Faves from the Archives

How To

Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems

By: Randall Munroe
Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
Length: 6 hours 15 minutes

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer

For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try... Read more

Mythos

By: Stephen Fry
Narrated by: Stephen Fry
Length: 15 hours 24 minutes

“Stephen Fry has dusted off the Greek myths. Starting with the creation and going through all the infights, back-stabbings, and just plain stupid mistakes of the Greek pantheon, he breaths new life into these tales with his characteristic wry humor and witty asides. A great added feature of the video book is that Fry himself reads it, so sit... Read more

Underland

A Deep Time Journey

By: Robert Macfarlane
Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
Length: 12 hours 3 minutes

“I don’t think there is a square mile of ground on this planet where Robert Macfarlane couldn’t dig up a new, wondrous story. Underland continues the tradition of profound storytelling, reflection, and, quite simply, gorgeous writing we have come to expect from him. Macfarlane’s ventures into the underworlds of our planet, both mythical and... Read more

Burnout

The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

By: Emily Nagoski, PhD & Amelia Nagoski, DMA
Narrated by: Emily Nagoski, PhD & Amelia Nagoski, DMA
Length: 7 hours 1 minute

“Working in an industry I’m super passionate about makes it REALLY hard to set healthy boundaries. When I’m not promoting books, I’m reading them. When I’m not on a Zoom call with an author, I’m stalking their #bookstagram profiles online. Books all day every day! The Nagoski siblings are two of my favorite nonfiction authors. They know how to... Read more

How to Hide an Empire

A History of the Greater United States

By: Daniel Immerwahr
Narrated by: Luis Moreno
Length: 17 hours 25 minutes

“A hilarious sparkler of historical quirks burns down to a dangerous fuse of tampering, territory, and transnational economics in this history of the USA not as the nation you just pictured, but as the complete global network of Americans, many without the rights the Lower 48 believe in, most segregated into cells of power that occasionally... Read more

90 Seconds to a Life You Love

How to Master Your Difficult Feelings to Cultivate Lasting Confidence, Resilience, and Authenticity

By: Joan I. Rosenberg
Narrated by: Joan I. Rosenberg
Length: 8 hours 54 minutes

Learn how to manage your most difficult feelings and build the emotional strength you need to create the life of your dreams.
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Sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, and vulnerability. In 30 years as a practicing psychologist, Dr. Joan Rosenberg has found that what most often blocks people from success... Read more

Joy Enough

A Memoir

By: Sarah McColl
Narrated by: Sarah McColl
Length: 4 hours 40 minutes

From a bracing new voice comes this life-affirming memoir of a daughter making and remaking her life in her mother's image. Sifting gingerly through memories of her late mother, brilliant newcomer Sarah McColl has penned an indelible tribute to the joy and pain of loving well. Even as her own marriage splinters, McColl drops everything when her... Read more

The Order of Time

By: Carlo Rovelli
Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch
Length: 4 hours 19 minutes

“In thirteen succinct chapters, Rovelli shows us that time as we know it—continuous, smooth, regular—is an illusion. Our perception of time is limited and can’t take into account its true nature as a fluctuating, particulate field--“a network of relations that no longer holds together as a coherent canvas.” Step by step, Rovelli’s deconstruction... Read more

Heartland

A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

By: Sarah Smarsh
Narrated by: Sarah Smarsh
Length: 9 hours 35 minutes

“A classic is born! Sarah Smarsh takes us on a five-generation trek through the hardscrabble life of her Kansas childhood in the ’80s and ’90s. Just as J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed addressed the uncomfortable topic of poverty in this country, Heartland successfully gives the reader an in-depth look at... 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

“The hype over this book is real! Consider this your sign to pick it up and give it a listen if you have been thinking about it. Kimmerer narrates her own book with emotion and heart, and I absolutely enjoyed every minute of it! Braiding Sweetgrass will make you see the world differently, and I truly think everyone can relate to a chapter in this... Read more

