Staff Picks

A Wizard of Earthsea

Earthsea Cycle: Book #1

By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: Rob Inglis
Length: 7 hours 17 minutes

"The shapeless mass of darkness split apart. It sundered, and a pale spindle of light gleamed between his open arms. In the oval of light there moved a human shape: a tall woman . beautiful, and sorrowful, and full of fear."-from A Wizard of Earthsea A Wizard of Earthsea, first in a tetralogy that includes The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest... Read more

I Will Die In A Foreign Land

By: Kalani Pickhart
Narrated by: Adam Barr
Length: 8 hours 4 minutes

In 1913, a Russian ballet incited a riot in Paris at the new Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. A century later, in November 2013, thousands of Ukrainian citizens gathered at Independence Square in Kyiv to protest then-President Yanukovych's failure to sign a referendum with the European Union, opting instead to forge a closer alliance with President... Read more

The Year of Magical Thinking

By: Joan Didion
Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
Length: 5 hours 10 minutes

Didion's journalistic skills are displayed as never before in this story of a year in her life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her husband unexpectedly dead due to a heart attack.

This powerful and moving work is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had... Read more

The Song of Achilles

A Novel

By: Madeline Miller
Narrated by: Frazer Douglas
Length: 11 hours 14 minutes

“This is one of the best books I've ever read. Do your heart a favor and read this beautiful, tender, heartbreaking book. Read more

In the Dream House

A Memoir

By: Carmen Maria Machado
Narrated by: Carmen Maria Machado
Length: 5 hours 28 minutes

“In the most inventive memoir I've read, Machado uses narrative tropes in a series of fragments and vignettes to break down the ways in which she, herself, was breaking down in an abusive same-sex relationship. A book about 'archival silence,' about inventing a language to tell a story. Read more

Autobiography of Red

Vintage Contemporaries

By: Anne Carson
Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
Length: 3 hours 55 minutes

The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional recreation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.

Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile,... Read more

Braiding Sweetgrass

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Length: 16 hours 44 minutes

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our... Read more

The Poet X

By: Elizabeth Acevedo
Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo
Length: 3 hours 30 minutes

“Getting to listen to the author herself read her poetry, which are clearly a testament to the spoken word and the art of slam, is absolutely the best way to devour this novel-in-verse. Acevedo puts everything into her words, and no one else could do them justice the way she does herself. Despite possible age/cultural/religious differences, any... Read more

Clap When You Land

By: Elizabeth Acevedo
Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo & Melania-Luisa Marte
Length: 5 hours 32 minutes

“Lyrically written with precise clarity and beautiful turn of phrase, National Book Award-winner Elizabeth Acevedo shares a poignant story of loss, identity, and family. I highly recommend the audio version because of the poetic cadence that begs to be read aloud and the voice of two women (including the author) who narrate the two points of view... Read more

The Smell of Other People's Houses

By: Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock
Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Erin Tripp, Karissa Vacker & Robbie Daymond
Length: 5 hours 37 minutes

In Alaska, 1970, being a teenager here isn’t like being a teenager anywhere else. This deeply moving and authentic debut is for fans of Rainbow Rowell, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, and Benjamin Alire Saenz. Intertwining stories of love, tragedy, wild luck, and salvation on the edge of America’s Last Frontier introduce a writer of rare... Read more

Kafka on the Shore

By: Haruki Murakami
Narrated by: Sean Barrett & Oliver Le Sueur
Length: 19 hours 6 minutes

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

This magnificent new... Read more

The Jakarta Method

Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

By: Vincent Bevins
Narrated by: Tim Paige
Length: 9 hours 58 minutes

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 BY NPR, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND GQ

The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States.  In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important... Read more

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

A Novel

By: Ocean Vuong
Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

“A rare poignant visceral reading experience, tackling themes of war, immigration, identity, sexuality, violence, and carving out your place in the world. More poetic than narrative. Deeply Affecting! Absolutely Brilliant! Stunning! Read more

A Really Good Day

How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life

By: Ayelet Waldman
Narrated by: Ayelet Waldman
Length: 7 hours 37 minutes

A revealing, courageous, fascinating, and funny account of the author's experiment with microdoses of LSD in an effort to treat a debilitating mood disorder, of her quest to understand a misunderstood drug, and of her search for a really good day. When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from "Lewis Carroll," Ayelet Waldman is at a low point.... Read more

The Communism of Love

An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value

By: Richard Gilman-Opalsky
Narrated by: Bea Flowers
Length: 14 hours 51 minutes

Exploring the meanings and powers of love from ancient Greece to the present day, Richard Gilman-Opalsky argues that what is called “love” by the best thinkers who have approached the subject is in fact the beating heart of communism—understood as a way of living, not as a form of government. Along the way, he reveals with clarity that the... Read more

Neuromancer

Sprawl Trilogy

By: William Gibson
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
Length: 10 hours 30 minutes

Neuromancer is the multiple award-winning novel that launched the astonishing career of William Gibson. The first fully-realized glimpse of humankind's digital future, it is a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about our technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our... Read more

No One Is Talking About This

A Novel

By: Patricia Lockwood
Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
Length: 4 hours 43 minutes

“This compact novel captures the life of a social media influencer in such a stunning way—I listened to this book with my jaw on the floor. Incredible (though if you've never opened Instagram or Twitter, this might not be for you). Read more

Bluets

By: Maggie Nelson
Narrated by: Maggie Nelson
Length: 2 hours 4 minutes

Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color …Since 2009, when it first published, to today, Bluets has drawn scores of readers with its surprising insights into the emotional depths that make us most human—via 240 short pieces, at once lyrical and philosophical, on the color blue. This new edition celebrates Maggie... Read more

Devolution

A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

By: Max Brooks
Narrated by: Judy Greer, Max Brooks, Jeff Daniels, Nathan Fillion, Mira Furlan, Terry Gross, Kimberly Guerrero, Kate Mulgrew, Kai Ryssdal & Steven Weber
Length: 9 hours 49 minutes

“I think my favorite part of this book was the interviews that would cut in between each chapter of the book to give more details on the "history" or "events" of the story. I felt like I was listening to NPR or reading from a non-fiction field guide. It's incredibly original, humorous, and terrifying. Read more

State and Revolution

By: Vladimir Ilich Lenin
Narrated by: Chris Matthews
Length: 4 hours 4 minutes

State and Revolution (1917) describes the role of the state in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution. It describes the inherent nature of the state as a tool for class oppression, a creation born of one social class' desire to control all other social classes.... Read more