I’ve spent the past busy month listening to thrillers and catching up on a thrilling podcast I’ve followed for years. Audio stories make chores (cooking, cleaning, decorating, driving) so much more enjoyable! So I shared them this month this month on Good Day Alabama on WBRC Fox 6.
The White Vault by Fool and Scholar Productions
The White Vault is storytelling at its finest with excellent sound effects thrown in. Science fiction with lots of smart, creative, psychologically scary stuff, too, The White Vault series started in 2017 and it’s up to five seasons with some bonus content available if you support them. Most of the seasons are available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Pandora. It starts with the collected records of a repair team sent to Outpost Fristed in vast, white, frozen Svalbard (a small Norwegian island near the Artic Circle with more polar bears than people). The team has no idea what waits for them below the ice. There’s a storm coming as well, and “travel is not advised.” The story is told by an international team of scientific experts, and the voice actors are amazing. Subsequent seasons happen in Patagonia, China and North America—all home to family-run sites where supernatural happenings have happened since before recorded time. So, you get great storytelling by creator K.A. Statz with solid geographical and cultural information setting the scene. Sound design, editing and direction from Travis Vengroff make this series addicting and enjoyable. A new chapter, The White Vault Goshawk, is now available. Do listen to the series in order.
The God of the Woods By Liz Moore
In August 1975, a 13-year-old girl vanishes from a summer camp in upstate New York. Barbara Van Laar’s family owns the camp; while their sprawling summer home is part of the estate, this is the first time Barbara has gone to camp. But it’s not the first time a Van Laar child has gone missing. Her older brother, Bear, vanished 14 years earlier and was never found. The camp employs most of the region’s residents, and many of them come out to frantically search for the missing child, as they did more than a decade before. What follows is a twisty story of decades-old secrets—some belonging to the wealthy Van Laar family, others to their working class neighbors, some they share. This mystery-thriller, published in mid 2024, picked up a ton of “best of” designations and rightly so. It’s a solid mystery that’s beautifully written and nicely plotted.
You’re Safe Here By Leslie Stephens
It’s not really a spoiler to say the characters are not safe at all here. Wellness, motherhood and technology collide in a dystopian near future in California. In 2060, the WellPod is the latest launch from the world’s largest tech company. It’s a fleet of floating personal paradises scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean, focused entirely on a voyage of health, solitude and relaxation. The company and the pods were created by an enigmatic founder who will stop at nothing to ensure her company’s success. For newly pregnant Maggie, the six-week program is the perfect chance to get away…especially since the baby isn’t her partner’s. But her partner, Noa Behar, a coder at the tech company, discovers something terribly wrong beneath WellPod’s shiny exterior—a history of faulty tech and dangerous cover-ups—and she will do anything to keep Maggie safe. The problem? The malfunctioning WellPods are already at sea. And there’s a storm coming. This book is timely, clever and thrilling.
I link to Amazon to show you exactly what book I’m talking about, but I love to shop locally at Church Street Coffee and Books, The Alabama Booksmith, Little Professor, and Thank You Books in Crestwood. And I visit my local library often in person and online!
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