2020 First Novel Prize: The Longlist

My Dark Vanessa

A Novel

By: Kate Elizabeth Russell
Narrated by: Grace Gummer
Length: 16 hours 2 minutes

“In this gripping debut novel, a teenage girl falls into an affair with her English teacher, who is 30 years her senior. The voice of Vanessa, the narrator, is unparalleled in its honesty, and her emotions are fiercely conveyed with unrelenting realness. This novel is a timely and important read, sometimes difficult, but ultimately an... Read more

Valentine

A Novel

By: Elizabeth Wetmore
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell & Jenna Lamia
Length: 10 hours 20 minutes

“After listening to the first chapter of Elizabeth Wetmore's debut (which I guarantee you will RIP through), it is easy to expect the rest of the book to be either a thriller or a courtroom drama. You would be wrong in these assumptions, but far from disappointed. In February 1976 in Odessa, Texas, after the assault and rape of a... Read more

Antkind

A Novel

By: Charlie Kaufman
Narrated by: Fred Berman
Length: 25 hours 41 minutes

The bold and boundlessly original debut novel from the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • “A dyspeptic satire that owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon . . . propelled by Kaufman’s deep... Read more

Conjure Women

A Novel

By: Afia Atakora
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 13 hours 58 minutes

A mother and daughter with a shared talent for healing—and for the conjuring of curses—are at the heart of this dazzling first novel
 
WINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • NPR • Parade • Book Riot • PopMatters

“Lush, irresistible . . . It took me into the hearts of... Read more

August

A Novel

By: Callan Wink
Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
Length: 11 hours 31 minutes

A boy coming of age in a part of the country that’s being left behind is at the heart of this dazzling novel—the first by an award-winning author of short stories that evoke the American West.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • “August reads like early Hemingway, retooled for the present.”—William Finnegan, Pulitzer... Read more

Real Life

A Novel

By: Brandon Taylor
Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

A FINALIST for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the NYPL Young Lions Award, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award 
 
“A blistering coming of age story” —O: The Oprah Magazine

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington... Read more

Under the Rainbow

A Novel

By: Celia Laskey
Narrated by: Phoebe Strole, Abigail Revasch, Will Damon, Lisa Flanagan, Michael Crouch, Kaleo Griffith, Kristen Sieh, Jonathan Todd Ross, Dani Martineck, Brittany Pressley & Lorna Raver
Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize

“Delivered with such conviction and grace … fresh … essential.” —The New York Times Book Review

When outsiders on a mission arrive to change a small town’s attitudes, residents and newcomers alike end up transformed.

Big Burr, Kansas is the kind of place where everyone seems to know... Read more

How Much of These Hills Is Gold

A Novel

By: C Pam Zhang
Narrated by: Catherine Ho & Joel de la Fuente
Length: 9 hours 8 minutes

“Lucy and Sam are alone in a land that challenges their very existence. The night took their Ma then their Ba 3 years later. Left to bury their Ba and survive in the barren hills spotted with gold rushers and coal mines, Lucy and Sam must face their legacy and futures in the west. Zhang’s storytelling is reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s. Her... Read more

The Illness Lesson

A Novel

By: Clare Beams
Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
Length: 10 hours 14 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • FINALIST FOR THE 2023 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • From the author of the award-winning debut story collection We Show What We Have Learned, an "atoundingly original” (The New York Times Book Review) work of historical fiction with shocking and eerie connections to our own time.

At their newly founded school,... Read more

Bestiary

A Novel

By: K-Ming Chang
Narrated by: Catherine Ho, Nancy Wu & Ren Hanami
Length: 8 hours 59 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about one family’s queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets.

“Gorgeous and gorgeously grotesque . . . Every line of this sensuous, magical-realist marvel is utterly... Read more

The All-Night Sun

A Novel

By: Diane Zinna
Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
Length: 10 hours 38 minutes

A lonely young woman gets too close to her charismatic female student in this propulsive debut, culminating in a dangerously debauched Midsommar’s Eve. 

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE AND THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD • “Memorable and meaningful.”—Claire Messud, New York Times bestselling author of The Burning Girl

... Read more

True Story

A Novel

By: Kate Reed Petty
Narrated by: Kristen Sieh, Alexander Cendese & Cassandra Campbell
Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

“A brilliant mind-bender of a novel that uses different methods of storytelling to illustrate how storytelling creates different versions of truth (if truth even exists) and reality. Are we the stories we tell ourselves? Or do we become the stories that are told about us? This is the question True Story asks as it peels away layer after layer of... Read more

Memorial

A Novel

By: Bryan Washington
Narrated by: Bryan Washington & Akie Kotabe
Length: 8 hours 19 minutes

“Maybe it's because I listened to this book on Libro.fm and the author was the narrator, but this novel felt so personal a story, that I kept thinking it was a memoir. The story follows two men, Benson and Mike, who live together and are in a tense, emotionally distant relationship. While Mike's mom is arriving from Japan for a long stay and... Read more

Luster

A Novel

By: Raven Leilani
Narrated by: Ariel Blake
Length: 6 hours 39 minutes

“Twenty-something Edie is struggling to find her place in the world. She's flailing, moving between jobs and out of her apartment, into her lover's home. But, she is the mistress, faced with the reality that the open relationship she entered isn't everything she thought - but it's the best she can find. As Edie's loyalties to her lover subside... Read more

The Henna Artist

The Jaipur Trilogy: Book #1

By: Alka Joshi
Narrated by: Sneha Mathan
Length: 10 hours 55 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK

"Captivated me from the first chapter to the final page."—Reese Witherspoon

Vivid and compelling in its portrait of one woman’s struggle for fulfillment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern, The Henna Artist opens a door into a world that is at... Read more

Indelicacy

A Novel

By: Amina Cain
Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo
Length: 3 hours

Amina Cain's extraordinary fiction has been said to take place in "a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch" (Blake Butler), and this, her debut novel, is no exception. Indelicacy introduces us to a cleaning woman at an art museum who nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her.... Read more

Kept Animals

A Novel

By: Kate Milliken
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
Length: 10 hours 41 minutes

Named a most anticipated novel by Oprah Daily, Vogue, Parade, The Millions, and Electric Lit • A Reader’s Digest Quarantine Book Club Pick • Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

A “rugged and ravishing” (Oprah Daily) debut novel of desire, betrayal, and loss, centering on three teenage girls, a horse ranch, and the accident... Read more

Sharks in the Time of Saviors

By: Kawai Strong Washburn
Narrated by: Tui Asau, G.K. Bowes, Kaleo Griffith & Jolene Kim
Length: 10 hours 37 minutes

“Night Marchers, gods, goddesses, and the dead all walk Hawaii with the Flores family, if only they can stop struggling to survive long enough to see them. At seven years old, Nainoa falls into the Pacific only to be brought back to his mother in the mouth of a shark, unharmed and now burdened with the rumor of legend. Noa struggles to... Read more