Local bookseller recommendations

Under the Big Black Sun

By: John Doe & Tom Desavia

Narrated by: Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins & Various

Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Under the Big Black Sun explores the nascent Los Angeles punk rock movement and its evolution to hardcore punk as it’s never been told before. Authors John Doe and Tom DeSavia have woven together an enthralling story of the legendary west coast scene from 1977-1982 by enlisting the voices of people who were there. The book shares chapter-length... Read more

Out of Darkness

By: Ashley Hope Pérez

Narrated by: Benita Robledo & Lincoln Hoppe

Length: 12 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

"This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" 

New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it... Read more

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

By: Frans de Waal

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 10 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

From world-renowned biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal comes this groundbreaking work on animal intelligence destined to become a classic.What separates your mind from an animal’s? Maybe you think it’s your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future―all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the... Read more

Maestra

By: L.S. Hilton

Narrated by: Emilia Fox

Length: 10 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND THE PERFECT READ FOR FANS OF KILLING EVE

THE BEST OF SKIMM READS 2016

“One of this year’s most talked about novels.” —The Washington Post

“A twenty-first-century femme fatale as lethal as Tom Ripley and as seductive as Bacall.” —Vogue 

A put-upon assistant at a prestigious London art house, Judith Rashleigh... Read more

Carmilla

By: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 2 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the 19th century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era.

Carmilla is Le Fanu's famous classic vampire story which has been filmed numerous times, including Vampyre (1932), Blood... Read more

Quench Your Own Thirst

By: Jim Koch

Narrated by: Jim Koch

Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER and named a 2016 Best Book of the Year by Inc., Business Insider, Forbes, and Amazon

Founder of The Boston Beer Company, brewer of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and a key catalyst of the American craft beer revolution, Jim Koch offers his unique perspective when it comes to business, beer, and turning your passion into a... Read more

Most Wanted

By: Lisa Scottoline

Narrated by: Julia Whelan

Length: 12 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

“Spellbinding. Another tour de force from Scottoline. It drew me in, in a single breath.” –Mary Kubica, bestselling author of The Good Girl

Donor 3319 Profile:
Tall. Blonde. Blue eyes.
Medical Student.
Wanted for Serial Murder.

Christine Nilsson and her husband, Marcus, are desperate for a baby. Unable to conceive, they find themselves facing a... Read more

Fellside

By: M. R. Carey

Narrated by: Finty Williams

Length: 15 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

In the aftermath of a devastating fire, a prisoner is offered one chance at redemption in this haunting supernatural suspense from the author of USA Today bestseller, The Girl With All the Gifts.

Fellside is a maximum security prison on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors. It's not the kind of place you'd want to end up. But it's where Jess Moulson... Read more

Tuesday Nights in 1980

By: Molly Prentiss

Narrated by: George Newbern

Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

“An intoxicating Manhattan fairy tale…As affecting as it is absorbing. A thrilling debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A vital, sensuous, edgy, and suspenseful tale of longing, rage, fear, compulsion, and love.” —Booklist (starred review)

A transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman... Read more

All Tomorrow’s Parties

By: Rob Spillman

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 9 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

From the award-winning, esteemed cofounding editor of the legendary Tin House magazine, All Tomorrow’s Parties is an intimate, spirited memoir of a rebellious young man’s fierce pursuit of an artistic life and a portrait of a shifting Berlin in the midst of a cultural renaissance.Rob Spillman has devoted his life to the rebellious pursuit of... Read more

The Railwayman's Wife

By: Ashley Hay

Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham & Steve West

Length: 8 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

For fans of The Light Between Oceans, this “exquisitely written, true book of wonders” (Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author) explores the aftermath of World War II in an Australian seaside town, and the mysterious poem that changes the lives of those who encounter it.

In 1948, in a town overlooking the vast, blue ocean, Anikka Lachlan... Read more

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

By: Dominic Smith

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 9 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

A masterful new story charts the circuitous course of the sole surviving work of a female Dutch painter

This is what we long for: the profound pleasure of being swept into vivid new worlds, worlds peopled by characters so intriguing and real that we can't shake them, even long after the reading's done. In his earlier, award-winning novels,... Read more

The Plot against America

By: Philip Roth

Narrated by: Ron Silver

Length: 13 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history.In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected president. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a... Read more

Lilac Girls

By: Martha Hall Kelly

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kathleen Gati, Kathrin Kana...

Length: 17 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this powerful debut novel reveals an incredible story of love, redemption, and terrible secrets that were hidden for decades.
 
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed... Read more

Dodgers

By: Bill Beverly

Narrated by: JD Jackson

Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Dodgers is a dark, unforgettable coming-of-age journey that recalls the very best of Richard Price, Denis Johnson, and J.D. Salinger.

It is the story of a young LA gang member named East, who is sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys—including East's hothead younger brother—to kill a key witness hiding out in Wisconsin. The journey... Read more

The Path

By: Michael Puett & Christine Gross-Loh

Narrated by: Michael Puett & Christine Gross-Loh

Length: 5 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today.

Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of the most popular at Harvard? Because it challenges all... Read more

Island of the Lost

By: Joan Druett

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 8 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death.



In 1864 Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton... Read more

Lust & Wonder

By: Augusten Burroughs

Narrated by: Augusten Burroughs

Length: 8 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

"Burroughs has lived this story, so his delivery perfectly matches the tone and pacing needed. Focusing on a series of failed relationships, Burroughs lets his voice rise in both tension and tenor as he analyzes the reasons, with help from analysis, that some relationships work and others are doomed by the personal quirks of both people." —... Read more

Jane Steele

By: Lyndsay Faye

Narrated by: Susie Riddell

Length: 12 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Nominated for the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel

The reimagining of Jane Eyre as a gutsy, heroic serial killer that The New York Times Book Review calls “wonderfully entertaining” and USA Today describes as “sheer mayhem meets Victorian propriety.”
 
“A thrill ride of a novel. A must read for lovers of Jane Eyre, dark humor, and... Read more

The Charm Bracelet

By: Viola Shipman

Narrated by: Andi Arndt

Length: 8 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

Lose yourself to the magic of The Charm Bracelet.

Through an heirloom charm bracelet, three women will rediscover the importance of family and a passion for living as each charm changes their lives.

On her birthday each year, Lolly’s mother gave her a charm, along with the advice that there is nothing more important than keeping family memories... Read more

The Nest

By: Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Narrated by: Mia Barron

Length: 11 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives.Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on... Read more

The Way I Used to Be

By: Amber Smith

Narrated by: Rebekkah Ross

Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times bestseller! In the tradition of Speak, Amber Smith's extraordinary debut novel “is a heart-twisting, but ultimately hopeful, exploration of how pain can lead to strength” (The Boston Globe).

Eden was always good at being good. Starting high school didn’t change who she was. But the night her brother’s best friend rapes her, Eden’s... Read more

The Summer Before the War

By: Helen Simonson

Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham

Length: 15 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A novel to cure your Downton Abbey withdrawal . . . a delightful story about nontraditional romantic relationships, class snobbery and the everybody-knows-everybody complications of living in a small community.”—The Washington Post

The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand returns with a breathtaking... Read more

The Caped Crusade

By: Glen Weldon

Narrated by: Glen Weldon

Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

“A roaring getaway car of guilty pleasures” (The New York Times Book Review), Glen Weldon’s The Caped Crusade is a fascinating, critically acclaimed chronicle of the rises and falls of one of the world’s most iconic superheroes and the fans who love him—now with a new afterword.

Since his debut in Detective Comics #27, Batman has been many... Read more