Literary Criticism bestsellers

Monsters

A Fan's Dilemma

By: Claire Dederer
Narrated by: Claire Dederer
Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

“Woody Allen, Picasso, even Michael Jackson? What do you do when the artists you love turn out to be terrible people? Claire Dederer confronts her own conflicted emotions with wit and deep insight. There are no easy answers here. Read more

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

By: George Saunders
Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, BD Wong & Renée Elise Goldsberry
Length: 14 hours 43 minutes

“This masterclass for writers is also a masterclass for readers, and you don't have to be a writer to enjoy it. Through his wise insights on storytelling, Saunders sent me away with an understanding of why I enjoy reading what I do, how stories work, and how to be a better storyteller (and human) in all rights. Read more

Poetry Unbound

50 Poems to Open Your World

By: Pádraig Ó Tuama
Narrated by: Pádraig Ó Tuama
Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

“Not only has he selected interesting poems, his down-to-earth essays describing why he loves them are excellent! Nothing uber-academic. Makes one wish this was the approach of poetry teachers everywhere. Read more

Pandora's Jar

Women in the Greek Myths

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

“Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of . . . but read on!”—Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's TaleThe national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships returns with a fascinating, eye-opening take on the remarkable women at the heart of classical stories Greek... Read more

One in a Millennial

On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In

By: Kate Kennedy
Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

This program is read by the author.

From pop culture podcaster and a voice of a generation, Kate Kennedy, a celebration of the millennial zeitgeist

One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned... Read more

Meet Me in the Margins

By: Melissa Ferguson
Narrated by: Talon David
Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

“Meet Me in the Margins is an adorable and bookish love story. The 'mystery editor' setup is funny and incredibly sweet, and Savannah's motivations as an author seem meta in the best way. Totally clean, this one makes for a great audiobook. Read more

Splinters

Another Kind of Love Story

By: Leslie Jamison
Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
Length: 8 hours 32 minutes

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes the riveting story of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage—an exploration of motherhood, art, and new love.
 
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. She has been compared... Read more

Minor Feelings

An Asian American Reckoning

By: Cathy Park Hong
Narrated by: Cathy Park Hong
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER• ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE• A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness

“Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

In... Read more

The Maximum Security Book Club

Reading Literature in a Men's Prison

By: Mikita Brottman
Narrated by: Beverley A. Crick
Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

A riveting account of the two years literary scholar Mikita Brottman spent reading literature with criminals in a maximum-security men’s prison outside Baltimore, and what she learned from them—Orange Is the New Black meets Reading Lolita in Tehran.On sabbatical from teaching literature to undergraduates, and wanting to educate a different kind... Read more

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need

By: Jessica Brody
Narrated by: Jessica Brody
Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

The first novel-writing guide from the best-selling Save the Cat! story-structure series, which reveals the 15 essential plot points needed to make any novel a success.

Novelist Jessica Brody presents a comprehensive story-structure guide for novelists that applies the famed Save the Cat! screenwriting methodology to the world of novel writing.... Read more

Committed

On Meaning and Madwomen

By: Suzanne Scanlon
Narrated by: Suzanne Scanlon
Length: 10 hours 12 minutes

A raw and masterful memoir about becoming a woman and going mad—and doing both at once.
 
When Suzanne Scanlon was a student at Barnard in the 90s, grieving the loss of her mother—feeling untethered and swimming through inarticulable pain—she made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
 
After nearly three... Read more

How to Think Like a Woman

Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind

By: Regan Penaluna
Narrated by: Angie Kane
Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

As a young woman growing up in Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: Who are we, and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academic—the first step, she believed, to becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What she didn’t... Read more

Reading Like a Writer

A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

By: Francine Prose
Narrated by: Nanette Savard
Length: 9 hours 1 minute

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a... Read more

A Poetry Handbook

By: Mary Oliver
Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
Length: 3 hours 33 minutes

“Mary Oliver would probably never admit to anything so grandiose as an effort to connect the conscious mind and the heart (that’s what she says poetry can do), but that is exactly what she accomplishes in this stunning little handbook.”—Los Angeles TimesFrom the beloved, legendary poet, the ultimate guide to writing and understanding poetry.With... Read more

