Essays audiobooks

Meaty

By: Samantha Irby

Narrated by: Samantha Irby

Length: 7 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Smart, edgy, hilarious, and unabashedly raunchy New York Times bestselling author Samantha Irby explodes off the printed page in her uproarious first collection of essays. 

Irby laughs her way through tragicomic mishaps, neuroses, and taboos as she struggles through adulthood: chin hairs, depression, bad sex, failed relationships, masturbation,... Read more

My American Dream

By: Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Narrated by: Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Length: 12 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

For decades, beloved chef Lidia Bastianich has introduced Americans to Italian food through her cookbooks, TV shows, and restaurants. Now she tells her own story for the first time in this “memoir as rich and complex as her mushroom ragú" (O, the Oprah Magazine).

Born in Pula, on the Istrian peninsula, Lidia grew up surrounded by love and... Read more

Look Alive Out There

By: Sloane Crosley

Narrated by: Sloane Crosley

Length: 6 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author

Sloane Crosley returns to the form that made her a household name in really quite a lot of households: Essays! These small doses of wit and sass make for an exuberant, unforgettable audiobook.

From the New York Times–bestselling author Sloane Crosley comes Look Alive Out There—a brand-new collection of essays... Read more

The Very Worst Missionary

By: Jamie Wright

Narrated by: Madeleine Lambert

Length: 4 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

After finding Jesus at a suburban megachurch, young Jamie Wright trades in the easy life on the cul-de-sac for the green fields of Costa Rica. There, along with her husband, kids, and the family cat, she intends to serve God and make converts. But she soon loses faith and falls into a funk of cynicism and despair. Fortunately, Knives the cat is... Read more

Feast

By: Hannah Howard

Narrated by: Hannah Howard

Length: 8 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

The compulsively readable memoir of a woman at war—with herself, with her body, and with food—while working her way through the underbelly of New York City’s glamorous culinary scene.Hannah Howard is a Columbia University freshman when she lands a hostess job at Picholine, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan. Eighteen years old and eager... Read more

Meditaciones desde el subsuelo

By: Guillermo Fadanelli

Narrated by: Mauricio Meléndez

Length: 4 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

¿Qué causas pueden sustentar a la escritura? ¿Tiene sentido seguir escribiendo en el mundo contemporáneo? Para responder, recurre a una cita E. L. Doctorow: "[La ficción] enseña las leyes de la comunidad y distribuye el sufrimiento". A partir de ella construye distintos argumentos a favor de la producción de ficciones y su consumo. La literatura... Read more

Under the Sign of Saturn

By: Susan Sontag

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Sontag’s most important critical writings from 1972 to 1980 are collected in Under the Sign of Saturn. One of America’s leading essayists, Sontag’s writings are commentaries on the relation between moral and aesthetic ideas, discussing the works of Antonin Artaud, Leni Riefenstahl, Elias Canetti, Walter Benjamin, and others. The collection... Read more

Run Forever

By: Amby Burfoot

Narrated by: Chris Ciulla

Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

In Run Forever, Boston Marathon winner and former Runner's World editor-in-chief Amby Burfoot shares practical advice and wisdom on how to run with greater joy and health for an entire lifetime.

Everyone learns how to run at an early age. It's naturally wired into your body. Yet in recent years, running has become complicated by trendy gadgets... Read more

Magic Hours

By: Tom Bissell

Narrated by: Tom Bissell

Length: 9 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox's work was relaunched... Read more

How to American

By: Jimmy O. Yang

Narrated by: Jimmy O. Yang & Mike Judge

Length: 6 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Standup comic, actor and fan favorite from HBO's Silicon Valley and the film Crazy Rich Asians shares his memoir of growing up as a Chinese immigrant in California and making it in Hollywood.

"I turned down a job in finance to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. My dad thought I was crazy. But I figured it was better to disappoint my parents for... Read more

Would You Rather?

By: Katie Heaney

Narrated by: Katie Heaney

Length: 5 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

A collection of poignant, relatable essays from the author of Never Have I Ever about coming out in her late twenties, entering into her first relationship, and figuring out what it means to be an adult.

