2024 National Book Critics Circle Longlists

Black Meme

A History of the Images that Make Us

By: Legacy Russell
Narrated by: Janina Edwards
Length: 4 hours 32 minutes

Representations of Blackness have always been integral to our understanding of of the modern world. In Black Meme, Legacy Russell, author of Glitch Feminism, explores the construct, culture, and material of the "meme" as mapped to Black visual culture from 1900 to present day. Mining archival and contemporary media Russell explores the impact of... Read more

Intervals

By: Marianne Brooker
Narrated by: Helen Keeley
Length: 5 hours 25 minutes

What makes a good death? A good daughter?
In 2009, with her forties and a harsh wave of austerity on the horizon, Marianne Brooker’s mother was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. She made a workshop of herself and her surroundings, combining creativity and activism in inventive ways. But over time, her ability to work, to... Read more

Magical/Realism

Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders

By: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
Narrated by: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
Length: 12 hours 24 minutes

Longlisted for the National Book Award
Longlisted for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
Shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award in Memoir

A brilliant, singular collection of essays that looks to music, fantasy, and pop culture—from Beyoncé to Game of Thrones—to excavate and reimagine what has been disappeared by... Read more

Recognizing the Stranger

On Palestine and Narrative

By: Isabella Hammad
Narrated by: Isabella Hammad
Length: 2 hours 28 minutes

Nine days before October 7, 2023, award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of... Read more

There's Always This Year

On Basketball and Ascension

By: Hanif Abdurraqib
Narrated by: Hanif Abdurraqib
Length: 8 hours 40 minutes

“You need not be a basketball aficionado to have your heart profoundly captured by this incredible work of nonfiction. Part cultural commentary and part memoir, Abdurraqib's writing is poetic and distinct, making you feel like you are watching a cherished friend perform spoken word. Structured like the four quarters of a basketball game,... Read more

When the Clock Broke

Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

By: John Ganz
Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
Length: 15 hours 17 minutes

"John Ganz is the most important young political writer of his generation—just the one our dark moment needs." —Rick Perlstein

"Lively and kaleidoscopic." —Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker

"John Ganz belongs to a species of public intellectual that is almost extinct . . . When the Clock Broke is the first of what I hope will be a shelf of books that... Read more

The Anthropologists

By: Aysegül Savas
Narrated by: Kathryn Aboya
Length: 4 hours 14 minutes

“The Anthropologists is a slim, impactful novella that cuts to the heart of human experience. In simple beautiful prose Aysegül Savas conveys the complex vagaries and bone deep loneliness of adulthood. This is a stunning and unique novel that I look forward to reading again and again. Read more

Beautyland

By: Marie-Helene Bertino
Narrated by: Andi Arndt
Length: 8 hours 56 minutes

“My daughter asked me to read Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino so we could talk about the ending. I was captivated by this gorgeously narrated story of a young girl who believes she is an alien, sent to earth to gather information for a civilization whose planet is in rapid decline. It is a coming-of-age story and a commentary on our earthly... Read more

Colored Television (A GMA Book Club Pick)

A Novel

By: Danzy Senna
Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
Length: 10 hours 13 minutes

“What happens when "fake it 'til you make it" goes too far and doesn't pan out? Danzy did an exceptional job of developing Jane's voice as she navigates through a disaster of her own making. While I spent most of the novel anxiously waiting for everything to come undone, I could not stop myself from turning the page instead of turning away out of... Read more

Godwin

A Novel

By: Joseph O'Neill
Narrated by: Karen Chilton & Kirby Heyborne
Length: 12 hours 31 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the acclaimed author of Netherland (a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the year): the odyssey of two brothers crossing the world in search of an African soccer prodigy who might change their fortunes.

Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical... Read more

Great Expectations

A Novel

By: Vinson Cunningham
Narrated by: Aaron Goodson
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in this “coming of age story that captures the soul of America” (The Washington Post), the debut novel from The New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Vinson Cunningham.

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD/JOHN... Read more

James

A Novel

By: Percival Everett
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 7 hours 48 minutes

“This isn't a retelling of a classic - this is MUCH better! Percival Everett does it again, another phenomenal novel in his own unique style. James is a powerhouse of a novel. Percival's discussion of language throughout the novel is something I will come back to over and over again. Dominic Hoffman is such a talented narrator - he truly helped... Read more

Small Rain

A Novel

By: Garth Greenwell
Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
Length: 9 hours 55 minutes

“Such deeply touching narration by the author. I love this audiobook. I could relate to so many parts about what a person goes through after becoming ill and the recovery process. Highly recommend. Read more

The Last Fire Season

A Personal and Pyronatural History

By: Manjula Martin
Narrated by: Manjula Martin
Length: 13 hours 9 minutes

H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman’s experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record.

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Told in... Read more

The Minotaur at Calle Lanza

By: Zito Madu
Narrated by: Amir Abdullah
Length: 4 hours

A "hauntingly effective" surrealist travel memoir about the mysterious transformations that may lurk inside us all (Library Journal, starred review).



Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see... Read more

Manboobs

A Memoir of Musicals, Visas, Hope, and Cake

By: Komail Aijazuddin
Narrated by: Komail Aijazuddin
Length: 7 hours 32 minutes

A blazing new talent’s hilarious memoir about coming of age and coming out in Pakistan, moving to America, looking for love, and falling in love with himself along the way

What do you do when you’re too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America, and ashamed of your body everywhere? How can you find happiness despite years of... Read more

My Good Bright Wolf

A Memoir

By: Sarah Moss
Narrated by: Morven Christie
Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

“The Scottish actor Morven Christie is the narrator: her reading is measured and reflective, drawing out the forlorn beauty of Moss’s prose.”—The Guardian

"Christie's performance captures Moss's narrative voice, creating a quiet intimacy that invites the listener into Moss's world."—AudioFile

A New York Magazine Most-Anticipated Book of the... Read more

Patriot

A Memoir

By: Alexei Navalny
Narrated by: Matthew Goode
Length: 16 hours 46 minutes

“A powerhouse of a memoir. Learn about Navalny's metamorphosis from ordinary Soviet citizen to activist who took on the corruption and treachery of Putin's regime, and as a result, was almost fatally poisoned. Navalny's is a tale of caution of what happens to a country when we allow autocrats and oligarchs to have complete rule which ultimately... Read more

Candida Royalle & the Sexual Revolution

A History from Below

By: Jane Kamensky
Narrated by: Mia Barron
Length: 16 hours 5 minutes

Acclaimed historian Jane Kamensky chronicles an indelible twentieth-century American life—and offers an entirely new understanding of the so-called sexual revolution.

Whether in front of the camera or behind it, Candice Vadala understood herself as both an artist and an entrepreneur. As Candida Royalle (1950–2015)—underground actress, porn star,... Read more

Candy Darling

Dreamer, Icon, Superstar

By: Cynthia Carr
Narrated by: Justin Vivian Bond
Length: 14 hours 2 minutes

A 2025 Audie Award winner for Best Nonfiction Narrator! This program is read by cabaret legend Justin Vivian Bond.

A Must-Read: The New York Times Book Review, Nylon, Star Tribune, Ms., Kirkus Reviews, The Bay Area Reporter, Town & Country, InsideHook

“[A] monumental biography.” —Hilton Als, The New Yorker

“A rich portrait of a glittering,... Read more