Mythologies

The Complete Edition, in a New Translation

By: Roland Barthes
Narrated by: John Lee
Length: 9 hours 12 minutes

What is astrology? Fiction for the bourgeoisie. The Tour de France? An epic. The brain of Einstein? Knowledge reduced to a formula. Like iconic images of movie stars or the rhetoric of politicians, they are fabricated. Once isolated from the events that gave birth to them, these "mythologies" appear for what they are: the ideology of mass... Read more

C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity

A Biography

Lives of the Great Religious Books

By: George M. Marsden
Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
Length: 5 hours 26 minutes

Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis's eloquent and winsome defense of the Christian faith, originated as a series of BBC radio talks broadcast during the dark days of World War Two. Here is the story of the extraordinary life and afterlife of this influential and much-beloved book. George Marsden describes how Lewis gradually went from being an... Read more

North by Shakespeare

A Rogue Scholar's Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard's Work

By: Michael Blanding
Narrated by: Will Collyer
Length: 15 hours 25 minutes

From the acclaimed author of The Map Thief comes the true story of a self-taught Shakespeare sleuth's quest to prove his eye-opening theory about the source of the English language's most famous plays.

A work of gripping non-fiction, North by Shakespeare presents the twinning narratives of rogue scholar Dennis McCarthy, called "the Steve Jobs of... Read more

The Oxford Inklings

Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle

By: Colin Duriez
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 6 hours 35 minutes

The Oxford Inklings tells the story of the friendships, mutual influence, and common purpose of the Inklings - the literary circle which congregated around C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Meeting in pubs or Lewis's college rooms, they included an influential array of literary figures. They were, claimed poet and novelist John Wain, bent on 'the... Read more

The Washington Book

How to Read Politics and Politicians

By: Carlos Lozada
Narrated by: Carlos Lozada
Length: 12 hours 49 minutes

The Pulitzer Prize–winning opinion columnist at The New York Times explores how people in power reveal themselves through their books and writings and, in so doing, illuminates the personal, political, and cultural conflicts driving Washington and the nation.

As a long-time book critic and columnist in Washington, Carlos Lozada dissects all... Read more

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler 50th Anniversary

Thalia Kids' Book Club

By: E. L. Konigsburg
Narrated by: Blue Balliett, Chris Grabenstein, Wendy Mass, Alexander London & Susannah Rodgers
Length: 1 hour 4 minutes

An afternoon of readings and lively discussion with contemporary authors, including Blue Balliett (Chasing Vermeer), Chris Grabenstein (Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library), Wendy Mass (The Candymakers), and Alexander London (The Wild Ones) who have been inspired by E. L. Konigsburg's Newbery Award-winning classic about a sister and brother who... Read more

Mythology

By: Edith Hamilton
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Dive into the timeless tales of gods and heroes in this bestselling A-to-Z encyclopedia detailing classic myths and legends—perfect for curious readers and academics alike. Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture-the... Read more

Trick Mirror

Reflections on Self-Delusion

By: Jia Tolentino
Narrated by: Jia Tolentino
Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire
 
Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia... Read more

Burning Questions

Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021

By: Margaret Atwood
Narrated by: Margaret Atwood & Full Cast
Length: 18 hours 59 minutes

“Atwood is brilliant--obviously, yes, but wonderfully so, nonetheless. These pieces took me to somewhere I have never traveled on the wings of a goddess. She informs, scolds, gives warnings, and inspires action. She talks about books she's written and books others have written. She speaks with authority and humility. I listen with awe and gratitude. Read more

Divine Might

Goddesses in Greek Myth

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

New York Times bestselling author Natalie Haynes returns to the world of ancient Greek myth in this scintillating follow-up to Pandora’s Jar.Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the... Read more

Bad Feminist

Essays

By: Roxane Gay
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

“Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there.”  — Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?A New York Times BestsellerBest Book of the Year: NPR • Boston Globe •... Read more

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

A Journey Through the Deep State

By: Kerry Howley
Narrated by: Nikki Massoud
Length: 7 hours

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A VANITY FAIR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.” – The New York Times

A wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America—from the acclaimed author of Thrown

Who are you? You are data... Read more

Orwell's Roses

By: Rebecca Solnit
Narrated by: Rebecca Solnit
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

“An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.” —Margaret Atwood

“A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker.” —Claire... Read more

Red Comet

The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

By: Heather Clark
Narrated by: Laura Jennings
Length: 45 hours 26 minutes

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.

