Audiobooks by Maria Dahvana Headley

'Susan Bennett masterfully narrates a stunning retelling of Beowulf that confronts all manner of monsters...Powerful, upsetting, and unforgettable, Bennett's narration is staggeringly potent.' - AudioFile Magazine New York Times bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley presents a modern retelling of the literary classic Beowulf, set in American suburbia as two mothers-a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran-fight to protect those they love in The Mere Wife. From the perspective of those who live in Herot Hall, the suburb is a paradise. Picket fences divide buildings-high and gabled-and the community is entirely self-sustaining. Each house has its own fireplace, each fireplace is fitted with a container of lighter fluid, and outside-in lawns and on playgrounds-wildflowers seed themselves in neat rows. But for those who live surreptitiously along Herot Hall's periphery, the subdivision is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights. For Willa, the wife of Roger Herot (heir of Herot Hall), life moves at a charmingly slow pace. She flits between mommy groups, playdates, cocktail hour, and dinner parties, always with her son, Dylan, in tow. Meanwhile, in a cave in the mountains just beyond the limits of Herot Hall lives Gren, short for Grendel, as well as his mother, Dana, a former soldier who gave birth as if by chance. Dana didn't want Gren, didn't plan Gren, and doesn't know how she got Gren, but when she returned from war, there he was. When Gren, unaware of the borders erected to keep him at bay, ventures into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, Dana's and Willa's worlds collide.

Maria Dahvana Headley (Author), Susan Bennett (Narrator)

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Aerie

The stunning sequel to Maria Dahvana Headley’s critically acclaimed Magonia tells the story of one girl who must make an impossible choice between two families, two homes—and two versions of herself. Aza Ray is back on earth. Her boyfriend, Jason, is overjoyed. Her family is healed. She’s living a normal life, or as normal as it can be if you’ve spent the past year dying, waking up on a sky ship, and discovering that your song can change the world. As in, not normal. Part of Aza still yearns for the clouds, no matter how much she loves the people on the ground. When Jason’s paranoia over Aza’s safety causes him to make a terrible mistake, Aza finds herself a fugitive in Magonia, tasked with opposing her radical, bloodthirsty, recently escaped mother, Zal Quel, and her singing partner, Dai. She must travel to the edge of the world in search of a legendary weapon, the Flock, in a journey through fire and identity that will transform her forever. Told in Maria Headley’s trademark John Green–meets–Neil Gaiman voice, Aerie is sure to satisfy the many readers who can’t wait to return to the spellbinding world of Magonia.

Maria Dahvana Headley (Author), Michael Crouch, Therese Plummer (Narrator)

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The End of the Sentence

It begins with a letter from a prisoner ... As he attempts to rebuild his life in rural Oregon after a tragic accident, Malcolm Mays finds himself corresponding with Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, a mysterious entity who claims to be the owner of Malcolm's house, jailed unjustly for 117 years. The prisoner demands that Malcolm perform a gory, bewildering task for him. As the clock ticks toward Dusha's release, Malcolm must attempt to find out whether he's assisting a murderer or an innocent. The End of the Sentence combines Kalapuya, Welsh, Scottish, and Norse mythology, with a dark imagined history of the hidden corners of the American West. Maria Dahvana Headley and Kat Howard have forged a fairytale of ghosts and guilt, literary horror blended with the visuals of Jean Cocteau, failed executions, shapeshifting goblins, and magical blacksmithery. In Chuchonnyhoof, they've created a new kind of Beast, longing, centuries later, for Beauty. "Headley and Howard manage to throw Malcolm and the reader headfirst into the darkness while making it feel like a gradual, incremental journey...Even the pleasant things-the friendly librarian Lischen, the house spirits who leave Malcolm food and drinks-feel ominous in the coauthors' stark but lyrical prose. Ultimately Malcolm and the reader must decide whether this is dark magic or something stranger altogether."-Publishers Weekly

Kat Howard, Maria Dahvana Headley (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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Magonia

Aza Ray is drowning in thin air. Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak, to live. All the doctors can do is give her drugs and hope they keep her alive. So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of the medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name. Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Jason, who's always been there. Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. The sickness catches up with her. Aza is lost to our world. And found, by another. Magonia. Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power. And she can use it to change the world. As she navigates her new life, Aza discovers that war is coming. Magonia and Earth are on the cusp of a reckoning. In Aza's hands lies the whole of humanity, ;including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie? Maria Dahvana Headley's soaring YA debut is a fiercely intelligent, multilayered fantasy rich with symbolism and steeped in allegory. Aza's journey pulls her deep into the questions of home, of love, of self, and of just what it means to find them all.

Maria Dahvana Headley (Author), Michael Crouch, Therese Plummer (Narrator)

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Queen of Kings: A Novel of Cleopatra, the Vampire

Maria Dahvana Headley blends history, romance, and the supernatural for a fantastic tale set in ancient Egypt. Upon hearing news of her husband Antony's death, Cleopatra is distraught. In an effort to resurrect him, she summons the fearsome warrior goddess Sekhmet. Striking a deal with the deity, Cleopatra pays a terrible price in the bargain and is transformed into a terrifying vampire-like creature whose lust for blood is only matched by her desire to exact vengeance upon those who have wronged her. "It's rare that a first novel is so magical, so dark, so well-researched, so smart or so compelling."-Neil Gaiman

Maria Dahvana Headley (Author), Katherine Kellgren (Narrator)

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