TIME Top Books of 2017

Sing, Unburied, Sing

A Novel

By: Jesmyn Ward
Narrated by: Kelvin Harrison, Jr., Chris Chalk & Rutina Wesley
Length: 8 hours 22 minutes

“Sing, Unburied, Sing is a dark and gorgeous song of love and heartbreak, haunting and tragic and disorienting in its timelessness. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill anchors Ward's tale to Mississippi today, which is almost indistinguishable from its notorious yesterday, a present and past (ironically) made more alive in the novel by ghosts and... Read more

What Happened

By: Hillary Rodham Clinton
Narrated by: Hillary Rodham Clinton
Length: 18 hours 34 minutes

“An engaging, beautifully synthesized page-turner” (Slate). The #1 New York Times bestseller and Time #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most personal memoir yet, about the 2016 presidential election.

In this “candid and blackly funny” (The New York Times) memoir, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and... Read more

The Hate U Give

By: Angie Thomas
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 50 minutes

“This bestselling, powerful young adult novel about social justice and one teen girl's effort to fight for what is right, will leave you breathless. The narration by Bahni Turpin is hands down the best I've ever heard. This is such an important book it should be required reading for life in general. Or listening. Definitely listening. Read more

White Tears

A novel

By: Hari Kunzru
Narrated by: Lincoln Hoppe, Danny Campbell & Dominic Hoffman
Length: 10 hours 15 minutes

“An unsettling, grungy, gorgeous tale of white appropriations of black culture, legacy, and memory, of the harrowing effects of racism through the years, of a haunting that resonates through generations through a blues song that should have been stamped on vinyl, that maybe was but never was. This is a story of the costs of a lack of reparations,... 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

Manhattan Beach

A Novel

By: Jennifer Egan
Narrated by: Norbert Leo Butz, Heather Lind & Vincent Piazza
Length: 15 hours 16 minutes

“Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach captures a time and place on the verge of momentous change. Set in Brooklyn in the 1940s, the novel tells the story of Anna Kerrigan, a young woman who has dropped out of Brooklyn College to contribute what she can to the American war effort. Unsatisfied with her job of inspecting and measuring machine parts,... Read more

Killers of the Flower Moon

The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

By: David Grann
Narrated by: Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee & Danny Campbell
Length: 9 hours 4 minutes

“The three sections of the book each cover a different part of this bizarre and unbelievable but true murder mystery: the investigation, the trial, and the aftermath. Each time I finished a section, I kind of assumed the interesting part was over. And each time I was WRONG. This book kept me guessing all the way to the end, and then some. Read more

Turtles All the Way Down

By: John Green
Narrated by: Kate Rudd
Length: 7 hours 11 minutes

FEATURED ON 60 MINUTES and FRESH AIR

“So surprising and moving and true that I became completely unstrung.” – The New York Times

Named a best book of the year by: The New York Times, NPR, TIME, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Southern Living, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, A.V. Club, Bustle, BuzzFeed, Vulture, and many... Read more

Exit West

A Novel

By: Mohsin Hamid
Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
Length: 4 hours 41 minutes

“Exit West will take your breath away as it magically weaves together a story of falling in love while the world falls apart. Spirited Nadia captures the heart of the thoughtful Saeed, but as their different paths in life converge, ordinary life gives way to the insults of war. Mohsin Hamid conveys the story of these young refugees with... Read more

Homo Deus

A Brief History of Tomorrow

By: Yuval Noah Harari
Narrated by: Derek Perkins
Length: 14 hours 53 minutes

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein... Read more

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

By: Erika L. Sánchez
Narrated by: Kyla Garcia
Length: 9 hours 40 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “stunning” (America Ferrera) YA novel about a teenager coming to terms with losing her sister and finding herself amid the pressures, expectations, and stereotypes of growing up in a Mexican American home.