“One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read." —Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed

With a... Read more

Happily

A Personal History-with Fairy Tales

By: Sabrina Orah Mark
Narrated by: Gilli Messer
Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

“In Happily, Mark spins magically surreal sketches of motherhood, art, and life. Woven from fairy tales refracted into reality, each essay shimmers with wit, candor, and whimsy. As sharp as a spindle, as ethereal as an eggshell - this gem like collection of memoir-fables will leave you enchanted. Read more

5 Minute Italian Short Stories for Beginners

A Fun and Easy Way to Learn Italian Fast With Just 5 Minutes a Day!

By: Speak Italian
Narrated by: Manuela Farina
Length: 4 hours 57 minutes

It’s the biggest conundrum of language learning:How can you become an amazing Italian speaker when you’re short on time? It’s easy: 5 Minute Italian short stories for beginners, that is. Let’s face it: We all have limited free time. So, how can you study Italian when you have only small shards of time available? Look no further: If you’re short... Read more

All Things Are Too Small

Essays in Praise of Excess

By: Becca Rothfeld
Narrated by: Ruth Crawford
Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as decluttering, mindfulness, David Cronenberg, sadomasochism, and women who wait. All Things Are Too Small is brilliant cultural and literary critic Becca Rothfeld’s plea for derangement: imbalance, obsession,... Read more

The Literature Book

Big Ideas Simply Explained

DK Big Ideas

By: DK
Narrated by: Katherine Press
Length: 15 hours 20 minutes

Exploring more than 100 of the world's most important literary works and the literary geniuses that created them, this book is the perfect introduction to the subject of literature and writing.

The Literature Book features some of the world's most celebrated books, plays, and poetry, including Latin American and African fiction, and best-selling... Read more

The Hidden Story of Narnia

A Book-By-Book Guide to C. S. Lewis' Spiritual Themes

By: Will Vaus
Narrated by: Will Vaus
Length: 5 hours 34 minutes

When ten-year-old Anne Waller from Suffolk England wrote to C. S. Lewis in 1961 with a question about The Chronicles of Narnia she never expected to receive a reply. However, not only did Lewis answer her letter, he also outlined the spiritual themes in each of the Narnia books. That letter served as inspiration for Will Vaus to write The Hidden... Read more

Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies

How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature

By: Elizabeth Winkler
Narrated by: Eunice Wong
Length: 14 hours 28 minutes

An “extraordinarily brilliant” and “pleasurably naughty” (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be.

The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most... Read more

Cassandra Speaks

When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes

By: Elizabeth Lesser
Narrated by: Xe Sands
Length: 6 hours 57 minutes

What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers?Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected... Read more

In Praise of Good Bookstores

By: Jeff Deutsch
Narrated by: Ako Mitchell
Length: 5 hours 1 minute

This audiobook narrated by Ako Mitchell provides an eloquent and charming reflection on the singular importance of bookstores

Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In this beautifully written book, Jeff Deutsch—the director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the... Read more

Year of the Monkey

By: Patti Smith
Narrated by: Patti Smith
Length: 4 hours 31 minutes

“Thanks to Libro.fm I just spent six hours with Patti Smith in my car. There is no better balm for getting unstuck than to listen to someone clearly enlivened by aging, loss, death and elections. Admittedly, Patti's global walkabout In The Year of the Monkey, a memoir of her life approaching the age of 70, often blurs dream and reality - and I've... Read more

Don't Panic

Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

By: Neil Gaiman
Narrated by: Simon Jones & Neil Gaiman
Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

Now in audiobook for the first time ever! Read by Simon Jones, the original “Arthur Dent,” and written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, Don’t Panic is the definitive chronicle of all things Hitchhiker!First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural... Read more

Writers on Walks: A BBC Radio 3 Collection

30 Reflections from Exploring on Foot

By: Robert Macfarlane, Deborah Levy, Jenn Ashworth, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Donkor, Michèle Roberts, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Ross Raisin, Owen Sheers, Nicholas Shakespeare, Nat Segnit, Sophie Coulombeau, Christopher Hope, Scarlett Thomas, Erica Wagner, Nicola Barker, Ian Samson, Kirsty Gunn & Philip Hoare
Narrated by: Various
Length: 6 hours 48 minutes

