Literary Criticism bestsellers

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 »

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 »

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 »

Meet Me in the Margins

“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. There were moments that I have rolled my eyes at because of course the character doesn't know she's living in a romance novel. Overall, this was a fun read/listen.”

Joey, The Bluestocking Bookshop

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

“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 humanity, and the joy and glory of Gogol.”

Mike Hare, Northshire Bookstore

“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 »

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

"Riveting and darkly funny and, in all senses of the word, unclassifiable... Howley's extraordinary book feels both startling and inevitable."
—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times



Who are you? You are data about data. You are a map of connections—a... Read more »

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 NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From "one of our most nuanced thinkers on the intersections of race, class, and feminism" (Cathy Park Hong, New York Times bestselling author of Minor Feelings) comes a memoir "as electric as the title suggests" (Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom).

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME... Read more »

The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th century Russia, that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia.Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the... Read more »

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller—and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

"Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you... Read more »

Undoing Gender constitutes Judith Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality, focusing on new kinship, psychoanalysis and the incest taboo, transgender, intersex, diagnostic categories, social violence, and the tasks of social transformation. In terms that draw from feminist and queer theory, Butler considers the norms that govern--and... Read more »

A collection of essays and other non fiction from Terry Pratchett, spanning the whole of his writing career from his early years to the present day.
     Terry Pratchett has earned a place in the hearts of readers the world over with his bestselling Discworld series -- but in recent years he has become equally well-known and respected as an... Read more »

Please note: This audiobook has been created using AI voice. The Tempest, thought to be one of the last plays that Shakespeare wrote alone, begins with a storm which shipwrecks the king of Naples and his crew. We quickly learn that the tempest was not a natural occurence; it was created by Prospero, the usurped duke of Milan who is stranded on... Read more »

A history of one of humankind’s most resilient and influential technologies over the past millennium—the book. Revelatory and entertaining in equal measure, Portable Magic will charm and challenge literature lovers of all kinds as it illuminates the transformative power and eternal appeal of the written word.

Stephen King once said that books are... Read more »

“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 »

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 »

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 »

“The queer memoir you’ve been waiting for”—Carmen Maria MachadoGrace Lavery is a reformed druggie, an unreformed omnisexual chaos Muppet, and 100 percent, all-natural, synthetic female hormone monster. As soon as she solves her “penis problem,” she begins receiving anonymous letters, seemingly sent by a cult of sinister clowns, and sets out on a... Read more »

“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 »

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 »

The go-to bestselling guide to help young people navigate from a middle school book report to English Comp 101In How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times bestselling author and professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers.With funny insights and a conversational style, he... Read more »

A beautifully written memoir-in-essays on fairy tales and their surprising relevance to modern life, from a Jewish woman raising Black children in the American South—based on her acclaimed Paris Review column “Happily”

“One of the most inventive, phenomenally executed books I’ve read in decades.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

The literary... Read more »

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 »

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A vibrant portrait of four college friends—Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley—who formed a new philosophical tradition while Oxford's men were away fighting World War II.

The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In... Read more »

Year of the Monkey

“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 not worked out the meaning of the candy wrappers yet - but still. This book has got soul, and I've listened to it twice. Aside from learning that she likes beans and eggs for breakfast, Patti writes with a raw and compelling lucidity about being, writing, gratitude and truth. Listen to it twice.”

Nancy, Northshire Bookstore

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 »

One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year 


THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED―ABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!―TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS

No one who read Elif Batuman's first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. "Babel in California" told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University... Read more »

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 »

Sneha Mathan narrates these luminous essays on translation and self-translation by award-winning writer and literary translator Jhumpa Lahiri
With an introduction, afterword, and acknowledgements read by the author

Translating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa... Read more »

Burning Questions

“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.”

Bob, Changing Hands

In the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged as an inviting, consoling outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise. This generous anthology pairs fifty illuminating poems with poet and podcast host Pádraig Ó Tuama's appealing, unhurried reflections. With keen insight and... Read more »

This CliffsNotes study guide on J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye supplements the original literary work, giving you background information about the author, an introduction to the work, a graphical character map, critical commentaries, expanded glossaries, and a comprehensive index, all for you to use as an educational tool that will allow... Read more »

How do you tell the story of a feminist education, when the work of feminism can never be perfected or completed? In A Sentimental Education, Hannah McGregor, the podcaster behind Witch, Please and Secret Feminist Agenda, explores what podcasting has taught her about doing feminist scholarship not as a methodology but as a way of life. Moving... Read more »

The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings—the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years... Read more »

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 »

From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers—from Shakespeare to James Joyce,... Read more »

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 »

The CliffsNotes study guide on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 supplements the original literary work, giving you background information about the author, an introduction to the work, a graphical character map, critical commentaries, expanded glossaries, and a comprehensive index, all for you to use as an educational tool that will allow you to... Read more »

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 »

"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 »

In Cross of Snow, the result of more than twelve years of research, including access to never-before-examined letters, diaries, journals, notes, Nicholas Basbanes reveals the life, the times, the work—the soul—of the man who shaped the literature of a new nation with his countless poems, sonnets, stories, essays, translations, and whose renown... Read more »

A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literatureWhat is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work—over the... Read more »

“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 »

Icelanders believe in elves. Why does that make you laugh?, asks Nancy Marie Brown, in this wonderfully quirky exploration of our interaction with nature. Looking for answers in history, science, religion, and art—from ancient times to today—Brown finds that each discipline defines what is real and unreal, natural and supernatural, demonstrated... Read more »

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 »

What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

“ What We Talk About When We Talk About Books healed some real cracks in my relationship with reading, and reinforced my love and optimism for the written word. Book historian Leah Price guides you through all the myths, melodrama, and baggage modern culture is carrying around about books. Through a humorous and curiosity-filled tour of book history, she unpacks why so many of us feel so much pressure to read the right things in the right way, and why we've come to feel like doing so would whip our brains into shape and make us into zen, hyper-focused superhumans. Price's measured take on things made me feel like it's all going to be okay. Elisabeth Rodgers' cool, clear voice was the perfect narration.”

Tova, Busboys and Poets Books

In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor, a classic work described by Newsweek as “one of the most liberating books of its time.” A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them... Read more »

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 »

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 »