Literary Criticism bestsellers

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

Monsters

A Fan's Dilemma

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

“In this personal critique of creative genius Dederer examines the phenomena of cancel culture. Exploring relationships between artist and audience/fan and whether it's possible to have the proverbial "cake and eat it" too. Lots of food for thought. 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

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

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

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

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

Poetry Unbound

50 Poems to Open Your World

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

“This collection could easily be subtitled How to Read Poetry Like a Poetry Lover. The collection could also easily double as a memoir, as Ó Tuama not only analyzes the 50 poems within, but shares anecdotes and memories that illuminate why each particular poem resonates with him. Listening to him is like having a passionate conversation about... 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

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

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

Warmth

Coming of Age at the End of Our World

By: Daniel Sherrell
Narrated by: Daniel Sherrell
Length: 7 hours 27 minutes

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2021 BY THE NEW YORKER AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“[Warmth] is lyrical and erudite, engaging with science, activism, and philosophy . . . [Sherrell] captures the complicated correspondence between hope and doubt, faith and despair—the pendulum of emotional states that defines our attitude toward the future.” —The New Yorker... Read more

Once Upon a Prime

The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature

By: Sarah Hart
Narrated by: Sarah Hart
Length: 8 hours 51 minutes

This program is read by the author.

"An exuberant enthusiasm for mathematics (and life in general) shines through Dr. Hart." —The New York Times

“An absolute joy to read!" —Steven Levitt, New York Times bestselling author of Freakonomics

"Listeners, however well versed in literature and mathematics, or not, will relish author/narrator Sarah Hart's... Read more

We Are the Baby-Sitters Club

Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers

By: Marisa Crawford & Megan Milks
Narrated by: Brittany Pressley, Ali Ahn, Emily Bauer, Erin Moon, Susan Heyward, Leigh Ponce, Daniel Henning, Dani Martineck, Nikki Massoud, Marisa Crawford, Megan Milks & Mara Wilson
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

A nostalgia-packed, star-studded anthology featuring contributors such as Kristen Arnett, Yumi Sakugawa, Myriam Gurba, and others exploring the lasting impact of Ann M. Martin’s beloved Baby-Sitters Club series

In 1986, the first-ever meeting of the Baby-Sitters Club was called to order in a messy bedroom strewn with RingDings, scrunchies, and a... Read more

The Art of Language Invention

From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building

By: David J. Peterson
Narrated by: David J. Peterson
Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

An insider’s tour through the construction of invented languages from the bestselling author and creator of languages for the HBO series Game of Thrones and the Syfy series Defiance

From master language creator David J. Peterson comes a creative guide to language construction for sci-fi and fantasy fans, writers, game creators, and language... Read more

Wives and Daughters

Penguin Classics

By: Elizabeth Gaskell
Narrated by: Laura Aikman
Length: 26 hours 56 minutes

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Laura Aikman. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Pam Norris.

Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centres on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries a new stepsister, Cynthia,... Read more

An Angel Walks Through the Stage and Other Essays

By: Jon Fosse
Narrated by: Kåre Conradi
Length: TBA

Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature Jon Fosse said farewell to theory early in his career, choosing poetry, fiction, and drama as his mediums of choice. Here, however, in a selection from his two books of essays, we see just how incisive a critic and memoirist he can be. Not only including a generous portion of Fosse's writing on... 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

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

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

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

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

Twenty-five Books That Shaped America

By: Thomas C. Foster
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
Length: 12 hours 1 minute

Thomas C. Foster, acclaimed author of the phenomenal bestseller How to Read Literature Like a Professor, returns with a hugely entertaining appreciation of twenty-five works of literature that have greatly influenced the American identity. In a delightfully informative, often wry manner, Twenty-Five Books that Shaped America looks closely at... 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

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

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

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

Autobiography of a Yogi

By: Paramhansa Yogananda
Narrated by: Andrew Hoffland
Length: 18 hours 30 minutes

"You realise that all along there was something tremendous within you, and you did not know it." - Paramhansa Yogananda. Paramahansa Yogananda was one of those great spiritual teachers in India who introduced the ancient wisdom of Kriya yoga, to the western world. His book Autobiography of a Yogi, which was first published in 1946, has been... 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

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

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

Weightless

Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul

By: Evette Dionne
Narrated by: Evette Dionne
Length: 7 hours 54 minutes

A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender—and toward a brighter future—from National Book Award nominee Evette DionneMy body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.In this insightful,... 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

