2024 Roundup

2024 got off to a marvellous start with the release of House of Broken Bricks by Fiona Williams, published by Faber. Narrated by Jessica Hayles with Ben Allen and Lee Braithwaite this is a very beautifully written debut. Other gems this year for Faber include Andrew O’Hagen’s multi-character masterpiece Caledonian Road. It was an absolute narrative feat on the part of Michael Abubakar. Alexandra Harris recorded The Rising Down, her take on Sussex history.We also recorded the hilarious The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, written by Richard Ayoade and starring the author and friends (Lydia Fox, Noel Fielding, Sally Hawkins, Stephen Merchant, Chris Morris and David Mitchell) and complete with music and sound effects. There was also The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Sing by Ingrid Persaud and read by the author with Martina Laird, Melanie LaBarrie, Chanel Quesnel. Another multi-voice project was the much anticipated YA book Songlight by screenwriter Moira Buffini, featuring Saffron Coomber with Sam Crerar, Katy Sobey, Joe Gaminara and Antonia Beamish.

More exciting YA titles were two Lauren Roberts's Kingdom of Ilya books: Powerful read by N’dea Miles and Kevin Shen and Reckless read by Cecily Bednar Schmidt and Chase Brown with Jared Zeus. Also for Simon & Schuster we recorded The Dagger and the Flame by Catherine Doyle (read by Freddy Carter and Emily Carey) and continued with books three and four of the Skandar series (Skandar and the Chaos Trials and Skandar and the Skeleton’s Curse) narrated by David Dawson.

We’ve welcomed quite a few famous faces to our studio recording their own books: Jokes, Jokes, Jokes by Jenny Éclair, She Speaks! By Harriet Walter, Friends of Dorothy by Sandi Toksvig, There and Back by Michael Palin, My Family by David Baddiel, Absolutely by Joanna Lumley, These Heavy Black Bones by champion swimmer Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell and A Very Private School by Earl Spencer.

For Macmillan we’ve been gradually rerecording the Peter James / Roy Grace backlist with Daniel Weyman, and also the new title, They Thought I Was Dead (about the mystery Roy Grace’s wife Sandy) read by Gemma Whelan. More series continuations came with Map of Bones by Kate Mosse narrated by Hattie Morahan which concludes The Joubert Family Chronicles. Prasanna Puwanarajah narrated the latest Alan Hollingsworth book, Our Evenings. We've also had the privilege of recording Colm Toíbín's books Brooklyn (read by Saoirse Ronan), Long Island (read by Jessie Buckley) and Nora Webster (read by Niamh Cusack). Rose Boyt read the extraordinary book Naked Portrait about her relationship with her father, Lucian Freud. There was a new Ben Aaronovitch, read by Kobna Holdbrook Smith (of course!) for Orion: Masquerades of Spring. Russell Tovey and Penelope Keith narrated another Orion titles, The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr. While on the theme of puzzles, for Bloomsbury Olivia Vinall recorded The Puzzle Wood . And, on the topic of Kobna Holdbrook Smith, another Bloomsbury titles was Kobna recording The Great When. We had the honour of recording Nobody Knows But Everybody Remembers with Mark Long of People Show, marking the 50th anniversary, and celebrating the history, of the experimental theatre company.

Charlotte Ritchie read Mallory Vayle and the Curse of Maggoty Skull. Dungeon Runners, narrated by Adrian Grey, Kristin Atherton and Max Dowler was an action-packed romp full of music and sound effects. And, in the year of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour we have to mention Sugababes’s Jade Ewen narrating Look What You Made Me Do!