Novels

Invisible Man

By: Ralph Ellison
Narrated by: Joe Morton
Length: 18 hours 36 minutes

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching--yet always with... Read more

Beloved

Pulitzer Prize Winner

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison
Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. 

This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner.

Sethe... Read more

Clotel

By: William Wells Brown
Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
Length: 6 hours 42 minutes

First published in 1853 amidst rumors that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with one of his slaves, Clotel is a fictional chronicle of one such child. After Jefferson's death, his mistress and her two daughters are auctioned. One daughter, Clotel, is purchased by a white man from Virginia who impregnates her. Despite the promise of marriage,... Read more

American Spy

A Novel

By: Lauren Wilkinson
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

“Part literary fiction, part spy novel, punctuated by black American history, Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel crosses time periods and genres. This unflinching portrayal of a young black woman who becomes a Fed during the height of the Cold War is based on the true story of Thomas Sankara, known as “Africa’s Che Guevara.” Politics, illicit... Read more

Their Eyes Were Watching God

By: Zora Neale Hurston
Narrated by: Ruby Dee
Length: 6 hours 44 minutes

“This book is a masterpiece. Zora Neale Hurston explores stages in a woman’s life so powerfully. Ruby Dee’s audiobook narration is the best audiobook narration I’ve ever heard. She expresses so much emotion and personality. She brings the characters to life and she savors every perfectly chosen word of the text. Read more

Kindred

By: Octavia E. Butler
Narrated by: Kim Staunton
Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

“This was my first time reading Octavia Butler. To say I was unprepared for the character study and journey she would take me on would be a great understatement. Dana, a black woman living in 1970s California mysteriously travels back in time (repeatedly) to the antebellum South and must find a way to stay put in her own time with as little... Read more

Carolina Built

By: Kianna Alexander
Narrated by: Shayna Small & Leon Nixon
Length: 10 hours 7 minutes

This “exuberant celebration of Black women’s joy as well as their achievements” (Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author) novelizes the life of real estate magnate Josephine N. Leary in a previously untold story of passion, perseverance, and building a legacy after emancipation in North Carolina.

Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a... Read more

The Known World

By: Edward P. Jones
Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
Length: 14 hours 17 minutes

In one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Edward P. Jones, two-time National Book Award finalist, tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his... Read more

Meridian

A Novel

By: Alice Walker
Narrated by: Susan Dalian
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

A poignant and powerful story of the American South in the 1960s and of one woman who risks her life for the people she loves from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple, now available in a new edition featuring an introduction by Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage.“A classic novel of both feminism and the Civil Rights... Read more

Lone Women

A Novel

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

“Small historic details and sweeping descriptive vistas place this unusual novel among the most interesting we've read in historical fiction this year. The hell-for-leather plot combined with deeply realized characters make it one of the best, period, and Joniece Abbott-Pratt's unsettlingly calm reading of even the most fantastical elements does... Read more

The Man in My Basement

By: Walter Mosley
Narrated by: Ernie Hudson
Length: 5 hours 15 minutes

This masterpiece by celebrated New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley is the mysterious story of a young Black man who agrees to an unusual bargain to save the home that has belonged to his family for generations.

The man at Charles Blakey's door has a proposition almost too strange for words. The stranger offers him $50,000 in cash to... Read more

Wench

A Novel

By: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Narrated by: Quincy Tyler Bernstine
Length: 8 hours 15 minutes

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is startling and original fiction that raises provocative questions of power and freedom, love and dependence. An enchanting and unforgettable novel based on little-known fact, Wench combines the narrative allure of Cane River by Lalita Tademy and the moral complexities of Edward P. Jones’s The Known World as it... Read more

The Emperor of Ocean Park

By: Stephen L. Carter
Narrated by: Richard Allen
Length: 26 hours 1 minute

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • INSPIRATION FOR THE MGM+ ORIGINAL SERIES • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • In his triumphant fictional debut, Stephen Carter combines a large-scale, riveting novel of suspense with the saga of a unique family. The Emperor of Ocean Park is set in two privileged worlds: the upper... Read more

Middle Passage

By: Charles Johnson
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 7 hours 5 minutes

After the Confederacy falls, newly freed slave Rutherford Calhoun is eager to avoid marrying a prim schoolteacher and boards the first ship he finds moored at a New Orleans port. Unbeknownst to Calhoun, the vessel is a slave ship enroute to Africa. On the return trip, Calhoun is put to work as a cabin boy and quickly assists the newly captured... Read more

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

By: James Weldon Johnson
Narrated by: Richard Allen
Length: 6 hours 4 minutes

Originally published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man revealed as never before the color line dividing America, and the price it exacted on those souls who could traverse the two worlds. The book presents the fictional account of 'an ex-colored man' - an African-American who could pass for white - as he attempts to... Read more

Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

A Novel

By: Ntozake Shange
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
Length: 7 hours 2 minutes

Ntozake Shange’s most beloved novel, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, is the story of three “colored girls,” three sisters and their mama from Charleston, South Carolina. Sassafrass, the oldest, is a poet and a weaver like her mother, gone north to college and living with other artists in Los Angeles, trying to weave a life out of her work, her... Read more

Afterlives

A Novel

By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
Narrated by: Damian Lynch
Length: 10 hours 13 minutes

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ”

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways, and basked in ordinary joys even as... Read more

Great Expectations

A Novel

By: Vinson Cunningham
Narrated by: Aaron Goodson
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in this “coming of age story that captures the soul of America” (The Washington Post), the debut novel from The New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Vinson Cunningham.

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD/JOHN... Read more

While We Were Dating

By: Jasmine Guillory
Narrated by: Janina Edwards
Length: 10 hours 21 minutes

An instant New York Times bestseller!

One of TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Reads of 2021!

Two people realize that it’s no longer an act when they veer off-script in this sizzling romantic comedy by New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory.

Ben Stephens has never bothered with serious relationships. He has plenty of casual dates to keep him... Read more

The Turner House

By: Angela Flournoy
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 12 hours 10 minutes

A powerful, timely debut, The Turner House marks a major new contribution to the story of the American family.The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father.... Read more