The New York Times Book Review: 100 Notable Books of 2020
We've got the audiobooks from this year’s notable fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
Yellow Bird
Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country
By Sierra Crane Murdoch
Narrated by: Sierra Crane Murdoch
Length: 14 hours 56 minutes
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it—an urgent work of literary journalism.
“I don’t know a more complicated, original protagonist in literature than Lissa Yellow Bird, or a more dogged reporter in American journalism than... Read more »
Writers & Lovers
A Novel
By Lily King
Narrated by: Stacey Glemboski
Length: 8 hours 13 minutes
Writers & Lovers
“I have had this book since last fall, but have been *saving* it for the right time and I am so thrilled I waited. Quarantine is the perfect time to allow Lily King to bring you gently into the world she creates in Writers & Lovers. A young woman who has recently lost her mother is waiting for the world to make itself known to her. Stuck in a dead end job while trying to finish her novel and find love, KC makes the reader not just feel FOR her, but feel WITH her. A beautifully written story that shows Lily King is at the top of her game.”
Mary, Anderson's Bookshop
A Woman Like Her
The Story behind the Honor Killing of a Social Media Star
By Sanam Maher
Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
The murder of a Pakistani social media star exposes a culture divided between accelerating modernity and imposed traditional values—and the tragedy of those caught in the middle.
In 2016, Pakistan’s first social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch, was murdered in a suspected honor killing. Her death quickly became a media sensation. It was both... Read more »
Why I Don't Write
And Other Stories
By Susan Minot
Narrated by: Alex McKenna, Kristen Sieh & Andrew Eiden
Length: 4 hours 38 minutes
A superb collection of short fiction--her first in thirty years and spanning many geographies--from the critically acclaimed author of Monkeys, Evening, and Thirty Girls. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK.
A writer dryly catalogs the myriad reasons she cannot write; an artist bicycles through a protest encampment in lower Manhattan and ruminates on... Read more »
Who Gets In and Why
A Year Inside College Admissions
By Jeffrey Selingo
Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
Length: 10 hours 11 minutes
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020
From award-winning higher education journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Selingo comes a revealing look from inside the admissions office—one that identifies surprising strategies that will aid in the college search.
Getting into a top-ranked college has never seemed more impossible, with... Read more »
War: How Conflict Shaped Us
How Conflict Shaped Us
By Margaret MacMillan
Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
Length: 10 hours 41 minutes
Is peace an aberration? The bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity.
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE EAST HAMPTON STAR
“Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. . . . She is right that we must, more than ever, think... Read more »
Wagnerism
Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
By Alex Ross
Narrated by: Alex Ross
Length: 28 hours 20 minutes
This program is read by the author, and includes excerpts from Richard Wagner's musical compositions throughout.
A New York Times Notable Books of 2020
Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for... Read more »
The Vanishing Half
A Novel
By Brit Bennett
Narrated by: Shayna Small
Length: 11 hours 33 minutes
The Vanishing Half
“This is a beautifully written, stunning, and scandalous story about two identical black twin girls, one who runs away from home at age 16. And then their lives completely shift, as one continues living her life as a Black woman, and the other that tries to pass herself off as white. This novel came at just the right time, in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protests and racial unrest in the United States. Brit Bennett has done a brilliant job with her novel! It is compelling and the audiobook on Libro.fm is exceptional!”
Marilyn, BookBar
Until the End of Time
Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
By Brian Greene
Narrated by: Brian Greene
Length: 14 hours 36 minutes
Instant New York Times Best-seller
From the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe comes a captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose.
"Few humans share Greene’s mastery of both the latest cosmological science and English prose."
—The New York Times (notable book of 2020)
Until the End... Read more »
The Undocumented Americans
A Homecoming
By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Length: 4 hours 53 minutes
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.
“Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be... Read more »
Uncanny Valley
A Memoir
By Anna Wiener
Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar
Length: 8 hours 44 minutes
Uncanny Valley
“Like Joan Didion or Renata Adler, Ben Lerner or Sally Rooney, Anna Wiener writes with dead-on specificity, scalpel-sharp analysis, deep sensitivity, and an eye for the absurd. She headed west into the modern gold rush that is the tech boom and now returns with gleaming ingots of insight, weaving tales of a strange land where boy-CEOs ride ripsticks and hoover up your data. An essential and very human look at the forces shaping who we are and how we behave.”
