"Be My Baby," by Ronnie Spector. (Macmillan, unabridged, 10 1/2 hours.)
Ronnie Spector's memoir — written with Vince Waldron and completed just before Spector's death in January — has found the perfect narrator in Rosie Perez. Perez and Spector were both born and raised in New York City, and neither relinquished the city's feisty accent. The book begins as an effervescent account of the teenage Ronnie (then Veronica Bennett), her sister, Estelle, and cousin, Nedra, dancing their way into the Peppermint Lounge.
From there, they became backup singers and, eventually, under the wing of Phil Spector, emerged as the Ronnettes, one of the most popular girl groups in the mid-1960s. Spector homed in on Ronnie, gradually becoming a mercurial, controlling monster — and Ronnie's husband. The details are bizarre, and this part of the book is as strange and horrifying as its beginning is vivacious and triumphant.
Ronnie finally escaped barefoot (her shoes confiscated by Phil) with the help of her mother and eventually found happiness and a renewed career with a second husband. This heartfelt, brilliantly narrated memoir — with an introduction by Keith Richards — is one of the best I have ever listened to.
"Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks," by Patrick Radden Keefe. (Random House, unabridged, 15 1/2 hours.)
Patrick Radden Keefe narrates his own collection of 12 essays in a strong, clear voice that conveys the dauntlessness of his own sleuthing. Among the subjects in these pieces (originally published in the New Yorker) are a disgruntled professor who turned a gun on her colleagues; the impresario whose rehabilitation of Donald Trump helped lead to his presidency; a lawyer who defended seemingly hopeless death-penalty cases; a highly respected physician-turned-inside-trader; and the drug lord El Chapo.
Also here are an investigation into the thriving business of counterfeit rare vintage wines and a profile of the late Anthony Bourdain. With a couple of exceptions, these characters make up a very bad lot and, while never exalting them, Keefe's storytelling is so limber and character-rich that the essays have the grip of thriller.
"Winter Work," by Dan Fesperman. (Random House, unabridged, 12 hours.)
Although this is the third novel in which author Dan Fesperman has assigned CIA agent Claire Saylor to an intelligence operation, you needn't be privy to her previous exploits to follow this one. Claire has been sent to East Berlin shortly after the fall of the Wall to secure a trove of Stasi files that promise to expose a mole in the CIA.
East Germany is in flux: The powerful, all-pervasive Stasi has lost its grip, its members scrambling for purchase in a new world. Everyone wants to lay hands on Stasi files — the KGB has sent a troika of thugs to exercise their own methods of securing them. One of Claire's potential contacts has already been tortured and shot, another wants to trade files for a haven for himself, his sick wife and a friend.
Desperation, treachery and suspense abound in a story based on actual events. Fesperman, a former reporter on international affairs, narrates the book himself in an amiable, sandy voice that remains easy-paced and unruffled in even the most lethal circumstances.
Katherine A. Powers, a Minnesota native, reviews for the Star Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. She writes this column monthly for the Washington Post.
