Staff Top 10's - 2017

The Unwomanly Face of War

An Oral History of Women in World War II

By: Svetlana Alexievich
Narrated by: Julia Emelin & Yelena Shmulenson
Length: 14 hours 17 minutes

“During WWII, American women mostly 'went to war' by working in factories, thus freeing the men to serve in the armed forces. That was not the case in the Soviet Union. There, more than a million Soviet women served in the Red Army. Some were non-combatants who served behind the lines (nurses and doctors). But most fought alongside the men... Read more

Reservoir 13

The Reservoir Series: Book #1

By: Jon McGregor
Narrated by: Matt Bates
Length: 8 hours 48 minutes

In midwinter in an English village, a teenage girl has gone missing and everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks, and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired,... Read more

The Essex Serpent

A Novel

By: Sarah Perry
Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
Length: 14 hours 44 minutes

“If you love mystery, Victorian England, and exploring the tension between science and religion, you will love The Essex Serpent. Many contemporary authors manage to evoke for readers that experience of reading Jane Austen or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the first time. The real miracle of Sarah Perry is that she manages to do so with a completely... Read more

On Tyranny

Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

By: Timothy Snyder
Narrated by: Timothy Snyder
Length: 1 hour 47 minutes

“A quick snippet of a book to keep at the ready. Snyder uses real life examples, references past times in history, and quotes major figures and philosophers, all of this giving the listener even more places to go if the point resonates. And providing some maybe new voices for those in your life whom you want to guide. Set up as key lessons with... Read more

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?

Stories

By: Kathleen Collins
Narrated by: Nina Lorez Collins, Cherise Boothe, Adenrele Ojo, Paula J. Parker, Desean Terry & Dan Woren
Length: 4 hours 8 minutes

Now available in Ecco’s Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker—a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley—whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide... Read more

Love and Trouble

A Midlife Reckoning

By: Claire Dederer
Narrated by: Claire Dederer
Length: 7 hours

From the New York Times best-selling author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, a ferocious, sexy, hilarious memoir about going off the rails at midlife and trying to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.

Claire Dederer is a happily married mother of two, ages nine and twelve, when she suddenly finds herself totally... Read more

Evicted

Poverty and Profit in the American City

By: Matthew Desmond
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 11 hours 2 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY

One of the most acclaimed books of our time, this modern classic “has set a new standard for reporting on poverty”... Read more

Bad Behavior

Stories

By: Mary Gaitskill
Narrated by: Mary Gaitskill
Length: 7 hours 16 minutes

This is a reissue of National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior—powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire, which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban-fringe generation as it searches for human connection.Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it was first published, heralding... Read more

Bad Dreams and Other Stories

By: Tessa Hadley
Narrated by: Emma Gregory
Length: 5 hours 50 minutes

The award-winning author of The Past once again ""crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural"" (Washington Post), in a collection of stories that elevate the mundane into the exceptional.The author of six critically acclaimed novels, Tessa Hadley has proven herself to be the champion of revealing the... Read more

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

By: Muriel Spark
Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
Length: 3 hours 59 minutes

In the classic work that launched a play, a movie, and a song, Muriel Spark tells the darkly intriguing story of an eccentric Edinburgh teacher and the intense relationship she develops with six of her students.At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and... Read more

We Were Eight Years in Power

An American Tragedy

By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by: Beresford Bennett
Length: 13 hours 37 minutes

In this “urgently relevant”* collection featuring the landmark essay “The Case for Reparations,” the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*—including the election of Donald Trump.

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book... Read more

Arbitrary Stupid Goal

By: Tamara Shopsin
Narrated by: Tamara Shopsin
Length: 3 hours 55 minutes

“Arbitrary Stupid Goal is a completely riveting world—when I looked up from its pages regular life seemed boring and safe and modern like one big iPhone. This book captures not just a lost New York but a whole lost way of life.” —Miranda July

In Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tamara Shopsin takes the reader on a pointillist time-travel trip to the... Read more

Golden Hill

A Novel of Old New York

By: Francis Spufford
Narrated by: Sarah Borges
Length: 10 hours 46 minutes

“Although the author has a respected list of non-fiction titles to his credit, Golden Hill feels like the work of an accomplished novelist. Set in New York City 25 years before the 1776 revolution, it is a tale of morality and its opposite, of politics and greed, failure and recovery, friendship, love, regret and restitution. The audiobook... Read more

Nothing to Envy

Ordinary Lives in North Korea

By: Barbara Demick
Narrated by: Karen White
Length: 12 hours 29 minutes

Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings... Read more

Magpie Murders

A Novel

Susan Ryeland Series: Book #1

By: Anthony Horowitz
Narrated by: Samantha Bond & Allan Corduner
Length: 15 hours 47 minutes

“Who better than the talented Anthony Horowitz to create this marvelous mystery within a mystery. Yes, we're treated to two mysteries for the price of one: One set in a peaceful village in England during the 1950s with the one and only Detective Atticus Pund taking the case, and the other set in contemporary times with a book editor who becomes... Read more

The Soul of an Octopus

A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

By: Sy Montgomery
Length: 9 hours 10 minutes

In this astonishing book from the author of the best selling memoir The Good Good Pig, Sy Montgomery explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus—a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature—and the remarkable connections it makes with humans. Read more

Love, Nina

A Nanny Writes Home

By: Nina Stibbe
Narrated by: Nina Stibbe
Length: 8 hours 1 minute

"Breezy, sophisticated, hilarious, rude and aching with sweetness: Love, Nina might be the most charming book I've ever read." -- Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette

In 1982, 20-year-old Nina Stibbe moved to London to work as a nanny to two opinionated and lively young boys. In frequent letters home to her sister, Nina described... Read more

My Brilliant Friend

The Neapolitan Novels: Book #1

By: Elena Ferrante
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

“Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels are a fierce, intimate, and beautifully unflinching account of female friendship - believe the hype - -a fever dream that leaves you impossibly clear-headed. Read more

The Argonauts

By: Maggie Nelson
Narrated by: Maggie Nelson
Length: 4 hours 48 minutes

An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and familyMaggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of “autotheory” offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the... Read more

Tenth of December

Stories

By: George Saunders
Narrated by: George Saunders
Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

“Reading George Saunders always makes me feel more optimistic about being human. Tenth of December moved me to tears- not just for the content of Saunders' stories (though there is no lack of tragedy in his satirical tragicomedies), but for the simple exuberance of his writing and the kindness with which he treats even his most contemptible... Read more