Literary Criticism bestsellers

Pandora's Jar

Women in the Greek Myths

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

“Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of . . . but read on!”—Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's TaleThe national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships returns with a fascinating, eye-opening take on the remarkable women at the heart of classical stories Greek... Read more

Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik
Narrated by: Lili Anolik
Length: 12 hours 34 minutes

“"Art, my God, Joan, I'm embarrassed to mention it in front of you, you know, but you mentioned burning babies in locked cars so I can mention Art." Eve Babitz to Joan Didion, 1972. In this blazing memoir, one feels like they're out for drinks discussing '70s Hollywood sleaze, female chauvinist pigs, and Charles Manson with your wildly messy and... 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

“This masterclass for writers is also a masterclass for readers, and you don't have to be a writer to enjoy it. Through his wise insights on storytelling, Saunders sent me away with an understanding of why I enjoy reading what I do, how stories work, and how to be a better storyteller (and human) in all rights. Read more

Jane Austen at Home

A Biography (250th Birthday Edition)

By: Lucy Worsley
Narrated by: Lucy Worsley
Length: 17 hours 17 minutes

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, Lucy Worsley has written a new Introduction to her Sunday Times Bestselling biography - the book that leads us into the rooms from which our best-loved novelist quietly changed the world.

This telling of the story of Jane's life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the... Read more

Monsters

A Fan's Dilemma

By: Claire Dederer
Narrated by: Claire Dederer
Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

“What do we do with the great art of monstrous men (and women)? Do we throw away all of its merit, determining it filthy and unworthy of our admiration? Do we separate the art from the artist, and the impact it’s had on society? Studying a variety of influential figures of the past, and the acts they committed, author Clare Dederer tackles this... Read more

How Sondheim Can Change Your Life

By: Richard Schoch
Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
Length: 6 hours 55 minutes

Discover the powerful and universal lessons from the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, the genius behind such musical theater masterworks as Company, West Side Story, and Into the Woods.

Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, but for countless fans around the world, he is “still here,” to quote one of his lyrics. With acclaimed revivals... Read more

Trick Mirror

Reflections on Self-Delusion

By: Jia Tolentino
Narrated by: Jia Tolentino
Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire
 
Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia... Read more

Recognizing the Stranger

On Palestine and Narrative

By: Isabella Hammad
Narrated by: Isabella Hammad
Length: 2 hours 28 minutes

Nine days before October 7, 2023, award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of... Read more

Minor Feelings

An Asian American Reckoning

By: Cathy Park Hong
Narrated by: Cathy Park Hong
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE • A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness

“Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

In... Read more

All Things Are Too Small

Essays in Praise of Excess

By: Becca Rothfeld
Narrated by: Ruth Crawford
Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as decluttering, mindfulness, David Cronenberg, sadomasochism, and women who wait. All Things Are Too Small is brilliant cultural and literary critic Becca Rothfeld’s plea for derangement: imbalance, obsession,... Read more

Meet Me in the Margins

A Rom-Com for People Who Love Books

By: Melissa Ferguson
Narrated by: Talon David
Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

“I've LOLed many times while listening to this enemies-to-lovers romance about books. I almost predicted the twist but was thrown off by a character I never suspected. This book would be great for readers who would prefer a non-steamy read. I felt for Savannah as I learned more about her family's dynamic and how she has tried to navigate it.... Read more

Splinters

Another Kind of Love Story

By: Leslie Jamison
Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
Length: 8 hours 32 minutes

“Leslie Jamison is a truth-teller and this memoir about splitting with her husband and raising her infant daughter in her first year of life was absolutely gripping. Read it for the specificity of detail, the masterful descriptions of emotional and psychological shifts, and for her powerful prose. A knock-out! Read more

How to Write a Sentence

And How to Read One

By: Stanley Fish
Narrated by: Rick Adamson
Length: 5 hours 12 minutes

New York Times Bestseller“Both deeper and more democratic than The Elements of Style” —Adam Haslett, Financial Times“A guided tour through some of the most beautiful, arresting sentences in the English language.” —SlateIn this entertaining and erudite gem, world-class professor and New York Times columnist Stanley Fish offers both sentence craft... Read more

