more than she ever imagined—but the toughest and most beautiful diamonds are formed under pressure. From squalid slums and the grim confines of Holloway Prison to the glittering nightclubs of London in the roaring twenties, Queen of Diamonds is a fast-paced, gritty story of love, loss, and loyalty to the gang. Women’s fiction with brass knuckles on!

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/774439 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Stolen Queen: A Novel

Author: Fiona Davis

Narrator: Linda Jones

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

Release date: January 7, 2025

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 6

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

*A New York Times Bestseller* From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back. Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. That is until an unbearable tragedy strikes. New York City, 1978: Nineteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.” Meanwhile, Charlotte is now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art. She’s consumed by her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant. The night of the gala: One of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing, and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening. Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, and a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/773204 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Granddaughter: A Novel

Author: Bernhard Schlink

Narrator: Sarah Moule, Richard Burnip

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 14 minutes

Release date: January 7, 2025

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

“Compelling . . . unfailingly interesting, building suspense as readers wonder what will happen” —Booklist (starred review) “[A] powerful story of loss and the desire to move forward.” —Publishers Weekly From the bestselling author of The Reader, a striking exploration of the past, told through the story of a German bookseller’s attempt to connect with his radicalized granddaughter. It is only after the sudden death of his wife, Birgit, that Kaspar discovers the price she paid years earlier when she fled East Germany to join him: she had to abandon her baby. Shattered by grief, yet animated by a new hope, Kaspar closes up his bookshop in present day Berlin and sets off to find her lost child in the east. His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, intent on reclaiming and settling ancestral lands to the East. Among them, Kaspar encounters Svenja, a woman whose eyes, hair, and even voice remind him of Birgit. Beside her is a red-haired, slouching, fifteen-year-old girl. His granddaughter? Their worlds could not be more different— an ideological gulf of mistrust yawns between them— but he is determined to accept her as his own. More than twenty-five years after The Reader, Bernhard Schlink once again offers a masterfully gripping novel that powerfully probes the past’s role in contemporary life, transporting us from the divided Germany of the 1960s to modern day Australia, and asking what unites or separates us. Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/773201 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Life of Herod the Great: A Novel

Author: Deborah G. Plant, Zora Neale Hurston

Narrator: Blair Underwood, Robin Miles

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 7 minutes

Release date: January 7, 2025

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

A never before published novel from beloved author Zora Neale Hurston, revealing the historical Herod the Great—not the villain the Bible makes him out to be but a religious and philosophical man who lived a life of valor and vision. In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ—a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea. From the peaks of triumph to the depths of human misery, the historical Herod “appears to have been singled out and especially endowed to attract the lightning of fate,” Hurston writes. An intimate of both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the Judean king lived during the first century BCE, in a time of war and imperial expansion that was rife with political assassinations and bribery, as the old world gave way to the new. Portraying Herod within this vivid and dynamic world of antiquity, little known to modern readers, Hurston’s unfinished manuscript brings this complex, compelling, and misunderstood leader fully into focus. Hurston shared her findings about Herod’s rise, his reign, and his waning days in letters to friends and associates. Text from three of these letters concludes the manuscript in an intimate way. Scholar-Editor Deborah Plant’s ''Commentary: A Story Finally Told'' assesses Hurston’s pioneering work and underscores Hurston’s perspective that the first century BCE has much to teach us and that the lens through which to view this dramatic and stirring era is the life and times of Herod the Great.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/772672 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Champagne Letters

Author: Kate Macintosh

Narrator: Jackie Sanders, Cassandra Campbell

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 36 minutes

Release date: December 10, 2024

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 3

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

Perfect for fans of bubbly wine and Kristin Harmel, this historical fiction novel follows Mme. Clicquot as she builds her legacy, and the modern divorcée who looks to her letters for inspiration. Reims, France, 1805: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot has just lost her beloved husband but is determined to pursue their dream of creating the premier champagne house in France, now named for her new identity as a widow: Veuve Clicquot. With the Russians poised to invade, competitors fighting for her customers, and the Napoleonic court politics complicating matters she must set herself apart quickly and permanently if she, and her business, are to survive. In present day Chicago, broken from her divorce, Natalie Taylor runs away to Paris. In a book stall by the Seine, Natalie finds a collection of the Widow Clicquot’s published letters and uses them as inspiration to step out of her comfort zone and create a new, empowered life for herself. But when her Parisian escape takes a shocking and unexpected turn, she’s forced to make a choice. Should she accept her losses and return home, or fight for the future she’s only dreamed about? What would the widow do?

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/777398 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Shadowed Land: A Novel

Series: #3 of The Lost Queen

Author: Signe Pike

Narrator: Siobhan Waring, Toni Frutin, Eilidh Beaton, Gary Furlong, Angus King

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 49 minutes

Release date: December 3, 2024

Genres: LGBTQ+

Publisher's Summary:

This “can’t-miss historical epic” (Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author) reimagines the legends of King Arthur by resurrecting the real historical figures who inspired these enduring tales. Scotland, AD 580: A queen has risen. A battle has been won. Loved ones who were lost have been reunited. But in a land of power-hungry kings, peace is precarious and cannot last for long. All too soon, circumstance pulls both Britons and Scots back to their own destinies. The warrior Artúr receives a mysterious summons from his father in Dalriada. Queen Languoreth and her brother must return to Strathclyde with the dangerous former bishop Mungo in tow, determined to maintain the fragile balance between the Christians and the people of the Old Way. Meanwhile, the young priestess Angharad must travel deep into the shadowed land of the Picts, hoping to become the initiate of Briochan, a druid who practices the secret Celtic art of weather work. As they rise to meet their fates, they are pushed to impossible new frontiers: each must decide whether they are willing to do what it takes to become the heroes their harrowing days demand. Set in the sprawling historical landscape of early medieval Scotland, Pike’s critically acclaimed retelling of the Arthurian saga thrusts readers into a world of ambition, loyalty and love, revealing truths that have for too long been buried by legend in this “gorgeous, sweeping saga” (Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestselling author).