Set in early 1990s Mexico City, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s latest supernatural thriller Silver Nitrate (13 hours) will appeal to film buffs as well as fans of horror fiction. Montserrat is a talented sound editor, but she has a hard time finding steady work in the male-dominated Mexican film industry. When her oldest friend (and lifelong romantic interest), a washed-up actor, moves in next door to a horror director, he and Montserrat embark on a dark and dangerous quest that might change their lives, for better or for worse. Narrator Gisela Chipe excels at the frequent shifts between English and Spanish, and although at times her delivery is a little flat, she effectively imbues a variety of secondary characters—both those providing comic relief and those who are more menacing—with individual personalities.

In Caroline O’Donoghue’s acclaimed novel, The Rachel Incident (9.5 hours), university student Rachel is extremely busy juggling a precarious love pentagon involving her Victorian Literature professor, her gay best friend James, her boss (who happens to be the professor’s wife) and her boyfriend. Naturally, mistakes are made. But despite being very funny, The Rachel Incident is not a farce; it’s a story about forgiveness for the harm done to us and the harm we do to others.

County Cork, Ireland, native Tara Flynn gives a brilliant performance as the older Rachel looking back on her tumultuous early 20s. Her voice is warm and authentic, and she is blessed with terrific comic timing. Best of all, Flynn’s nuanced narration reflects not only Rachel’s raucous sense of humor but also her hard-earned insight and compassion. The result is an audiobook that is as wise as it is hilarious.

Susan Casey has made a career of writing about the ocean and the creatures who inhabit it. In her latest, Casey considers how little we know about the ocean’s deepest reaches and profiles the people who are intent on improving that knowledge via manned submersibles.

In a well-researched investigation of the history of deep ocean exploration, Casey follows both a wealthy entrepreneur intent on breaking records and the scientists whose research relies on the same high-tech equipment. The audiobook of The Underworld (12 hours) is accompanied by a PDF with illustrations, photographs and other resources to aid listeners’ understanding. Casey’s motivation, as listeners learn, is personal, and hearing the author read her thrilling account of finally descending into the ocean’s depths herself provides additional emotional heft.

At 70, Flor Marte is the second eldest of four Dominican American sisters who are all gifted with special powers. Flor’s power is that she can predict when someone will die. Inspired by a dream about losing her teeth, as well as a documentary that her daughter, Ona, told her about, Flor decides to throw her own living wake. As her family reluctantly prepares for the wake, the fear that Flor will soon die stirs a need in each of her sisters—Pastora, Mathilde and Camila—as well as in Ona and in Flor’s niece, Yadi, to confront the lies within their own lives.

Rich narration from three different sources conveys the mystical elements of Family Lore (10 hours). Sixta Morel voices the four Marte sisters, while the book’s author, Elizabeth Acevedo, voices Ona, from whose perspective we hear the stories of each of the six women unfold. It can be hard to distinguish between the characters’ voices, with the exception of Yadi, whose confident proclamations about her vaginal superpowers are delivered by a third narrator, Danyeli Rodriguez del Orbe. But as the novel jumps back and forth between past and present, the interplay of Acevedo, Morel and Rodriguez del Orbe’s voices lends a magical storytelling quality to the Marte family’s tale.