New York Times Book Review: 100 Notable Books of 2021

Appleseed

A Novel

By: Matt Bell
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
Length: 15 hours 44 minutes

“This cross between a Shakespeare drama and a Grimm fairy tale is unsettling, attention-grabbing, and thought-provoking in the way stories do so well when reason often fails. A powerful read! Read more

Afterparties

Stories

By: Anthony Veasna So
Narrated by: Jason Sean
Length: 6 hours 56 minutes

“These stories of the members of a compact Cambodian-American community, from the refugees to the business owners to the gay teenagers, seamlessly balance humor with hardships. Read more

Razorblade Tears

A Novel

By: S. A. Cosby
Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
Length: 12 hours 22 minutes

“Fantastic book, my first S.A. Cosby book, but not my last. I enjoyed it on audio -fantastic narrating! It kept me tuning back in. Read more

The Prophets

By: Robert Jones, Jr.
Narrated by: Karen Chilton
Length: 14 hours 52 minutes

“This was quite the stunning debut - I loved the meta quality of the narration and the overall lyrical writing style. A powerful and commanding story! Read more

The Plot

A Novel

By: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
Length: 10 hours 53 minutes

“I devoured this smart, suspenseful novel about a failed novelist who reignites his career with a stolen plot and gains fame and notoriety. Korelitz’s depiction of the book world is a treat for those of us in it, but her twisty, psychologically astute plotting will hold broad appeal. Read more

Our Country Friends

A Novel

By: Gary Shteyngart
Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
Length: 12 hours 14 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Town & Country, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews

Finalist for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction • Longlisted for... Read more

One Last Stop

By: Casey McQuiston
Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
Length: 12 hours 10 minutes

“Red, White, and Royal Blue fans rejoice: Casey McQuiston is back and better than ever! This book has everything I wanted and more. We've got time warps, we've got a found family dynamic, we've got a diner to save, and, of course, we've got Casey's delightfully funny writing style. What more is there to ask for? If you're looking for a fun... Read more

Oh William!

A Novel

By: Elizabeth Strout
Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
Length: 7 hours

“As intimate and affecting as anything Elizabeth Strout has written — a beautiful new perspective in the ongoing story of Lucy Barton, but one that easily stands alone. Kimberly Farr’s narration makes for an outstanding audiobook experience as well. Read more

No One Is Talking About This

A Novel

By: Patricia Lockwood
Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
Length: 4 hours 43 minutes

“Patricia Lackwood's Priestdaddy is one of my favorite memoirs of all time, so I knew I just HAD to get my hands on her debut novel. As expected it's weird and quirky as hell, a tad inappropriate but makes you literally LOL. She creates a plot through a constellation of nebulous observations and witticisms that, as I said, is expected from her.... Read more

The Netanyahus

An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

By: Joshua Cohen
Narrated by: Joshua Cohen, David Duchovny & Ethan Herschenfeld
Length: 8 hours 31 minutes

2022 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction and named one of the notable books of 2021 by The New York Times Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959–1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the... Read more

My Year Abroad

A Novel

By: Chang-rae Lee
Narrated by: Lawrence Kao
Length: 16 hours 34 minutes

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A New York Times Notable Book * Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, TIME, and Marie Claire

“A manifesto to happiness—the one found when you stop running from who you are.” –New York Times Book Review

“An extraordinary book, acrobatic on the level of the sentence, symphonic across its many movements—and... Read more

My Monticello

Fiction

By: Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Narrated by: Aja Naomi King, January LaVoy, Landon Woodson, LeVar Burton, Ngozi Anyanwu & Tomiwa Edun
Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

“A dynamic, and timely, debut by a new voice in fiction, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson. This collection is comprised of five short stories and one novella all set in the state of Virginia. As you read these stories, you will experience, and feel, the gamut of human emotion as the voices and themes in each are different. The author explores race,... Read more

The Morning Star

By: Karl Ove Knausgaard
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Mia Barron, Michael Braun, Alyssa Bresnahan, Hannah Cabell, Michael Crouch, Leah Horowitz, Elisabeth Rodgers & Graham Winton
Length: 23 hours 11 minutes

“Knausgaard’s keen realism meets the dark impulses of Steven King’s fiction in this beginning-of-the-end-days, absorbing novel. Read more

The Magician

A Novel

By: Colm Toibin
Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery
Length: 16 hours 37 minutes

“Toíbín’s brilliant imagining of the life of Thomas Mann follows his superb 2004 novel The Master, about Henry James, and does not disappoint in the least. Feast on this intelligently, profoundly felt novel about the author of The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice, Buddenbrooks and many others. Read more

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

An Oprah’s Book Club Novel

By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton & Prentice Onayemi
Length: 29 hours 48 minutes

“This is the best book I’ve read this year. An ambitious debut novel tracing the history of one family against the backdrop of American history and showing the stories that are remembered and the ones that are forgotten. Read more

The Lincoln Highway

A Novel

By: Amor Towles
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland & Dion Graham
Length: 16 hours 38 minutes

“THIS BOOK EXCEEDED ALL EXPECTATIONS! As a huge fan of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility, The Lincoln Highway had a lot of pressure and holy cow did it surpass anything I could have hoped for. From the first page, I was immediately drawn into Towles' magical writing and superb characters. This felt like a modern classic, the new and... Read more

Light Perpetual

A Novel

By: Francis Spufford
Narrated by: Imogen Church
Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, NPR, Slate, Lit Hub, Fresh Air, and more

From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, an “extraordinary…symphonic…casually stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century... Read more

A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

By: Peter Ho Davies
Narrated by: Christopher Ryan Grant
Length: 4 hours 33 minutes

“There are some stories that require as much courage to write as they do art. Peter Ho Davies’s achingly honest, searingly comic portrait of fatherhood is just such a story...The world needs more stories like this one, more of this kind of courage, more of this kind of love.” —Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend

A... Read more

Libertie

By: Kaitlyn Greenidge
Narrated by: Channie Waites
Length: 12 hours 12 minutes

“This fascinating story of Libertie is set in and around the Civil War in Brooklyn, NY. Libertie, the daughter of a free black doctor, feels obligated to live up to her mothers’ expectations for her, all the while attempting to forge for herself her own path through the world. Themes of racism, colorism, and gender are all grappled with. Though... Read more

Klara and the Sun

A Novel

By: Kazuo Ishiguro
Narrated by: Sura Siu
Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

“When I read Ishiguo's work, I feel as if a veil has been lifted, and suddenly the world—or range—of humanness, and all it's uncomfortable possibilities, are clear. I'm so grateful for his extraordinary talents and ability to manifest new understandings inside the mind this reader. Whether it's the source of human emotion, the impact of memory,... Read more