Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Rising

By: Sharon Wood

Narrated by: Emily Durante

Length: 8 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

In Rising, Wood reflects on the seventy days she spent on Everest and on the pivotal experiences and influences that brought her to that staggeringly beautiful and austere corner of the world. Beyond the physical hardships, she faced personal challenges as an outlier in the male bastion of Himalayan climbing. These were compounded by the vexing... Read more

When Time Stopped

By: Ariana Neumann

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

Length: 10 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

In this astonishing story that “reads like a thriller and is so, so timely” (BuzzFeed) Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: “Like Anne Frank’s diary, it offers a story that needs to be told and heard” (Booklist, starred review).

In 1941, the first Neumann family member was taken by the Nazis, arrested in German-occupied... Read more

Imperfect Union

By: Steve Inskeep

Narrated by: Steve Inskeep

Length: 13 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Steve Inskeep tells the riveting story of John and Jessie Frémont, the husband and wife team who in the 1800s were instrumental in the westward expansion of the United States, and thus became America's first great political couple

John C. Frémont, one of the United States’s leading explorers of the nineteenth century, was relatively unknown in... Read more

Ordinary Girls

By: Jaquira Diaz

Narrated by: Almarie Guerra

Length: 10 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

A fierce, beautiful, and unflinching memoir from a wildly talented debut author



While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz found herself caught between extremes: as her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was surrounded by the love of her friends; as she longed for a family and... Read more

Life Undercover

By: Amaryllis Fox

Narrated by: Amaryllis Fox

Length: 7 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 

“Fast and thrilling . . . Life Undercover reads as if a John le Carré character landed in Eat Pray Love." —The New York Times

Amaryllis Fox's riveting memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while... Read more

Eyes to the Wind

By: Ady Barkan

Narrated by: Bradley Whitford

Length: 9 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

In this “gripping story of resistance and the triumph of human will” (Senator Elizabeth Warren), activist and subject of the documentary Not Going Quietly Ady Barkan explores his life with ALS and how his diagnosis gave him a profound new understanding of his commitment to social justice for all.

Ady Barkan loved taking afternoon runs on the... Read more

Diamond Doris

By: Doris Payne

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 6 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

In the ebullient spirit of Ocean’s 8, The Heist, and Thelma & Louise, a sensational and entertaining memoir of the world’s most notorious jewel thief—a woman who defied society’s prejudices and norms to carve her own path, stealing from elite jewelers to live her dreams.Growing up during the Depression in the segregated coal town of Slab... Read more

Perfect Sound Whatever

By: James Acaster

Narrated by: James Acaster

Length: 6 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

The brand new memoir from James Acaster: cult comedian, bestselling author of Classic Scrapes, undercover cop, receiver of cabbages.

PERFECT SOUND WHATEVER is a love letter to the healing power of music, and how one man's obsessive quest saw him defeat the bullshit of one year with the beauty of another. Because that one man is James Acaster, it... Read more

Naturally Tan

By: Tan France

Narrated by: Tan France

Length: 7 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

"Tan France's unique accent, chummy intimacy, and cheeky delivery make audio the best way to experience his memoir." — AudioFile Magazine

This program is read by the author, with a special guest appearance!

In this heartfelt, funny, and touching memoir, one of the stars of Netflix’s Emmy Award-winning smash-hit Queer Eye reveals how an Englishman... Read more

Notes from a Young Black Chef

By: Kwame Onwuachi & Joshua David Stein

Narrated by: Kwame Onwuachi

Length: 7 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

“Kwame Onwuachi’s story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world.” —Questlove
 
By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had launched his own catering company with twenty... Read more

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker

By: Damon Young

Narrated by: Damon Young

Length: 8 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

A Finalist for the NAACP Image Award Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay An NPR Best Book of the Year A Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite of the YearFrom the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous... Read more

The Sun Is a Compass

By: Caroline Van Hemert

Narrated by: Xe Sands

Length: 9 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

This gripping true story follows a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure—perfect for fans of Cheryl Strayed.​ During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to... Read more

