The Shadow King
By Maaza Mengiste
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 16 hours 9 minutes
"A brilliant novel, lyrically lifting history towards myth. It's also compulsively readable. I devoured it in two days." ? Salman Rushdie In 1935, orphaned servant Hirut struggles to adapt to her new household as Ethiopia faces Mussolini's looming invasion. As the battles begin in earnest, Hirut and other women must care for the wounded. But... Read more »
The Color of Law
A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
By Richard Rothstein
Narrated by: Adam Grupper
Length: 9 hours 32 minutes
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation-that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate... Read more »
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
By Saidiya Hartman
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
Length: 10 hours 5 minutes
In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday... Read more »
The Dead are Arising
The Life of Malcolm X
By Les Payne & Tamara Payne
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 18 hours 6 minutes
Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm Xall living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders... Read more »
Patsy
A Novel
By Nicole Dennis-Benn
Narrated by: Sharon Gordon
Length: 17 hours 9 minutes
Patsy
“I feel that Dennis-Benn is unparalleled in writing the insidious unforgivables. The mother who can't find love for her daughter, the more-than-friend who takes everything you give them and never gives back, the daughter told to be a "good girl" who finds difficulty doing either of those things for the woman who ends up raising her. Like her debut, this novel is filled with characters tormented by the compromises they made but whose character Dennis-Benn refuses to compromise. The painfully recognizable humanity of everyone in Patsy asks us all to reach inside for the empathy we're capable of for people we wouldn't normally think to give it to.”
Alice, Water Street Bookstore
Driving While Black
African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights
By Gretchen Sorin
Narrated by: Gretchen Sorin & Janina Edwards
Length: 9 hours 8 minutes
How the automobile fundamentally changed African American life—the true history beyond the Best Picture–winning movie. The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African... Read more »
Felon
Poems
By Reginald Dwayne Betts
Narrated by: Reginald Dwayne Betts
Length: 1 hour 21 minutes
A searing volume by a poet whose work conveys “the visceral effect that prison has on identity” (New York Times).
Felon tells the story of one man in fierce, dazzling poems― canvassing his wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace― and, in doing so,... Read more »
Afropessimism
By Frank Wilderson, III
Narrated by: Frank Wilderson, III
Length: 13 hours 39 minutes
Combining trenchant philosophy with lyrical memoir, Afropessimism is an unparalleled account of Blackness. Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery?in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms?continue to define the Black experience? And why is... Read more »
The Book of Two Ways
A Novel
By Jodi Picoult
Narrated by: Patti Murin
Length: 15 hours 47 minutes
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light comes a “powerful” (The Washington Post) novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE
Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant... Read more »
Magic Lessons
The Prequel to Practical Magic
By Alice Hoffman
Narrated by: Sutton Foster
Length: 13 hours 25 minutes
Magic Lessons
“I so wanted to read this slowly and savor every page since this may be the last time we get to venture into this world of magic and the Owens family. But as if entranced by Alice Hoffman’s magic, the pages were turning faster and faster and I devoured this book in two sittings. No one tells a story like Alice Hoffman, and I only hope she finds a way to bring this magical family back to us again in the future. I simply loved this book. It’s everything you want from Alice Hoffman — a great story of love and magic!”
Julie Slavinsky, Warwick's
Monogamy
A Novel
By Sue Miller
Narrated by: Sue Miller
Length: 10 hours 53 minutes
If you enjoyed Hieroglyphics, then you’ll love Monogamy.
“I could hardly wait to get in my car and start the audio of Sue Miller reading her novel Monogamy, a welcome relief from radio news! The story of Annie and her marriage -- before, during, and as a widow -- it is also a perspective on other loyalties, besides the one to a spouse: friendships, "steps and exes," children, neighbors, even Annie's husband's loyalty to the bookshop he owns. The author's gentle reading invites thoughtful reflection on Annie's tale.”
Cheryl, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza
The Exiles
A Novel
By Christina Baker Kline
Narrated by: Caroline Lee
Length: 10 hours 17 minutes
The Exiles
“To be candid, I sure that The Exiles wasn't going to be my cup of tea. Boy, was I ever wrong. The Exiles is a powerful and unforgettable novel that is beautifully written. I will warn you, some of the scenes portrayed were so raw and haunting that the visuals took a while to leave my mind. But they were warranted and made the story much more believable. The narration was definitely a star in its own right. Every accent was on point. Christine Baker Kline has now become one of my favorite authors. If you enjoy historical fiction with depth this book is for you.”
