Reading Group Indie Next

Scribe

A Novel

By: Alyson Hagy
Narrated by: Shannon McManus
Length: 5 hours 33 minutes

“Scribe is a novel about dystopian Appalachia following the Civil War, a place ravaged by sickness and divvied up by the brute strength of men and their ability to defeat any invaders. If that doesn’t pique your interest, its main character is a complicated woman with a highly valued skill: the ability to write. In the wake of war and widespread... Read more

The Rules of Magic

A Novel

By: Alice Hoffman
Narrated by: Marin Ireland
Length: 10 hours 58 minutes

“This installment was fun as an audiobook. Marin Ireland is a fabulous narrator and actress (if you ever have the chance to catch her life on the NY stage it is worth it!). I enjoyed this little look into the characters that Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest made famous. It was mostly based in NYC, where the sisters grew up with their younger... Read more

The End We Start From

By: Megan Hunter
Narrated by: Louise Brealey
Length: 2 hours 2 minutes

The End We Start From heralds the arrival of Megan Hunter, a dazzling and unique literary talent. Hunter’s debut is a searing original, a modern-day parable of rebirth and renewal, of maternal bonds, and the instinct to survive and thrive in the absence of all that’s familiar.As London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her... Read more

Future Home of the Living God

A Novel

By: Louise Erdrich
Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
Length: 10 hours 43 minutes

“Powerful, prophetic and absolutely pertinent to our times, Louise Erdrich’s new novel "Future Home of the Living God" is a horrifying haunt through women’s reproductive rights and the lengths the government will go to ensure the success of mankind as we know it. Riveting, yet repulsive and revealing at the same time, Erdrich captures the essence... Read more

The Dark Net

By: Benjamin Percy
Narrated by: David Chandler
Length: 11 hours 3 minutes

Hell on earth is only one click of a mouse away in acclaimed writer Benjamin Percy's terrifying new horror novel The Dark Net is real. An anonymous and often criminal arena that exists in the secret, far reaches of the Web, some use it to manage Bitcoins, pirate movies and music, or traffic in drugs and stolen goods. And now, an ancient darkness... Read more

The Readymade Thief

By: Augustus Rose
Narrated by: Emily Rankin
Length: 14 hours 24 minutes

“Much to the chagrin of my household, once I started this book I refused to put it down. I let my children fend for themselves while I walked along the Philly streets with Lee and Tomi, solving the age-old puzzle in the midst of which 17-year-old Lee has found herself. She has many of the same struggles and life choices to make as high school... Read more

A Kind of Freedom

By: Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin & Adenrele Ojo
Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of black society, and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves.In 1982, Evelyn’s daughter Jackie is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent... Read more

The Story of Arthur Truluv

Mason: Book #1

By: Elizabeth Berg
Narrated by: Elizabeth Berg
Length: 6 hours 53 minutes

A life-affirming novel about an unforgettable character, a wise and loving man whose humor and unconditional love create for himself and others second chances at happiness. Three people find their way back from loss and loneliness to a different kind of belonging, in this deeply moving novel. Arthur, an old widower struggling to overcome his... Read more

The Ninth Hour

A Novel

By: Alice McDermott
Narrated by: Euan Morton
Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

“Alice McDermott's dazzling The Ninth Hour turns on the contradictions that confound our need to reconcile with mortality. The empathetic characters, at once agents and benefactors of Christian charity, grow to realize not just the grace but also the hubris of their faith. A stunning work of generational storytelling, The Ninth Hour is... Read more

Five-Carat Soul

By: James McBride
Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Nile Bullock, Prentice Onayemi & Dominic Hoffman
Length: 8 hours 33 minutes

“Sometimes after I've read a great book by an author, I judge. When I picked up a copy of James McBride's new collection of stories, Five-Carat Soul, I was prepared to be disappointed; how could he top The Good Lord Bird? Was I ever surprised, in the best way possible! These stories have all the magnificent qualities of his National Book... Read more

American Wolf

A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

By: Nate Blakeslee
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall & Nate Blakeslee
Length: 9 hours 12 minutes

