Literary Criticism bestsellers

Monsters

A Fan's Dilemma

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

“What do we do with the great art of monstrous men (and women)? Do we throw away all of its merit, determining it filthy and unworthy of our admiration? Do we separate the art from the artist, and the impact it’s had on society? Studying a variety of influential figures of the past, and the acts they committed, author Clare Dederer tackles this... 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

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

“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

“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

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

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

Words Are My Matter

Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a Writer’s Week

By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: Laural Merlington
Length: 13 hours 16 minutes

“The legendary Ursula K. Le Guin grants us a little further insight into a mind that has shaped worlds and readers for decades. Le Guin’s language is remarkable, poetic, and precise, whether venerating another artist or gently mocking literary critics. This collection of essays, speeches, and short nonfiction runs a gamut of subjects and topics,... 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

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

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

Jane Austen's Bookshelf

A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend

By: Rebecca Romney
Narrated by: Rebecca Romney
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure that introduces readers to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves.

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that... Read more

One in a Millennial

On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In

By: Kate Kennedy
Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

“Kate Kennedy’s One in a Millennial is the memoir you didn’t know you needed to understand the chaos of adulting in the digital age. She blends pop culture references with millennial struggles like navigating mental health, figuring out relationships, and making sense of a world that’s kinda falling apart. It’s raw, funny, and real—perfect for... 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

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

The Gift

How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World

By: Lewis Hyde
Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
Length: 13 hours 35 minutes

A modern classic cherished by many of the greatest artists of our time, The Gift is a brilliant, life-changing defense of the value of creative labor.Drawing on examples from folklore and literature, history and tribal customs, economics and modern copyright law, Lewis Hyde demonstrates how our society—governed by the marketplace—is poorly... 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

Trauma Plot

A Life

By: Jamie Hood
Narrated by: Jamie Hood
Length: 9 hours 34 minutes

From a rising literary star and the author of how to be a good girl comes a brilliant, biting, and beautifully wrought memoir of trauma and the cost of survival

"Hood descends into the terrifying dark of the unsayable with the dimmest of flashlights and returns bearing verbal gems, treasures, and marvels. Trauma Plot is a glass case of such... 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

High Weirdness

Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies

By: Erik Davis
Narrated by: Erik Davis
Length: 20 hours 57 minutes

An exploration of the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson.



A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from... Read more

Sex with Shakespeare

Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love

By: Jillian Keenan
Narrated by: Jillian Keenan
Length: 9 hours 56 minutes

A provocative, moving, kinky, and often absurdly funny memoir about Shakespeare, love, obsession, and spankingWhen it came to understanding love, a teenage Jillian Keenan had nothing to guide her—until a production of The Tempest sent Shakespeare’s language flowing through her blood for the first time. In Sex with Shakespeare, she tells the... Read more

The Written World

The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization

By: Martin Puchner
Narrated by: Arthur Morey
Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

The story of literature in sixteen acts—from Homer to Harry Potter, including The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote, The Communist Manifesto, and how they shaped world history

In this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the how stories and literature have created the world we... Read more

Authority

Essays

By: Andrea Long Chu
Narrated by: Andrea Long Chu
Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

Read by the author, this bold, provocative collection of essays asks one of the most urgent questions of our time: What is authority when everyone has an opinion on everything?

Since her canonical 2017 essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the... Read more

Thalia Book Club: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah

Thalia Book Club

By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Narrated by: Robin Desser & Francesca Choy-Kee
Length: 1 hour 11 minutes

The author of the critically acclaimed Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus presents her newest novel Americanah, a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria facing challenges in the countries they come to call home. Read more

Every Day I Read

53 Ways to Get Closer to Books

By: Hwang Bo-reum
Length: TBA

From the internationally bestselling author of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop comes a warm and reflective collection of essays about reading, language and life.

Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure?

Rarely do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves... Read more

Revisionaries

What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, and Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers

By: Kristopher Jansma
Narrated by: Greg D. Barnett
Length: 8 hours 58 minutes

Find creative inspiration in this fascinating rummage through the wastebaskets, secret diaries, and abandoned files of twenty literary superstars.



