It’s been more than three decades since the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering that Salman Rushdie be killed for the “blasphemies” of his novel The Satanic Verses. By 2022, Rushdie had long since emerged from years of hiding and was enjoying a tranquil existence with his fifth wife, the writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths. But that August, as he took the stage at the Chatauqua Institute in Western New York state to speak on “the importance of keeping writers safe from harm,” an attacker rushed up and stabbed him 15 times, partially blinding and nearly killing him. In Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (Penguin Random House Audio, 6 hours and 22 minutes), the authordescribes his slow, difficult recovery; his reluctant return to a high-security lifestyle; and his thoughts about his attacker, whom he calls the A. His warm, grandfatherly voice fills with all the emotions he describes—the outrage of the assault, the tenderness of his marriage, the wonder inspired by several unusual coincidences: He had just finished writing Victory City, a novel in which the protagonist is partly blinded, and he had dreamed, two nights before the attack, of being stabbed in an arena. Rushdie’s narration makes this riveting memoir an unusually absorbing listening experience.

Some may remember Hawaiian Surf, a short-lived but popular men’s cologne from the 1960s. Also short-lived was the fortune Guy Trebay’s father made from his brainchild. Trebay’s memoir, Do Something: Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of ’70s New York (Penguin Random House Audio, 6 hours and 29 minutes), is the sad story of a deeply fractured family, but the author’s skill in creating characters—from his charismatic, irresponsible father to his wild, felonious, currently incarcerated sister and well-known figures like Candy Darling and Andy Warhol—makes for a lively chronicle.It’s become almost de rigueur for memoirists to read their own audiobooks, but Trebay, whose voice is familiar to those who follow New York Times fashion podcasts and videos, passed the mic to Edoardo Ballerini. Ballerini has been called the “voice of God” for his narration of everyone from Tolstoy to Thich Nhat Hanh, but I was not initially convinced that his cultured tones would be ideal for the story of Trebay’s Long Island childhood and down-and-out days as the tallest and skinniest denizen of Manhattan’s druggy arts scene. However, the elegance and complexity of Trebay’s prose style turns out to be Ballerini catnip. There’s no real plot but much scenery to enjoy along the way.

If it’s plot you’re looking for, Brittney Griner’s memoir of her harrowing and insane ordeal in the Russian prison system is a nail-biter, even if we already know how Coming Home (Penguin Random House Audio, 10 hours and 36 minutes) turns out. Griner and her talented co-writer, Michelle Burford, bring every part of the WNBA baller’s nightmare vividly to life, from the hasty packing that left two nearly empty cannabis vape cartridges in a zippered compartment of her duffel to the terrors of the spinning blade in the fabric-cutting workshop at the prison camp where she spent a gulag winter in damp clothes and frozen dreadlocks. The remarkably deep-voiced Griner—she mentions her voice as one of the many things she has been bullied for in her life, along with her height, her flat chest, her race, and her sexual orientation—reads the introduction, epilogue, and (surprisingly moving) acknowledgments herself; retired professional golfer Andia Winslow does a bravura job with the rest. It’s both infuriating to learn of the hate mail Griner has received since her release and inspiring to hear her read the names and tell the stories of other hostages currently imprisoned around the world.

Marion Winik hosts NPR’s The Weekly Reader podcast.