The Bookish Life Podcast

Disruptions

Stories

By: Steven Millhauser
Narrated by: Gisela Chípe, Vas Eli & Arthur Morey
Length: 9 hours 1 minute

An exquisite new collection from a Pulitzer Prize–winning master of the short story, the culmination of a five-decade career: work that takes us beneath the placid surface of suburban life into the elusive strangeness of the everyday

Here are eighteen stories of astonishing range and precision. A housewife drinks alone in her Connecticut living... Read more

Whalefall

A Novel

By: Daniel Kraus
Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

“Whalefall, by Daniel Kraus, is based on a ridiculous premise - a skinny little scuba diver is swallowed by a huge sperm whale. Also, the first couple of chapters are kind of slow going. So why am I recommending this book? Because it is a rollercoaster of a story. Jay Gardiner's estranged father commits suicide by drowning himself. We know it's... Read more

The Rachel Incident

A novel

By: Caroline O'Donoghue
Narrated by: Tara Flynn
Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

“Last night I finished The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue and I just can’t stop thinking about it. In the tradition of a Curtis Sittenfeld or a Sally Rooney novel, The Rachel Incident is the story of best friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos and a young woman desperately trying to navigate all three. I can’t wait to put a copy of it in your... Read more

Lone Women

A Novel

By: Victor LaValle
Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
Length: 9 hours 10 minutes

“A great mixture of historical fiction and horror through the unique lens of a woman on the Western Frontier - it’s a chilling tale that touches on the trauma we carry and how we reckon with our past. Read more

No Country for Old Men

By: Cormac McCarthy
Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Packing the money out, he knows, will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does a victim's burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes how... Read more

The Art Thief

A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

By: Michael Finkel
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini & Michael Finkel
Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

“Over the course of eight years, master thief Stephane Breitwieser carried out over 200 brazen heists of fine art from museums and cathedrals across Europe! Amassing a private art collection with an estimated value of two billion dollars (in the top floor of his mother's home where he lived with his girlfriend and accomplice), Breitwieser saw... Read more

Four Thousand Weeks

Time Management for Mortals

By: Oliver Burkeman
Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman
Length: 5 hours 53 minutes

“Burkeman’s title emphasizes that if we make it to 80 years of age, we live roughly four thousand weeks. That intro alone sounds pretty sobering, but Burkeman takes us through philosophers’ and scientists’ wisdom across centuries with conclusions that are very optimistic. Burke reassures us with stories such as the American who in 1969 went... Read more

The Only One Left

A Novel

By: Riley Sager
Narrated by: Christine Lakin & Dawn Harvey
Length: 12 hours 31 minutes

“I was surprised again and again as the many buried secrets in the Hope family’s story were revealed. Kit knows that the woman in her care is suspected by most everyone of having murdered her parents and sister many years ago. But as Lenora begins to tell her own story, Kit becomes increasingly uncertain about what really happened. Sager weaves a... Read more

Tom Lake

A Novel

By: Ann Patchett
Narrated by: Meryl Streep
Length: 11 hours 22 minutes

“Once again, Patchett does her thing. Expertly read. Read more

Crook Manifesto

A Novel

By: Colson Whitehead
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

“I loved the precursor to this book, Harlem Shuffle, and I love the return of Ray Carney and Pepper in this novel. These characters and the 1970s Harlem they inhabit are so vivid. Loved it! Read more

Those We Thought We Knew

By: David Joy
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
Length: 9 hours 53 minutes

“Raw, gritty and masterful, David Joy's latest novel, Those We Thought We Knew, is set in his beloved Appalachian mountains among folks who believe their town is peaceful and nurturing. But that façade is lifted when Toya Gardner, a young Black artist, comes to stay with her grandmother at the family homestead to finish her MFA thesis project.... Read more

All the Sinners Bleed

A Novel

By: S. A. Cosby
Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
Length: 13 hours 5 minutes

“Not only was this a riveting mystery, but there were such really engaging turns of phrases that just really caught my attention. The narrator was fantastic and I didn't want to stop listening. I really hope there will be more Titus Crowne. Read more

Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

By: Hernan Diaz
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò & Orlagh Cassidy
Length: 10 hours 20 minutes

“Who can you trust in the end? This 'brilliant literary puzzle' tells the story of the legendary Wall Street Tycoon Andrew Bevel and his enigmatic wife Mildred. Told in four interlocking parts, Trust is a novel within a novel, the fragmented notes for a ghostwritten memoir that Andrew hopes will set the record straight, the ghostwriter's own... Read more

Heartbreak

A Personal and Scientific Journey

By: Florence Williams
Narrated by: Florence Williams
Length: 10 hours 37 minutes

For fans of Wild and Lab Girl, Heartbreak is a uniquely immersive audiobook, merging science and self-discovery to change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love. When her twenty-five-year marriage unexpectedly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. What she doesn’t... Read more

The Perfect Golden Circle

By: Benjamin Myers
Narrated by: Tim Key
Length: 5 hours 37 minutes

Summer 1989, deep in the English countryside—during a time of mass unemployment, class war, and rebellion . . .

Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men—Calvert, an ex-soldier traumatized by his experience in the Falklands War, and his affable friend Redbone—set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an... Read more

My Murder

A Novel

By: Katie Williams
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
Length: 7 hours 52 minutes

“Whiplash plot twists and near-poetry descriptions keep readers clutching their headphones during this brainy summer blockbuster. The narrator's repetitions and elaborations, which at first feel unreliable, turn out to be... no, I can't tell you. No spoilers. She's also hilarious, and dizzyingly honest about big themes like postpartum depression,... Read more

Ozark Dogs

By: Eli Cranor
Narrated by: Eli Cranor
Length: 7 hours 29 minutes

In this Southern thriller two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his teenage granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Arkansas junkyard. He teaches her how to... Read more

Sing Her Down

A Novel

By: Ivy Pochoda
Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Kimberly M. Wetherell, Sophie Amoss & Victoria Villarreal
Length: 8 hours 33 minutes

This program features multicast narration.

“I read everything Ivy Pochoda writes. Her capture of the complexities, diversities, and insanities of today’s life and culture is next to none. I loved Sing Her Down. The world will too.” —Michael Connelly, author of Desert Star

No Country for Old Men meets Killing Eve in this gritty, feminist Western... Read more

The Summer of 1876

Outlaws, Lawmen, and Legends in the Season That Defined the American West

By: Chris Wimmer
Narrated by: Chris Wimmer & Johnny Heller
Length: 8 hours

This program features a preface and acknowledgments read by the author.

"The audiobook is a fun and easy listening experience."- AudioFile

From the creator of the "Legends of the Old West" podcast, an audiobook exploring the overlapping narratives of the biggest legends in frontier mythology.

The summer of 1876 was a key time period in the... Read more

The Guest

A Novel

By: Emma Cline
Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan
Length: 8 hours 36 minutes

“Alex, a young grifter, runs from some of her troubles only to create more, bouncing from one situation to the next in the late summer Hamptons. An unreliable narrator, it's never clear why Alex has chosen her path, but Cline allows glimmers of a deeper struggle within her. It's unsettling to be in the mind of a person so self-destructive and who... Read more