Melinda, Buttonwood Books and Toys
The London Restoration
By Rachel McMillan
Narrated by: Hannah Curtis
Length: 11 hours 47 minutes
The secrets that might save a nation could shatter a marriage.
Madly in love, Diana Foyle and Brent Somerville married in London as the bombs of World War II dropped on their beloved city. Without time for a honeymoon, the couple spent the next four years apart. Diana, an architectural historian, took a top-secret intelligence post at Bletchley... Read more »
Take a Hint, Dani Brown
A Novel
The Brown Sisters
By Talia Hibbert
Narrated by: Ione Butler
Length: 10 hours
Take a Hint, Dani Brown
“Le swoon. I feel so healed. This book is pure and wonderful and and hilarious and utterly charming. Talia Hibbert has made a fake-dating trope convert out of me - her execution was just that perfect. Dani Brown is the career-focused nerd so many women have been told not to be and I felt so seen in her struggles to balance her needs in a relationship. Zafir Ansari is one of the kindest souls and his mental health and grief struggles were all too relatable. Add a dash of smash the patriarchy, all the sarcasm, and a hint of steam and I do believe you have a perfect concoction to escape the 2020 madness.”
Britt, Second Star to the Right
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
By V. E. Schwab
Narrated by: Julia Whelan
Length: 17 hours 9 minutes
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
“Schwab has a masterpiece on her hands with this title. I loved it from the beginning, and that love grew until the very end. Addie needed to find a way to escape the life she is supposed to live as a woman in France, 1714. “No matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” As the sun sets, she is praying to any god that will listen to help her be free, someone eventually hears her... and they answer. 300 years later Addie walks into a bookstore to find a young man at the counter. Upon her return she realizes he remembers her...”
Maxwell, Paragraphs Bookstore
The Once and Future Witches
By Alix E. Harrow
Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
Length: 16 hours 3 minutes
The Once and Future Witches
“Alix Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January was my favorite book last year, so I had incredibly high expectations when I picked up The Once and Future Witches. This book is very different, but I adore it just as much! Set in the late 1800s in a world with a slightly alternate history from ours, women are fighting for the vote and losing. Three wayward sisters decide to challenge the patriarchy by bringing back witchcraft. Told through familiar stories twisted in new ways, this book is incredible. You will not be able to put it down, from the beautifully written introduction to the pulse-pounding ending!”
Carrie Deming, Dog Ear Books
The Orphan Collector
By Ellen Marie Wiseman
Narrated by: Rachel Botchan
Length: 15 hours 51 minutes
Ellen Marie Wiseman, acclaimed author of What She Left Behind and The Life She Was Given, weaves the stories of two very different women into a page-turning novel as suspenseful as it is poignant, set amid one of historys deadliest pandemics. In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphias... Read more »
The Daughters of Yalta
The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War
By Catherine Grace Katz
Narrated by: Christine Rendel
Length: 14 hours 55 minutes
The untold story of the three intelligent and glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and of the conference’s fateful reverberations in the waning days of World War II. Tensions during the Yalta Conference in February 1945 threatened to tear apart the wartime alliance among Franklin... Read more »
Is this Anything?
By Jerry Seinfeld
Narrated by: Jerry Seinfeld
Length: 6 hours 15 minutes
Is this Anything?
“My husband and I have had the pleasure of seeing Jerry Seinfeld live on two occasions. Obviously, we are big fans. When I learned that Seinfeld was releasing his book at the same time as a cross-country road trip that we had planned, I was ecstatic. Jerry did not let us down. The miles flew by quickly as we laughed our way through Connecticut. I highly recommend this book - especially if you are planning a road trip during the holidays.”
Melinda, Buttonwood Books and Toys
Everything Beautiful in Its Time
Seasons of Love and Loss
By Jenna Bush Hager
Narrated by: Jenna Bush Hager
Length: 5 hours 1 minute
Jenna Bush Hager, the former first daughter and granddaughter, #1 New York Times bestselling author, and coanchor of the Today show, shares moving, funny stories about her beloved grandparents and the wisdom they passed on that has shaped her life.
To the world, George and Barbara Bush were America’s powerful president and influential first... Read more »