“American Wolf uncovers the true legacy of the American wolf's survival after its reintroduction into the Rockies after nearly becoming extinct in the 1920s. The book focuses on renowned wolf O-Six, who's unlike any female wolf that Yellowstone park ranger Rick McIntyre has ever seen. Many of O-Six's survival challenges are directly linked to the... Read more

Code Girls

The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II

By: Liza Mundy
Narrated by: Erin Bennett
Length: 14 hours 4 minutes

“There is so much arguing these days over the existence of women in STEM fields and whether they should be allowed to be there. 'Oh honey,' says Code Girls, wrapping an arm around your shoulder, 'we never left.' In riveting prose, Mundy shows the presence of these women from the very beginning -and then how they were almost forcibly forgotten... Read more

Spineless

The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone

By: Juli Berwald
Narrated by: Juli Berwald
Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

“Reading Spineless made me think of Nabokov's butterflies: The subject is distant to the extent that it feels almost extraterrestrial, but the author's passion is contagious. The complexity, the evolution, and the mystery of the organism grows on you, and, suddenly, you're excited about? well, jellyfish! Spineless gives climate change a story,... Read more

The Stowaway

A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica

By: Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Narrated by: Jacques Roy
Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

“The story of Billy Gawronski, the young man who repeatedly tried to join Richard Byrd's Antarctic expedition, reads like an adventure novel. The reality of his life is beyond the realm of the wildest imagination. Shapiro brings this resilient and resourceful man to life against the changing world of the Roaring Twenties, and his story perfectly... Read more

The Half-Drowned King

A Novel

The Golden Wolf Saga: Book #1

By: Linnea Hartsuyker
Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
Length: 15 hours 33 minutes

“A fast-paced and harrowing saga of a sibling pair, both trying to do what is right for the other while navigating the physical and political terrain around them. Ragnvald and his sister, Svanhild, are our protagonists, and the book contains alternating chapters about each of their adventures. One fights a war on the battlefield while the other... Read more

The Hidden Light of Northern Fires

A Novel

By: Daren Wang
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 11 hours 29 minutes

“In The Hidden Light of Northern Fires, a town on the Underground Railroad secedes from the Union after it becomes fractured by the politics of the American Civil War. As a huge geek on the subject, I'm often skeptical of historical fiction relating to it. While Wang's tale benefits from being based on truth, that is a moot point. His... Read more

Love and Other Consolation Prizes

A Novel

By: Jamie Ford
Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller & Jamie Ford
Length: 11 hours 28 minutes

“Jamie Ford has written another fabulous story. In Love and Other Consolation Prizes, a child is raffled off as a prize at a world's fair in Seattle in 1909. Based on a real-life raffle, this story is about Ernest Young, a Chinese orphan refugee who is won by the owner of The Tenderloin, a brothel where he becomes the house boy and lives a life... Read more

The Prague Sonata

By: Bradford Morrow
Narrated by: Christina Delaine
Length: 18 hours 45 minutes

In the early days of the new millennium, pages of a worn and weathered original sonata manuscript—the gift of a Czech immigrant living out her final days in Queens—come into the hands of Meta Taverner, a young musicologist whose concert piano career was cut short by an injury. To Meta's eye, it appears to be an authentic eighteenth-century work;... Read more

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

A Novel

By: Heather Morris
Narrated by: Richard Armitage
Length: 7 hours 25 minutes

“I devoured The Tattooist of Auschwitz, a powerful book based on a true story, in two sittings. Lale, a Slovakian Jew at Auschwitz-Birkenau, becomes the Tatowierer—the man responsible for tattooing every prisoner who arrives at the concentration camp. Seen by some as a collaborator, Lale must make impossible choices to keep himself and his... Read more

Everything Here Is Beautiful

By: Mira T. Lee
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Emily Woo Zeller, Ozzie Rodriguez, Kim Mai Guest & Paul Boehmer
Length: 13 hours 17 minutes

“Everything Here Is Beautiful is a remarkable debut about two sisters and the strength of their bond. At the heart of this story is Lucia - a sister, mother, and woman who struggles with mental illness. Told from alternating points of view, Mira T. Lee gives an honest and emotional look at living with mental illness and its impact on not only... Read more