Literary Criticism bestsellers

Meet Me in the Margins

A Rom-Com for People Who Love Books

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

“I've LOLed many times while listening to this enemies-to-lovers romance about books. I almost predicted the twist but was thrown off by a character I never suspected. This book would be great for readers who would prefer a non-steamy read. I felt for Savannah as I learned more about her family's dynamic and how she has tried to navigate it.... Read more

Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik
Narrated by: Lili Anolik
Length: 12 hours 34 minutes

“"Art, my God, Joan, I'm embarrassed to mention it in front of you, you know, but you mentioned burning babies in locked cars so I can mention Art." Eve Babitz to Joan Didion, 1972. In this blazing memoir, one feels like they're out for drinks discussing '70s Hollywood sleaze, female chauvinist pigs, and Charles Manson with your wildly messy and... Read more

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

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

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

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

“In this literal master class on literature and writing, Saunders earnestly yet playfully dissects 19th-century Russian short stories to discover how they exude life to this very day, while highlighting methods any aspiring writer can employ. The huge bonus: reading the wondrous stories themselves, and experiencing Tolstoy’s authority, Chekhov’s... Read more

Splinters

Another Kind of Love Story

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

“Leslie Jamison is a truth-teller and this memoir about splitting with her husband and raising her infant daughter in her first year of life was absolutely gripping. Read it for the specificity of detail, the masterful descriptions of emotional and psychological shifts, and for her powerful prose. A knock-out! Read more

The Monster and the Mirror

Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell

By: K.J. Aiello
Narrated by: K.J. Aiello
Length: 9 hours 58 minutes

Revelatory memoir and cultural criticism that connects popular fantasy and our perceptions of mental illness to offer an empathetic path to compassionate care Growing up, K.J. Aiello was fascinated by magical stories of dragons, wizards, and fantasy, where monsters were not what they seemed and anything was possible. These books and films... 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

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

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

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

A Room of One's Own

By: Virginia Woolf
Narrated by: Frances Butt
Length: 4 hours 25 minutes

A Le Monde 100 Books of the Century book Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time. … [Woman] pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon... Read more

Craft in the Real World

Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping

By: Matthew Salesses
Narrated by: Matthew Salesses
Length: 5 hours 56 minutes

This national bestseller is "a significant contribution to discussions of the art of fiction and a necessary challenge to received views about whose stories are told, how they are told and for whom they are intended" (Laila Lalami, The New York Times Book Review).

The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind;... 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

Taylor Swift by the Book

The Literature behind the Lyrics, from Fairy Tales to Tortured Poets

By: Rachel Feder & Tiffany Tatreau
Narrated by: Tiffany Tatreau
Length: 6 hours 49 minutes

From the childhood nostalgia of Peter Pan in Speak Now to the haunted halls of Rebecca in Evermore, Taylor Swift’s lyrics are packed with literary connections. Make sure you’re catching them all with this expert guide to the novels, poems, and plays that influenced her songwriting.Let a literature professor and a musical theater artist guide you... Read more

Why Read Moby-Dick?

By: Nathaniel Philbrick
Narrated by: Nathaniel Philbrick
Length: 2 hours 33 minutes

A “brilliant and provocative” (The New Yorker) celebration of Melville’s masterpiece—from the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye

One of the greatest American novels finds its perfect contemporary champion in Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick’s enlightening and entertaining tour... Read more

Dangerous Fictions

The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality

By: Lyta Gold
Narrated by: Amy O'Donnell
Length: 11 hours 51 minutes

In a political moment when social panics over literature are at their peak, Dangerous Fictions is a mind-expanding treatise on the nature of fictional stories as cultural battlegrounds for power. Fictional stories have long held an uncanny power over hearts and minds, especially those of young people. In Dangerous Fictions, Lyta Gold traces... Read more

Sensuous Knowledge

A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone

By: Minna Salami
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 7 hours 15 minutes

The creator of the internationally popular, multiple award-winning blog MsAfropolitan applies an Africa-centered feminist sensibility to issues of racism and sexism, challenging our illusions about oppression and liberation and daring women to embrace their power.

Sensuous Knowledge is a collection of thought provoking essays that explore... Read more

Metamorphoses

In Search of Franz Kafka

By: Karolina Watroba
Narrated by: Deborah Balm
Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

In 2024, exactly one hundred years after his death at the age of forty, readers all over the world will reach for the works of Franz Kafka. Many of them will want to learn more about the enigmatic man behind the classic books filled with mysterious courts and monstrous insects. Who, exactly, was Franz Kafka? Karolina Watroba, the first Germanist... Read more

The Law of Superheroes

By: James Daily, J.D. & Ryan Davidson, J.D.
Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
Length: 7 hours 58 minutes

