Black Authors

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

By: Wole Talabi

Narrated by: Ben Arogundade

Length: 10 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

The debut fantasy novel from an award-winning, Nebula-nominated Nigerian authorA mythic tale of disgruntled gods, revenge, and a heist across two worlds, perfect for fans of Nnedi Okorafor, Neil Gaiman, Marlon James, and Karen LordShigidi is a disgruntled and demotivated nightmare god in the Orisha spirit company, reluctantly answering prayers... Read more

Pulling the Chariot of the Sun

By: Shane McCrae

Narrated by: Shane McCrae

Length: 5 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Vulture’s #1 Memoir of 2023

An unforgettable, “lyrical and poignant” (The Washington Post) memoir by an award-winning poet about being kidnapped from his Black father and raised by his white supremacist grandparents.

When Shane McCrae was three years old, his grandparents kidnapped him and took him to suburban Texas. His mom was white and his dad... Read more

Sing Me to Sleep

By: Gabi Burton

Narrated by: Dami Olukoya

Length: 12 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Bloomsbury presents Sing Me to Sleep by Gabi Burton, read by Dami Olukoya.

Featured in the New York Times, Glamour, Buzzfeed, and more!

In this dark and seductive YA fantasy debut, perfect for fans of Fourth Wing and These Violent Delights, a siren assassin falls for a forbidden man.

Killer. Liar. Soldier. Spy.

Saoirse is a killer: Her ability to... Read more

Her Good Side

By: Rebekah Weatherspoon

Narrated by: Marcella Cox & Daniel K. Isaac

Length: 7 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

**A New York Times Best Romance Book of the Year**

A swoony, heart-melting YA romance from beloved author Rebekah Weatherspoon about two awkward teens who decide to practice dating in order to be good at the real thing. Perfect for fans of Nicola Yoon and Jenny Han.

Sixteen-year-old Bethany Greene, though confident and self-assured, is what they... Read more

Homebodies

By: Tembe Denton-Hurst

Narrated by: Marcella Cox

Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

""[A] sharp, charming and passionate debut."" —New York Times Book Review A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Elle, USA Today, Bustle, Ebony, Harper’s Bazaar, PopSugar, New York Post, The Skimm, and The Millions.A Best Book of 2023 by Marie Claire, Esquire, Vogue, them, Autostraddle, Betches, Gay Times, and Cosmopolitan.An insightful, propulsive,... Read more

Ellie Engle Saves Herself

By: Leah Johnson

Narrated by: Rocky Anicette

Length: 6 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

From award-winning YA author Leah Johnson comes her middle grade debut: a laugh-until-you-cry, cry-until-you-laugh story about friendship, change, and the power we have to love ourselves. Ellie Engle doesn't stand out. Not at home, where she's alone with her pet fish since her dad moved away and her mom has to work around the clock . Not at the... Read more

Wonderland

By: Jennifer Hillier

Narrated by: Eunice Wong

Length: 11 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

From the bestselling author of the hugely popular thrillers Things We Do in the Dark, Little Secrets, and Jar of Hearts comes Wonderland, a roller coaster of a listen. Now in audio for the first time!

After a personal tragedy and professional scandal forces homicide detective Vanessa Castro out of Seattle, she takes a new job in Seaside,... Read more

Pomegranate

By: Helen Elaine Lee

Narrated by: Machelle Williams & Janina Edwards

Length: 12 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION

The acclaimed author of The Serpent’s Gift returns with this “deep and beautiful” (Jaqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author) story about a queer Black woman working to stay clean, pull her life together, and heal after being released from prison.

Ranita Atwater... Read more

My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix

By: Kalynn Bayron

Narrated by: Clifford Samuel

Length: 7 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

"Clifford Samuel's low, melodious voice sounds like it was made for this atmospheric queer retelling of the Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde story." - AudioFile Magazine

A teen boy tries to discover the reason behind his best friend's disappearance—and the arrival of a mysterious and magnetic stranger—in misty Victorian London, in Kalynn Bayron's My... Read more

Time's Undoing

By: Cheryl A. Head

Narrated by: Jade Wheeler & Ronald Peet

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

A searing and tender novel about a young Black journalist’s search for answers in the unsolved murder of her great-grandfather in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, decades ago—inspired by the author’s own family history

Birmingham, 1929: Robert Lee Harrington, a master carpenter, has just moved to Alabama to pursue a job opportunity, bringing... Read more

Sink

By: Joseph Earl Thomas

Narrated by: Joseph Earl Thomas

Length: 6 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture.

