Booknotes - Fall 2019

The Proudest Blue

A Story of Hijab and Family

By: Ibtihaj Muhammad
Narrated by: Ibtihaj Muhammad
Length: 7 minutes

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
A powerful, vibrantly illustrated story about the first day of school--and two sisters on one's first day of hijab--by Olympic medalist and social justice activist Ibtihaj Muhammad.
With her new backpack and light-up shoes, Faizah knows the first day of school is going to be special. It's the start of a... Read more

Pet

By: Akwaeke Emezi
Narrated by: Christopher Myers
Length: 5 hours 32 minutes

National Book Award Finalist

Stonewall Book Award Winner

"[A] beautiful, genre-expanding debut...Pet is a nesting doll of creative possibilities." (The New York Times)

The award-winning, genre-defying novel by the New York Times best-selling author of The Death of Vivek Oji that explores themes of identity and justice and asks: How do you share the... Read more

The World Doesn't Require You

Stories

By: Rion Amilcar Scott
Narrated by: JD Jackson
Length: 11 hours 59 minutes

The World Doesn't Require You announces the arrival of a generational talent, as Rion Amilcar Scott shatters rigid genre lines to explore larger themes of religion, violence, and love—all told with sly humor and a dash of magical realism.

Established by the leaders of the country's only successful slave revolt in the mid-nineteenth century,... Read more

The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club)

A Novel

By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by: Joe Morton
Length: 14 hours 14 minutes

“Ta-Nehisi Coates understands something big and he understands it better than anyone else right now. The Water Dancer led me on a journey up and down the landscape of American slavery with a narrative that feels like The Book of Exodus meets, well, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Over 400 pages I have cried, I have laughed, I have been educated, and I have... Read more

The Topeka School

A Novel

By: Ben Lerner
Narrated by: Nancy Linari, Peter Berkrot & Tristan Wright
Length: 10 hours 34 minutes

“It’s the late ’90s in Topeka, and high school senior Adam Gordon is partying, going to school, and preparing for a national speech and debate competition—living a life he expects to reflect back upon with irony and detachment in some urbane, imaginary future. Lerner shifts between perspectives, stealing stylistic bits from autofiction and... Read more

The Women of the Copper Country

By: Mary Doria Russell
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 12 hours 27 minutes

From the bestselling and award-winning author of The Sparrow comes “historical fiction that feels uncomfortably relevant today” (Kirkus Reviews) about “America’s Joan of Arc”—the courageous woman who started a rebellion by leading a strike against the largest copper mining company in the world.

In July 1913, twenty-five-year-old Annie Clements... Read more

Red at the Bone

A Novel

By: Jacqueline Woodson
Narrated by: Jacqueline Woodson, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Peter Francis James, Shayna Small & Bahni Turpin
Length: 3 hours 52 minutes

“Jacqueline Woodon's novella RED AT THE BONE is the story of a black American family told through the perspective of 5 people. Vastly different perspectives of the same events (a teenage pregnancy, prejudice, class issues between generations) creates a compelling audiobook. Listening to this book was a delight, as the 5 narrators truly made it a... Read more

Out of Darkness, Shining Light

A Novel

By: Petina Gappah
Narrated by: Nyasha Hatendi & Sibongile Mlambo
Length: 10 hours 6 minutes

“Engrossing, beautiful, and deeply imaginative” (Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing), this epic novel about the explorer David Livingstone and the extraordinary group of Africans who carry his body across impossible terrain “illuminates the agonies of colonialism and blind loyalty” (O, The Oprah Magazine).

