Julia Whelan, January LaVoy, and Edoardo Ballerini are among the crop of beloved narrators set to join Audible’s Narrator Hall of Fame this year.

Established in 2018, the Narrator Hall of Fame celebrates "voice talent whose outstanding performances have redefined the listening experience, engaged devoted fans and elevated our creator community."

In order to be eligible for induction, narrators must:

• Have at least 50(!) titles on Audible
• Be highly rated by listeners
• Demonstrate versatility across genres and styles
• Be actively involved in the narrator community
• Have contributed to the evolution of the art form

Also among the 2026 cohort are Hillary Huber, who has recorded more than 800 audiobooks; JD Jackson (aka Jakobi Diem), known as the Voice of Black Romance; and Ray Porter, a fan favorite in sci-fi and thrillers whose many titles include Project Hail Mary (a truly elite audiobook experience and a Book Riot fave).

This year’s inductees will be honored in a ceremony at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre in New York on April 8. Past honorees include Jim Dale, Alan Cumming, Robin Miles, and Vikas Adam.

Time once again to check in on recent book announcements. Some of these have publication dates already, some don’t (some will even keep these dates). Always an interesting mix. 

Ply by Hernan Diaz (September 29th from Riverhead)

We don’t have a cover or much in the way of a plot for Diaz’s follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Trust. Here is what Diaz says about his new book: “So many of my long-lasting passions come together in this book: experimental music and literature, adventure narratives, philosophy, nineteenth-century coming-of-age novels, noir fiction.” 

Life Out of Order by Audrey Niffenegger (October 2026 from Hanover Square)

It’s been fun to watch fans of The Time Traveler’s Wife lose their minds on Instagram when hearing about this sequel in which Alba DeTamble has inherited her father’s time-traveling abilities. 

Go and Do Likewise: How to Heal a Broken Country by Andy Beshear (September 22nd from St. Martin’s Press)

In this book, Beshear will chronicle his time as CEO of Sweetums "will share what his own faith has meant to him, how it has informed his family and his public life—and serves as a rebuke to how faith has been hijacked, profaned, misused, and corrupted by Donald Trump and other public figures.” Apparently the subtitle, How to Soft-Launch a Presidential Campaign, was too on-the-nose. 

The Stars Look Like Home by TJ Klune (Jan 12, 2027 from Wildthorn)

Two notable things here: first, a Homeward Bound-esque animal adventure story from the warm-hearted and inventive Klune (The House on the Cerulean Sea) sounds terrific. Second, this is the launch title for a new commercial imprint, Wildthorn, at Tor, the signature sci-fi/fantasy imprint at Macmillan. All genres blend into one, given enough time.  

Exit 8 by Genki Kawamura (2026)

Kawamura’s If Cats Disappeared From the World is an international best-seller, and his latest, based on the 2023 video game of the same name, has an equally high concept: “A commuter is riding the Tokyo subway when he receives a life-changing text message. As he approaches the station exit, something strange happens; he finds himself caught in an infinite loop of subway tunnels. Why is he trapped here? And will he escape, before it is too late?”

📚 Read it. ❤️ Love it. 🤝 Share it.

ThriftBooks’ February Focus is all about turning reading into a shared experience. It’s not just about finishing books, but about passing them along, recommending them, and starting conversations that bring stories to life.

This month’s spotlight titles are made for discussion and gifting because reading doesn’t have to be a solo sport. With tools like Already Read It and the Annual Reading Challenge, you can log what you’ve finished, track your progress, and contribute to a larger community of readers doing the same.

One book is just the beginning.

Laura Dave’s bestselling 2021 thriller The Last Thing He Told Me was adapted into an Apple TV+ series in 2023, developed by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine company.

• The series follows Hannah Hall (Jennifer Garner) after her husband disappears, leaving her and her stepdaughter to try to piece together what happened to him.

In January, Laura Dave published a sequel to the novel, The First Time I Saw Him. And this week, the Apple TV+ series is back with season two, adapted from the sequel.

• Judy Greer joins the cast this season, marking the first time Greer and Garner have worked together since co-starring in 13 Going on 30.

In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Garner says she hopes in future episodes to have a "physical fight" with Greer: "I would like to wipe the floor with her... We’ve been friends a long time. I would like to fight her."

I really don’t know how to follow that up, but you can watch episode one of season two tomorrow on Apple TV+! -DE

"It’s easy to fall into a state of apathy when the world, in some ways, is literally on fire. The antidote feels simple: dopamine surges from scrolling, buying, distracting. Each can be more comfortable than facing the reality of the world around us. However, James Baldwin reminds us that we cannot change what we do not face,” writes Carolina Ixta, author of the recently released YA novel Few Blue Skies. 

The true antidote to apathy is action, says Ixta, pointing out that young people have spearheaded political action movements for decades.

