Literary Pursuits

A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories

By: Flannery O'Connor
Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

An essential collection of classic stories that established Flannery O’Connor’s reputation as an American master of fiction—now with a new introduction by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff In 1955, with the title story and others in this critical edition, Flannery O’Connor firmly laid claim to her place as one of the most original... Read more

White Noise

By: Don DeLillo
Narrated by: Michael Prichard
Length: 12 hours 48 minutes

Now a Netflix film!

Winner of the National Book Award, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra­modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an “airborne toxic event,” a lethal black... Read more

The Old Man and the Sea

By: Ernest Hemingway
Narrated by: Donald Sutherland
Length: 2 hours 29 minutes

2007 Audie Award Finalist for Solo Narration—Male

*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize*
“A beautiful tale, awash in the seasalt and sweat, bait and beer of the Havana coast. It tells a fundamental human truth: in a volatile world, from our first breath to our last wish, through triumphs and pitfalls both trivial and profound, what sustains us,... Read more

Of Mice and Men

Penguin Audio Classics

By: John Steinbeck
Narrated by: Gary Sinise
Length: 3 hours 11 minutes

Celebrating its 75th anniversary, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men remains one of America's most widely read and beloved novels. Here is Steinbeck’s dramatic adaptation of his novel-as-play, which received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play in 1937-1938 and has featured a number of actors who have played the iconic roles of... Read more

The Unwomanly Face of War

An Oral History of Women in World War II

By: Svetlana Alexievich
Narrated by: Julia Emelin & Yelena Shmulenson
Length: 14 hours 17 minutes

“During WWII, American women mostly 'went to war' by working in factories, thus freeing the men to serve in the armed forces. That was not the case in the Soviet Union. There, more than a million Soviet women served in the Red Army. Some were non-combatants who served behind the lines (nurses and doctors). But most fought alongside the men... Read more

Monkey King

Journey to the West

By: Wu Cheng'en
Narrated by: Robert Wu
Length: 13 hours 57 minutes

A Chinese Lord of the Rings and one of the all-time great fantasy novels--which Neil Gaiman has said "is in the DNA of 1.5 billion people"--now in a thrilling new translation

A shape-shifting trickster on a kung-fu quest for eternal life, Monkey King is one of the most memorable superheroes in world literature. High-spirited and omni-talented, he... Read more

The House on Mango Street

By: Sandra Cisneros
Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
Length: 2 hours 17 minutes

A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2025 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National... Read more

Brick Lane - Abridged

By: Monica Ali
Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
Length: 11 hours 9 minutes

Set in the gritty Tower Hamlets area of East London, Brick Laneis the story of Nazneen, an Asian immigrant girl and how she deals with issues of love, cultural differences and the human spirit. Nazneen is forced into an arranged marriage with a much older man whose expectations of life are miserably low. When they flee the oppression of their... Read more

The Lady of the Camellias - Abridged

By: Alexandre Dumas (fils)
Narrated by: Laura Paton
Length: 2 hours 9 minutes

The tragic but doomed love of Marguerite and Armand, recounted so passionately in La Dame aux Camélias, became one of the great love stories from its first publication in 1848. The title role of the consumptive heroine and her ultimate sacrifice inspired actresses from Sarah Bernhardt to Greta Garbo – and Giuseppe Verdi to write La Traviata. In... Read more

Burial Rites

A Novel

By: Hannah Kent
Narrated by: Morven Christie
Length: 11 hours 59 minutes

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master,... Read more

Middle Passage

By: Charles Johnson
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 7 hours 5 minutes

After the Confederacy falls, newly freed slave Rutherford Calhoun is eager to avoid marrying a prim schoolteacher and boards the first ship he finds moored at a New Orleans port. Unbeknownst to Calhoun, the vessel is a slave ship enroute to Africa. On the return trip, Calhoun is put to work as a cabin boy and quickly assists the newly captured... Read more

The Picture of Dorian Gray

By: Oscar Wilde
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 7 hours 44 minutes

“Dorian sells his soul so that his portrait will age instead of him. He embarks on a hedonistic self-indulgent lifestyle as his portrait becomes hideously unrecognizable. This was assigned reading for me in the 11th grade and now has a permanent home on my favorite bookshelf. Read more

The Japanese Lover

By: Isabel Allende
Narrated by: Joanna Gleason
Length: 9 hours 6 minutes

From New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende, “a magical and sweeping” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) love story and multigenerational epic that stretches from San Francisco in the present-day to Poland and the United States during World War II.

In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents... Read more

Waverley

By: Sir Walter Scott
Narrated by: David Rintoul
Length: 17 hours 8 minutes

Waverley by Sir Walter Scott is an enthralling tale of love, war and divided loyalties. Taking place during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, the novel tells the story of proud English officer Edward Waverley. After being posted to Dundee, Edward eventually befriends chieftain of the Highland Clan Mac-Ivor, and falls in love with his beautiful... Read more

Old Filth

Old Filth: Book #1

By: Jane Gardam
Narrated by: Bill Wallace
Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

A Best Book of the Year choice by: The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post (Jonathan Yardley) • The San Francisco Chronicle • New York Magazine • The Globe & Mail • Slate

Sir Edward Feathers has progressed from struggling young barrister to wealthy expatriate lawyer to distinguished retired judge living out his last days in... Read more

When We Were Orphans

By: Kazuo Ishiguro
Narrated by: John Lee
Length: 10 hours 51 minutes

Narrated by John Lee""John Lee conveys both Banks' intelligence and his uneasy depths in this fine performance."" —AudioFileA masterful novel from Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day, and one of the most admired writers of our time.Christopher Banks, an English... Read more

Dream of the Red Chamber

By: Cao Xueqin
Narrated by: Geoffrey Giuliano And The Icon Ensemble
Length: 18 hours 36 minutes

The Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone) is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of China, and considered the greatest of them all. Almost 40 main characters and some 500 minor characters tell the fortunes of the Chia family; the book details mainly the life of Chia Pao-yü, the heir apparent, who is described as very... Read more

The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov, Vol. 1

1882–1885

By: Anton Chekhov
Narrated by: Anthony Heald
Length: 7 hours 42 minutes

A Russian author, playwright, and physician, Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov’s stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number. Raymond Carver once said, “It is not... Read more

Cannery Row

Penguin Audio Classics

By: John Steinbeck
Narrated by: Jerry Farden
Length: 5 hours 58 minutes

Steinbeck’s tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependent on one another for both physical and emotional survivalPublished in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of... Read more

Anil's Ghost

By: Michael Ondaatje
Narrated by: Alan Cumming
Length: TBA

With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize—winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing.

Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in... Read more