The Monster and the Mirror

Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell

By: K.J. Aiello
Narrated by: K.J. Aiello
Length: 9 hours 58 minutes

Revelatory memoir and cultural criticism that connects popular fantasy and our perceptions of mental illness to offer an empathetic path to compassionate care Growing up, K.J. Aiello was fascinated by magical stories of dragons, wizards, and fantasy, where monsters were not what they seemed and anything was possible. These books and films... Read more

The Anatomy of Genres

How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

By: John Truby
Narrated by: Nick Mondelli
Length: 22 hours 16 minutes

A guide to understanding the major genres of the story world by the legendary writing teacher and author of The Anatomy of Story John Truby. Most people think genres are simply categories on Netflix or Amazon that provide a helpful guide to making entertainment choices. Most people are wrong. Genre stories aren’t just a small subset of the... Read more

How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor

A Smart, Irreverent Guide to Biography, History, Journalism, Blogs, and Everything in Between

By: Thomas C. Foster
Narrated by: David de Vries
Length: 9 hours 36 minutes

The New York Times bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor uses the same skills to teach how to access accurate information in a rapidly changing 24/7 news cycle and become better readers, thinkers, and consumers of media.We live in an information age, but it is increasingly difficult to know which information to trust.... Read more

Bibliotherapy

Books to Guide You Through Every Chapter of Life

By: Molly Masters
Narrated by: Molly Masters
Length: 4 hours 12 minutes

A beautiful, thoughtful guide to finding your perfect next read, no matter what life’s throwing at you, from the founder of Aphra a.k.a. ‘your inclusive AF feminist book club’ Through turbulent times, stories keep us afloat. Books, particularly, console and guide us, feed our souls, and open our eyes... Read more

Nothing Personal

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: JD Jackson
Length: 1 hour 10 minutes

James Baldwin’s critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of readers.

Available for the first time in a stand-alone edition, Nothing Personal is Baldwin’s deep probe into the American condition. Considering the Black... Read more

One in a Millennial

On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In

By: Kate Kennedy
Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

This program is read by the author.

From pop culture podcaster and a voice of a generation, Kate Kennedy, a celebration of the millennial zeitgeist

One in a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned... Read more

Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies

How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature

By: Elizabeth Winkler
Narrated by: Eunice Wong
Length: 14 hours 28 minutes

An “extraordinarily brilliant” and “pleasurably naughty” (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be.

The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most... Read more

Committed

On Meaning and Madwomen

By: Suzanne Scanlon
Narrated by: Suzanne Scanlon
Length: 10 hours 12 minutes

A raw and masterful memoir about becoming a woman and going mad—and doing both at once.
 
When Suzanne Scanlon was a student at Barnard in the 90s, grieving the loss of her mother—feeling untethered and swimming through inarticulable pain—she made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
 
After nearly three... Read more

Why Indigenous Literatures Matter

By: Daniel Heath Justice
Narrated by: Daniel Heath Justice
Length: 9 hours 17 minutes

Part survey of the field of Indigenous literary studies, part cultural history, and part literary polemic, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter asserts the vital significance of literary expression to the political, creative, and intellectual efforts of Indigenous peoples today. Selected as an Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Community Read by the... Read more

Othello

Two Complete Full Cast Performances of Original Shakespeare Text & Modern English

No Fear Shakespeare Audio Recordings

By: William Shakespeare & SparkNotes
Narrated by: Vikas Adam, Wayne Carr, William DeMeritt, Neil Hellegers, Chris Kipiniak, Robin Miles, Sarah Mollo-Christensen, Jason O'Connell, Imani Jade Powers & Gabra Zackman
Length: 6 hours 21 minutes

SparkNotes Audio presents … No Fear Shakespeare audio recordings! Listen to full cast performances of Shakespeare's plays in all their brilliance—and understand what every word means!

Don’t be intimidated by Shakespeare. These audiobook editions make the Bard’s plays accessible and enjoyable.