Stranded within an ever-shifting family’s desperate but volatile attempts to love, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack... Read more

Gone Like Yesterday

By: Janelle M. Williams

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 12 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK

A lyrical debut novel that asks what we owe to our families, what we owe to our ancestors, and what we owe to ourselves. Janelle M. Williams’s Gone Like Yesterday employs magical realism to explore the majestic and haunting experience of being a Black woman in today’s America.   
 
Gone Like Yesterday follows two... Read more

Against the Currant

By: Olivia Matthews

Narrated by: Janina Edwards

Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Little Caribbean, Brooklyn, New York: Lyndsay Murray is opening Spice Isle Bakery with her family, and it’s everything she’s ever wanted. The West Indian bakery is her way to give back to the community she loves, stay connected to her Grenadian roots, and work side-by-side with her family. The only thing getting a rise out of Lyndsay is Claudio... Read more

Promise Boys

By: Nick Brooks

Narrated by: Alfred Vines, Anthony Lopez, Brad Sanders, Chri...

Length: 6 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2024 Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production for Young Adults!

"Skilled vocal performances from more than a dozen narrators immerse listeners in a schoolyard murder mystery involving race, wealth, and power."- AudioFile

This audiobook features a full cast, musical accompaniment, and sound design. Listen along and become... Read more

Decent People

By: De'Shawn Charles Winslow

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Bloomsbury presents Decent People by De'Shawn Charles Winslow, read by Bahni Turpin.

From Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winning author De’Shawn Charles Winslow, a sweeping and unforgettable novel of a Black community reeling from a triple homicide, and the secrets the killings reveal.

In the still-segregated town of West Mills, North... Read more

Moonrise Over New Jessup

By: Jamila Minnicks

Narrated by: Karen Chilton

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a thought-provoking and enchanting debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the civil rights movement in Alabama.
 
It’s 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the... Read more

Jackal

By: Erin E. Adams

Narrated by: Sandra Okuboyejo & William DeMeritt

Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

RECOMMENDED BY GILLIAN FLYNN ON THE TODAY SHOW • A young Black girl goes missing in the woods outside her white rust belt town. But she's not the first—and she may not be the last. . . .

“I read this thriller that is Get Out meets The Vanishing Half in one night.”—BuzzFeed

“Extraordinary . . . A terrifying tale of fears and hatreds generated by... Read more

Split Decision

By: Ice-T, Spike & Douglas Century

Narrated by: Ice-T, Spike & Douglas Century

Length: 8 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Award-winning actor, rapper, and producer Ice-T unveils a compelling memoir of his early life robbing jewelry stores until he found fame and fortune—while a handful of bad choices sent his former crime partner down an incredibly different path.

Ice-T rose to fame in the late 1980s, earning acclaim for his music before going on to enthrall... Read more

Gathering Blossoms Under Fire

By: Alice Walker

Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis, Walker & Janina Edwards

Length: 22 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

From National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize­–winning author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker’s fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights and women’s activist, and intellectual.

For the first time, the... Read more

Memphis: A Read with Jenna Pick

By: Tara M. Stringfellow

Narrated by: Karen Murray, Adenrele Ojo & Tara Stringfellow

Length: 9 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy.

“A rhapsodic hymn to Black women.”—The New York Times Book Review

“I fell in love with this family, from... Read more

Like a Sister

By: Kellye Garrett

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 11 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

In this "crackling domestic suspense" filled with "wry humor and deft pacing" (Alyssa Cole), no one bats an eye when a Black reality TV star is found dead—except her estranged half-sister, whose refusal to believe the official story leads her on a dangerous search for the truth.

Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel • Lefty Award Winner for Best... Read more

Recitatif

By: Toni Morrison

Narrated by: Zadie Smith & Bahni Turpin

Length: 1 hour 54 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Nobel Prize winner—for the first time in a beautifully produced stand-alone edition, with an introduction by Zadie Smith
 
“A puzzle of a story, then—a game.... When [Morrison] called Recitatif an ‘experiment’ she... Read more

Black Love Matters

By: Jessica P. Pryde

Narrated by: Jessica P. Pryde, Gina Daniels, Julienne Irons,...

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

An incisive, intersectional essay anthology that celebrates and examines romance and romantic media through the lens of Black readers, writers, and cultural commentators, edited by Book Riot columnist and librarian Jessica Pryde.
 
Romantic love has been one of the most essential elements of storytelling for centuries. But for Black people in... Read more

African Town

By: Charles Waters & Irene Latham

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Ronald Peet, Andrew Eiden, ...

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda.... Read more