Banned and Challenged Titles

Parable of the Sower

Earthseed: Book #1

By: Octavia E. Butler
Narrated by: Lynne Thigpen
Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

“Prescient, brilliant, challenging; a book everyone should read, probably multiple times in their lives as N.K. Jemisin suggests. Read more

Parable of the Talents

Earthseed: Book #2

By: Octavia E. Butler
Narrated by: Patricia R. Floyd, Sisi Aisha Johnson & Peter Jay Fernandez
Length: 15 hours 28 minutes

Best-selling author Octavia E. Butler's acclaimed novels have won numerous awards, and she is a recipient of a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Parable of the Talents was selected as one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of horrifying... Read more

Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed

15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora

By: Saraciea J. Fennell
Narrated by: Avi Roque, Elizabeth Acevedo, Frankie Corzo, Ibi Zoboi, Janel Martinez, Jasminne Mendez, Julian Randall, Khalil Haywood, Lilliam Rivera, Natasha Diaz, Saraciea J. Fennell & Zakiya N. Jamal
Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

This program is read by a full cast.

Edited by The Bronx Is Reading founder Saraciea J. Fennell and featuring an all-star cast of Latinx contributors, Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed is a ground-breaking anthology that will spark dialogue and inspire hope

In Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming... Read more

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

By: Malinda Lo
Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
Length: 12 hours 25 minutes

“This coming of age story about a young woman growing up queer in 1950s Chinatown, San Francisco, was brilliant. I loved the rich historical detail, believable characters, exploration of intersectional identities, romance, and sense of place, made even stronger by the excellent narration. Best book I've read in quite some time and highly... Read more

This Is How It Always Is

A Novel

By: Laurie Frankel
Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
Length: 11 hours 6 minutes

The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

*Named one of the top 10 books of 2017 by People Magazine*

“It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think.” —Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives... Read more

Flowers for Algernon

By: Daniel Keyes
Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
Length: 8 hours 59 minutes

“One of the best and most heartbreaking books I’ve read in a long time. The story of a man who is mentally handicapped and goes through an experimental surgery to make him smart. It works and he becomes a genius, but only temporarily. Just long enough to give him a taste of what he has been missing, realize that people always laugh at his... Read more

Plainsong

By: Kent Haruf
Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

National Book Award Finalist

A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver.

In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since... Read more

Cat's Cradle

By: Kurt Vonnegut
Narrated by: Tony Roberts
Length: 7 hours 11 minutes

Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. Read more

On the Road: the Original Scroll

Penguin Audio Classics

By: Jack Kerouac
Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
Length: 12 hours 35 minutes

The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published as Kerouac originally composed it
 
“The sparse and unassuming scroll is the living version [of On the Road] for our time. . . . It is a dazzling piece of writing.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
During three weeks in 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote the first draft of On the Road—typed as a long,... Read more

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

The Inheritance Trilogy: Book #1

By: N. K. Jemisin
Narrated by: Casaundra Freeman
Length: 11 hours 47 minutes

“Yeine is the leader of a people far from the center of civilization, but the death of her mother calls her to the heart of the empire and entangles her in more than a dispute over inheritance. I was so blown away by this book that I felt shaken and exhilarated by it. Even if you don’t normally read fantasy, this is one that is so meaty, you need... Read more

Legendborn

The Legendborn Cycle

By: Tracy Deonn
Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
Length: 18 hours 54 minutes

“Imagine a world where the enchanting magic of Harry Potter collides with the vibrant life of college campuses. Picture young witches and wizards navigating the trials of academia, forging friendships, and discovering their true identities while mastering spells and brewing potions. Join them on an adventure filled with late-night study sessions,... Read more

The Midwife's Apprentice

By: Karen Cushman
Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin
Length: 2 hours 50 minutes

Lyrical yet unsentimental, The Midwife's Apprentice won the coveted 1996 Newbery Medal. Filled with striking characters, it paints unforgettable pictures of village life in the Middle Ages, the midwife's craft, and a very remarkable girl's growing independence and pride. Brat has no name, no home, and no shelter against the 14th-century English... Read more

Only Mostly Devastated

A Novel

By: Sophie Gonzales
Narrated by: Mark Sanderlin
Length: 7 hours 48 minutes

"[Narrator Mark] Sanderlin convincingly shares this LGBTQ romance, with emotions ranging from snark to sweet and everything in between, and serving up a satisfying conclusion...A fun listen on a variety of levels, but make no mistake: it packs some great messaging without any nasty aftertaste. Yum!" -- Booklist

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda... Read more

Holes

Holes Series

By: Louis Sachar
Narrated by: Kerry Beyer & Louis Sachar
Length: 4 hours 37 minutes

“This is a perfect story for anyone of any age who loves a tale of mystery, history, and a bit of a plot twist! Read more

The Slave Dancer

By: Paula Fox
Narrated by: Peter MacNicol
Length: 4 hours 1 minute

Jessie Bollier often played his fife to earn a few pennies down by the New Orleans docks. One afternoon a sailor asked him to pipe a tune, and that evening Jessie was kidnapped and dumped aboard The Moonlight, a slave ship, where a hateful duty awaited him. He was to play music so the slaves could "dance" to keep their muscles strong, their... Read more

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Revised Edition)

By: Jesse Andrews
Narrated by: Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, Keith Szarabajka, Hillary Huber, Kirby Heyborne, Abigail Revasch & Adenrele Ojo
Length: 6 hours 8 minutes

THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE HIT FILM!

Up until senior year, Greg has maintained total social invisibility. He only has one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time—when not playing video games and avoiding Earl’s terrifying brothers— making movies, their own versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics. Greg would be the first one to tell... Read more

Sold

By: Patricia McCormick
Narrated by: Justine Eyre
Length: 3 hours 42 minutes

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all... Read more

All Boys Aren't Blue

A Memoir-Manifesto

By: George M. Johnson
Narrated by: George M. Johnson
Length: 5 hours 11 minutes

“After listening to this book, I was outraged to learn how widely banned it is across the country - This story needs to be told and shared. Read more

Gender Queer

A Memoir

By: Maia Kobabe
Narrated by: Maia Kobabe, Trini Alvarado, Stephen Graybill, Phoebe Kobabe, Jeremy Carlisle Parker & Full Cast
Length: 1 hour 58 minutes

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner
2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book

The ground-breaking, bestselling graphic novel is now available on audio.

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only... Read more

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

By: Stephen Chbosky
Narrated by: Noah Galvin
Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

“This book is an amazing coming of age story that deals with a lot of difficult topics. I read it when I was closer to the age of the characters and I think that was the best time to read it. Stephen perfectly captures what it’s like to be a teenager and not knowing where you fit in as well as finally finding friends that you love and connect... Read more