Each No Fear Shakespeare audio recording audio... Read more

On Writing (and Writers)

A Miscellany of Advice and Opinions

By: C. S. Lewis
Narrated by: John Lee
Length: 3 hours 10 minutes

A definitive collection of wisdom on every style of writing and a celebration of the transformative power of the written word from one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the modern age, C. S. Lewis, the beloved author of the Chronicles of Narnia series, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and other revered classics.Featuring... Read more

The Children's Book of Virtues - Abridged

Audio Treasury

By: William J. Bennett
Narrated by: William J. Bennett
Length: 1 hour 13 minutes

From the #1 national bestseller comes the definitive audio treasury of great moral takes for young children and their parents, including ten postcard-sized reproductions of Michael Hague's beautiful illustrations and featuring performances by:

The Bennett Family
(William, Elayne, John and Joseph)

Barbara Bush

Dorian Harewood

Charlton... Read more

Syria's Secret Library

Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege

By: Mike Thomson
Narrated by: David Rintoul
Length: 9 hours 6 minutes

The remarkable story of a small, makeshift library in the town of Daraya, and the people who found hope and humanity in its books during a four-year siege.

Daraya lies on the fringe of Damascus, just southwest of the Syrian capital. Yet for four years it lived in another world. Besieged by government forces early in the Syrian Civil War, its... Read more

Living and Dying with Marcel Proust

By: Christopher Prendergast
Narrated by: John Lee
Length: 7 hours 36 minutes

Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is the result of a lifetime's reading of, reflection on, and love for Proust's masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time.

One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction, Proust's In Search of Lost Time describes a unique journey, combining elements drawn from the timeless narratives of great expectations and... Read more

The Return of the Light

Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice, 5th Anniversary Edition

By: Carolyn McVickar Edwards
Narrated by: Siiri Scott
Length: 2 hours 36 minutes

A collection of twelve traditional tales from around the world that honor the "return of the light" that takes place on the winter solstice



The winter solstice, the day the "sun stands still," marks the longest night and the shortest day of the year, and it comes either on December 20th or 21st. Celebrations honoring the winter solstice as a... Read more

La verdad de las mentiras

By: Mario Vargas Llosa
Narrated by: Mario Velásquez
Length: 13 hours

La vida es una y tiene límites. La lectura de novelas los revienta y lo que era una se convierte en mil, infinitas. Ése es el mayor poder de la literatura y este libro nos hace participar de él. «Hay que leer buenos libros, e incitar y enseñar a leer a los que vienen detrás, como un quehacer imprescindible, porque él impregna y enriquece a todos... Read more

The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1

An Experiment in Literary Investigation

By: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
Length: 25 hours 56 minutes

“BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE 20TH CENTURY.” —TimeVolume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.

“The greatest and most powerful single indictment of a... Read more

Bad Feminist

Essays

By: Roxane Gay
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

“Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there.”  — Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?A New York Times BestsellerBest Book of the Year: NPR • Boston Globe •... Read more

The Art of Memoir

By: Mary Karr
Narrated by: Mary Karr
Length: 7 hours 20 minutes

Bestselling author and renowned professor Mary Karr offers a master class in the essential elements of great memoir—delivered with her signature wit, insight, and candor.Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash... Read more

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

By: René Girard
Narrated by: Mike Fraser
Length: 21 hours 25 minutes

An astonishing work of cultural criticism, this book is widely recognized as a brilliant and devastating challenge to conventional views of literature, anthropology, religion, and psychoanalysis. In its scope and interest it can be compared with Freud's Totem and Taboo, the subtext Girard refutes with polemic daring, vast erudition, and a... Read more

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Essays

Picador Modern Classics

By: Joan Didion
Narrated by: Maya Hawke
Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

“In this snapshot of mid-century American culture, Didion, deliberate and unabashed, takes the reader on journeys across the United States - from Newport, to Sacramento, to Hollywood, to Hawaii, and back to San Francisco - digesting political unrest, youthful buoyancy, and fundamental questions of morality and human responsibility. Her essays... Read more

Divine Might

Goddesses in Greek Myth

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

“Natalie Haynes writes as if she knows these goddesses personally, and this audiobook is her telling us all their secrets. I found myself falling back in love with greek mythology, and looking at it's female deities in new lights, for better and for worse. Read more

Mythology

By: Edith Hamilton
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Dive into the timeless tales of gods and heroes in this bestselling A-to-Z encyclopedia detailing classic myths and legends—perfect for curious readers and academics alike. Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture-the... Read more

Orwell's Roses

By: Rebecca Solnit
Narrated by: Rebecca Solnit
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

“An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.” —Margaret Atwood

“A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker.” —Claire... Read more

