Check It Out Category: Audiobooks

Readers (and nonreaders) try audiobooks for a variety of reasons. Once hooked, however, it doesn’t take long to form strong opinions about which qualities of voice acting are most important. Truly skilled narrators inspire devotion to the point that listeners will follow a favorite reader to any book s/he records, no matter the plot! One such talent is the celebrated Davina Porter.

Porter’s graceful, lilting expression brings warmth to every book, and her skill with accents and dialects is nothing short of astounding. (After a taste, you won’t want to hear anyone else read anything that begs for a brogue!) Though Porter’s voice is “surely one of the most elegant and refined in audiobooks,” don’t mistake that for being stuffy. She is game for all sorts of storytelling. Hear for yourself:

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Porter is best known for narrating this popular series.  When a WWII combat nurse is transported back to 1743, she soon finds herself married to a young Scotsman. Will she find her way back to her own time, or is her destiny forever entwined with the gallant Jamie Fraser?

Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George

In this gripping child-in-danger story, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers and her partner, Inspector Thomas Lynley, investigate the kidnapping of a friend’s little girl from an Italian marketplace. With both her job and the life of a little girl on the line, Barbara must decide what matters most, and how far she’s willing to go to protect it.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

Overcoming a life of hardship and loneliness, Gemma Hardy, a brilliant and determined young woman, accepts a position as an au pair on the remote Orkney Islands where she faces her biggest challenge yet in this imaginative re-telling of Jane Eyre set in Iceland.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

A ne’er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter’s beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Thomas Hardy’s impassioned story tells of hope and disappointment, rejection and enduring love, and Porter’s magnificent reading offers a new accessibility to a true classic.

Dinner with Churchill by Cita Stezler

Dinners for Churchill were about more than good food, excellent champagnes, and Havana cigars. He loved using the dinner table both as a stage on which to display his brilliant conversational talents and an intimate setting in which to glean gossip and diplomatic insights and to argue for the many policies he espoused over a long life.

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher by training, and an amateur sleuth by choice. When a young man falls from a balcony to his death in this first of a series, Isabel does not believe it was an accident. Plunging deep into the shady business community of Edinburgh, she is determined to root out the truth.

The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

In this second of a celebrated series, with each passing day Kelsea Glynn is growing into her new responsibilities as Queen of the Tearling. By stopping the shipments of slaves to the neighboring kingdom of Mortmesne, she crossed the Red Queen, a brutal ruler whose power derives from dark magic, who is sending her fearsome army into the Tearling to take what is hers.