Three brilliant readers team up to narrate V.E. Schwab’s mesmerizing sapphic supernatural novel, and each homes in on what makes the characters get under your skin in powerful and disturbing ways.
In Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (Macmillan Audio, 18 hours and 26 minutes), three women are linked across centuries. Maria, poor but crafty and valued only for her ability to produce heirs, is sentenced to wed a wealthy, brutish man in 16th century Spain. Country-dwelling Charlotte is shipped off to London in 1827 to find a husband after a scandalous attachment to a friend. Twenty-first- century Alice, quiet and grieving, has left her home and tragedy behind in Scotland for a Boston university. In their attempts to escape societies that denigrate them, each finds that freedom comes with an unthinkable cost.
Veteran performer Julia Whelan takes on the role of Maria, who is at first resourceful and bold, then grows into a terrifying and malignant presence. Marisa Calin reflects Charlotte’s desperation over her future, which blinds her to the dangers ahead, while Scottish-born Katie Leung elicits waves of compassion for once-meek Alice, who is shocked to learn the sacrifices her new existence requires.
This is a supernatural novel, but it's also a story about love and hunger, about the lengths to which women will go for revenge, to be valued, and to be at the mercy of nothing but their own desires.
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Whelan is also one of two narrators on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s riveting love-and-science story Atmosphere (Random House Audio, 9 hours and 52 minutes), undoubtedly one of the best audiobooks of 2025. Atmosphere doesn’t fall into the thriller genre, but its suspense is almost unbearable, as Whelan and Kristen D. Mercurio bring their characters alive with deeply affecting emotions.
Set at the dawn of the space shuttle program in the 1980s, the narrative follows two storylines. In the first, would-be astronaut Joan Goodwin works her way through training, longing to be assigned to a space mission and bonding with fellow pilots and scientists, in particular Vanessa Ford, a magnetic engineer who dreams of flying the shuttle. In the second, a terrifying botched mission endangers its crew and threatens to destroy all Joan’s dreams.
The action alone will keep you on edge, but Whelan and Mercurio’s performances infuse the dangers with gut-wrenching anxiety.
Listening to the 11th and final installment of Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko crime series is bittersweet, but for fans of these intelligent, intriguing novels about a Moscow detective, it’s an absolute must. The series, which began in 1981 with Gorky Park, ends with a chilling glance at life—and death—under Vladimir Putin.
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Narrated by the terrific Jeremy Bobb, Hotel Ukraine (Simon & Schuster Audio, 6 hours and 16 minutes) takes place during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Arkady, whose Parkinson’s disease is worsening, is trying to hide his physical deterioration from his superiors while investigating the murder of a diplomat that may be tied to a violent paramilitary group.
Arkady’s illness and Putin loom as imposing twin dangers, one or the other sure to fell the detective before he’s ready. Bobb invests Arkady with a blend of world-weary pessimism and gallows humor, balancing his pragmatism with an unquenchable hope and helping Smith, who died in July, end his series on a perfect final note.
Connie Ogle is a writer in South Florida.
