Literary Criticism bestsellers

Jane Austen's Bookshelf

A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend

By: Rebecca Romney
Narrated by: Rebecca Romney
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure that introduces readers to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves.

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that... 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 absolutely adore stories that focus on careers in the book industry. 'Meet Me in the Margins' is a super sweet (almost cheesy) rom-com centered around an editor at a highbrow publishing house secretly writing a romance book. I loved the nods to the ARC room, the stresses of working hand-in-hand with authors, and the never ending editing... 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

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

Everything Must Go

The Stories We Tell About the End of the World

By: Dorian Lynskey
Narrated by: Dorian Lynskey
Length: 14 hours 49 minutes

A rich, captivating, and darkly humorous look into the evolution of apocalyptic thought, exploring how film and literature interact with developments in science, politics, and culture, and what factors drive our perennial obsession with the end of the world.

As Dorian Lynskey writes, “People have been contemplating the end of the world for... 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

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

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

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

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

Happily

A Personal History-with Fairy Tales

By: Sabrina Orah Mark
Narrated by: Gilli Messer
Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

“In Happily, Mark spins magically surreal sketches of motherhood, art, and life. Woven from fairy tales refracted into reality, each essay shimmers with wit, candor, and whimsy. As sharp as a spindle, as ethereal as an eggshell - this gem like collection of memoir-fables will leave you enchanted. 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

Bibliophobia

A Memoir

By: Sarah Chihaya
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

“A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.”—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

“[A] stirring and sparkling new memoir.”—The Washington Post

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH: Time, Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes,... Read more

Istanbul

Memories and the City

By: Orhan Pamuk
Narrated by: John Lee
Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes a portrait of Istanbul by its foremost writer, revealing the melancholy that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire.  

"Delightful, profound, marvelously origina.... Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." —The Washington Post Book World

A... Read more

Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik
Narrated by: Lili Anolik
Length: 12 hours 45 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

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

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

Ernest Hemingway on Writing

By: Larry W. Phillips
Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
Length: 2 hours 39 minutes

A collection of reflections on writing and the nature of the writer from one the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

Throughout Hemingway’s career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing—that it takes off “whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk’s feathers if you show it or... Read more

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

Girlhood

By: Melissa Febos
Narrated by: Melissa Febos
Length: 8 hours 13 minutes

Bloomsbury presents Girlhood written and read by Melissa Febos.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
National Bestseller
Lambda Literary Award Finalist

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME * NPR * The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * Washington Independent Review of Books * The Millions * Electric Literature * Ms Magazine * Entropy... Read more

Constructing a Nervous System

A Memoir

By: Margo Jefferson
Narrated by: Karen Murray
Length: 5 hours 1 minute

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From "one of our most nuanced thinkers on the intersections of race, class, and feminism" (Cathy Park Hong, New York Times bestselling author of Minor Feelings) comes a memoir "as electric as the title suggests" (Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom).

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME... Read more

Why Read Moby-Dick?

By: Nathaniel Philbrick
Narrated by: Nathaniel Philbrick
Length: 2 hours 33 minutes

A “brilliant and provocative” (The New Yorker) celebration of Melville’s masterpiece—from the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye

One of the greatest American novels finds its perfect contemporary champion in Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick’s enlightening and entertaining tour... Read more

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

By: Dante Alighieri
Narrated by: Suzanne Fowler , Dennis Wells, Rina Riley Anis Marsh, Talia Morton, Malcolm Cameron, Mollie Sanders, Kris Welch & June Sherman
Length: 12 hours 16 minutes

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption.

Dante Alighieri was born... Read more

Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz

The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton

By: Gail Crowther
Narrated by: Imani Jade Powers
Length: 8 hours 38 minutes

In this vividly rendered and empathetic biography of two of the greatest poets of the 20th century—Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton—“the friendship and rivalry that the pair shared—not to mention the titular cocktails at a Boston hotel—is explored in fascinating detail” (Town & Country).

Introduced at a poetry workshop in Boston University,... 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

Thalia Book Club: Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow

Thalia Book Club

By: Amor Towles
Narrated by: Liesl Schillinger & Boyd Gaines
Length: 1 hour 33 minutes

A Gentleman in Moscow recounts the story of Count Alexander Rostov. In 1922, on the heels of the Russian Revolution, the Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and sentenced to permanent house arrest in Moscow’s grand Hotel Metropol. In something of a literary feat, as the Count’s story progresses over three decades,... Read more

The Gilded Page

The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts

By: Mary Wellesley
Narrated by: Mary Wellesley
Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

A breathtaking journey into the hidden history of medieval manuscripts, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the ornate Psalter of Henry VIII.Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. Many have survived because of an author’s status—part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer’s writing, for example, is because... Read more

The Amen Corner

A Play

Vintage International

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor, Dion Graham, January LaVoy, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Janina Edwards, Aaron Goodson, Angel Pean, Shayna Small, Robin Miles, Dominic Hoffman, JD Jackson & Adenrele Ojo
Length: 2 hours 48 minutes

From one of the most brilliant writers of the twentieth century—a masterpiece of the modern American theater: a play about faith and family, about the gulf between black men and black women and black fathers and black sons.

