The Strand Names the Year’s Best Mystery Fiction Audiobooks

The Strand Names the Year’s Best Mystery Fiction Audiobooks

 

Building on its audiobook summer guide and reviews over the past twenty years, The Strand Magazine has announced nominees for the 2023 Strand Magazine Critics Audiobook Awards.

These awards recognize excellence in the field of audiobook mystery fiction and are judged by a nine-person panel from respected corners of the audiobook market.

 

Returning to the annual list of nominees, Michael Connelly, Anthony Horowitz, and S. A. Cosby continue to thrill us with their newest titles. However, a number of newer authors feature in the nominee list as well, including Nita Prose and Richard Osman.

 

 

And the nominees are . . .

The White Lady

By Jacqueline Winspear | read by Orlagh Cassidy (HarperAudio)

This heart-stopping novel, set in post-WWII Britain in 1947, follows the coming of age of former wartime operative Elinor White—veteran of two wars, trained killer, protective of her anonymity—when she is drawn back into the world of menace she has been desperate to leave behind.

 

Desert Star

By Michael Connelly | read by Titus Welliver, Christine Lakin, Peter Giles (Little, Brown and Company)

Los Angeles Police Department detectives Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch team up to hunt the brutal killer who is Bosch’s “white whale”—a man responsible for the murder of an entire family.

 

The Bullet That Missed: Thursday Murder Club

By Richard Osman | read by Fiona Shaw, Richard Osman, Steph McGovern (Penguin Audio)

The crime-fighting quartet of the Coopers Chase Retirement Village take on an ex-KGB colonel, several TV icons, and a murderous money launderer as they rush to catch the latest killer.

The Paris Apartment

By Lisa Foley | read by Clare Corbett, Daphne Kouma, Julia Winwood, Sope Dirisu, Sofia Zervudachi, Charlie Anson (HarperAudio)

Following a young woman escaping turmoil in her personal life for the refuge of her brother’s home in a posh Parisian apartment building, The Paris Apartment invites readers into a world of intrigue, where everyone’s a suspect, and nothing is quite as it seems.

The Twist of a Knife

By Anthony Horowitz | read by Rory Kinnear (HarperAudio)

Thrown into prison and fearing for both his personal future and his writing career, Anthony is the prime suspect in Throsby’s murder, and when a second theatre critic is found to have died in mysterious circumstances, the net closes in. Ever more desperate, he realizes that only one man can help him.

 

The Maid

By Nita Prose | read by Lauren Ambrose (Random House Audio)

In this cozy murder mystery, Molly must find Mr. Black’s killer or risk getting entangled in a dirty plot. And to do so, Molly must rely on those she trusts so they can clean up this mess.

 

My Darkest Prayer

By S. A. Cosby | read by Adam Lazarre-White (Macmillan Audio)

A former marine and sheriff’s deputy, Nathan has built a reputation in his small southern town as a man who can help when all other avenues have been exhausted. When a beloved local minister is found dead, his parishioners ask Nathan to make sure the death isn’t swept under the rug.

 

The Strand will announce the winners of the awards this September and will include a feature on the nominees in our upcoming issue.