First published in 1980 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction , Shirley Hazzard’s extraordinary The Transit of Venus (Spiegel & Grau by Spotify Audiobooks, 15 hours and 29 minutes) has never been recorded as an audiobook before. This inaugural version is beautifully read by British actor Juliet Stevenson, whose performance resonates with the dry, knowing wit required to take on Hazzard’s masterpiece.

The novel opens during a storm in rural 1950s England, where Australian sisters Caroline and Grace Bell have emigrated. “By nightfall the headlines would be reporting devastation,” Stevenson tells us, referencing a condition that could also describe what happens to the characters.

Grace is to be married to the son of the house; Caro becomes the object of affection for hopeless astronomer Ted Tice. But happiness aligns only briefly throughout their lives: Caro falls for someone else, and so it goes over the course of 30 years, attraction and power ebbing and flowing, twisting the hearts of even the seemingly content Grace; her bureaucrat husband, Christian; and the unscrupulous playwright Paul Ivory, whose arrogance will one day receive a brutal comeuppance. Stevenson conquers the accents and nuances so thoroughly that, although the book is long, you’ll hate to hear it end.

Harry Crews’ classic 1988 novel, The Knockout Artist (Penguin Audio, 8 hours and 44 minutes), is finally available on audio, with a foreword by crime writer S.A. Cosby that puts Crews’ blend of storytelling prowess and hardscrabble realism into sharp perspective. This is helpful: the profane and politically incorrect language could easily wound modern sensibilities.

The story follows Eugene Talmadge Biggs from Bacon County, Georgia, a boxer who has discovered an aptitude for knocking himself out. This talent brings him to the seediest spots in New Orleans, where he winds up the object of interest for a young woman writing a dissertation and a businessman with a disturbing alter ego, both of whom change the course of Eugene’s life.

The book is jammed with colorful characters and sleazy situations, and reading it with an over-the-top Southern drawl might seem natural. But narrator Matt Godfrey shows surprising restraint, and this approach works. At first, his voice seems too sedate for the material, but as Eugene’s reality begins to unravel, Godfrey downplays the cartoonish nature of the book and balances it with a welcome vocal steadiness.

Actor Matt Bomer reads the latest audio version of James Baldwin’s 1956 novel, Giovanni’s Room (Random House Audio, 6 hours and 4 minutes), with what seems like an intimate understanding of David, an outwardly bland American expat in Paris who has hidden his true self so deeply he can barely connect with it. David is engaged, but while his fiancee, Hella, travels in Spain, he embarks on an affair with the working-class Giovanni, an Italian immigrant.

Reading James Baldwin’s novels—especially Giovanni’s Room, which is told from a white perspective—always produces a brief shock, reminding you how ahead of his time the revolutionary author was. Experiencing this audio version of Baldwin’s examination of sexuality, power, privilege, and class is no different. The story is frank and painful, its tragedy hitting home via Bomer’s understated interpretation. His calm and measured reading only highlights the turmoil David hides in his untrustworthy heart.

Connie Ogle is a writer in Florida.