Summer Reading For Adults

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

50th Anniversary Edition

Penguin Audio Classics

By: Ken Kesey
Narrated by: John C. Reilly
Length: 10 hours 31 minutes

A fiftieth-anniversary edition of Ken Kesey's searing American classic. Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Turning conventional notions of sanity and insanity on their heads, the novel tells the unforgettable story of a mental... Read more

Song of Solomon

A Novel

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison
Length: 15 hours 27 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An official Oprah Winfrey’s “The Books That Help Me Through” selection • The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner transfigures the coming-of-age story with this brilliantly imagined novel. Includes a new foreword by the author.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Milkman Dead was born shortly after... 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

Pride and Prejudice

By: Jane Austen
Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was first published in 1813. The story follows Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, moral rightness, education and marriage in her aristocratic society of early 19th century England. Elizabeth is the second eldest of five daughters of a country gentleman living in the fictional town... Read more

The Joy Luck Club

By: Amy Tan
Narrated by: Gwendoline Yeo
Length: 9 hours 5 minutes

For decades, a quartet of Chinese women who have emigrated to San Francisco gather to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk—they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Over the years, their stories have informed the lives of four daughters who feel the weight of family and world history on their shoulders. With wit and sensitivity, this novel explores... Read more

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

“A lot can be said about this autobiography - it is one of the best I have ever read. The stories are personal and well accounted for, and the reader has no choice but to regard her life and strength through hardship so inspiring. Before reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I had a good idea of Angelou through her poetry and lectures. Her... Read more

Frankenstein

or The Modern Prometheus

By: Mary Shelley
Narrated by: Anthony Heald, Stefan Rudnicki & Simon Templeman
Length: 8 hours 42 minutes

Soon to be a major new film adaptation written and directed by Guillermo del ToroThis special unabridged, multivoiced production of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece of nineteenth-century Gothic horror is narrated by film and television star Anthony Heald, joined by Grammy winner Stefan Rudnicki and actor Simon Templeman, under the direction of... Read more

Romeo and Juliet

The Fully Dramatized Audio Edition

Folger Shakespeare Library Presents

By: William Shakespeare
Narrated by: Full Cast Dramatization
Length: 2 hours 56 minutes

FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
The World’s Leading Center for Shakespeare Studies

The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, brings Romeo and Juliet to life with this new full-length, full-cast dramatic recording of its definitive Folger Edition.

In Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare creates a tragic world in which... Read more

Jane Eyre

By: Charlotte Brontë
Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
Length: 18 hours 52 minutes

Jane Eyre, the plain yet spirited governess, introduced a new kind of heroine to literature: one whose virtuous integrity, sharp intellect, and tireless perseverance broke through class barriers to win equal stature with the man she loved.Orphaned and subject to a cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit... Read more

The House on Mango Street

By: Sandra Cisneros
Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
Length: 2 hours 17 minutes

A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2025 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National... 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

The Hate U Give

By: Angie Thomas
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 50 minutes

“This bestselling, powerful young adult novel about social justice and one teen girl's effort to fight for what is right, will leave you breathless. The narration by Bahni Turpin is hands down the best I've ever heard. This is such an important book it should be required reading for life in general. Or listening. Definitely listening. Read more

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom and Huck Series: Book #1

By: Mark Twain
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Who could forget the pranks, the adventures, the sheer fun of Tom Sawyer? From Tom’s sly trickery with the whitewashed fence to his and Becky Thatcher’s calamities in Bat Cave, the enjoyment never ends.Just what did boys do in a small town during the mid-1800s, a time when there were no televisions, no arcades, and no videos? They whitewashed... Read more

Treasure Island

By: Robert Louis Stevenson
Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Perhaps Stevenson’s best-known work, this adventure novel set in the eighteenth century is inspired by the actual exploits of pirate Captain Kidd and the search for his buried treasure. For pure imaginative delight, Treasure Island is unsurpassed. From the moment young Jim Hawkins meets the blind pirate Pew at the Admiral Benbow inn, to the... Read more

Punching the Air

By: Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam
Narrated by: Ethan Herisse
Length: 4 hours 28 minutes

New York Times and USA Today bestseller * Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor * Walter Award Winner * Goodreads Finalist for Best Teen Book of the Year * Time Magazine Best Book of the Year * Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year * School Library Journal Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Best Book of the... Read more

Into the Wild

By: Jon Krakauer
Narrated by: Philip Franklin
Length: 7 hours 3 minutes

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for... Read more

The Grapes of Wrath

Penguin Audio Classics

By: John Steinbeck
Narrated by: Dylan Baker
Length: 21 hours

John Steinbeck's powerful evocation of the suffering and hardship caused by the Great Depression, and a panoramic vision of the struggle for the American Dream, The Grapes of Wrath includes a critical introduction by Robert DeMott in Penguin Modern Classics. 'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.'... Read more

Animal Farm

By: George Orwell
Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
Length: 3 hours 11 minutes

Soon to be an animated film adaptation produced and directed by Andy Serkis George Orwell’s classic satire of the Russian Revolution has become an intimate part of our contemporary culture, with its treatment of democratic, fascist, and socialist ideals through an animal fable.The animals of Mr. Jones’s Manor Farm are overworked, mistreated, and... Read more

Darius the Great Is Not Okay

By: Adib Khorram
Narrated by: Michael Levi Harris
Length: 7 hours 33 minutes

“Darius is struggling. He doesn't fit in at school. He has trouble making friends. He's bullied. And to top that off, he's plagued by horribly negative thoughts including the very painful feeling that his father doesn't like him and wishes to replace him with his younger sister. Darius, indeed, is not okay. Everything changes when Darius meets... Read more

Long Way Down

By: Jason Reynolds
Narrated by: Jason Reynolds
Length: 1 hour 43 minutes

“One of the best parts of listening to this audiobook was getting to hear Jason Reynolds breathe further life into the heartbreaking words he wrote. I don't doubt the emotion would have been evident in the text, but as he said in the interview at the end of the audio, only he knew the right beats in order to make sure his message wasn't lost. I... Read more