Selina Hastings: Countess of Huntingdon

I’ll admit: I didn’t expect to be gripped by a 28-minute audiobook about an 18th-century countess. But *Selina Hastings* packs more drama into its runtime than some epics do in hours. Beeke’s writing is lean and muscular, focusing on Selina’s most audacious moves—like when she essentially created her own denomination because the establishment wouldn’t play ball. The pacing is relentless, jumping from her conversion under Whitefield’s preaching to her high-stakes battles with the Anglican hierarchy. It’s less a biography and more a case study in how power, faith, and sheer stubbornness can reshape history. Helen Langford’s performance is the secret weapon here. Her voice carries the weight of Selina’s title but never tips into caricature. That said, her cadence occasionally feels *too* measured—like she’s delivering a lecture rather than a story—which can make the already dense historical details feel even more compressed. And while the brevity is refreshing, it does leave you wanting more: What *exactly* did her enemies say in those heated debates? How did her aristocratic peers react when she started ordaining working-class preachers? Still, as a primer on a woman who outmaneuvered men in both pulpits and Parliament, it’s electrifying. Pair it with a longer work on the Evangelical Revival, and you’ve got the perfect one-two punch.