“Alive and crackling—a gritty tale wrapped in a page-turner. ”—The New York Times

Perfect Mexican daughters... Read more

Lincoln in the Bardo

A Novel

By: George Saunders
Narrated by: George Saunders, Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, Carrie Brownstein, Don Cheadle, Lena Dunham, Bill Hader, Kirby Heyborne, Keegan-Michael Key, Julianne Moore, Megan Mullally, Susan Sarandon, Ben Stiller & Various
Length: 7 hours 24 minutes

“Saunders' first novel has a steep entry curve. It's not a novel that reveals itself quickly and easily, but if you give it your attention, if you burrow deep into the book, you'll be eminently rewarded. There is a richness and depth of humanity here. There is the strange and wonderful. There is love and grief and mystery all brought together in... Read more

The Rules Do Not Apply

A Memoir

By: Ariel Levy
Narrated by: Ariel Levy
Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •  “This Year’s Must-Read Memoir” (W magazine) about the choices a young woman makes in her search for adventure, meaning, and love

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
Vogue• Time• Esquire• Entertainment Weekly• The Guardian• Harper’s Bazaar• Library Journal• NPR 

All her life, Ariel Levy was told that she was too... Read more

The Stars Beneath Our Feet

By: David Barclay Moore
Narrated by: Nile Bullock & David Barclay Moore
Length: 6 hours 19 minutes

"The right story at the right time. . . . It’s not just a narrative; it’s an experience. It’s the novel we’ve been waiting for." —The New York Times

A boy tries to steer a safe path through the projects in Harlem in the wake of his brother’s death in this outstanding debut novel that celebrates community and creativity. Winner of the... Read more

The Changeling

A Novel

By: Victor LaValle
Narrated by: Victor LaValle
Length: 14 hours 1 minute

“Mesmerizing . . . a dark fairy tale of New York, full of magic and loss, myth and mystery, love and madness.”—Marlon James, author of the Dark Star trilogy

NOW AN APPLE TV+ SERIES STARRING LAKEITH STANFIELD • ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME

Winner of an American Book Award, a Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, a British Fantasy... Read more

The Meaning of Michelle

16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own

By: Veronica Chambers
Narrated by: January LaVoy & Prentice Onayemi
Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

“Whenever I think about Michelle Obama, I think, ‘When I grow up, I want to be just like her. I want to be that intelligent, confident, and comfortable in my own skin’.” ―Roxane Gay

“Even after eight years of watching them daily in the press, the fact that the most powerful man in the world is a Black man is still breathtaking to me. The fact... Read more

The Ninth Hour

A Novel

By: Alice McDermott
Narrated by: Euan Morton
Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

“Alice McDermott's dazzling The Ninth Hour turns on the contradictions that confound our need to reconcile with mortality. The empathetic characters, at once agents and benefactors of Christian charity, grow to realize not just the grace but also the hubris of their faith. A stunning work of generational storytelling, The Ninth Hour is... Read more

The Evangelicals

The Struggle to Shape America

By: Frances FitzGerald
Narrated by: Jacques Roy
Length: 25 hours 50 minutes

* Winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award
* National Book Award Finalist
* Time magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year
* New York Times Notable Book
* Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017

This “epic history” (The Boston Globe) from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic... Read more

Days without End

By: Sebastian Barry
Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
Length: 7 hours 58 minutes

From Sebastian Barry, a two-time finalist for the Man Booker Prize, comes a powerful and unforgettable novel chronicling a young Irish immigrant’s army years in the Indian wars and the American Civil War.Thomas McNulty, having fled the Great Famine in Ireland and now barely seventeen years old, signs up for the US Army in the 1850s and with his... Read more

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow

Nevermoor: Book #1

By: Jessica Townsend
Narrated by: Gemma Whelan
Length: 11 hours

“Nevermoor is The Unwanteds meets The Apprentice Witch, with a splash of Alice in Wonderland and The Mysterious Benedict Society. Seems like the perfect book right? This book weaves together a magical tale of cursed child, Morrigan Crow, who manages to escape her fate while traveling to alternate world. But how long can one really escape their... Read more