Thursday, February 9, 2012

2012 Audiobook Preview

Audiobook lovers rejoice! The year 2012 looks to be filled with a wealth of literary treasures. Now that Groundhog Day is in the rearview mirror, let’s take a look at what lies ahead—aside from six more weeks of winter.

Just released on February 7 was Stay Awake, a new collection of short stories from Dan Chaon. Chaon’s last collection was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001. Here he returns to the short form for the first time in eleven years after publishing two novels in the meantime.

On Valentine’s Day, readers will fall in love with a trio of books. Sophie Kinsella looks to continue her bestselling ways with I’ve Got Your Number, while Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah’s Key and A Secret Kept, returns with The House I Loved. If you like a little horror with your romance, Anne Rice has the answer with The Wolf Gift.

Finishing out February, there’s Other People We Married on February 21 from Emma Straub, daughter of novelist Peter Straub and a powerful author in her own right. On the 28th, bestseller Jodi Picoult offers Lone Wolf, while Ramona Ausubel makes a conspicuous debut with No One Is Here Except All of Us, a fable of a Jewish village in Romania trying to persevere through the horrors of World War II.

Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. On March 13 she turns her talents to non-fiction with When I Was a Child I Read Books, a collection of essays on a variety of themes. Going in the other direction, Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN, tries his hand at fiction in Monday Mornings, about a group of surgeons who confront their failures in weekly “Morbidity and Mortality” meetings.

Also in March, Lyndsay Faye follows up her Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper pastiche with another work of historical crime fiction, The Gods of Gotham. Then, acclaimed writer Lionel Shriver (another National Book Award finalist) presents The New Republic, a novel about terrorism that she originally wrote in 1998 but shelved after the September 11 World Trade Center attacks.

April is the month for heavy hitters on the bestseller lists. First up, on the 3rd, is Mary Higgins Clark with The Lost Years. On the 10th, John Grisham eschews the courtroom for the baseball diamond in Calico Joe. Stephen King follows up 11/22/63 with the eighth installment in his Dark Tower series, The Wind Through the Keyhole, on the 24th. Also on that day, critical lightning rod Jonathan Franzen returns with his latest book of essays, Farther Away.

Further out on the horizon, there’s still plenty to look forward to: Deadlocked, a new Southern Vampire book from Charlaine Harris; Home, by Toni Morrison, a novel about racial inequality and the aftereffects of war; Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel; In One Person by venerable author John Irving; and Mortality, the final memoir by firebrand and critic Christopher Hitchens, who passed away in December.

Of course, this is just a small sampling of what awaits us in the world of audiobooks in 2012. What new and upcoming releases are you and your patrons most looking forward to? Let us know in the comments section below.

For more 2012 previews, click on the links below:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/48029-spring-2012-sneak-previews.html
http://entertainment.time.com/2011/12/07/seven-books-im-looking-forward-to-in-2012/
http://www.themillions.com/2012/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2012-book-preview.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

We'd love to hear what you think! Just be sure to leave your name and email address or your username, so we can respond appropriately.