Where the Past Begins

A Writer's Memoir

By: Amy Tan
Narrated by: Amy Tan & Daniel Halpern
Length: 14 hours 32 minutes

In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan reveals herself in a way she never has before, delving into her childhood, adolescence, family history, beginnings as a writer and professional life to explore the answers to questions of purpose and meaning that we all ask ourselves as we get... Read more

Poetry Unbound

50 Poems to Open Your World

By: Pádraig Ó Tuama
Narrated by: Pádraig Ó Tuama
Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

“This is my favorite way to experience poetry - in the company of a deeply kind, wise-hearted, warmly funny, poetry-loving friend like Pádraig Ó Tuama who here introduces each specially selected poem, mostly by poets writing today, allows it to blow your mind and break your heart, and then walks you through what makes it so special. This is a... Read more

Red Comet

The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

By: Heather Clark
Narrated by: Laura Jennings
Length: 45 hours 26 minutes

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.

“One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read." —Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed

With a... Read more

How to Write Like a Writer

A Sharp and Subversive Guide to Ignoring Inhibitions, Inviting Inspiration, and Finding Your True Voice

By: Thomas C. Foster
Narrated by: David de Vries
Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

The New York Times bestselling author of the beloved classic How to Read Literature Like a Professor teaches you how to write everything from a report for your community association to a meaningful memoir in this masterful and engaging guide.Combing anecdotes and hard-won lessons from decades of teaching and writing—and invoking everyone from... Read more

American Scary

A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond

By: Jeremy Dauber
Narrated by: Jeremy Dauber
Length: 16 hours 54 minutes

From the acclaimed author of American Comics and Jewish Comedy comes a highly entertaining book that examines the American obsession with horror—and what it tells us about ourselves.
 
In American Scary, noted cultural historian and Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes the reader to the startling origins of the horror genre in the United... Read more

The Uptown Local

Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: A Memoir

By: Cory Leadbeater
Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
Length: 6 hours

A brilliant debut memoir about a young writer—struggling with depression, family issues, and addiction—and his life-changing decade working for Joan DidionAs an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days... Read more

M Train

A Memoir

By: Patti Smith
Narrated by: Patti Smith
Length: 6 hours 31 minutes

National Best Seller 

From the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as “a roadmap to my life.”

M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes... Read more

Reading Genesis

By: Marilynne Robinson
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
Length: 12 hours 41 minutes

One of our greatest novelists and thinkers presents a radiant, thrilling interpretation of the book of Genesis.

“[Suzanne] Toren's narration highlights Genesis as a work of literature that is especially beautiful when read aloud.”—AudioFile

For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various... Read more

Ulysses by James Joyce

By: James Joyce
Narrated by: Sam Blair , Pietro Kelley, Teo Harding, Sefa Chandler, Clarissa Meyer Samuel Welch, Arina Sharp, Joshua Riley
Length: 31 hours 28 minutes

Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris. It is considered one of the most important works of Modernist literature.
Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main... Read more

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need

By: Jessica Brody
Narrated by: Jessica Brody
Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

The first novel-writing guide from the best-selling Save the Cat! story-structure series, which reveals the 15 essential plot points needed to make any novel a success.

Novelist Jessica Brody presents a comprehensive story-structure guide for novelists that applies the famed Save the Cat! screenwriting methodology to the world of novel writing.... Read more

Dangerous Fictions

The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality

By: Lyta Gold
Narrated by: Amy O'Donnell
Length: 11 hours 51 minutes

In a political moment when social panics over literature are at their peak, Dangerous Fictions is a mind-expanding treatise on the nature of fictional stories as cultural battlegrounds for power. Fictional stories have long held an uncanny power over hearts and minds, especially those of young people. In Dangerous Fictions, Lyta Gold traces... Read more

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

A Journey Through the Deep State

By: Kerry Howley
Narrated by: Nikki Massoud
Length: 7 hours

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A VANITY FAIR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.” – The New York Times

A wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America—from the acclaimed author of Thrown

Who are you? You are data... Read more

How to Read Now

Essays

By: Elaine Castillo
Narrated by: Elaine Castillo
Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

“How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories.”

“A book that doesn’t seek to shut down the current literary discourse so much as shake it up.” (The New York Times Book... Read more