Odyssey Bookstore's Staff Picks

The Secret History

By: Donna Tartt
Narrated by: Donna Tartt
Length: 22 hours 3 minutes

A Read With Jenna Book Club Pick • International Bestseller“Enthralling. . . . A remarkably powerful novel.” —The New York TimesIn this brilliant novel from Donna Tartt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch, comes a richly textured and hypnotic story of golden youth corrupted by its own moral arrogance.Richard Papen had never been... Read more

Jazz - Abridged

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison
Length: 3 hours

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.

“As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize–winning Beloved.... Morrison... Read more

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

By: Ottessa Moshfegh
Narrated by: Julia Whelan
Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

“At first, My Year of Rest and Relaxation feels like the end of something, like a novel about the end of someone’s life. But Moshfegh has a way of affirming life unlike any other author. Repercussions of grief, emotional exhaustion, and the general anchors of life hurl a young woman into the warm embrace of the idea of hibernating for a year. Of... Read more

The Friend (National Book Award Winner)

A Novel

By: Sigrid Nunez
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 5 hours 59 minutes

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING NAOMI WATTS

“A beautiful book . . . a world of insight into death, grief, art, and love.” —Wall Street Journal

“A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory . . . Nunez has a wry, withering... Read more

Winners Take All

The Elite Charade of Changing the World

By: Anand Giridharadas
Narrated by: Anand Giridharadas
Length: 9 hours 36 minutes

The New York Times bestselling, groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite's efforts to "change the world" preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve. An essential read for understanding some of the egregious abuses of power that dominate today’s news.

Former New York Times columnist... Read more

Cloud Atlas

A Novel

By: David Mitchell
Narrated by: Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, Kirby Heyborne, John Lee & Richard Matthews
Length: 19 hours 50 minutes

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction
 
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize
 
Cloud Atlas... Read more

On Beauty

By: Zadie Smith
Narrated by: Peter Francis James
Length: 18 hours 48 minutes

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth

"In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." —Kirkus Reviews

Having hit bestseller lists from the New York... Read more

Ghost Wars

The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invas ion to September 10, 2001 (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

By: Steve Coll
Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
Length: 26 hours 48 minutes

The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan

With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after... Read more

The Stranger in the Woods

The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

By: Michael Finkel
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
Length: 6 hours 18 minutes

“This is one heck of a very strange true story. When Christopher Knight was just 20 years old, he drove his car north towards Maine. When the car gave out, he began walking, carrying a tent and a few belongings, hiding in the woods, then finding a place that he liked in between some boulders. He made a camp, where he lived for almost three... Read more

Dubliners

By: James Joyce
Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce that was first published in 1914. The fifteen stories were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of the Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the twentieth century.



The stories were written at a time when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a... Read more

Howards End

By: E. M. Forster
Narrated by: Steven Crossley
Length: 11 hours 51 minutes

Considered by many to be E. M. Forster's greatest novel, Howards End is a beautifully subtle tale of two very different families brought together by an unusual event. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger." When the elder Mrs. Wilcox... Read more

Atonement

By: Ian McEwan
Narrated by: Jill Tanner
Length: 12 hours 26 minutes

Ian McEwan has received prestigious awards and international praise for his novels, including Enduring Love. In Atonement, three children lose their innocence--as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935--and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's priviledged class; Robbie Turner is the... Read more

Passing

By: Nella Larsen
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 4 hours 5 minutes

Nella Larsen’s fascinating exploration of race and identity—the inspiration for the Netflix film directed by Rebecca Hall, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.Irene Redfield is a Black woman living an affluent, comfortable life with her husband and children in the thriving neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s. When she reconnects with her... Read more

The Violent Bear It Away

By: Flannery O’Connor
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
Length: 6 hours 15 minutes

First published in 1960, The Violent Bear It Away is now a landmark in American literature. It is a dark and absorbing example of the gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O’Connor’s work.The orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousin, Rayber, struggle to defy the prophecy of their dead uncle—that... Read more

The Lathe of Heaven

By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: George Guidall
Length: 6 hours 48 minutes

A classic science fiction novel by one of the greatest writers of the genre, set in a future world where one man's dreams control the fate of humanity. In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William... Read more

In Watermelon Sugar

By: Richard Brautigan
Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
Length: 2 hours 21 minutes

iDEATH is a place where the sun shines a different color every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. In this book, Richard Brautigan discovers and expresses the mood of the counterculture generation. Read more

This Is Not Propaganda

Adventures in the War Against Reality

By: Peter Pomerantsev
Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
Length: 7 hours 29 minutes

Learn how the perception of truth has been weaponized in modern politics with this "insightful" account of propaganda in Russia and beyond during the age of disinformation (New York Times).
When information is a weapon, every opinion is an act of war.

We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft... Read more

The Souls of Yellow Folk

Essays

By: Wesley Yang
Narrated by: David Shih
Length: 6 hours 35 minutes

““For the title of his debut collection of essays on race, gender, and American society, Wesley Yang invokes W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1903 classic study of race in America. These 13 essays explore the ways in which the American dream shapes and distorts an assortment of people: chefs, strivers, pickup artists, and school shooters. Included here is ‘Paper... Read more

Mrs. Caliban

By: Rachel Ingalls
Narrated by: Amy Landon
Length: 3 hours 37 minutes

It all starts with the radio. Dorothy's husband, Fred, has left for work, and she is at the kitchen sink washing the dishes, listening to classical music. Suddenly, the music fades out and a soft, close, dreamy voice says, "Don't worry, Dorothy."



A couple weeks later, there is a special interruption in regular programming. The announcer warns... Read more