The Good Neighbor

The Life and Work of Fred Rogers

By: Maxwell King
Narrated by: LeVar Burton
Length: 14 hours 7 minutes

“A wonderful biography of an American icon who seemed too good to be true. And yet, believe it or not, he was an even better, more caring man than he portrayed on television. If you are a fan of Fred Rogers and want to understand what drove him to create Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, this is an essential read. Learning more about Rogers’ life through... Read more

Dear Sweet Pea

By: Julie Murphy
Narrated by: Phoebe Strole
Length: 6 hours 20 minutes

The first middle grade novel from Julie Murphy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dumplin’ (now a popular Netflix film), is a funny, heartwarming story perfect for fans of Rebecca Stead, Ali Benjamin, and Holly Goldberg Sloan.Patricia “Sweet Pea” DiMarco wasn’t sure what to expect when her parents announced they were getting a divorce. She... Read more

Black Leopard, Red Wolf

The Dark Star Trilogy: Book #1

By: Marlon James
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 23 hours 59 minutes

“Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a shot across the bow of fantasy literature: bold, fresh, and filled with brutal wonder and endless imagination. James’tale set in a fantastical ancient Africa follows a hunter known only as Tracker as he trails the scent of a lost boy, meeting a shape-shifting leopard along the way. At turns... Read more

Frankissstein

A Love Story

By: Jeanette Winterson
Narrated by: John Sackville & Perdita Weeks
Length: 7 hours 10 minutes

Since her astonishing debut at twenty-five with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide critical and commercial success as “one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time” (Elle). Her new novel, Frankissstein, is an audacious love story that weaves together disparate lives into an exploration of... Read more

FKA USA

A Novel

By: Reed King
Narrated by: Dan Bittner & Peter Ganim
Length: 15 hours 19 minutes

“This book is a wild ride through a post-dissolution, post-apocalyptic United States beginning a mere decade from now and continuing to the end of the 21st century. The political, technological, and ecological disasters it envisions seem all too plausibly extrapolated from the headlines of today. Despite the litany of cascading disasters — mass... Read more

When All Is Said

A Novel

By: Anne Griffin
Narrated by: Niall Buggy
Length: 8 hours 4 minutes

“Dark and unflinching yet packed with heart and humanity, When All Is Said is Irish storytelling at its best. Maurice Hannigan sits in a bar on a Saturday night and toasts five people who have been important in his life and who have left him, either through death or distance. The 84-year-old widower spools out his story like tangled fishing line,... Read more

The Need

By: Helen Phillips
Narrated by: Alex Allwine
Length: 6 hours 19 minutes

“THE NEED is a thriller about the sheer emotional and physical intensity of mothering and perhaps a rip in the time space continuum. Phillips is a gifted lyrical creator of worlds. Not for the faint of heart and wonderfully absorbing. Read more

Sorcery of Thorns

By: Margaret Rogerson
Narrated by: Emily Ellet
Length: 14 hours 20 minutes

“Amazing! I wonderful fantasy I loved every bit of. The narrator brought this story to life, and I was hypnotized the entire time. This story has some of my favorite elements in it. A strong, smart heroine? Check. A charming hero with demons and a chip on his shoulder? Check. An evil threatening the safety of the world? Check. Elizabeth is such... Read more

Hollow Kingdom

By: Kira Jane Buxton
Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

“We need more heroes like S.T. — a foul-mouthed, idealistic, moral crow with unquenchable courage — and his sidekick, a befuddled bloodhound. Kira Jane Buxton speaks crow, gull, dog, housecat, and owl with such fluency and poetry that I could not put this book down. Her vision of the zombie apocalypse is a strange and wonderful journey I want to... Read more

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

By: Alix E. Harrow
Narrated by: January LaVoy
Length: 12 hours 20 minutes

“This lovely, magical book is a coming-of-age story that blends the best qualities of the adventure stories of the early 20th century with some thoroughly modern sensibilities. January Scaller is an almost-orphan in the early 1900s, the unlikely ward of a rich collector of antiquities who employs her father to travel the world discovering... Read more