Essays audiobooks

The Collected Schizophrenias

By: Esmé Weijun Wang

Narrated by: Esmé Weijun Wang

Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Powerful, affecting essays on mental illness, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and a Whiting AwardAn intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying... Read more

Charlie Hustle

By: Keith O'Brien

Narrated by: Ellen Adair & Keith O'Brien

Length: 14 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

A captivating chronicle of the incredible story of one of America’s most iconic, charismatic, and still polarizing figures—baseball immortal Pete Rose—and an exquisite cultural history of baseball and America in the... Read more

Vanishing Treasures

By: Katherine Rundell

Narrated by: Lenny Henry & Katherine Rundell

Length: 3 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

A Most Anticipated Book from Boston Globe, Parade, & Literary Hub • From the award-winning author Katherine Rundell comes a “rare and magical book” (Bill Bryson) reckoning with the vanishing wonders of our natural world

The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and... Read more

Cassandra Speaks

By: Elizabeth Lesser

Narrated by: Xe Sands

Length: 6 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers?Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected... Read more

Survival of the Thickest

By: Michelle Buteau

Narrated by: Michelle Buteau

Length: 6 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

*Now a Netflix series—Season 2 coming soon!*

Stand-up comedian and star of Netflix’s Michelle Buteau: A Buteau-ful Mind at Radio City Music Hall and creator and star of Survival of the Thickest delivers a collection of “hilarious…bracingly honest” (Real Simple) essays in her unique voice, cheeky swagger, and unapologetic frankness that’s “one... Read more

Me Talk Pretty One Day

By: David Sedaris

Narrated by: David Sedaris

Length: 5 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one... Read more

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Maya Hawke

Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke, star of Netflix's Stranger Things.

"Narrating in a voice as clear and sustaining as a cool glass of water, Hawke’s unflashy approach allows the words to reveal their magic."—The Orange County Register

"Didion’s timeless essays shine with Hawke at the helm. This audiobook will bring... Read more

Raw Dog

By: Jamie Loftus

Narrated by: Jamie Loftus

Length: 9 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

One of BookPage's Best Audiobooks of 2023

"Loftus is a charming narrator...goofy, engaging, and always game to do a silly voice." —The New York Times

"There’s something terribly irresistible about her narration, which is often incredibly funny." —BookPage

Part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique—comedian Jamie Loftus's debut,... Read more

Yearbook

By: Seth Rogen

Narrated by: Seth Rogen & Full Cast

Length: 6 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

A collection of funny personal essays from one of the writers of Superbad and Pineapple Express and one of the producers of The Disaster Artist, Neighbors, and The Boys. (All of these words have been added to help this book show up in people’s searches using the wonders of algorithmic technology. Thanks for bearing with us!) The... Read more

Congratulations, The Best Is Over!

By: R. Eric Thomas

Narrated by: R. Eric Thomas

Length: 6 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The beloved author of Here for It returns with a collection of “funny and compulsively readable” (Vogue), “hilarious and incisive” (Time) essays about what happens after happily ever after.

“How is it possible that I liked this book even more than his last one? Phenomenal.”—Jenny Lawson, New York Times bestselling author of... Read more

A True History of the United States

By: Daniel A. Sjursen

Narrated by: Daniel A. Sjursen

Length: 24 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

“Thought-provoking—a must read for [everyone] seeking a firm grasp of accurate American history."  —Kirkus (starred review)

Brilliant, readable, and raw. Maj. (ret.) Danny Sjursen, who served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at West Point, delivers a true epic and the perfect companion to Howard Zinn’s A People’s... Read more

Strong Female Character

By: Fern Brady

Narrated by: Fern Brady

Length: 6 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Witty, dry, and gimlet-eyed, this is a necessary corrective in a world where Autistic women are all either written off as quiet and docile, or erased entirely.” —Devon Price, Ph.D., author of Unmasking Autism

Scottish comedian Fern Brady was told she couldn't be autistic because she'd had loads of boyfriends and is... Read more

Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth

By: Maggie Nelson

Narrated by: Maggie Nelson

Length: 1 hour 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth is an experiment in interiority written in the pandemic studio. Something of a companion piece to 2009’s Bluets, Pathemata merges a pain diary chronicling a decade of jaw pain with dreams and dailies, eventually blurring the lines between embodied, unconscious, and everyday life.

In scrupulously distilled... Read more

The Book of (More) Delights

By: Ross Gay

Narrated by: Ross Gay

Length: 6 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

From bestselling author of The Book of Delights and award-winning poet, a book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us.

Ross Gay’s essays have been called “exquisite” (Tracy K. Smith), “imperative” (the New York Times Book Review), and “brilliant” (Ada Limón). Now,... Read more

Así veo las cosas

By: Jorge Ramos

Narrated by: Jorge Ramos, Joel Luna & Annie González

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

El libro más personal, íntimo y revelador de Jorge Ramos en casi cien columnas y tres puentes.   "Jorge Ramos […] es una persona íntegra y de esas hay muy pocas en este mundo. A leer estas páginas de su memoria me entero de algunos secretos, me entretengo, me conmuevo y me reencuentro con el amigo de siempre, con el periodista que me pone al día... Read more

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century

By: Alice Wong

Narrated by: Alejandra Ospina & Alice Wong

Length: 8 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of... Read more

I Feel Bad About My Neck

By: Nora Ephron

Narrated by: Nora Ephron

Length: 3 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself.
The woman who brought us When Harry Met... Read more

A Brief History of Intelligence

By: Max S. Bennett

Narrated by: George Newbern

Length: 12 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Equal parts Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughs” in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can... Read more

The Book of Delights

By: Ross Gay

Narrated by: Ross Gay

Length: 5 hours

Abridged: No

The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyric essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders. Ross Gay's The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays- some as short as a paragraph; some as long as... Read more

The Witches Are Coming

By: Lindy West

Narrated by: Lindy West

Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

This is a witch hunt. We're witches, and we're hunting you.

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice,... Read more

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . .

By: David Graeber

Narrated by: Jacques Servin & Savitri D

Length: 13 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews.

"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic... Read more

Want

By: Gillian Anderson

Narrated by: Gillian Anderson & Anonymous

Length: 11 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

A collection of sexual fantasies from women around the world, Want is a revelatory, sensational, and game-changing exploration of women’s sexuality that asks, and answers: How do women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous?

“The book you hold in your hands started as an invitation to women across the world, a call for... Read more

Danse Macabre

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: Holter Graham

Length: 18 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

NOW AVAILABLE ON AUDIO!

Before he gave us the “one of a kind classic” (The Wall Street Journal) memoir On Writing, Stephen King wrote a nonfiction masterpiece in Danse Macabre, “one of the best books on American popular culture” (Philadelphia Inquirer).

From the author of dozens of #1 New York Times bestsellers and the creator of many... Read more

The Fire Next Time

By: James Baldwin

Narrated by: Jesse Martin

Length: 2 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The book that galvanized the nation, gave voice to the emerging civil rights movement in the 1960s—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today. - “The finest essay I’ve ever read.” —Ta-Nehisi CoatesAt once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the... Read more