If you like to write—whether it's a pastime, a passion, or a profession—you've probably found yourself reading something brilliant and thinking, "I could never do this! I might as well give up." But if... Read more

La ira de México

Siete voces contra la impunidad

By: Lydia Cacho, Sergio González Rodríguez, Anabel Hernández, Marcela Turati, Diego Enrique Osorno, Emiliano Ruiz Parra, Elena Poniatowska & Juan Villoro
Narrated by: Karina Castillo & Ricardo Méndez
Length: 9 hours 48 minutes

Los periodistas más importantes de México dan voz a la indignación popular, en uno de los países más peligrosos para ejercer el periodismo. En estas páginas se reúnen los trabajos de varios de los periodistas más importantes de México: Juan Villoro, Lydia Cacho, Marcela Turati, Segio González Rodríguez, Anabel Hernández, Diego Enrique Osorno, y... Read more

How to Write Like a Writer

A Sharp and Subversive Guide to Ignoring Inhibitions, Inviting Inspiration, and Finding Your True Voice

By: Thomas C. Foster
Narrated by: David de Vries
Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

The New York Times bestselling author of the beloved classic How to Read Literature Like a Professor teaches you how to write everything from a report for your community association to a meaningful memoir in this masterful and engaging guide.Combing anecdotes and hard-won lessons from decades of teaching and writing—and invoking everyone from... Read more

The Great War and Modern Memory

By: Paul Fussell
Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
Length: 15 hours 44 minutes

Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a... 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

Bibliophobia

A Memoir

By: Sarah Chihaya
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

“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] stirring and sparkling new memoir.”—The Washington Post

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH: Time, Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes,... Read more

Signs and Wonders

Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss

By: Delia Falconer
Narrated by: Delia Falconer
Length: 7 hours 41 minutes

Winner of the 2022 Nib Literary Awards.

Chosen as a 2021 ‘Book of the Year’ in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Book Review.

The celebrated, Walkley Award-winning author on how global warming is changing not only our climate but our culture. Beautifully observed, brilliantly argued and deeply felt, these essays show that our... Read more

Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik
Narrated by: Lili Anolik
Length: 12 hours 45 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

Jane Austen at Home

A Biography (250th Birthday Edition)

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

THE REMARKABLE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE BBC'S MISS AUSTEN: THE PERFECT GIFT FOR ANY JANE AUSTEN LOVER

Readers LOVE Jane Austen at Home:

'A "tour de force" which should be in the reading list of anyone who has either read the books or watched the film adaptations.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'This book is a delight . . . I will return to Austen's novels with a... 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

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

Everything Must Go

The Stories We Tell About the End of the World

By: Dorian Lynskey
Narrated by: Dorian Lynskey
Length: 14 hours 49 minutes

A rich, captivating, and darkly humorous look into the evolution of apocalyptic thought, exploring how film and literature interact with developments in science, politics, and culture, and what factors drive our perennial obsession with the end of the world.

As Dorian Lynskey writes, “People have been contemplating the end of the world for... Read more

Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

A Memoir in Essays

By: Nicole Graev Lipson
Narrated by: Nicole Graev Lipson
Length: 8 hours 8 minutes

In this intimate and riveting memoir, Best American Essayist Nicole Graev Lipson breaks through the ready-made stories of womanhood, rescuing truth from the fiction that infiltrates our lives. What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to... 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

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

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

How to Read a Book

The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

By: Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
Narrated by: Edward Holland
Length: 15 hours 25 minutes

A CNN Book of the Week: “Explains not just why we should read books, but how we should read them. It’​s masterfully done.” —Farheed Zakaria

Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic... Read more

Year of the Monkey

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

“A poetic, ruminative dream of a book, Year of the Monkey chronicles a difficult year in a mesmerizing and unpredictable way. Everything Smith writes feels like a gift, and this is no exception. 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

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

Bad Sex

Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution

By: Nona Willis Aronowitz
Narrated by: Nona Willis Aronowitz
Length: 9 hours 44 minutes

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Bustle, Esquire, Nylon, and The Millions

“Intimate, thoughtful, and accessible to anyone struggling with the persistent, maddening inequities of contemporary sex.” –Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad

From Teen Vogue sex and love columnist Nona Willis Aronowitz, a blend of memoir,... 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

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

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 Hour of Land

A Personal Topography of America's National Parks

By: Terry Tempest Williams
Narrated by: Terry Williams
Length: 11 hours 1 minute

For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why close to 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now, to honor the centennial of the National Park Service, Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the beloved memoir When Women Were Birds, returns... Read more

How a Poem Moves 

A Field Guide for Readers of Poetry

By: Adam Sol
Narrated by: Adam Sol & Soraya Peerbaye
Length: 5 hours 22 minutes

A collection of playfully elucidating essays to help reluctant poetry readers become well-versed in verseDeveloped from Adam Sol’s popular blog, How a Poem Moves is a collection of 35 short essays that walks readers through an array of contemporary poems. Sol is a dynamic teacher, and in these essays, he has captured the humor and engaging... Read more