New York Times Book Review: 100 Notable Books of 2022

Afterlives

A Novel

By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
Narrated by: Damian Lynch
Length: 10 hours 13 minutes

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ”

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways, and basked in ordinary joys even as... Read more

American Midnight

The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis

By: Adam Hochschild
Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
Length: 15 hours 6 minutes

From legendary historian Adam Hochschild, a groundbreaking reassessment of the overlooked but startlingly resonant period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, when the foundations of American democracy were threated by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor"A riveting, resonant... Read more

The Arc of a Covenant

The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People

By: Walter Russell Mead
Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
Length: 26 hours 13 minutes

In this bold examination of the Israeli–American relationship, Walter Russell Mead demolishes the myths that both pro-Zionists and anti-Zionists have fostered over the years. He makes clear that Zionism has always been a divisive subject in the American Jewish community, and that American Christians have often been the most fervent supporters of... Read more

Avalon

A Novel

By: Nell Zink
Narrated by: Justis Bolding
Length: 6 hours 21 minutes

“A contemporary coming of age story, a young woman, abandoned on a sketchy landscaping farm falls in with a group of intellects at her high school. Faced with a budding on again off again romance, Zink's character Brandy takes her challenges on with a perfect blend of naivete and sarcasm. Nell Zink is the most prolific female writer I know, who... Read more

The Bangalore Detectives Club

The Kaveri and Ramu Series: Book #1

By: Harini Nagendra
Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
Length: 9 hours 16 minutes

The first in a charming, joyful cozy crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband, Ramu. Perfect for fans of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she’s resigned herself to a quiet life.But... Read more

Black Folk Could Fly

Selected Writings

By: Randall Kenan
Narrated by: Jaime Lincoln Smith
Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

A personal, social, and intellectual self-portrait of the beloved and enormously influential late Randall Kenan, a master of both fiction and nonfiction.

Virtuosic in his use of literary forms, nurtured and unbounded by his identities as a Black man, a gay man, an intellectual, and a Southerner, Randall Kenan was known for his groundbreaking... Read more

Bliss Montage

Stories

By: Ling Ma
Narrated by: Katharine Chin
Length: 6 hours 13 minutes

"Narrator Katharine Chin nails the dark humor and flat tone of this bizarre and fascinating short story collection."- AudioFile

A new creation by the author of Severance, Bliss Montage crashes through our carefully built mirages.

What happens when fantasy tears the screen of the everyday to wake us up? Could that waking be our end?

In Bliss... Read more

The Books of Jacob

A Novel

By: Olga Tokarczuk
Narrated by: Allen Lewis Rickman & Gilli Messer
Length: 35 hours 37 minutes

A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ”

“Just as awe-inspiring as the Nobel judges claimed.” – The Washington Post

“Olga Tokarczuk is one of our greatest living fiction writers. . . This could well be a decade-defining book akin to Bolaño’s 2666.” –AV Club

“Sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit. . . The comedy in this novel blends, as it... Read more

Breathless

The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

By: David Quammen
Narrated by: Jacques Roy
Length: 13 hours 25 minutes

National Book Award finalist Breathless tells the story of the worldwide scientific race to decipher the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, trace its source, and make possible the vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic—a “luminous, passionate account of the defining crisis of our time” (The New York Times).

Breathless is a “gripping” (The Atlantic) but... Read more

The Candy House

A Novel

By: Jennifer Egan
Narrated by: Michael Boatman, Nicole Lewis, Thomas Sadoski, Colin Donnell, Griffin Newman, Rebecca Lowman, Jackie Sanders, Lucy Liu, Christian Barillas, Tara Lynne Barr, Alex Allwine, Emily Tremaine, Kyle Beltran, Dan Bittner, Chris Henry Coffey, Ali Andre Ali, Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, George Newbern, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Gibson Frazier, Allison Light & Travis Tonn
Length: 11 hours 11 minutes

“Egan weaves together these seemingly disparate characters and storylines into a stunning ending. The Candy House is about family, connection, legacy, technology, and so much more. It is her best work yet. Read more

Checkout 19

A Novel

By: Claire-Louise Bennett
Narrated by: Claire-Louise Bennett
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A NEW YORKER "ESSENTIAL READ"

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND VOGUE

“Bennett writes like no one else. She is a rare talent, and Checkout 19 is a masterful novel.” –Karl Ove Knausgaard

From the author of the “dazzling. . . . and daring” Pond (O magazine), the adventures of a young... Read more

Companion Piece

A Novel

By: Ali Smith
Narrated by: Natalie Simpson
Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

‘A story is never an answer.
A story is always a question.’
Here we are in extraordinary times.
Is this history?
What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other?
What have we lost?
What stays with us?
What does it take to unlock our future?
Following her astonishing quartet of Seasonal novels, Ali Smith again lights a way... Read more

Constructing a Nervous System

A Memoir

By: Margo Jefferson
Narrated by: Karen Murray
Length: 5 hours 1 minute

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From "one of our most nuanced thinkers on the intersections of race, class, and feminism" (Cathy Park Hong, New York Times bestselling author of Minor Feelings) comes a memoir "as electric as the title suggests" (Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom).

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME... Read more

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Narrated by: Gisela Chípe
Length: 11 hours 39 minutes

“As in her fantastic novel Mexican Gothic, Moreno-Garcia has once again created a mystery that keeps unfolding into stranger and stranger shapes. An isolated little girl lives in both her father's wealthy, reclusive world and the company of the servants that run the remote estate where he performs his research. She is familiar both with his... Read more

The Dead Romantics

By: Ashley Poston
Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
Length: 10 hours 23 minutes

“Great premise with real poignancy, laugh out loud moments, and an original plot. This one channels TJ Klune and Younger, the tv series. Very entertaining!! Really wonderful narration for audio edition. Read more

Dead-End Memories

Stories

By: Banana Yoshimoto
Narrated by: Kathleen Li
Length: 4 hours 38 minutes

Japan's internationally celebrated master storyteller returns with five stories of women on their way to healing that vividly portrays the blissful moments and the sorrows that surround us in everyday life

First published in Japan in 2003, Dead-End Memories collects the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, quietly... Read more

Democracy's Data

The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them

By: Dan Bouk
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
Length: 11 hours 3 minutes

The census isn't just a data-collection process; it's a ritual, and a tool, of American democracy. Behind every neat grid of numbers is a collage of messy, human stories—you just have to know how to read them.

In Democracy's Data, the data historian Dan Bouk examines the 1940 U.S. census, uncovering what those numbers both condense and cleverly... Read more

Demon Copperhead

A Novel

By: Barbara Kingsolver
Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
Length: 21 hours 2 minutes

WINNER OF THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE • WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONA New York Times "Ten Best Books of 2022" • An Oprah’s Book Club Selection • An Instant New York Times Bestseller • An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller • A #1 Washington Post Bestseller "Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even... Read more

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

By: James Hannaham
Narrated by: James Hannaham & Flame Monroe
Length: 9 hours 18 minutes

“I value interesting characters and masterful writing above all else in books, and this has both. The writing style is totally original; Carlotta's running first person commentary interjects the third person narration in a way that can be jarring at first but soon feels natural, like you're thinking Carlotta's thoughts right along with her. As we... Read more

Dr. No

A Novel

By: Percival Everett
Narrated by: Amir Abdullah
Length: 6 hours 22 minutes

A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from an American novelist whose star keeps rising

The protagonist of Percival Everett's puckish new novel is a brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means "nothing" in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for "nothing.") He is an expert on nothing. That... Read more