The Lady from the Black Lagoon

By: Mallory O'Meara

Narrated by: Mallory O''Meara & Mallory O'Meara

Length: 9 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

2019 SCIBA Book Award Winner for Biography

A Hugo and Locus Award Finalist

Winner of the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award

The Los Angeles Times Bestseller

A Thrillist Best Book of the Year

A Book Riot Best Book of 2019

One of Booklist’s 10 Best Art Books of the Year

The Lady from the Black Lagoon uncovers the life and work of Milicent Patrick—one of... Read more

The World According to Fannie Davis

By: Bridgett M. Davis

Narrated by: Bridgett M. Davis

Length: 10 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

As seen on the Today Show: This true story of an unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and their life in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s highlights "the outstanding humanity of black America" (James McBride).
In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty... Read more

Witness

By: Ariel Burger

Narrated by: Jason Culp

Length: 8 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

In the vein of Tuesdays with Morrie, a devoted protégé and friend of one of the world’s great thinkers takes us into the sacred space of the classroom, showing Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel not only as an extraordinary human being, but as a master teacher.The world remembers Elie Wiesel—Nobel laureate, activist,... Read more

The End of the End of the Earth

By: Jonathan Franzen

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 6 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

This program has been updated with a new epilogue written and read by the author.

A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections

The essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like “a fire-fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them.”... Read more

Why Religion?

By: Elaine Pagels

Narrated by: Lynde Houck

Length: 7 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century? Why do so many still believe? And how do various traditions still shape the way people experience everything from sexuality to politics, whether they are religious or not? In Why Religion? Elaine Pagels looks to her own life to help address these questions.These questions took on a new... Read more

Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

By: Phoebe Robinson

Narrated by: Phoebe Robinson

Length: 8 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

DON’T MISS PHOEBE ROBINSON’S COMEDY SERIES EVERYTHING’S TRASH—NOW ON FREEFORM!

New York Times bestselling author and star of 2 Dope Queens Phoebe Robinson is back with a new, hilarious, and timely essay collection on gender, race, dating, and the dumpster fire that is our world.

Wouldn't it be great if life came with instructions? Of course, but... Read more

The Ravenmaster

By: Christopher Skaife

Narrated by: Christopher Skaife

Length: 6 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

"[Christopher Skaife's] natural storyteller's charm results in a performance that is conversational, funny, and self-deprecating...Ravenmaster is a joyful listening experience." — AudioFile Magazine

This program is read by the author.

The first behind-the-scenes account of life with the legendary ravens at the world’s eeriest monument.

The ravens... Read more

Dear America

By: Jose Antonio Vargas

Narrated by: Jose Antonio Vargas

Length: 5 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called “the most famous undocumented immigrant in America,” tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms.“This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book––at it's core––is not about immigration at all. This book is about... Read more

The Diary of a Bookseller

By: Shaun Bythell

Narrated by: Robin Laing

Length: 9 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Shaun Bythell owns the Bookshop, Scotland’s largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover’s paradise? Well, almost … In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at... Read more

Lands of Lost Borders

By: Kate Harris

Narrated by: Amy Landon

Length: 10 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven’t felt for years. It’s a modern classic."" —Pico IyerA brilliant, fierce writer makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road—an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab... Read more

Tragedy Plus Time

By: Adam Cayton-Holland

Narrated by: Adam Cayton-Holland

Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

“Inspiring, tragic, and at times heart-rendingly funny.” —People

Unsentimental, unexpectedly funny, and incredibly honest, Tragedy Plus Time is a love letter to every family that has ever felt messy, complicated, or (even momentarily) magnificent.

Meet the Magnificent Cayton-Hollands, a trio of brilliant, acerbic teenagers from Denver, Colorado,... Read more

Pops

By: Michael Chabon

Narrated by: Michael Chabon

Length: 2 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

“Magical prose stylist” Michael Chabon (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) delivers a collection of essays—heartfelt, humorous, insightful, wise—on the meaning of fatherhood.For the September 2016 issue of GQ, Michael Chabon wrote a piece about accompanying his son Abraham Chabon, then thirteen, to Paris Men’s Fashion Week. Possessed with a... Read more