Essays audiobooks

The Crane Wife

By: CJ Hauser

Narrated by: CJ Hauser

Length: 9 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

A memoir in essays that expands on the viral sensation “The Crane Wife” with a frank and funny look at love, intimacy, and self in the twenty-first century. From friends and lovers to blood family and chosen family, this “elegant masterpiece” (Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger) asks what more expansive definitions of love... Read more

Burning Questions

By: Margaret Atwood

Narrated by: Margaret Atwood & Full Cast

Length: 18 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

In this brilliant selection of essays, the award-winning, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments offers her funny, erudite, endlessly curious, and uncannily prescient take on everything from whether or not The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia to the importance of how to define granola—and seeks answers to Burning Questions... Read more

My Mess Is a Bit of a Life

By: Georgia Pritchett

Narrated by: Katherine Parkinson

Length: 4 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

“Georgia Pritchett is a singularly hilarious person. Her book is a delightful and perfect reflection of her. Its tenderness sneaks up on you and really packs a punch. What a magnificent read!”—Julia Louis DreyfusJenny Lawson meets Nora Ephron in this joyful memoir-in-vignettes on living—and thriving—with anxiety from a multiple Emmy... Read more

On Freedom

By: Maggie Nelson

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Length: 10 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

An expansive, exhilarating work of criticism by one of the most significant writers of our day.

So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long... Read more

The 2000s Made Me Gay

By: Grace Perry

Narrated by: Grace Perry

Length: 8 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

From The Onion and Reductress contributor, this collection of essays is a hilarious nostalgic trip through beloved 2000s media, interweaving cultural criticism and personal narrative to examine how a very straight decade forged a very queer woman.

"Honest, funny, smart, and illuminating.” —Anna Drezen, co-head... Read more

Seed to Dust

By: Marc Hamer

Narrated by: Owen Teale

Length: 9 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

For readers of Late Migrations and H is for Hawk

A stunning meditation on gardening and the wisdom of plants, " that rare book that will appeal to nonfiction readers everywhere. . . Candid, tender, thoughtful and absorbing."—Shelf Awareness (STARRED Review)

"With chapters. . . [that] shimmer like lantern slides, lit with luminous imagery. . . Seed... Read more

The Hard Crowd

By: Rachel Kushner

Narrated by: Rachel Kushner

Length: 7 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

AUDIO EXCLUSIVE: INCLUDES GALAXIE 500’S SONG “ANOTHER DAY!”

“The Hard Crowd is wild, wide-ranging, and unsparingly intelligent throughout.” —Taylor Antrim, Vogue

From a writer celebrated for her “chops, ambition, and killer instinct” (John Powers, Fresh Air), a career-spanning collection of spectacular essays about politics and culture.

Rachel... Read more

Like Streams to the Ocean

By: Jedidiah Jenkins

Narrated by: Jedidiah Jenkins

Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “As inviting, wide-ranging, and philosophical as an all-night conversation with a best friend, and as revealing and thought-provoking as the diary of a curious adventurer.”—Sasha Sagan, author of For Small Creatures Such as We

You can travel the world looking for yourself, but if you don't know what you're looking for,... Read more

Stakes Is High

By: Mychal Denzel Smith

Narrated by: Mychal Denzel Smith

Length: 3 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Brave, clear-eyed, and passionate, Stakes Is High is the book we need to guide us past crisis mode and through an uncertain future.

The events of the past decade have forced us to reckon with who we are and who we want to be. We have been invested in a set of beliefs about our American identity: our exceptionalism, the inevitable rightness of our... Read more

Having and Being Had

By: Eula Biss

Narrated by: Alex McKenna

Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME , NPR, INSTYLE, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

“A sensational new book [that] tries to figure out whether it’s possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society. . . . The results are enthralling.” —Associated Press 

A timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York... Read more

In Praise of Paths

By: Torbjørn Ekelund

Narrated by: TJ Oberholzer

Length: 4 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

“What [Ekelund is] addressing is the intention to walk one’s way to meaning: the walk as spiritual exercise, a kind of vision quest... A key strategy for finding ourselves, then, is to first get lost.”—The New York Times Book Review

