Play Audiobook Sample
The Almost Sisters: A Novel Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(5.00) - 1 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality---the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.
Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs’ weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.
It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She’s having a baby boy—an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old’s life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she’s been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother’s affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she’s pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she’s got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie’s been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family’s freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.
Download and start listening now!
“[A] multifaceted story, rich in heart and significance and showcasing Joshilyn Jackson’s double talents as author and narrator…She makes all her characters engaging—black, white, young, old, and nerdy. What Jackson has whipped up, seemingly effortlessly, is a complex Southern layer cake, exquisite when you bite through it all at once and when you return to nibble individual layers—as many listeners most certainly will. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
-
“A book only Joshilyn Jackson could have written…She deftly combines such unexpected subjects as superheroes, single motherhood, race, and the impact of long-buried secrets.”
— Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author -
“A family saga rich in detail with lovable characters whose plates are overflowing with drama, conflict, and secrets…Jackson combines humor and conflict to weave a beautiful story.”
— RT Book Reviews (4 stars) -
“[A] multigenerational, Southern tale of sisters, friendship, and small-town life, including the author’s signature quirky characters and deft touch with serious topics.”
— Library Journal (starred review) -
“Another spirited page-turner set in a new South still haunted by the ghosts of the old…A satisfying, entertaining read from an admired writer who deserves to be a household name.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“Jackson has packed in all the drama needed for a fast-paced summer read, but this isn’t your average beach book. Dark secrets and racism plague Grandma Birchie’s seemingly charming southern town, and Leia will soon find that real-life villains aren’t as easy to identify as the ones in her comic books.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Compulsively readable—and lamentably timely [with] Jackson’s characteristic humor, absorbing characters, and candid depictions of messy families.”
— Booklist -
Joshilyn Jackson has literary super powers… She lasers through the weathered grace and mossy tradition of the contemporary south to explode its comic book dualism with blistering genius.
— Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine
Awards
-
A July 2017 LibraryReads Pick
-
AudioFile Earphones Award Winner
The Almost Sisters Listener Reviews
-
—
Deborah, 7/17/2022
About Joshilyn Jackson
Joshilyn Jackson is the bestselling author of Backseat Saints, Gods in Alabama, Between, Georgia, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages and short-listed for the Townsend Prize. She won the SIBA Book Award for Fiction in 2005, and, as a former actor, was nominated for an Audie Award and received a Listen Up Award from Publishers Weekly.