Could Superman sue if someone exposed his identity as Clark Kent? Is a life sentence for an immortal like Apocalypse “cruel and unusual punishment?” Is X-ray vision a violation of search and seizure laws? Is the Joker legally insane? And who foots the bill when a hero destroys a skyscraper or two while defending Metropolis?Fear not, gentle... 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

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Essays

Picador Modern Classics

By: Joan Didion
Narrated by: Maya Hawke
Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

“In this snapshot of mid-century American culture, Didion, deliberate and unabashed, takes the reader on journeys across the United States - from Newport, to Sacramento, to Hollywood, to Hawaii, and back to San Francisco - digesting political unrest, youthful buoyancy, and fundamental questions of morality and human responsibility. Her essays... Read more

Jane Austen at Home

A Biography (250th Birthday Edition)

By: Lucy Worsley
Narrated by: Lucy Worsley
Length: 17 hours 17 minutes

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, Lucy Worsley has written a new Introduction to her Sunday Times Bestselling biography - the book that leads us into the rooms from which our best-loved novelist quietly changed the world.

This telling of the story of Jane's life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the... 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

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

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

Divine Might

Goddesses in Greek Myth

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

“Natalie Haynes writes as if she knows these goddesses personally, and this audiobook is her telling us all their secrets. I found myself falling back in love with greek mythology, and looking at it's female deities in new lights, for better and for worse. Read more

The Real Lolita

The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World

By: Sarah Weinman
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

“Any fan of Nabokov’s Lolita will be enthralled by Sarah Weinman’s investigation of the real-life kidnapping and sexual assault that became the basis for the 20th-century masterpiece. Weinman dives deep into the archives to piece together the ties between fact and fiction, even when the author or the victim’s family refused to discuss history.... 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 is my favorite way to experience poetry - in the company of a deeply kind, wise-hearted, warmly funny, poetry-loving friend like Pádraig Ó Tuama who here introduces each specially selected poem, mostly by poets writing today, allows it to blow your mind and break your heart, and then walks you through what makes it so special. This is a... 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.

“[Suzanne] Toren's narration highlights Genesis as a work of literature that is especially beautiful when read aloud.”—AudioFile

For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various... 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

A Wilder Shore

The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson

By: Camille Peri
Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
Length: 16 hours 14 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE PICK

“Engrossing . . . [A] richly researched and vivid double portrait.” —Phyllis Rose, The Atlantic

“A love story, an adventure story, two literary biographies in one; A Wilder Shore is these things and more—and it's very, very good.” —Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha... 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

The Saga of the Volsungs

With The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok

By: Jackson Crawford
Narrated by: Jackson Crawford
Length: 4 hours 51 minutes

From the translator of the bestselling Poetic Edda comes a gripping new rendering of two of the greatest sagas of Old Norse literature. Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members—including, among others, the dragon slayer... Read more

Recognizing the Stranger

On Palestine and Narrative

By: Isabella Hammad
Narrated by: Isabella Hammad
Length: 2 hours 28 minutes

Nine days before October 7, 2023, award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of... Read more

The Uptown Local

Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: A Memoir

By: Cory Leadbeater
Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
Length: 6 hours

A brilliant debut memoir about a young writer—struggling with depression, family issues, and addiction—and his life-changing decade working for Joan DidionAs an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days... Read more

Agatha Christie’s Marple

Expert on Wickedness

By: Mark Aldridge
Narrated by: Jane Slavin
Length: 11 hours 41 minutes

A new investigation from Dr Mark Aldridge, exploring a lifetime of Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple. In Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness,‘Agathologist’ Dr Mark Aldridge looks at nearly a century of St Mary Mead’s most famous resident and uses his own detective skills to uncover new... Read more

All of the Marvels

A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told

By: Douglas Wolk
Narrated by: Douglas Wolk
Length: 12 hours 27 minutes

Winner of the 2022 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

The first-ever full reckoning with Marvel Comics’ interconnected, half-million-page story, a revelatory guide to the “epic of epics”—and to the past sixty years of American culture—from a beloved authority on the subject who read all 27,000+... 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

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

Nothing Personal

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: JD Jackson
Length: 1 hour 10 minutes

James Baldwin’s critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of readers.

Available for the first time in a stand-alone edition, Nothing Personal is Baldwin’s deep probe into the American condition. Considering the Black... 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

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

No Judgment

Essays

By: Lauren Oyler
Narrated by: Lauren Oyler
Length: 8 hours 46 minutes

“You know a book of essays is written with panache when it can appeal to both 30 year olds (my son) and 60 year olds (me). I especially enjoyed the My Anxiety essay as I felt a kinship with Lauren Oyler's unique issues. Her sardonic view of self-help gurus in The Power of Vulnerability was also humorously delicious. 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

Girlhood

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

Bloomsbury presents Girlhood written and read by Melissa Febos.

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... 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

Bibliophobia

A Memoir

By: Sarah Chihaya
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Length: TBA

“A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.”—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

“A must for the obsessive reader.”—Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably... Read more