An ode to paths and the journeys we take through nature, as told by a gifted writer who stopped driving and... Read more

Erosion

By: Terry Tempest Williams

Narrated by: Terry Tempest Williams

Length: 9 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

Timely and unsettling essays from an important and beloved writer and conservationist

In Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams's fierce, spirited, and magnificent essays are a howl in the desert. She sizes up the continuing assaults on America's public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open space of... Read more

How to Catch a Mole

By: Marc Hamer

Narrated by: Marc Hamer

Length: 3 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

In this evocative and heart-wrenching memoir, a hard-working Welsh molecatcher reveals his double life as a poet and a dreamer • “A wonderful memoir … hands down the most charming book I read last year.”—Margaret Renkl, The New York Times“How to Catch a Mole is a small book of many things. In quiet, crystalline prose, it blends memoir, keen... Read more

Late Migrations

By: Margaret Renkl

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

Length: 5 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Selected as a TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna book club pick, Late Migrations is an unusual, captivating portrait of a family―and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world―from beloved New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl.Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and... Read more

The Accidental Veterinarian

By: Philipp Schott

Narrated by: Tom Perkins

Length: 5 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

With insight and humor, Dr. Philipp Schott shares tales from the unlikely path he took into his career of veterinary science and anecdotes from his successful small-animal clinic. Dr. Schott brings to his writing the benefit of many years of expertise. Wisdom he imparts on listeners includes the best way to give your cat a pill, how to prevent... Read more

No Happy Endings

By: Nora McInerny

Narrated by: Nora McInerny

Length: 7 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

The author of It’s Okay to Laugh and host of the popular podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking—interviews that are “a gift to be able to listen [to]” (New York Times)—returns with more hilarious meditations on her messy, wonderful, bittersweet, and unconventional life.

Life has a million different ways to kick you right in the chops. We lose love,... Read more

I Might Regret This

By: Abbi Jacobson

Narrated by: Abbi Jacobson

Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

From the co-creator and co-star of the hit series Broad City, a "poignant, funny, and beautifully unabashed" (Cheryl Strayed) New York Times bestselling essay collection about love, loss, work, comedy, and figuring out who you really are when you thought you already knew.
When Abbi Jacobson announced to friends and acquaintances that she planned... Read more

What If This Were Enough?

By: Heather Havrilesky

Narrated by: Heather Havrilesky

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

*A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018*
*A Bustle Best Nonfiction Book of 2018*
*One of Chicago Tribune's Favorite Books by Women in 2018*
*A Self Best Book of 2018 to Buy for the Bookworm in Your Life*

By the acclaimed critic, memoirist, and advice columnist behind the popular "Ask Polly," an impassioned collection tackling our obsession with... Read more

Can We All Be Feminists?

By: June Eric-Udorie

Narrated by: Various

Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

"As timely as it is well-written, this clear-eyed collection is just what I need right now."  —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming

"The intersectional feminist anthology we all need to read" (Bustle), edited by a feminist activist and writer who "calls to mind a young Audre Lorde" (Kirkus)

Why do some women struggle to identify as... Read more

Daemon Voices

By: Philip Pullman

Narrated by: Philip Pullman & Simon Mason

Length: 12 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

From the internationally best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, a spellbinding journey into the secrets of his art--the narratives that have shaped his vision, his experience of writing, and the keys to mastering the art of storytelling.

One of the most highly acclaimed and best-selling authors of our time now gives us a book that... 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

Feminasty

By: Erin Gibson

Narrated by: Erin Gibson

Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

From the wickedly funny and feminist creator and host of the Throwing Shade podcast, a collection of hilarious personal essays and political commentary perfect for fans of Lindy West and Roxane Gay.

Since women earned the right to vote a little under one hundred years ago, our progress hasn't been the Olympic sprint toward gender equality... 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

The Best Cook in the World

By: Rick Bragg

Narrated by: Rick Bragg

Length: 19 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

From the beloved, best-selling author of All Over but the Shoutin', a delectable, rollicking food memoir, cookbook, and loving tribute to a region, a vanishing history, a family, and, especially, to his mother.

Margaret Bragg does not own a single cookbook. She measures in "dabs" and "smidgens" and "tads" and "you know, hon, just some." She... Read more