When Katie Heaney published her first book of essays, chronicling her singledom up to age twenty-five, she was still waiting to meet the right... Read more

The Measure of My Powers

By: Jackie Kai Ellis

Narrated by: Jackie Kai Ellis

Length: 4 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 TASTE CANADA AWARDS AND THE RAKUTEN KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE. For fans of Eat Pray Love, Wild, and H is for Hawk, The Measure of My Powers is the story of one woman's search for self-love, experienced through food and travel.

"With searing vulnerability and unflinching honesty, Jackie Kai... Read more

The Return of Marco Polo's World

By: Robert D. Kaplan

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

A bracing assessment of U.S. foreign policy and world disorder over the past two decades from the bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy
 
“[Kaplan] has emerged not only as an eloquent defender of foreign-policy realism but as a grand strategist to whom the Pentagon turns for a tour d’horizon.”—The Wall Street... Read more

Other Colors

By: Orhan Pamuk

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 16 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

A luminous essay collection about loneliness, contentment, and the books and cities that have shaped the experience of a Nobel Prize winner and the acclaimed author of My Name is Red.

"One of the essential writers that both East and West can gratefully claim as their own.” —The New York Times Book Review

In the three decades that Nobel... Read more

Tell Me How It Ends

By: Valeria Luiselli

Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard

Length: 2 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the US.

Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young... Read more

Walking on Water

By: Madeleine L'Engle

Narrated by: Pamela Almand

Length: 6 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

In this classic book, Madeleine L’Engle addresses the questions, What makes art Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian artist? What is the relationship between faith and art? Through L’Engle’s beautiful and insightful essay, readers will find themselves called to what the author views as the prime tasks of an artist: to listen, to remain... Read more

Can It Happen Here?

By: Cass R. Sunstein

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

“What makes Trump immune is that he is not a president within the context of a healthy Republican government. He is a cult leader of a movement that has taken over a political party – and he specifically campaigned on a platform of one-man rule. This fact permeates “Can It Happen Here? . . . which concludes, if you read between the lines, that... Read more

Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll

By: Andrew Friedman

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll transports listeners back in time to witness the remarkable evolution of the American restaurant chef in the 1970s and 1980s. Andrew Friedman goes inside Chez Panisse and other Bay Area restaurants to show how the politically charged backdrop of Berkeley helped spark this new profession; into the historically... Read more

Don't Call Me Princess

By: Peggy Orenstein

Narrated by: Peggy Orenstein

Length: 10 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter delivers her first ever collection of essays—funny, poignant, deeply personal and sharply observed pieces, drawn from three decades of writing, which trace girls’ and women’s progress (or lack thereof) in what Orenstein once called a “half-changed world.”... Read more

Stay Hungry

By: Sebastian Maniscalco

Narrated by: Sebastian Maniscalco

Length: 7 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

From comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco—star of the film About My Father with Robert DeNiro—an inspiring, honest, uproarious collection of essays tracing his career from playing boxing rings and bowling alleys to reaching the pinnacles of comedy success.

At twenty-four, Sebastian Maniscalco arrived in LA with a suitcase and saved up minimum... Read more

What Are We Doing Here?

By: Marilynne Robinson

Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie

Length: 11 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith.Whether... Read more

Stories I Love to Tell

By: Gene Edwards

Narrated by: Milton Bagby

Length: 3 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

America’s beloved storyteller will guide and thrill your imagination with these classic tales. Join Gene Edwards as he recounts his favorite stories from more than 50 years of travel and ministry. Considered the “Paul Harvey” of Christian writers, Gene Edwards is one of America’s most beloved authors. Stories I Love to Tell, his new book, is a... Read more

Sold into Egypt

By: Madeleine L'Engle

Narrated by: Pamela Almand

Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

This classic work of spirituality from the author of A Wrinkle in Time offers life-transforming insights on the rich heritage of the Bible and shows how the characters of this ancient text are relevant for living the good life now.Is Joseph—the deserted son of Jacob from the Old Testament—relevant in our modern age? For Madeleine L’Engle, the... Read more

A Stone for a Pillow

By: Madeleine L'Engle

Narrated by: Pamela Almand

Length: 8 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

This classic work of spirituality from the author of A Wrinkle in Time offers life-transforming insights on the rich heritage of the Bible and shows how the characters of this ancient text are relevant for living the good life now.In this book for the curious, spiritual seeker, Madeleine L’Engle offers relevant lessons drawn from the life of... Read more