Staff Recommendations

On the Road: the Original Scroll

Penguin Audio Classics

By: Jack Kerouac
Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
Length: 12 hours 35 minutes

The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published as Kerouac originally composed it
 
“The sparse and unassuming scroll is the living version [of On the Road] for our time. . . . It is a dazzling piece of writing.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
During three weeks in 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote the first draft of On the Road—typed as a long,... Read more

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

By: Edgar Allan Poe
Narrated by: Jamie Hanes
Length: 6 hours 37 minutes

The only novel Poe ever completed, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket tells of the story of Gordon Pym, a sailor whose misadventures take him across the globe. Experiencing mutiny, shipwreck, and even cannibalism, Pym's outrageous adventures find him as far as the South Pole. While Poe felt his novel was silly in many respects, it... Read more

The Sound and the Fury

By: William Faulkner
Narrated by: Grover Gardner & Gabra Zackman
Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century is the story of a family of Southern aristocrats on the brink of personal and financial ruin. • The definitive corrected text, including Faulkner's Appendix

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson... Read more

The Goldfinch

A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

By: Donna Tartt
Narrated by: David Pittu
Length: 32 hours 24 minutes

“The Goldfinch was always one of those books I was intimidated to start. It's so long! And sprawling! Was I really going to commit to thirty hours of a book about a painting? The answer is: I waited much too long to get to this truly incredible story, and if you--like me--are daunted by this book's length and scope, the audiobook is for you. Read... Read more

We Are the Ants

By: Shaun David Hutchinson
Narrated by: Gibson Frazier
Length: 9 hours 13 minutes

A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)

From the “author to watch” (Kirkus Reviews) of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes an “equal parts sarcastic and profound” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving.

Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by... Read more

Frankenstein

or The Modern Prometheus

By: Mary Shelley
Narrated by: Anthony Heald, Stefan Rudnicki & Simon Templeman
Length: 8 hours 42 minutes

Soon to be a major new film adaptation written and directed by Guillermo del ToroThis special unabridged, multivoiced production of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece of nineteenth-century Gothic horror is narrated by film and television star Anthony Heald, joined by Grammy winner Stefan Rudnicki and actor Simon Templeman, under the direction of... Read more

The Wind in the Willows

By: Kenneth Grahame
Narrated by: Mary Woods
Length: 5 hours 59 minutes

The Wind in the Willows is a book for those “who keep the spirit of youth alive in them; of life, sunshine, running water, woodlands, dusty roads, winter firesides.” So wrote Kenneth Grahame of his timeless tale of Rat, Mole, Badger, and Toad, in their lyrical world of gurgling rivers and whispering reeds, a world which is both beautiful and... Read more

Dark Shadows - The Fall of the House of Trask

Dark Shadows

By: Joseph Lidster
Narrated by: Nancy Barrett, Jerry Lacy & Marie Wallace
Length: 1 hour 17 minutes

1941: The Reverend Gregory Trask has come back from Hell to be reunited with his daughter, Charity. But why has he returned? Is he really free of the influence of The Dark Lord? The ghost of Pansy Faye doesn’t think so and is keeping a close eye on him. Torn between the spirit who haunts her and a father returned from beyond the grave, whose... Read more

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell

By: Joseph Campbell
Narrated by: Arthur Morey, John Lee & Susan Denaker
Length: 14 hours 37 minutes

Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell’s revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In this book, Campbell outlines the Hero’s Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually... Read more

The Time It Never Rained

By: Elmer Kelton
Narrated by: George Guidall
Length: 13 hours 17 minutes

The Time It Never Rained helped convince the Western Writers of America to declare seven-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton the greatest Western writer of all time. Forged from Kelton’s 1950s observations of drought-ravaged West Texas, this compelling novel tells the story of one rancher’s struggle to maintain his independence despite the... Read more

Papillon

By: Henri Charriere
Narrated by: Michael Prichard
Length: 18 hours 18 minutes

Henri Charrière, called ""Papillon,"" for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was... Read more

The Invisible Man

By: H. G. Wells
Narrated by: James Adams
Length: 5 hours 19 minutes

On a freezing February day, a stranger emerges from out of the gray to request a room at a local provincial inn. Who is this out-of-season traveler? More confounding is the thick mask of bandages obscuring his face. Why does he disguise himself in this manner and keep himself hidden away in his room?Aroused by trepidation and curiosity, the... Read more

Good Omens

By: Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Narrated by: Martin Jarvis
Length: 12 hours 32 minutes

Season 2 of Good Omens coming soon!“Reads like the Book of Revelation, rewritten by Monty Python.” — San Francisco ChronicleThe classic novel of angels, demons, and Armageddon from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, now a Prime original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant.According to The Nice... Read more

The Feast of All Saints - Abridged

By: Anne Rice
Narrated by: Courtney B. Vance
Length: 2 hours 50 minutes

In the days before the Civil War, there lived a Louisiana people unique in Southern histroy. Though descended from African slaves, they were also descended from the French and Spanish who enslaved them. Called the Free People of Color, this dazzling historical novel chronicles the lives of four of them--men and women caught perilously between... Read more

Lysistrata

By: Aristophanes
Narrated by: Marnye Young
Length: 1 hour 52 minutes

The Peloponnesian War drags on and on with no end in sight, and the tough-minded Lysistrata has had enough. Men!—always making stupid decisions that affect everyone. Women’s opinions are never listened to.Taking matters into her own hands, Lysistrata convenes a meeting of women from warring city-states across Greece and calls for a sex strike.... Read more

The Picture Dorian Gray

By: Oscar Wilde
Narrated by: Don Hagen
Length: 8 hours 41 minutes

With a dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty, Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for sparkling prose and astute social observation to The Picture of Dorian Gray.

After the artist, Basil Hallward, paints his portrait, Dorian Gray frivolously wishes that the picture change, yet he remain the same.... Read more