Sam MacLaughlin, McNally Jackson Williamsburg
Tokyo Ueno Station
A Novel
By Yu Miri
Narrated by: Johnny Heller
Length: 3 hours 58 minutes
WINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations.
Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is tied by a series of coincidences to the Imperial... Read more »
This Is All I Got
A New Mother's Search for Home
By Lauren Sandler
Narrated by: Lauren Sandler
Length: 10 hours 3 minutes
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From an award-winning journalist, a poignant and gripping immersion in the life of a young, homeless single mother amid her quest to find stability and shelter in the richest city in America
LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD • “Riveting . . . a remarkable feat of reporting.”—The New York Times
Camila is... 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
The Third Rainbow Girl
“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, The Third Rainbow Girl weaves true crime with memoir to stunning effect.”
Tove Holmberg, Powell's Books
The Splendid and the Vile
A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
By Erik Larson
Narrated by: John Lee & Erik Larson
Length: 17 hours 48 minutes
The Splendid and the Vile
“Larson does a splendid job again of creating the personal story out of a larger historical event. Here he concentrates on the Churchills and the two years of the London blitz. By using diaries and letters, he tells of the immense loss of life and property. He also gives voice to the great spirit of the people who endured this. We are transported to 10 Downing Street and the official weekend home of the prime minister where meetings, meals, parties, and intrigue abound.”
Valerie, Blue Willow Bookshop
Soul Full of Coal Dust
A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia
By Chris Hamby
Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
Length: 14 hours 1 minutes
In a devastating and urgent work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hamby uncovers the tragic resurgence of black lung disease in Appalachia, its Big Coal cover-up, and the resilient mining communities who refuse to back down. Decades ago, a grassroots uprising forced Congress to enact long-overdue legislation designed... Read more »
Sisters
A Novel
By Daisy Johnson
Narrated by: Daisy Edgar-Jones & Anna Koval
Length: 4 hours 34 minutes
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
“[A] skillfully crafted gothic mystery . . . Johnson pulls off a great feat in this book.” —Financial Times
“It reminded me, in its general refusal to play nice, of early Ian McEwan.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Johnson crafts an aching thriller about the dangers of loving too intensely.” —Time
... Read more »
The Sirens of Mars
Searching for Life on Another World
By Sarah Stewart Johnson
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 7 hours 56 minutes
The Sirens of Mars
“I loved this quietly gorgeous book. Sarah Johnson Stewart brings her characters to vivid life —philosophers and scientists from the annals of Western history, family and teachers from her own life, or the dusty dunes of the ‘red planet’ itself — with clear, almost poetic prose, detailing the history of humanity’s fascination with Mars, as well as her own. You will leave these pages with a deeper understanding of interplanetary science and the wonder of humanity’s next discovery.”
Jocelyn Shratter, Bookshop Santa Cruz
Shuggie Bain
By Douglas Stuart
Narrated by: Angus King
Length: 17 hours 30 minutes
Shuggie Bain
“Shuggie Bain is sad, but there’s so much more to it than that. Hugh “Shuggie” Bain is different—he’s gentle and polite and lonely, a poor boy growing up in 1980’s Glasgow. His glamorous mother, Agnes, is an alcoholic, but she embodies her dignity when she needs it most. In one notably humorous scene, she drunkenly collects her son from his good-for-nothing father, upon checking herself out of the psych ward, and breaks the windows of his house while neighborhood boys whoop and holler at her boldness. Shuggie runs to his savior and clings to her with unconditional love. Eventually, he and his mother pledge to be “brand new” upon moving back into the city—she’ll stop drinking and Shuggie will be “normal.” But no matter how many football statistics he memorizes, Shuggie will never be like other boys, and his mother will never stop drinking. Their relationship is beautiful and overflowing with love, deeply humanizing those who struggle with substance abuse. I’ll never forget Shuggie Bain.”
Mary, Raven Book Store
Shakespeare in a Divided America
What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
By James Shapiro
Narrated by: Fred Sanders
Length: 9 hours 11 minutes
One of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year • A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • A New York Times Notable Book
A timely exploration of what Shakespeare’s plays reveal about our divided land.
“In this sprightly and enthralling book . . . Shapiro amply demonstrates [that] for Americans the politics of Shakespeare are not... Read more »