• “Carmelita Torres was just 17 when she refused to be bathed in a kerosene bath required for Mexican migrants on the US-Mexico border. Claudette Colvin was only 15 when she refused to give up her seat to a white person on a bus. Autumn Peltier was only nine when she advocated for clean drinking water on her indigenous reservation.”

Ixta highlights several books to help young people-and, perhaps, not so young people-to find light in this moment. Among them:

• Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin : “Divided into breaths, this lush story reminds young people everywhere of their resiliency in times of peril.”
• Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan : “Caught between the tensions of a strike, the Great Depression, the Mexican Revolution, and the Dust Bowl, Esperanza seeks to find hope and find herself. “
• Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay: “The novel balances the nuances of masculinity, generational trauma, and immigration while displaying the history of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.”

→ Find all of Ixta’s recommendations and learn about her latest book-one that marries action with hope and resilience-in the “What’s Up in YA?” newsletter.

Level up your reading life with Book Riot All Access! Unlock the industry’s best deep dives, join in with community features, and conquer the Read Harder Challenge alongside fellow bibliophiles. Start with a gift on us: The first 100 new annual members get a FREE copy of Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser. Experience the "evil" stepmother’s side of the story in this breathtaking feminist reimagining of Cinderella. Don’t miss your chance to grab this stunning debut and gain year-round access to the best of Book Riot. Join All Access today!

Whatever your romance reading flavor, our resident expert Jess Pryde is here to hook you up.

• ⛳️ The 19th Hole by Evelyn Latrice : With 82% of ratings at five stars, this is one of the highest-rated books on this list, and it’s by an author whose lowest rating on Goodreads is 4.41. We don’t get a lot of golf romance in general—I can count maybe four—and a Black professional golfer dealing with racism in the sport seeking respite at a Black-owned golf resort? Yeah, unheard of.
• 😈 Son of the Morning by Akwaeke Emezi: If you thought Paradise Lost  was racy Bible fanfiction, have I got something for you. Galilee was raised in a magical, matriarchal family far off the grid, but now she’s living in the city, making new friends, and ready to figure out what’s next. When she meets security manager Lucifer at her friend’s family home, the last thing she expects is to end up in a battle between literal Heaven and Hell ... or in an intense and powerful romantic entanglement with the Fallen One himself. 
• 🪐 Love From the Cosmos by Mowa Badmos : Moyo is ready to level up in life, which means it’s time to find her perfect partner. But instead of enduring the questionable dating pool in Boston, she decides to join Cupid’s Bow, a matchmaking app based on astrology with a 99% success rate. Niyi, one of three matchmakers, doesn’t particularly feel up to the celestial duty and writes an algorithm instead of doing the real work. When things go wrong for Moyo, Niyi volunteers to be her dating coach to fix his own mistake. Little does she know, she’s working with the actual god Saturn.  

💗 Load up on more recommendations.

Walt Whitman’s essays on the promise and failures of American democracy are just as relevant today as they were when they were written, as David Bromwich explains in this introduction to On Democracy, out now.

For several generations now, American leaders have wanted to convert the world to democracy. At the same time, many citizens have come to feel that the liberty and security promised by the constitution are imperiled at home.

No social critic had a surer insight into these linked ambitions and fears than Walt Whitman; but to understand the uniqueness of Whitman’s thoughts on democracy, one must recognize that he is describing American democracy.

He does not make the case for political democracy anywhere at any time. Democratic Vistas, his inquisitive and original-minded essay of 1871 on post-Civil War America, places society above the state and asks that we treat culture as a measure of the health of society.

A democratic polity—a system of popular sovereignty and majority rule—is a precondition for the maintenance of such a society and the freedom of its culture. But politics for Whitman is a secondary concern; the “vistas” in his title mean to suggest a future society of equal men and women and the culture they foster. The adjective “democratic” always carried, for him, a greater value than the noun...

As he tells us in Democratic Vistas, his task is to expound the character of American society and the impress it leaves on every individual. An equal civic regard for all persons has become, in the United States, the natural concomitant of equal rights. This is a matter of manners rather than rules.

The habit of regarding one’s fellow men and women as equals can be discerned even in points of physical attitude—the posture one adopts, for example, in addressing or listening to a stranger. The expectation is that all are tolerated, none excluded.

The attitude of one American toward another is not deference or contempt or watchful surveillance. It is curiosity.

Excerpted from the Introduction by David Bromwich, published in On Democracy by Walt Whitman. Copyright © 2026 by Library of America. Used by permission of the publisher.

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Did you know?: Tan’s breakout novel, The Joy Luck Club , isn’t really a novel—it’s a collection of linked short stories. But an early review called it a novel and the publisher decided to take the subtitle, "Stories," off the final jacket copy.

Join us as we revisit Tan’s beloved novel The Joy Luck Club.

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🔎 Who is Freida McFadden? Here’s a reader’s guide with all the essential info.

🎧 Indie booksellers love these audiobooks by Black authors.

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