Black Lives Matter - read diverse books

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

Zeal

A Novel

By: Morgan Jerkins
Narrated by: January LaVoy & Shayna Small
Length: 13 hours 21 minutes

“One of the most perfect, sweeping, epic books I've ever had the pleasure to read. Read more

Harlem Rhapsody

By: Victoria Christopher Murray
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 15 hours 5 minutes

“This book was an amazing addition to my Black History Month TBR. I absolutely loved meeting Jessie and learning how all of our famous authors of the Harlem Renaissance came to be. Well done!! Read more

Black in Blues

How a Color Tells the Story of My People

By: Imani Perry
Narrated by: Imani Perry
Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY: Time, USA Today, People, AARP, Today.com, BookRiot, Bustle, LitHub, BookPage, Our Culture, and VultureA surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani PerryThroughout history, the concept of Blackness has been... Read more

Good Dirt

A Novel

By: Charmaine Wilkerson
Narrated by: January LaVoy
Length: 11 hours 26 minutes

“A beautiful, emotional family saga centered around an heirloom. I particularly loved Ebby, and the writing gave such rich context to each character. If you like family sagas or stories across time, give this a try! Read more

The Sing Sing Files

One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice

By: Dan Slepian
Narrated by: Dan Slepian
Length: 6 hours 56 minutes

“Bristling with urgency, empathy, and determination…this is investigative journalism at its best and most necessary.”—AudioFile

The author's podcast, Letters from Sing Sing, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

This program is read by the author and features sound design and original archival sound recordings from Sing Sing maximum-security prison,... Read more

The Underground Railroad (Television Tie-in)

A Novel

By: Colson Whitehead
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 10 hours 43 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.

One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century

The basis for the acclaimed original Prime Video series... Read more

After the Dance

A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti (Updated)

By: Edwidge Danticat
Narrated by: Edwidge Danticat
Length: 3 hours 40 minutes

In After the Dance, one of Haiti’s most renowned daughters returns to her homeland, taking readers on a stunning, exquisitely rendered journey beyond the hedonistic surface of Carnival and into its deep heart.

Edwidge Danticat had long been scared off from Carnival by a loved one, who spun tales of people dislocating hips from gyrating with too... Read more

Erasure

A Novel

By: Percival Everett
Narrated by: Sean Crisden
Length: 8 hours 16 minutes

“The novel on which the film American Fiction is based: Percival Everett’s caustic, funny and thought-provoking novel about race, stereotypes, and the publishing industry. Read more

How to Escape from a Leper Colony

A Novella and Stories

By: Tiphanie Yanique
Narrated by: Robin Miles, Dion Graham & Andrew Garman
Length: 38 minutes

Like Gabriel GarcIa MArquez, Edwidge Danticat, and Maryse CondE before her, Tiphanie Yanique has crafted a debut collection that is heartbreaking, hilarious, and mesmerizing. Set mostly in the U.S. Virgin Islands, these lyrical and haunting stories are part oral history, part postcolonial narrative-but ultimately a loving portrait of a wholly... Read more

Americanah

A novel

By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
Length: 18 hours 44 minutes

“Americanah by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie As a bookseller, for years I've been asked, "Have you read Americanah?" and been embarrassed to say I had not. Libro.fm's audio celebrates the novel's Tenth Anniversary, and it's worth the wait. Narrator Adjoa Andoh brilliantly captures the humor and pathos of Ifemelu and Obinze, their star-crossed love,... Read more

Death of the Author

A Novel

By: Nnedi Okorafor
Narrated by: Liz Femi, Anthony Oseyemi, Jason Culp & Chris Djuma
Length: 16 hours 12 minutes

“Okorafor masterfully threads together a story about the art of storytelling, breaking barriers, and being true to yourself while pulling readers into the passion of being in the Nigerian community. Filled with unexpected friendships, challenges of having a disability, worldwide adventures -- and ROBOTS -- Zelu and Ankara's story will challenge... Read more

We Rise

Speeches by Inspirational Black Women

By: Michelle Obama, Barbara Jordan, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Condoleezza Rice, Mary McLeod Bethune, Cynthia McKinney, Shirley Chisholm & Amanda Meadows
Narrated by: Michelle Obama
Length: 2 hours 7 minutes

This rare compilation includes memorable speeches delivered by celebrated African American women from both the past and present. Spanning decades and elucidating the fight for equality, these speeches not only represent important moments of Black history but reveal the struggle from a female perspective. The live recordings in this captivating... Read more

What's Mine and Yours

By: Naima Coster
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 12 hours 15 minutes

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

An instant New York Times bestseller!

A USA Today bestseller!

Named a Best Book of 2021 by Amazon • Esquire • Marie Claire • Refinery29 • Kirkus • Redbook • Ms. Magazine • The Millions • Undomesticated Magazine • Paperback Paris

"A once-every-few-years reading experience."—Mary Beth Keane, New York... Read more

Open City

A Novel

By: Teju Cole
Narrated by: Teju Cole
Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

“The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float. Nigeria was like that for me: mostly forgotten, except for those few things that I remembered with outsize intensity.”
 
Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders... Read more

Tremor

A Novel

By: Teju Cole
Narrated by: Atta Otigba & Yetide Badaki
Length: 7 hours 48 minutes

An “extraordinary, ambitious” (The Times UK) novel that masterfully explores what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world—from the award-winning author of Open City

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • “Cole’s mind is so agile that it’s easy to follow him anywhere.”—The New Yorker

WINNER OF THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD • FINALIST... Read more

Every Day Is for the Thief

Fiction

By: Teju Cole
Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
Length: 4 hours 3 minutes

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY DWIGHT GARNER, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle | NPR | The Root | The Telegraph | The Globe and Mail

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • FINALIST, PHILLIS WHEATLEY BOOK AWARD • TEJU COLE WAS NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICANS OF THE YEAR BY NEW... Read more

A More Perfect Union

By: Tammye Huf
Narrated by: Gary Furlong, Chanté McCormick & Patryce Williams
Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

Inspired by true events, A More Perfect Union is an epic story of love and courage, desperation and determination, and three people whose lives are inescapably entwined…

Henry O’Toole sails to America in 1848 to escape the famine in Ireland, only to face anti-immigrant prejudice. Determined never to starve again, he changes his surname to Taylor... Read more

Black History Collection

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk

By: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Booker T. Washington & W.E.B. Du Bois
Narrated by: Mark Bowen, Rick Walz & Jowanna Lewis
Length: 27 hours 8 minutes

America's black intellectuals - writers, historians, educators, and community activists - have made major contributions to the struggle for equality and human rights throughout American public life. The key streams of thought that gave rise to the intellectual traditions associated with African Americans emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries.... Read more

Night Flyer

Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People

Significations

By: Tiya Miles
Narrated by: Janina Edwards
Length: 6 hours 5 minutes

From the National Book Award–winning author of All That She Carried, an intimate and revelatory reckoning with the myth and the truth behind an American everyone knows and few really understand

Harriet Tubman is among the most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she’s a figure more out of myth... Read more