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Basil's War written by Stephen Hunter, read by James Cameron StewartBasil St. Florian is an accomplished agent in the British Army, tasked with dozens of dangerous missions for crown and country across the globe. But his current mission, going undercover in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, might be his toughest assignment yet. He will be searching for an ecclesiastic manuscript that doesn't officially exist, one that genius professor Alan Turing believes may hold the key to a code that could prevent the death of millions and possibly even end the war. St. Florian isn't the classic British special agent with a stiff upper lip - he is a swashbuckling, whisky-drinking cynic and thrill-seeker who resents having to leave Vivien Leigh's bed to set out on his crucial mission. Despite these proclivities, though, Basil's Army superiors know he's the best man for the job, carrying out his espionage with enough charm and quick wit to make any of his subjects lower their guards.
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Billy Summers written by Stephen King, read by Paul SparksBilly Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything. This spectacular pause-resisting novel is part war story, part love letter to small-town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It’s about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption. You won’t hit pause, and you won’t forget Billy.
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The Cape Doctor by written by E.J. Levy, read by Mary Jane WellsDr. James Miranda Barry was a brilliant nineteenth-century Irish physician who rose to the rank of Inspector General of military hospitals in the British colonies. Barry reformed medicine for women, slaves, and native peoples; performed the first successful caesarian in Africa; and advocated for the humane and proper treatment of leprosy; but his achievements were overshadowed by the discovery, upon his death, that the doctor was born as a woman and had carried a pregnancy late to term. Beginning in Cork, Ireland, the novel recounts Barry's journey from daughter to son in order to enter medical school and provide for family, but Barry soon embraced his newfound freedom. From brilliant medical student in Edinburgh and London to eligible bachelor and quick-tempered physician in Cape Town, Barry thrived. When Barry befriended the aristocratic Cape governor, the doctor rose to the pinnacle of society before the two were publicly accused of a homosexual affair that scandalized the colonies and nearly cost them their lives. The Cape Doctor is the story of Barry's rise from penniless Irish girl to one of the most celebrated and accomplished figures of his time, a time that looks -- in its technological discoveries, revolutionary fervor, battle over women's rights, human rights, religious intolerance, and social unrest -- remarkably like our own.
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The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers The daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, Ailey is raised in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. Growing up, she struggles with this duality, a battle for belonging that shapes her identity. On one side are her exacting parents and her imperious, light-skinned grandmother Nana Claire, to whom skin color is paramount. On the other, Ailey feels the pull of the “deep country” of her mother’s land-tending family, whose forebears endured the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. But how can Ailey live up to everyone’s expectations when half of her family rejects the truth of a fraught racial history, while the rest can’t ever seem to break away from it? To come to terms with who she is and what she wants, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering shocking and unexpected tales of generations of ancestors—Black, Indigenous, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story of the Black experience in America itself.
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The Madness of Crowds written by Louise Penny, read by Robert BathurstYou’re a coward. Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. It starts innocently enough. While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. He’s asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university. While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture. They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson’s views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it’s near impossible to tell them apart. Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold. Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, ça va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone. When a murder is committed it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion. And the madness of crowds.
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The Reading List written by Sara Nisha Adams, read by Tara Divina, Sagar Arya, and Paul PantingWidower Mukesh lives a quiet life in Wembley, in West London after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home. When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.
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