Montclair Literary Festival 2024- Part 2

I Just Keep Talking

A Life in Essays

By: Nell Irvin Painter
Narrated by: Nell Irvin Painter
Length: 17 hours 1 minute

From the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People and Old in Art School, a finalist for the NBCC Award, comes a comprehensive new collection of essays spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it.

Throughout her prolific writing career, Nell Painter has published works on such... Read more

Wedding Issues

A Novel

By: Elle Evans
Narrated by: Maria Marquis
Length: 8 hours 52 minutes

Competition for a bridal magazine cover unleashes mayhem, forcing a mastermind maid of honor to stop being a people pleaser and start figuring out what she wants out of life. A hilarious, smart coming-of-age story.
Olivia “Liv” Fitzgerald’s life is on ambition autopilot. The soon-to-be-lawyer has her life plan set and can talk anyone into... Read more

Days of Wonder

A Novel

By: Caroline Leavitt
Narrated by: Xe Sands, Stephanie Willing & Steve Quinn
Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

A New York Times bestselling author delivers a tantalizing, courageous story about mothers and daughters, guilt and innocence, and the lengths we go for love.

As a teenager, for a moment, Ella Fitchburg found love—yearning, breathless love—that consumed both her and her boyfriend, Jude, as they wandered the streets of New York City together. But... Read more

Hester

A Novel

By: Laurie Lico Albanese
Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

“Loved this so much - and *really* terrific as an audiobook! Read more

Julia

A Novel

By: Sandra Newman
Narrated by: Louise Brealey
Length: 14 hours 20 minutes

“A great companion piece to George Orwell's 1984. It tells the story of Winston Smith's lover, Julia, as she tries to navigate the dangerous world of Big Brother, doublespeak, Room 101 and the aftermath of their forbidden affair. Taut and terrifying,  this is highly recommended. Read more

The Way You Make Me Feel

Love in Black and Brown

By: Nina Sharma
Narrated by: Nina Sharma
Length: 9 hours 21 minutes

“Remarkable . . . The Way You Make Me Feel affirms that Black and Brown existence in America comes with no guarantee of collective solidarity, no innate promise of racial equality. The path to justice is uncertain, Sharma reminds us, and we must each work hard—and be bold enough to sacrifice our own comfort—to actualize it.” —Washington Post

A... Read more

Flores and Miss Paula

A Novel

By: Melissa Rivero
Narrated by: Gisela Chipe & Liliana Montenegro
Length: 10 hours 4 minutes

A Recommended Book From:The Washington Post * Today * Sunset Magazine * Country Living * Good Housekeeping A wry, tender novel about a Peruvian immigrant mother and a millennial daughter who have one final chance to find common groundThirtysomething Flores and her mother, Paula, still live in the same Brooklyn apartment, but that may be the only... Read more

Embers on the Wind

A Novel

By: Lisa Williamson Rosenberg
Narrated by: Karole Foreman
Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

The past and the present converge in this enthralling, serpentine tale of women connected by motherhood, slavery’s legacy, and histories that span centuries.In 1850 in Massachusetts, Whittaker House stood as a stop on the Underground Railroad. It’s where two freedom seekers, Little Annie and Clementine, hid and perished. Whittaker House still... Read more

Go Back and Get It

A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing

By: Dionne Ford
Narrated by: Dionne Ford
Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

An unexpected family photograph leads Dionne Ford to uncover the stories of her enslaved female ancestors, reclaim their power, and begin to heal 

Countless Black Americans descended from slavery are related to the enslavers who bought and sold their ancestors. Among them is Dionne Ford, whose great grandmother was the last of six children born... Read more

Real Americans

A novel

By: Rachel Khong
Narrated by: Louisa Zhu, Eric Yang & Eunice Wong
Length: 14 hours 40 minutes

“A sprawling multi-generational family saga that’s full of family secrets and mysteries. It opens in 1999 with Lily a poor student in NYC, then jumps to 2021 and her son Nick, and finally to 2030 to Lily’s mother May. An engrossing story with compelling characters. Read more

Disappearing Earth

A novel

By: Julia Phillips
Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
Length: 11 hours 15 minutes

“Julia Phillips is an author to watch. She beautifully transports us to a region of the world that I had never heard of and now can’t stop thinking about. The stories of the women there—their family dynamics, their hopes and fears, the economic and cultural divide of various communities—tell a moving story about this place in a moment in time,... Read more

In the Orchard

A novel

By: Eliza Minot
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A novel about womanhood, modern family, and the interior landscape of maternal life, as seen through the life of a young wife and mother on a single day.

At night, Maisie Moore dreams that her life is perfect: the looming mortgages and credit card debt have magically vanished, and she can raise her four... Read more

The Storm We Made

A Novel

By: Vanessa Chan
Narrated by: Samantha Tan
Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

“Stunning. Horrifying. Raw. Gritty. Luscious. The WWII novel you haven't seen before. Read more

Coleman Hill

A Novel

By: Kim Coleman Foote
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin & Dion Graham
Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

Coleman Hill is the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a remarkable, character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations. In 1916, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the... Read more

Summer Romance

By: Annabel Monaghan
Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio
Length: 8 hours 27 minutes

“Monaghan has a way with second-chance romances that just makes me happy, and this one is no exception. I loved the characters, I adored the summer vibes, and the narrator was just perfect. A delightful summer read! Read more

One Last Shot

By: Betty Cayouette
Narrated by: Betty Cayouette, Brittany Pressley & Sean Patrick Hopkins
Length: 10 hours 46 minutes

This program features an author's note and acknowledgments read by the author.

From the creator of viral TikTok account Betty's Book List, a debut romance about a supermodel and a photographer with a past marriage pact who meet again ten years later on a photoshoot in Cinque Terre, Italy.

From the moment Emerson and Theo met as teenagers, they... Read more

The Swans of Harlem

Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History

By: Karen Valby
Narrated by: Karlya Shelton-Benjamin, Sheila Rohan, Lydia Abarca Mitchell, Marcia Lynn Sells, Khadija Tariyan McKinney G. & January LaVoy
Length: 10 hours 11 minutes

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK • Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography • The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now.

“This is the kind of history I wish I learned as a child dreaming of the stage!” —Misty... Read more

Splinters

Another Kind of Love Story

By: Leslie Jamison
Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
Length: 8 hours 32 minutes

“Leslie Jamison is a truth-teller and this memoir about splitting with her husband and raising her infant daughter in her first year of life was absolutely gripping. Read it for the specificity of detail, the masterful descriptions of emotional and psychological shifts, and for her powerful prose. A knock-out! Read more

This Strange Eventful History

By: Claire Messud
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 16 hours 32 minutes

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists.

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a... Read more