“This is how we carried out of Africa the... Read more

Inland

A Novel

By: Téa Obreht 
Narrated by: Anna Chlumsky, Edoardo Ballerini & Euan Morton
Length: 13 hours 7 minutes

“Inland is a beautifully narrated by voices that are rarely heard in a story of the American west. Lurie, an immigrant from the middle east, and Nora, a pioneer wife struggling to survive, are both haunted by ghosts of their past. The dry arid desert provides a perfect backdrop for the events, relationships and challenges these two characters... Read more

Hollow Kingdom

By: Kira Jane Buxton
Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

“You wouldn't think a foul-mouthed, wise-cracking crow named S. T. (short for Shit Turd) would be a great companion at the end of the world, but honestly? I couldn't imagine another living being to spend the apocalypse with. Buxton amazingly captures the natural world as the humans have devolved into zombie-like creatures, and given us the... Read more

Gideon the Ninth

Locked Tomb: Book #1

By: Tamsyn Muir
Narrated by: Moira Quirk
Length: 16 hours 49 minutes

“Gideon the Ninth is an epic science fantasy that if delivered into the hands of enough people will set the world on fire as it hasn’t been since The Hunger Games. Brilliance doesn’t come close to explaining Tamsyn Muir’s narrative where no single word is wasted or her engineering of a world with characters that end up belonging to you... Read more

Frankissstein

A Love Story

By: Jeanette Winterson
Narrated by: John Sackville & Perdita Weeks
Length: 7 hours 10 minutes

Since her astonishing debut at twenty-five with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide critical and commercial success as “one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time” (Elle). Her new novel, Frankissstein, is an audacious love story that weaves together disparate lives into an exploration of... Read more

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

A Novel

By: Olga Tokarczuk
Narrated by: Beata Pozniak
Length: 11 hours 39 minutes

“Janina is an eccentric middle-aged woman who translates William Blake, studies astrology, and is acutely attuned to the wilderness around her in rural Poland. When hunters and poachers begin to be gruesomely murdered, Janina informs the police that the animals are responsible. As the bodies mount, so does her involvement with the mystery,... Read more

Doxology

A Novel

By: Nell Zink
Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
Length: 12 hours 31 minutes

A Recommended Book of 2019 from Vulture and EsquirePam, Daniel, and Joe might be the worst punk band on the Lower East Side. Struggling to scrape together enough cash and musical talent to make it, they are waylaid by surprising arrivals—a daughter for Pam and Daniel, a solo hit single for Joe. As the ‘90s wane, the three friends share in one... Read more

Celestial Bodies

By: Jokha Alharthi
Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard
Length: 8 hours 3 minutes

“In this gripping family saga, author Jokha Alharthi—the first female Omani writer to be translated into English—involves you deeply in the personal drama of her characters and in the extended family system, which includes former servants and masters, while also somehow telling the modern history of the country of Oman. I was immediately... Read more

Berta Isla

A novel

By: Javier Marías
Narrated by: Frankie Corzo & Bruce Mann
Length: 18 hours 29 minutes

From the award-winning, internationally best-selling Spanish writer, author of The Infatuations, comes a gripping new novel of intrigue and missed chances--at once a spy story and a profound examination of a marriage founded on secrets and lies.

When Berta Isla was a schoolgirl, she decided she would marry Tomás Nevinson--the dashing... Read more

The Undying

Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care

By: Anne Boyer
Narrated by: Amy Finegan
Length: 5 hours 4 minutes

Award-winning poet and essayist Anne Boyer delivers a one-of-a-kind meditation on illness in the age of data?sharing her true story of coping with cancer, both the illness and the industry, in The Undying. A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For... Read more

Trick Mirror

Reflections on Self-Delusion

By: Jia Tolentino
Narrated by: Jia Tolentino
Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire
 
Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia... Read more

A Pilgrimage to Eternity

From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith

By: Timothy Egan
Narrated by: Timothy Egan
Length: 12 hours 41 minutes

From "the world's greatest tour guide," a deeply-researched, captivating journey through the rich history of Christianity and the winding paths of the French and Italian countryside that will feed mind, body, and soul (New York Times).

"What a wondrous work! This beautifully written and totally clear-eyed account of his pilgrimage will have you... Read more

Our Women on the Ground

Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World

By: Zahra Hankir
Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
Length: 10 hours 51 minutes

Nineteen Arab women journalists speak out about what it’s like to report on their changing homelands in this first-of-its-kind essay collection, with a foreword by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour

“A stirring, provocative and well-made new anthology . . . that rewrites the hoary rules of the foreign correspondent... Read more