“I’m convinced that Patti Smith is the reincarnation of some spiritual mystic. Someone like Joan of Arc or Hildegard von Bingen. At this point I am committed to only listening to her audiobooks because her words are even more powerful in her own dreamy cadence. I sound like a school girl mooning over her first loved celebrity but, I can’t say... Read more

The Black Box

Writing the Race

By: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.”
— Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste

“This is a... 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

Breaking Bread with the Dead

A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

By: Alan Jacobs
Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
Length: 4 hours 51 minutes

“At a time when many Americans . . . are engaged in deep reflection about the meaning of the nation's history [this] is an exceptionally useful companion for those who want to do so with honesty and integrity.” —Shelf Awareness

From the author of How to Think and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, a literary guide to engaging with... Read more

Notes of a Native Son

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Ron Butler
Length: 5 hours 3 minutes

At last, a new audio edition of the book many have called James Baldwin's most influential work!Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained... Read more

Gods, Heroes & Monsters

By: Mark Daniels
Narrated by: Mike Cooper
Length: 4 hours 18 minutes

Since the dawn of communication, humankind has looked around itself and used myths and legends to make sense of the world. Imaginative tales of goddesses, heroes, villains and beasts bring understanding to the biggest questions in life: Who made the world? What happens when we die? Where did we come from? How should we live our lives? Gods,... Read more

Read Dangerously

The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

By: Azar Nafisi
Narrated by: Azar Nafisi
Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide to the power of literature in turbulent times, arming readers with a resistance reading list, ranging from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood.""[A] stunning look at the power of reading. ... Provokes and inspires at every turn.""... Read more

Cold Warriors

Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War

By: Duncan White
Narrated by: Fred Sanders
Length: 24 hours 47 minutes

A brilliant, invigorating account of the great writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain who played the dangerous games of espionage, dissidence and subversion that changed the course of the Cold War.During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the... Read more

Changing My Mind

Occasional Essays

By: Zadie Smith
Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
Length: 12 hours 25 minutes

"[These essays] reflect a lively, unselfconscious, rigorous, erudite, and earnestly open mind that's busy refining its view of life, literature, and a great deal in between." —Los Angeles Times

Split into five sections--Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering--Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both... Read more

The Iliad

By: Homer
Narrated by: Alfred Molina
Length: 16 hours 3 minutes

From the renowned translator of Rilke, Tao Te Ching, and Gilgamesh, a vivid new translation of Western civilization’s foundational epic: The Iliad.

Tolstoy called the Iliad a miracle; Goethe said that it always thrust him into a state of astonishment. Homer’s story is thrilling, and his Greek is perhaps the most beautiful poetry ever sung or... Read more

Super-Infinite

The Transformations of John Donne

By: Katherine Rundell
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 7 hours 3 minutes

From standout scholar Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite presents a sparkling and very modern biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death.Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing.In his myriad lives he was a scholar of... Read more

Ulysses by James Joyce

By: James Joyce
Narrated by: Sam Blair , Pietro Kelley, Teo Harding, Sefa Chandler, Clarissa Meyer Samuel Welch, Arina Sharp, Joshua Riley
Length: 31 hours 28 minutes

Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris. It is considered one of the most important works of Modernist literature.
Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main... Read more

Eat Your Mind

The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker

By: Jason McBride
Narrated by: Candace Thaxton
Length: 13 hours 13 minutes

“It’s shocking to learn that this is McBride’s first book...Eat Your Mind does everything a good biography should and more” —Los Angeles Times

The first full-scale authorized biography of the pioneering experimental novelist Kathy Acker, one of the most original and controversial figures in 20th-century American literature.

Kathy Acker... Read more

Shakespeare

By: Bill Bryson
Narrated by: Bill Bryson
Length: 5 hours 28 minutes

Shakespeare: The Illustrated Edition is an exquisitely illustrated, updated edition of Bill Bryson’s bestselling biography of William Shakespeare that takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship. With more than 100 color and black-and-white illustrations throughout, and... Read more

Praying with Jane Eyre

Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice

By: Vanessa Zoltan
Narrated by: Vanessa Zoltan & Cassandra Campbell
Length: 7 hours 21 minutes

“In these soaring, open-hearted essays, Vanessa Zoltan writes with fierce brilliance about suffering, survival, and the kind of meaning in life that can withstand real scrutiny.”—John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed
 
 
A deeply felt celebration of a classic novel--and a reflection on the ways our... 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

How to Read Now

Essays

By: Elaine Castillo
Narrated by: Elaine Castillo
Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

“How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories.”

“A book that doesn’t seek to shut down the current literary discourse so much as shake it up.” (The New York Times Book... Read more