Spring brings a bounty of new audiobooks, and the following is just a small sampling of some of the forthcoming titles we’re eagerly anticipating.
What says “spring” more than the birds and the bees? Buzzing bees show up to sample the first spring crocuses, daffodils, and tulips, and birdsong returns, along with the showy colors of migrating spring warblers. Of course, in some places, spring takes longer to arrive than we would like, with surprise April snowstorms, “mud season,” and FOMO-inducing social media photos of clouds of cherry blossoms. So perhaps the arrival of a sunny romance in dreary February is perfect timing. Author and librarian Sarah T. Dubb follows up her charming romance audiobook Birding With Benefits with Honey Bee Mine (Simon & Schuster Audio, Feb. 10), in which a beekeeper and a restaurateur team up to plan a summer honey festival. Narrators Mia Hutchinson-Shaw and Evan Sibley, who proved to be a winning team performing Birding with Benefits, return for Honey Bee Mine.
Author Adib Khorram’s latest young adult audiobook also feels very timely. One Word, Six Letters (Macmillan Audio, March 17), read by Arya Shahi and Major Curda, concerns the fallout from a student shouting a derogatory word at school. Count on a nuanced exploration from Khorram, author of Darius the Great Is Not Okay, and a compelling dual narration from Persian American playwright Shahi, who narrated his own An Impossible Thing To Say, and actor Curda, who co-narrated Libba Bray’s Under the Same Stars.
In May, Martha Wells returns with Platform Decay (Recorded Books, May 5), the newest installment of her beloved Murderbot series about a rogue security unit that spends its time protecting hapless humans even though it would much rather be watching its favorite dramas. The SF series is narrated by Kevin R. Free with deadpan perfection, and we certainly hope that he’ll return to narrate Book 8. The 2025 Apple TV+ streaming series starring Alexander Skarsgård surely garnered Wells even more fans, and anyone who gets to start the series from the beginning is a lucky listener indeed.
Back to the birds and the bees and all things green with two new nonfiction audiobooks that will lead listeners out into the backyard and beyond. Mary Berry, the cookbook author most familiar from her long stint as a judge on The Great British Bake Off, admits, “In another life, I could have been a gardener.” Berry’s new memoir, My Gardening Life (DK Audio, March 10), promises to share her interests beyond the kitchen, just in time for the rest of us to start pondering what we might want to plant in our own gardens. And Suzanne Simard revisits the fascinating lives of trees with When the Forest Breathes (Random House Audio, March 31). Simard gave her memoir Finding the Mother Tree a masterful narration. In When the Forest Breathes, Simard examines the processes of renewal and regeneration in healthy forest ecosystems and in her own life. With apologies to George R.R. Martin—spring is coming!
Jennifer Dowell is the audiobooks editor.