22 writers talk about their memorable excursions and the act of walking, and share their creative observations

In these six series, taken from BBC Radio 3's The Essay, an array of novelists, poets, journalists and biographers chart the varied and inspiring walks they have taken around Britain and elsewhere. Here are treks taken at daybreak and... Read more

Girlhood

By: Melissa Febos
Narrated by: Melissa Febos
Length: 8 hours 13 minutes

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
National Bestseller
Lambda Literary Award Finalist

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME * NPR * The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * Washington Independent Review of Books * The Millions * Electric Literature * Ms Magazine * Entropy Magazine * Largehearted Boy * Passerbuys

“Irreverent and... Read more

The Nutmeg's Curse

Parables for a Planet in Crisis

By: Amitav Ghosh
Narrated by: Sam Dastor
Length: 10 hours 12 minutes

In this ambitious successor to The Great Derangement, acclaimed writer Amitav Ghosh finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment.A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary... Read more

Index, A History of the

A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age

By: Dennis Duncan
Narrated by: Neil Gardner
Length: 8 hours 9 minutes

Most of us give little thought to the back of the book—it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or... Read more

Why We Read

On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out

By: Shannon Reed
Narrated by: Paige McKinney
Length: 8 hours 54 minutes

A hilarious and incisive exploration of the joys of reading from a teacher, bibliophile, and Thurber Prize Semifinalist

We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference, or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the... Read more

How to Read the Constitution--and Why

By: Kim Wehle
Narrated by: Kim Wehle
Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

""A must-read for this era.”—Jake Tapper, CNN Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent An insightful, urgent, and perennially relevant handbook that lays out in common sense language how the United States Constitution works, and how its protections are eroding before our eyes—essential reading for anyone who wants to understand and parse the... Read more

Reading Genesis

By: Marilynne Robinson
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
Length: 12 hours 41 minutes

One of our greatest novelists and thinkers presents a radiant, thrilling interpretation of the book of Genesis.

For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative.... Read more

God

A Biography

God in Three Classic Scriptures

By: Jack Miles
Narrated by: Michael Prichard
Length: 19 hours 13 minutes

What sort of "person" is God? Is it possible to approach him not as an object of religious reverence, but as the protagonist of the world's greatest book--as a character who possesses all the depths, contradictions, and abiguities of a Hamlet? In this "brilliant, audacious book" (Chicago Tribune), a former Jesuit marshalls a vast array of... Read more

A is for Arsenic

The Poisons of Agatha Christie

By: Kathryn Harkup
Narrated by: Nicky Diss
Length: 10 hours 55 minutes

Shortlisted for the BMA Book Awards and Macavity Awards 2016

Fourteen novels. Fourteen poisons. Just because it's fiction doesn’t mean it's all made-up ...

Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books; indeed, she employed it more than any other murder method, with the poison itself often being a... Read more

Bulfinch's Mythology

The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes

By: Thomas Bulfinch
Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
Length: 13 hours 52 minutes

First published in three separate volumes from 1855 to 1863, Bulfinch's Mythology quickly became the standard source of classic tales from ancient Greece and Rome, the Norse tradition, and beyond. This edition contains the full text of The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes, the first volume of Bulfinch's seminal work. From stories of... Read more

Origins of The Wheel of Time

The Legends and Mythologies that Inspired Robert Jordan

Wheel of Time

By: Michael Livingston
Narrated by: Harriet McDougal, Kate Reading, Michael Kramer & Michael Livingston
Length: 9 hours 35 minutes

This program includes a bonus interview with Rosamund Pike.

“Jordan has come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal.” —The New York Times on The Wheel of Time® series

Explore never-before-seen insights into the Wheel of Time, including:

—An alternate scene from an early draft of The Eye of the World
—The long-awaited backstory of Nakomi

Take a... Read more

The Art of Memoir

By: Mary Karr
Narrated by: Mary Karr
Length: 7 hours 20 minutes

Bestselling author and renowned professor Mary Karr offers a master class in the essential elements of great memoir—delivered with her signature wit, insight, and candor.Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash... Read more