Powell's Staff Picks

Pure Colour

A Novel

By: Sheila Heti
Narrated by: Sheila Heti
Length: 3 hours 49 minutes

Pure Colour is a galaxy of an audiobook: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.

Here we are, just... Read more

My Mess Is a Bit of a Life

Adventures in Anxiety

By: Georgia Pritchett
Narrated by: Katherine Parkinson
Length: 4 hours 13 minutes

“Georgia Pritchett is a singularly hilarious person. Her book is a delightful and perfect reflection of her. Its tenderness sneaks up on you and really packs a punch. What a magnificent read!”—Julia Louis DreyfusJenny Lawson meets Nora Ephron in this joyful memoir-in-vignettes on living—and thriving—with anxiety from a multiple Emmy... Read more

The Sentence

By: Louise Erdrich
Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
Length: 11 hours 49 minutes

“Why did it take me so long to read this perfect, perfect book? Read more

Taste

My Life Through Food

By: Stanley Tucci
Narrated by: Stanley Tucci
Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

“Such a deal! You get beloved actor Stanley Tucci's droll wit; family memories; stories of decades of New York's food scene; reminiscences of iconic Italian settings; mouth-watering recipes -- including his carefully enunciated, accurate pronunciations of all the ingredients! Another bonus of the audio of Tucci's Taste: you can chop and boil and... Read more

Wandering in Strange Lands

A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

By: Morgan Jerkins
Narrated by: Morgan Jerkins
Length: 8 hours 3 minutes

“Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan Jerkins is a fascinating look at the history of the Great Migration through Jerkins' exploration of her own family history and legacy. Jerkins provides an additional dimension to understanding Black lineage in the United States and the complexity of what it means to be Black in America. Read more

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

By: George Saunders
Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, BD Wong & Renée Elise Goldsberry
Length: 14 hours 43 minutes

“In this literal master class on literature and writing, Saunders earnestly yet playfully dissects 19th-century Russian short stories to discover how they exude life to this very day, while highlighting methods any aspiring writer can employ. The huge bonus: reading the wondrous stories themselves, and experiencing Tolstoy’s authority, Chekhov’s... Read more

Fight Night

By: Miriam Toews
Narrated by: Miriam Toews & Georgia Toews
Length: 6 hours 19 minutes

“How my bookseller heart leapt when I heard there was a new Miriam Toews novel on the horizon! This tender, funny family portrait, narrated by nine-year-old Swiv in a letter to her estranged father, had me in stitches and in tears and introduced me to a grandmother I won’t soon forget. Read more

Iron Widow (Book 1)

Iron Widow: Book #1

By: Xiran Jay Zhao
Narrated by: Rong Fu
Length: 12 hours 18 minutes

“Iron Widow is the feminist bloodthirsty rage antihero fantasy saga of my DREAMS! Pacific Rim meets The Hunger Games. Much like in the movie Pacific Rim, as our protagonist, Zetian is mentally co-piloting gigantic transforming mechas that humanity is relying on to battle massive aliens come to dominate the planet. And much like in The Hunger... Read more

Furious Hours

Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

By: Casey Cep
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 11 hours 15 minutes

“In Cold Blood and To Kill a Mockingbird kept me up reading all night as a teen, and I can now add Furious Hours to the list of couldn’t-put-it-down tomes. I was enthralled, educated, and awestruck by Casey Cep’s well-researched and masterfully written true-crime account of a rural minister, his lawyer, and his killer. Thankfully, Cep discovered... Read more

Long Bright River

A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)

By: Liz Moore
Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
Length: 13 hours 18 minutes

“At the heart of this sleek police noir is a family decayed and ravaged by drug addiction. And make no mistake, LONG BRIGHT RIVER does have a heart. Although it is full of twists and turns and has a who-done-it element that will blow your mind at every second, it is also an examination of family, motherhood, and inherited trauma that is both... Read more

Mobituaries

Great Lives Worth Reliving

By: Mo Rocca
Narrated by: Mo Rocca
Length: 11 hours 45 minutes

“I have been enjoying Mobituaries both for the fun of the individual stories and the joy that Mo seems to take in telling them. I don't often recommend a book as the audiobook over hardcover but in this case I think that the audiobook is the way to go. Read more

How to Hide an Empire

A History of the Greater United States

By: Daniel Immerwahr
Narrated by: Luis Moreno
Length: 17 hours 25 minutes

“A hilarious sparkler of historical quirks burns down to a dangerous fuse of tampering, territory, and transnational economics in this history of the USA not as the nation you just pictured, but as the complete global network of Americans, many without the rights the Lower 48 believe in, most segregated into cells of power that occasionally... Read more

Angels in America

A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

By: Tony Kushner
Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Susan Brown, Denise Gough, Beth Malone, James McArdle, Lee Pace, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Bobby Cannavale & Edie Falco
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Presenting an original audiobook performance of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, starring the cast of the National Theatre's 2018 Broadway revival.

In this production, adapted especially for the listening experience, Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, and the entire cast recreate their acclaimed performances from the 2018 Tony Award-winning National... Read more

Vespertine

By: Margaret Rogerson
Narrated by: Caitlin Davies
Length: 12 hours 6 minutes

An international bestseller!

From the New York Times bestselling author of Sorcery of Thorns and An Enchantment of Ravens comes a thrilling, “dark coming-of-age adventure” (Culturess) about a teen girl with mythic abilities who must defend her world against restless spirits of the dead.

The spirits of the dead do not rest.

Artemisia is training... Read more

Plunder

A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure

By: Meir Menachem Kaiser
Narrated by: Meir Menachem Kaiser
Length: 9 hours 7 minutes

A New York Times Critics’ Best Nonfiction Book of 2021
Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography

From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland—and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows 

Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable... Read more

Leave the World Behind

A Novel

By: Rumaan Alam
Narrated by: Marin Ireland
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

“In Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, a family of four rents an Airbnb to get away from it all for a relaxing vacation. Everything they need is there: natural surroundings, a pool, and solitude. After an ominous notification about a power outage in the city, the internet goes out. When the owners of the house show up to stay until everything... Read more

Eating to Extinction

The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them

By: Dan Saladino
Narrated by: Dan Saladino
Length: 16 hours 13 minutes

This audiobook is read by the author.

Dan Saladino's Eating to Extinction is the prominent broadcaster’s pathbreaking tour of the world’s vanishing foods and his argument for why they matter now more than ever

Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly six... Read more

A Thousand Ships

A Novel

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 8 hours 33 minutes

“From The Aeneid to The Iliad and The Odyssey, classic stories of the Trojan War are implicitly reliant on the role of women, however reticent they are portrayed. Finally — finally! — we have a retelling that does women, girls, and goddesses justice. Through the perspective of women in various places and times during the war, Natalie Haynes... Read more

Brown Girls

A Novel

By: Daphne Palasi Andreades
Narrated by: Tashi Thomas
Length: 4 hours 26 minutes

“A gorgeous, gratifying story, evoking a strong sense of place in the 'dregs of Queens' and told from the plural perspective of the eponymous brown girls. Disguised by the book's brevity is the impressive span of rich, lively vignettes that make up a life, cradle to grave. Particularly notable is the way Andreades rejects the idea of caricature... Read more

See No Stranger

A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

The Revolutionary Love Project

By: Valarie Kaur
Narrated by: Valarie Kaur
Length: 13 hours 14 minutes

#1 LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE • An urgent manifesto and a dramatic memoir of awakening, this is the story of revolutionary love.

“In a world stricken with fear and turmoil, Valarie Kaur shows us how to summon our deepest wisdom.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love
 
How do we love in a time... Read more