"[Baldwin] uses words as the sea uses waves." —Langston Hughes

In his first work for the theater, James Baldwin brought all... Read more

Charles Dickens: A BBC Biography

By: Armando Iannucci, Melvyn Bragg, Sam West, Tess Hadley, Romesh Gunesekera, A.L. Kennedy, Alexander McCall Smith & Claire Tomalin
Narrated by: Armando Iannucci, Melvyn Bragg, Sam West, Tess Hadley, Romesh Gunesekera, A.L. Kennedy, Alexander McCall Smith & Claire Tomalin
Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

A BBC radio collection celebrating Charles Dickens' life, work and influence

Charles Dickens was a literary giant, second only to Shakespeare in the ranks of England's greatest writers. This extensive biographical collection looks at the man, his novels and his legacy to provide an all-round portrait of the much-loved author.

Michael Eaton's... Read more

Motherlands

Poems

Max Ritvo Poetry Prize

By: Weijia Pan
Narrated by: Weijia Pan
Length: 47 minutes

Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, this engrossing debut interrogates history, identity, and the power of poetry to elucidate both.Motherlands opens with a child drawn early to poetry. “In summer I write. Two lines at a time, two vying souls / running up the wall.” The collection follows this speaker-poet through a childhood in post-Maoist... Read more

From Holmes to Sherlock

The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon

By: Mattias Boström
Narrated by: Shaun Grindell
Length: 17 hours 2 minutes

In From Holmes to Sherlock, Mattias Boström recreates the full story behind the legendary detective and his many incarnations—a real-life narrative of success, tragedy, and family secrets that has never previously been told in its entirety. The beginning is classic: a young Arthur Conan Doyle sitting in a Scottish lecture hall taking notes on... 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

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

Signs and Wonders

Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss

By: Delia Falconer
Narrated by: Delia Falconer
Length: 7 hours 41 minutes

Winner of the 2022 Nib Literary Awards.

Chosen as a 2021 ‘Book of the Year’ in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Book Review.

The celebrated, Walkley Award-winning author on how global warming is changing not only our climate but our culture. Beautifully observed, brilliantly argued and deeply felt, these essays show that our... Read more

A Room of One's Own

By: Virginia Woolf
Narrated by: Sara Nichols
Length: 4 hours 9 minutes

"A Room of One's Own" began life as a pair of lectures delivered by Virginia Woolf in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, women's colleges at the University of Cambridge and was published as a stand-alone book in 1929. In this brilliant examination of literature, history and gender discrimination, Woolf posits that the dearth of... 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

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

How Sondheim Can Change Your Life

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

An “incisive…heartwarming” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of 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... 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

Burning Questions

Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021

By: Margaret Atwood
Narrated by: Margaret Atwood & Full Cast
Length: 18 hours 59 minutes

“Atwood is brilliant--obviously, yes, but wonderfully so, nonetheless. These pieces took me to somewhere I have never traveled on the wings of a goddess. She informs, scolds, gives warnings, and inspires action. She talks about books she's written and books others have written. She speaks with authority and humility. I listen with awe and gratitude. Read more

Devotion

The Why I Write Series: Book #1

By: Patti Smith
Narrated by: Patti Smith
Length: 2 hours 8 minutes

“I could hear Smith's unique voice throughout, and for that I was grateful. I bought this at The Strand bookstore where Smith worked in her youth, so I felt a magical power within the slim volume. Why does Smith write...'Because we cannot simply live.' Read more

The Real Lolita

The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World

By: Sarah Weinman
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

“Any fan of Nabokov’s Lolita will be enthralled by Sarah Weinman’s investigation of the real-life kidnapping and sexual assault that became the basis for the 20th-century masterpiece. Weinman dives deep into the archives to piece together the ties between fact and fiction, even when the author or the victim’s family refused to discuss history.... 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

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

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

Languages of Truth

Essays 2003-2020

By: Salman Rushdie
Narrated by: Raj Ghatak & Salman Rushdie
Length: 13 hours 18 minutes

Newly collected, revised, and expanded nonfiction from the first two decades of the twenty-first century—including many texts never previously in print—by the Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author

Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual... Read more

Storyland

A New Mythology of Britain

By: Amy Jeffs
Narrated by: Amy Jeffs & Lucy Paterson
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

Immersed in mist and old magic, Storyland is an exquisitely illustrated new mythology of Britain, set in its wildest landscapes. Historian and printmaker Amy Jeffs reimagines ancient legends in wondrous detail in this this gift-worthy collection for all lovers of myth, folklore, and mysticism.

Storyland begins between the Creation and Noah's... 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

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

Read Dangerously

The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

By: Azar Nafisi
Narrated by: Azar Nafisi
Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide to the power of literature in turbulent times, arming readers with a resistance reading list, ranging from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood.""[A] stunning look at the power of reading. ... Provokes and inspires at every turn.""... Read more