Articles by Aurelia C. Scott

Cats first arrived in Japan in the 6th century, imported from China by Buddhist monks to protect sacred scrolls from rodents. Soon the industrious creatures came to symbolize...

Kate Reading’s ability to transform the written word into a compelling listen has made her one of my favorite narrators. I’ll often choose an audiobook simply...

Let’s get far away from present-day Earth this month with some thought-provoking and fun science fiction. Up first are Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki’s...

When Wanda McCaddon died in December 2023 at the age of 91, we lost an effervescent spirit, a fine actress, and a chameleon-like audiobook narrator. McCaddon was one of those...

The six audiobooks selected for our list of Best Fiction of 2023 are distinctive and uniquely satisfying. Listening to them is akin to joining a book group whose reading choices...

Feeling scattered these days? You need micro listens! They offer all the pleasure of an audiobook without hours of commitment. Here are four single-story audiobooks plus a...

October, the harvest month, often is a period of reflection for me. Thus far, I can say that this has been a year of happiness and sadness. Wonderful, awful, and pretty...

September is a bountiful month, full of farmer’s market plenty and the annual Booker Prize shortlist. This year’s shortlist will be chosen on September 21 from a...

Let’s take a summer road trip without the hassle of actual driving. We’ll meet lovers, aliens, people on the lam, and a father and son on their way to Mount...

I did a happy dance when I heard that three of my favorite narrators have been inducted as AudioFile Golden Voices. Nicholas Boulton, Kevin R. Free, and Marin Ireland are...

Each May, the Pulitzer Prize Board awards outstanding achievement in journalism, letters, and music. Stamped with the image of Benjamin Franklin on one side and a printing press...

When I miss my mother, an intuitive woman with a sense of adventure, I like to imagine her living in the future—perhaps traveling through space on a sleek starship while...

Let’s consider love, that many-splendored thing. Love as affection for your running buddy, gratitude for your cat’s purr or your dog's devotion, and yes, lust...

In this first month of 2023, I want to share five novels about not giving up. Even the most sincere New Year’s resolutions take us only so far. To carry us past the third...

The six Earphones Award-winning audiobooks on AudioFile’s list of the best fiction list of 2022 gave me hours of listening pleasure. They’re witty, thoughtful,...

September will always be back-to-school month for me, even though it’s been decades since I sat in a classroom. Knowing that many of you right now also have the urge to...

Just in time for the last lazy days of summer listening, I give you four authors and seven—seven!—historical fiction titles that will spirit you away in your own...

Listening to Juliet Stevenson narrate an audiobook is like finding a perfect gift inside a beautifully wrapped present. The voice—warm, inviting, exquisitely...

In my part of the world, birds are singing, and the trees are a watercolor of tender green, baby pink, and bridal white. It’s spring, the perfect time for audiobooks that...

Put down your doomscrolling device and voyage with me out of earth’s orbit to different realms in five new fantasy and science fiction novels. A mix of stand-alone and...

Let’s revisit Upton Sinclair, whose 90 books and muckraking journalism helped make 20th century America a safer, fairer place. Let’s revisit him because we’re...

When I was in third grade, Valentine’s Day was simple and heartfelt. Our class made glue-smudged creations of red construction paper, lace doilies, and paper-doll cherubs...

At the age of eighty, author John Edgar Wideman is not resting on his laurels, which include a Rhodes Scholarship, MacArthur Fellowship, the Prix Femina Étranger, the...

The five Earphones Award-winning audiobooks on AudioFile’s list of the best fiction of 2021 kept me awake past my bedtime and made me forget half the items on grocery runs...

Novelist Colm Tóibín, an ebullient, broad-shouldered Irishman with piercing dark eyes, has given persuasive voice to many women, including Nora, a forty-year-old...

Mary Roach wants to know stuff. Fascinating, icky, weird, occasionally embarrassing stuff. The great thing is that she finds out about that stuff and shares it with us. The...

As students head into the classroom this September, many of them for the first time, I thought I’d celebrate their achievement by sharing five debut novels. It takes...

August is the archetypal vacation month. This year, it’s also a good month to celebrate the relationships that have helped us survive the last seventeen months of...

Listening to Maggie Shipstead’s new audiobook, GREAT CIRCLE, narrated by Cassandra Campbell and Alex McKenna, offers the immersive satisfaction of an historical saga, the...

As we celebrate the mask-free smiles of post-pandemic life, hugs and laughter are starting to repair the pain and isolation of the past fifteen months. Still, the world is...

The just-announced shortlist for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction promises hours of fantastic listening. If you start soon, you’ll be able to hear the audiobook...

In April, cheered by Easter egg shades of crocus and chilled by the north wind, I welcome spring with chewy fiction. Beautifully written, intriguingly peopled, immersively...

Joan Didion and Morgan Jerkins’s new audiobooks give us reason to celebrate the power of women’s voices. The authors, both of whom have written novels, memoirs, and...

That Cupid strikes with an arrow suggests that love is more complicated than it seemed in third grade when I pasted pink cherubs on Valentine lace doilies and savored chalky...

Feel like escaping the confines of your second pandemic-winter without actually going anywhere until you can receive a vaccine? Me too. That’s why I’ve selected six...

Poet and author Paulette Jiles's celebrated debut novel, ENEMY WOMEN, newly released in audio, is a gripping and unexpectedly relevant exploration of the ravages of...

Daring, funny, relatable, eye-opening, moving, and filled with gorgeous prose.  Those are some of the adjectives I’d use to describe the two novels that won top...

We adults who love YA titles used to be hesitant to reveal our passion, lest other adults recoil in literary-fiction-horror. But no longer. Bahni Turpin's amazing...

Meet my great great grandfather Reese, who emigrated from Wales to Wisconsin in the 1860s and married Matilda, whose family originated in Saarland. And my husband Bob's...

"Focus on something. It’ll steady your nerves," my mother advised. That’s why I stared fixedly at Mr. Potter the Latin teacher throughout my 6th grade...

As our national celebration of family and pie approaches, I’m reminded of the Thanksgiving when our gorgeously brown turkey slid off the serving platter and across the...