BCB Staff Picks

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

Exit West

A Novel

By: Mohsin Hamid
Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
Length: 4 hours 41 minutes

“Exit West will take your breath away as it magically weaves together a story of falling in love while the world falls apart. Spirited Nadia captures the heart of the thoughtful Saeed, but as their different paths in life converge, ordinary life gives way to the insults of war. Mohsin Hamid conveys the story of these young refugees with... Read more

Fat City

By: Leonard Gardner
Narrated by: R. C. Bray
Length: 4 hours 34 minutes

Fat City is a vivid novel of defiance and struggle, of the potent promise of the good life and the desperation and drink that waylay those whom it eludes. Stockton, California, is the novel's setting: the Lido Gym, the Hotel Coma, Main Street's lunchrooms and dark bars offer a temporary respite to the men and women whose backbreaking work in the... Read more

Memoirs of a Polar Bear

By: Yoko Tawada
Narrated by: Paul Woodson & Christa Lewis
Length: 8 hours 52 minutes

Memoirs of a Polar Bear has in spades what Rivka Galchen hailed in the New Yorker as "Yoko Tawada's magnificent strangeness"—Tawada is an author like no other. Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous as both circus performers and writers in East Germany: they are polar bears who move in human society, stars of the... Read more

Idlewild

A Novel

By: James Frankie Thomas
Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio
Length: 12 hours 25 minutes

A darkly funny story of two adults looking back on their intense teenage friendship, in a queer, trans, and early-Internet twist on the Manhattan prep school novel

Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of... Read more

Amor Actually

A Holiday Romance Anthology

By: Adriana Herrera, Zoey Castile, Alexis Daria, Diana Muñoz Stewart, Priscilla Oliveras, Sabrina Sol & Mia Sosa
Narrated by: Ramona Master & Gomez Pugh
Length: 12 hours 10 minutes

"It’s Christmas Eve in NYC, when anything is possible. For these couples, it’s the season to find true love. From second chances, big leaps, missed connections, and reconnections, this charming collection celebrates the spirit of the holidays and delivers nine perfect HEAs. Make the Yuletide Gay by Adriana Herrera After a string of broken... Read more

Home Cooking

A Writer in the Kitchen

By: Laurie Colwin
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
Length: 5 hours 41 minutes

Weaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, the acclaimed author of Happy All the Time delivers a beloved cookbook manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. • With a foreword by Ruth Reichl.

“As much memoir as cookbook and as much about eating as cooking.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the... Read more

The Risk it Takes to Bloom

On Life and Liberation

By: Raquel Willis
Narrated by: Raquel Willis
Length: 13 hours 40 minutes

A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation.
In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women’s March podium just after the presidential election of Donald Trump, primed to tell her story as a young Black transgender woman from the... Read more

The End of Drum-Time

A Novel

By: Hanna Pylväinen
Narrated by: Philippe Spall
Length: 14 hours 30 minutes

"Many listeners will be transported and maybe even transfixed by this audiobook. Philippe Spall portrays the inhabitants of a village in 1850s Scandinavia with subtle strength. He navigates parallel plots with energy and clarity, his tone of urgency moving the story along." - AudioFile Magazine

An epic love story in the vein of Cold Mountain and... Read more

The Great Transition

A Novel

By: Nick Fuller Googins
Narrated by: Stacy Carolan & Stacy Gonzalez
Length: 11 hours 31 minutes

“What a propulsive thriller! I was immediately sucked into this climate story which is full of emotion, adventure and strong characters. Larch (father) and Emi (daughter) are searching for Kristina (mother) who has suddenly gone missing. Told through multiple voices and a great high school history project, the story of how the world almost ended... Read more