Best Books of 2023

Fourth Wing

Empyrean: Book #1

By: Rebecca Yarros
Narrated by: Rebecca Soler & Teddy Hamilton
Length: 21 hours 22 minutes

“This narration has turned this first time fantasy bookseller into a Dragon loving, fantasy reader for life! I was literally gripping my steering wheel crying out 'pull up, pull up' during the fight scenes. What a fun, gritty, sexy book this gem has turned out to be. There is something for everyone in here. Read more

Tom Lake

A Novel

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

“This book is perfectly read by Meryl Streep! Read more

Tress of the Emerald Sea

A Cosmere Novel

Secret Projects: Book #1

By: Brandon Sanderson
Narrated by: Michael Kramer
Length: 12 hours 26 minutes

“This felt like reading one of my childhood adventure/fairytale books, like warmth and nostalgia and absurdity all wrapped together. I loved the wildly unfamiliar setting and the quirky, loveable characters. A small-town girl turns pirateer to rescue her love from a sorceress, and to do so has to sail over oceans of... moon dust? Definitely a... Read more

Happy Place

By: Emily Henry
Narrated by: Julia Whelan
Length: 11 hours 2 minutes

“I’ve never been so devastated by love before. Not in the absence of it, but in the all-encompassing presence of it in a book like this. This book isn’t 'Slow release hot', as Harriet would be described by Wyn, because it seized my attention from the first chapter. This book did not disappoint and I cannot wait to see what else Henry has in store... Read more

The Covenant of Water

By: Abraham Verghese
Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
Length: 31 hours 16 minutes

“An engrossing tale of three generations of an Indian family plagued by family drownings - this medical mystery and vivid characters propelled me through this epic tale. Read more

Chain Gang All Stars: A Read with Jenna Pick

National Book Award Finalist

By: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Narrated by: Shayna Small, Aaron Goodson, Michael Crouch & Lee Osorio
Length: 13 hours 38 minutes

“Sometimes I read a book so profound, and yet so profoundly disturbing, that I don’t know whether to beg everyone to read it or caution them not to. Chain-Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a novel, but I found myself checking again and again to see what was factual and what was fiction, and much of the commentary on the prison system... Read more

The Postcard

By: Anne Berest
Narrated by: Barrie Kealoha
Length: 13 hours 5 minutes

“A powerful personal account of a family’s history over multiple generations with a stunning ending that resolves the mystery of the postcard’s sender! The author launches her family research and investigation of who could have written the anonymous, unsigned postcard a decade earlier when her daughter experiences an anti-semitic incident at... Read more

Lone Women

A Novel

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

“Victor LaValle gets better and better with every new novel. A master of literary horror, he takes literal monsters and ghosts - in this case in the historical context of early 20th century Montana homesteaders - and uses them to reflect back on our contemporary society and all of its metaphorical monsters and ghosts. In the harsh and solitary... Read more

Let Us Descend

A Novel

By: Jesmyn Ward
Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

“When Jesmyn Ward speaks you listen. Her voice in this new novel is so powerful. This novel should be in everyone's hands as it walks you through the life of a young slave girl before the Civil War. Will make a great book club book! Read more

The Wager

A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

By: David Grann
Narrated by: Dion Graham & David Grann
Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

“An absorbing non-fiction nautical shipwreck thriller, this is the story of the ill-fated journey of The Wager in 1740-41 as it attempts to to sail round Cape Horn, the treacherous tip of South America. The hardships seem unreal: starvation, illness (scurvy, typhus), death, but also murder and a mutinous crew, never mind the truly wild weather... Read more

Poverty, by America

By: Matthew Desmond
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 5 hours 40 minutes

“Matthew Desmond, best selling author of Evicted, is back to examine the causes of poverty in America. Since the Johnson Administration in the 1960s, the American government has waged war on poverty. Vast amounts of money are spent annually fighting poverty, but poverty seems to be an entrenched part of American society. Desmond argues and... Read more

Quietly Hostile

Essays

By: Samantha Irby
Narrated by: Samantha Irby
Length: 9 hours 31 minutes

“I'm obsessed with Samantha Irby (in a cute way, not a dangerous way). Her books are hilarious, endearing, and a little gross. Walking around the neighborhood listening to this audiobook got me a lot of weird looks as I gasped, gagged, talked back to her (she narrates all of her audiobooks!), and laughed with wild abandon. Read more

Soil

The Story of a Black Mother's Garden

By: Camille T Dungy
Narrated by: Camille T Dungy
Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

“Part nature writing, part exploration of the African diaspora and Black identity, part memoir, Dungy puts herself in conversation with all the white nature writers who've come before - Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson - and exposes how a monoculture in both cultivars and cultural backgrounds threatens us and... Read more

How to Say Babylon

A Memoir

By: Safiya Sinclair
Narrated by: Safiya Sinclair
Length: 16 hours 46 minutes

“The author's growing understanding of her childhood isolation and the world around her helped turn her pain into poetry as she broke free. After reading this memoir I am now interested in reading some of her award winning poetry. Read more

The Best Strangers in the World

Stories from a Life Spent Listening

By: Ari Shapiro
Narrated by: Ari Shapiro
Length: 8 hours 15 minutes

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“The Best Strangers in the World is a witty, poignant book that captures Ari Shapiro’s love for the unusual, his pursuit of the unexpected, and his delight at connection against the odds.”—Ronan Farrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times-bestselling author of Catch and Kill and War... Read more

Rocky Mountain High

A Tale of Boom and Bust in the New Wild West

By: Finn Murphy
Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey
Length: 6 hours 22 minutes

The best-selling author of The Long Haul returns with the story of ditching his truck to seek his fortune … in hemp.After decades as a long-haul trucker, Finn Murphy left the road and settled in Boulder County, Colorado. Before long he noticed that many of his neighbors were captivated by the prospect of vast riches in “the Hemp Space.” When... Read more

This Is What It Sounds Like

What the Music You Love Says About You

By: Ogi Ogas & Susan Rogers
Narrated by: Susan Rogers
Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

A legendary record producer–turned–brain scientist explains why you fall in love with music.This Is What It Sounds Like is a journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favorite songs move you. But it’s also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles, rose to become... Read more

Hello Beautiful (Oprah's Book Club)

A Novel

By: Ann Napolitano
Narrated by: Maura Tierney
Length: 15 hours 6 minutes

“Napolitano did such a beautiful job with this book! Though seemingly a story about a boy and a girl, it is actually so much more than that - it's a novel about love, despair, identity, and redemption. I felt like Napolitano captured the essence of what it means to struggle with mental illness so well in her prose and how we all deserve to be... Read more

The Last Animal

A Novel

By: Ramona Ausubel
Narrated by: Natasha Soudek
Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Whip-smart and compulsively readable. . . both a wildly entertaining adventure story and a meditation on what it means to love your children—fiercely and imperfectly.”—Oprah Daily

“Springs alive to explore questions that stump scientists and families, problems of the head and the heart.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“A... Read more

A Fever in the Heartland

The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

By: Timothy Egan
Narrated by: Timothy Egan
Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

“Some pride themselves on knowing historical facts and hidden histories, and yet, Egan, with his horror story about the KKK, will stop you in your tracks. Wasn't this just a 19th century Southern phenomenon? Who knew American Terror happened literally in our own backyard. Read more