Underground Books

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Maya Hawke

Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

"Narrating in a voice as clear and sustaining as a cool glass of water, Hawke’s unflashy approach allows the words to reveal their magic."—The Orange County Register

This program is read by actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke, star of Netflix's Stranger Things.

Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction,... Read more

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

By: Ross Gay

Narrated by: Ross Gay

Length: 1 hour 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner, 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, poetry category
Winner, 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize
Finalist, 2015 National Book Award, poetry category
Finalist, 2015 NAACP Image Awards, poetry category

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that... Read more

And He Shall Appear

By: Kate Van Der Borgh

Narrated by: Elliot Fitzpatrick

Length: 11 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

From a mesmerizing new literary voice comes a story of obsessive friendship, chilling powers, and untimely death for readers of dark academia classics like If We Were Villains and The Secret History. An unnamed narrator arrives at Cambridge University in the early aughts determined to reinvent himself. His northern accent marks him as an... Read more

Jasmine Is Haunted

By: Mark Oshiro

Narrated by: Vico Ortiz

Length: 8 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

Jasmine Garza has a problem: a ghost has been following her for years, ever since her Papi died. Not that Mami will admit anything supernatural is going on. But even the ghost she won’t acknowledge makes real trouble, so Jasmine and her mami are moving (again) to a new apartment in East Hollywood. This time Jasmine is committed to living a... Read more

Pearly Everlasting

By: Tammy Armstrong

Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass

Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Set during the Great Depression, an immersive and enchantingly atmospheric novel about a girl and a bear raised as sister and brother in a remote logging camp, and the lengths to which they’ll go to protect each other. New Brunswick, 1934. When a cook in a logging camp finds an orphaned baby bear, he brings it home to his wife, who names the cub... Read more

Millie Fleur's Poison Garden

By: Christy Mandin

Narrated by: Elizabeth Knoweldon

Length: 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Wednesday Addams meets The Curious Garden in this delightfully peculiar story about finding joy in being wonderfully weird.Garden Glen is a very bland place. Every house and every garden looks exactly like the other. That is... until Millie Fleur La Fae comes to town.Up on a scruffy hill, beside a ramschackle house, Millie Fleur plants her... Read more

Don't Eat the Pie

By: Monique Asher

Narrated by: Cady Zuckerman & Stephanie Willing

Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

In DON'T EAT THE PIE, readers are transported to the hauntingly picturesque Camillia Island, where gothic horror meets family drama, unraveling the sinister secrets behind a mother and daughter's summer that promises to be as unsettling as it is compelling for fans of Shirley Jackson and Daphne du Maurier. Newlywed Sam has always wanted to be a... Read more

Tiny Threads

By: Lilliam Rivera

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo

Length: 7 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

In this sinister, slow-burn novel of supernatural suspense, a young woman gets her dream job working for a famous designer—and discovers the dark side of high-stakes fashion.
 
“Lilliam Rivera cuts the fashion industry to shreds in this horror-filled take on late-stage capitalism.”—CrimeReads

Fashion-obsessed Samara finally has the life she’s... Read more

Snake Oil

By: Kelsey Rae Dimberg

Narrated by: Kristen Sieh, Andi Arndt & Renata Friedman

Length: 12 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

A razor-sharp literary thriller about three women vying for power at a wellness startup, where the cost of ambition might be deadlyOne woman’s elixir is another woman’s poisonRhoda West is Silicon Valley’s favorite female CEO: the luminously charismatic founder of the fast-growing startup Radical, a wellness company whose core mission is the... Read more

The School for Wicked Witches

By: Will Taylor

Narrated by: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw

Length: 6 hours

Abridged: No

Ava isn't ready to leave her home in Oz -- especially not to become a witch. Then the worst thing that could possibly happen occurs -- Ava's magic does very wrong and she is banished to a school for wicked witches. Perfect for fans of WICKED, WITCHLINGS, and THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL!In Oz, most girls and boys with magical powers are sent... Read more

Guillotine

By: Delilah S. Dawson

Narrated by: Elisabeth Ashby

Length: 5 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

The Menu meets Ready or Not in this dark tale of opulent luxury and shocking violence from the New York Times bestselling author of Bloom.



Thrift fashionista Dez Lane doesn't want to date Patrick Ruskin; she just wants to meet his mother, the editor-in-chief of Nouveau magazine. When he invites her to his family's big Easter reunion at their... Read more

Sacrificial Animals

By: Kailee Pedersen

Narrated by: Yung-I Chang

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Inspired by Kailee Pedersen's own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up on a farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.

