James Tate Hill's Audiobook Picks

Planet of the Blind

By: Stephen Kuusisto
Narrated by: Brian Keeler
Length: 5 hours 40 minutes

Blindness in the 195Os was a social stigma. Stephen's mother wanted a normal life for him, so he fought desperately to uphold the illusion of sight.
For a child frantic to fit in, each day was an exhausting pretence. He managed to ride a bike, when even reading involved pressing his nose to the page and painfully forcing his eyes to concentrate.... Read more

House of Prayer No. 2

A Writer's Journey Home

By: Mark Richard
Narrated by: Mark Richard
Length: 6 hours 34 minutes

Award-winning author Mark Richard delivers a fascinating and unique memoir. Born in the South with deformed hips, Richard was tagged a "special" child. Nothing was expected of him. But as a young man, he decided to strike out and experience as much of our strange world as he possibly could. "No one writes like him. His prose style is both... Read more

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

By: Bich Minh Nguyen
Narrated by: Alice H. Kennedy
Length: 7 hours 55 minutes

Beginning with her family’s harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner follows Bich Nguyen as she comes of age in the pre-PC-era Midwest. Filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, Nguyen’s desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food – Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies. More... Read more

In Pharaoh's Army

Memories of the Lost War

By: Tobias Wolff
Narrated by: Michael Kramer
Length: 5 hours 32 minutes

Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive, the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his own illusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye for detail, pitiless candor and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life a modern classic. Read more

Autobiography of a Face

By: Lucy Grealy
Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
Length: 5 hours 55 minutes

"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."



At age nine, Lucy... Read more

The Third Rainbow Girl

The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia

By: Emma Copley Eisenberg
Narrated by: Emma Copley Eisenberg
Length: 10 hours 32 minutes

“In this thoughtful and immersive chronicle of the 1980 murders that thrust West Virginia’s Pocahontas County into the national spotlight, Eisenberg seeks to better understand not only the crimes and their aftermath, but also the lasting impact the region (which she came to know independent of her inquiry) had on her. A complex and captivating... Read more

The Fact of a Body

A Murder and a Memoir

By: Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Narrated by: Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Length: 10 hours 37 minutes

“Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich didn't set out to investigate murder of six-year-old Jeremy Guillory in Louisiana; it was the case she happened upon as a young law school intern in 1992. In a fascinating twist, this becomes not only the true story of a heinous crime for which the perpetrator is in prison, but also of the investigation that unlocks... Read more

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing

Essays

By: Lauren Hough
Narrated by: Cate Blanchett & Lauren Hough
Length: 9 hours 10 minutes

“Lauren Hough has led a more interesting life than you, but no need to be jealous: this life includes growing up traveling the world in a sex cult, getting kicked out of the Air Force under Don't Ask Don't Tell, and a 7 day stint in the SHU without even having her arrest processed. And as a former cable guy and gay bar bouncer, she has seen more... Read more

Heavy

An American Memoir

By: Kiese Laymon
Narrated by: Kiese Laymon
Length: 6 hours 17 minutes

“"I wanted to write a lie," Kiese Laymon says in the opening pages of his brutal, beautiful memoir, Heavy. The book is written in the second person, addressed to his mother, with whom Laymon shares a turbulent, intimate relationship. She feeds his mind with books, but critiques the way Laymon feeds his body as he struggles with his weight. She is... Read more