The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska... Read more

Medusa

By: Nataly Gruender

Narrated by: Helen Laser

Length: 11 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

An intimate look into the life of a legendary mythical villain who has so often been stripped of her voice and humanity in this debut novel, perfect for fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe and the works of Jennifer Saint.

You know how Medusa’s story ends, but you’ve never heard her tell her own story… until now.
 
The only mortal daughter of two sea... Read more

The Hypocrite

By: Jo Hamya

Narrated by: Claire Kinson

Length: 5 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR •DAKOTA JOHNSON’S TEATIME PICTURES SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUB PICK ● From a fiercely talented writer poised to be a new generation’s Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy, a novel set between the London stage and Sicily, about a daughter who turns her novelist father’s fall from grace into a play, and a father who increasingly fears... Read more

Elizabeth of East Hampton

By: Audrey Bellezza & Emily Harding

Narrated by: Teddy Hamilton & Brittany Pressley

Length: 9 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

This fresh and whip-smart modern retelling of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice—from the authors of the “great beach read” (Bookreporter) Emma of 83rd Street—transports you to summer in the Hamptons, where classes clash, rumors run wild, and love has a frustrating habit of popping up where you least expect it.

It’s a truth universally... Read more

The Unmothers

By: Leslie J. Anderson

Narrated by: Chelsea Stephens

Length: 8 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

In this emotionally raw and propulsive folk horror-mystery, a journalist goes to a small town and unravels a dark secret that the women have been keeping for generations.Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards... Read more

The White Guy Dies First

By: Terry J. Benton-Walker, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, ...

Narrated by: Alejandro Antonio Ruiz, André Santana, Angel Pe...

Length: 12 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

"This Young Adult book is a scream to listen to."—The Berkshire Eagle

This program features multicast narration as well as an author's note and acknowledgements read by the author.

13 SCARY STORIES. 13 AUTHORS OF COLOR. 13 TIMES WE SURVIVED... THE FIRST KILL.

The White Guy Dies First includes thirteen scary stories by all-star contributors and this... Read more

The Astrology House

By: Carinn Jade

Narrated by: Amanda Dolan, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Gilli Messe...

Length: 9 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

A group of wealthy Manhattanites visit an astrology-themed hotel, where simmering resentments and long-held secrets lead to a shocking death in this fresh, twisty, and suspenseful debut that “welcomes an incredible new talent to the world of domestic suspense” (Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author).

Margot needs a minute. She’s been... Read more

Whoever You Are, Honey

By: Olivia Gatwood

Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood

Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

What happens when what was once considered dystopia is now reality?

This darkly brilliant debut novel explores how women shape themselves beneath the gaze of love, friendship, and the algorithm—“a fever dream for the AI age” (People).

“This book reads like a thriller, but it's also a tender and searching exploration of what it means to inhabit a... Read more

The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

By: Sarah Brooks

Narrated by: Katie Leung & Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

Length: 9 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films.

For fans of Piranesi and The Midnight Library, a stunning historical fantasy novel set on a grand express train, about a group of passengers on a dangerous journey across a magical landscape

“Breathtaking…Abounding with mysteries and... Read more

A Shore Thing

By: Joanna Lowell

Narrated by: Ros Watt

Length: 13 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

"Glorious.... Every scene in this book is a treasure."--The New York Times

Named a Best Romance of the Year by The New York Times and Parade

A delightfully queer Victorian love story, featuring a boldly brash trans hero, the beguiling botanist who captures his heart, and a buoyant bicycle race by the British seaside — from the author of The Duke... Read more

The Witches of Bellinas

By: J. Nicole Jones

Narrated by: Piper Goodeve

Length: 8 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

A dreamy California Gothic about a woman who moves to the mysterious town of Bellinas to save her marriage, only to be swept up in a hedonistic cult that isn’t what it seemsTansy and her husband, Guy, are the newest arrivals in Bellinas, a lush oasis tucked into the coast of northern California where a reclusive, creative community is beginning... Read more

That Night in the Library

By: Eva Jurczyk

Narrated by: Hannah Cabell

Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

ONE NIGHT LOCKED IN THE LIBRARY.WHAT COULD GO WRONG?On the night before graduation, seven students gather in the basement of their university’s rare books library. They’re not allowed in the library after closing time, but it’s the perfect place for the ritual they want to perform—one borrowed from the Greeks, said to free those who take part in... Read more

Lady of Steel and Straw

By: Erica Ivy Rodgers

Narrated by: Brittany Pressley

Length: 13 hours

Abridged: No

Star-crossed lovers grapple with forbidden attraction and a growing army of ghostly dead in this swashbuckling YA fantasy debut.

After ten years of exile, following regicide in the House of Tristain, an alarming royal edict is delivered to the immortal scarecrow Guardians who once defended the crown: surrender themselves to the church of the... Read more