Essays audiobooks

Sunshine State

By: Sarah Gerard

Narrated by: Madeleine Maby

Length: 10 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

Rising literary star and Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award finalist Sarah Gerard uses her experiences growing up along Florida’s gulf coast to illuminate the struggles of modern human survival—physical, emotional, environmental—through a collection of essays exploring intimacy, addiction, obsession, religion, homelessness, and... Read more

The Souls of Yellow Folk

By: Wesley Yang

Narrated by: David Shih

Length: 6 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

One of the most acclaimed essayists of his generation, Wesley Yang writes about race and sex without the jargon, formulas, and polite lies that bore us all. His powerful debut, The Souls of Yellow Folk, does more than collect a decade's worth of cult-reputation essays—it corrals new American herds of pickup artists, school shooters, mandarin... Read more

It Was an Ugly Couch Anyway

By: Elizabeth Passarella

Narrated by: Elizabeth Passarellla

Length: 7 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

Read by the author.A collection of refreshingly honest and hilarious essays from Southern Living columnist Elizabeth Passarella about navigating change--whether emotional or logistical--and staying sane during life's unexpected twists and turns.After Elizabeth Passarella and her husband finally decided that it was time to sell their two-bedroom... Read more

Having and Being Had

By: Eula Biss

Narrated by: Alex McKenna

Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME , NPR, INSTYLE, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

“A sensational new book [that] tries to figure out whether it’s possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society. . . . The results are enthralling.” —Associated Press 

A timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York... Read more

Blue Nights

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr

Length: 4 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century

From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts... Read more

In Praise of Paths

By: Torbjørn Ekelund

Narrated by: TJ Oberholzer

Length: 4 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

“What [Ekelund is] addressing is the intention to walk one’s way to meaning: the walk as spiritual exercise, a kind of vision quest... A key strategy for finding ourselves, then, is to first get lost.”—The New York Times Book Review

An ode to paths and the journeys we take through nature, as told by a gifted writer who stopped driving and... Read more

A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention

By: Rebecca Schiller

Narrated by: Rebecca Schiller

Length: 11 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

It should have been Rebecca Schiller's dream come true: moving her young family to the English countryside to raise goats and coax their own fruit and vegetables from the land. But, as she writes: The summer of striding out toward a life of open fields and sacks of corn, I brought a confused black hole of something pernicious but not yet... Read more

A Guest at the Feast

By: Colm Toibin

Narrated by: Colm Toibin

Length: 9 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by LitHub and The Millions!

From one of the most engaging and brilliant writers of our time comes a “not to be missed” (LitHub) collection of eleven essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes, homosexuality, and literature.

“IT ALL STARTED WITH MY BALLS.” So begins... Read more

Burning Questions

By: Margaret Atwood

Narrated by: Margaret Atwood & Full Cast

Length: 18 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

In this brilliant selection of essays, the award-winning, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments offers her funny, erudite, endlessly curious, and uncannily prescient take on everything from whether or not The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia to the importance of how to define granola—and seeks answers to Burning Questions... Read more

The Crane Wife

By: CJ Hauser

Narrated by: CJ Hauser

Length: 9 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

A memoir in essays that expands on the viral sensation “The Crane Wife” with a frank and funny look at love, intimacy, and self in the twenty-first century. From friends and lovers to blood family and chosen family, this “elegant masterpiece” (Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger) asks what more expansive definitions of love... Read more

Seed to Dust

By: Marc Hamer

Narrated by: Owen Teale

Length: 9 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

For readers of Late Migrations and H is for Hawk

A stunning meditation on gardening and the wisdom of plants, " that rare book that will appeal to nonfiction readers everywhere. . . Candid, tender, thoughtful and absorbing."—Shelf Awareness (STARRED Review)

"With chapters. . . [that] shimmer like lantern slides, lit with luminous imagery. . . Seed... Read more

On Freedom

By: Maggie Nelson

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Length: 10 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

An expansive, exhilarating work of criticism by one of the most significant writers of our day.

So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long... Read more

Dirtbag, Massachusetts

By: Isaac Fitzgerald

Narrated by: Isaac Fitzgerald

Length: 7 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER



USA TODAY BESTSELLER



Winner of the New England Book Award for Nonfiction



"The best of what memoir can accomplish . . . pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy." —Esquire, "Best Memoirs of the Year"



A TIME Best Book of the Season * A Rolling Stone Top Culture Pick * A... Read more

Travel as a Political Act

By: Rick Steves

Narrated by: Rick Steves

Length: 10 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Change the world one trip at a time. In this illuminating collection of stories and lessons from the road, acclaimed travel writer Rick Steves shares a powerful message that resonates now more than ever.

With the world facing divisive and often frightening events, from Trump, Brexit, and Erdogan, to climate change, nativism, and populism, there's... 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

Round Here and Over Yonder

By: Trae Crowder & Corey Ryan Forrester

Narrated by: Trae Crowder & Corey Ryan Forrester

Length: 7 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Read by the authors.Join Southern comedian duo Trae Crowder and Corey Ryan Forrester in this hilarious and irreverent travel guide as they wander about ponderin' the peculiarities beyond their small-town front porches.Trae and Corey will take you from the smallest of small towns to major US metropolises (or is it metropoli? We haven't a fartin'... Read more

The Tao of the Backup Catcher

By: Tim Brown

Narrated by: Justin Price & Tim Brown

Length: 9 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

This fascinating book "reminds us of the beauty of baseball" and chronicles the unsung men of baseball who serve the job, the hardships they face, and their love for a game that would not always love them back―told partly through the experiences of an MLB veteran. (Jim Abott, former major league pitcher).

In baseball there are superstars, stars,... Read more

The Breaks of the Game

By: David Halberstam

Narrated by: Brian Troxell

Length: 17 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

A New York Times bestseller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions.
More than six years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered... Read more

The Time of Our Lives

By: Peggy Noonan

Narrated by: Betsy Foldes Meiman, Rena-Marie Villano & Peggy...

Length: 17 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Commentary and conservative icon Peggy Noonan offers her most insightful work, including her Wall Street Journal columns about the 2016 Election.

New York Times bestseller The Time of Our Lives travels the path of Peggy Noonan's remarkable and influential career, beginning with a revealing essay about her... Read more

The Goshawk

By: T. H. White

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 4 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

The predecessor to Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk, T. H. White’s nature-writing classic, The Goshawk, asks the age-old question: What is it that binds human beings to other animals? White, author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham’s Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular... Read more

Dead White Guys

By: Matt Burriesci

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

After his daughter was born prematurely in 2010, Matt Burriesci set out to write a book about thirty-two great books, from Plato to Karl Marx, and how their lessons have applied to his life. As someone who has spent a long and successful career advocating for great literature, Burriesci defends the great books in this series of tender and candid... Read more

Content

By: Cory Doctorow

Narrated by: Richard Powers

Length: 7 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Hailed by Bruce Sterling as a "political activist, gizmo freak, junk collector, programmer, entrepreneur, and all-around Renaissance geek," Cory Doctorow is the web's most celebrated high-tech pop-culture maven. Content is the first collection of Doctorow's infamous articles, essays, and polemics.Here's why Microsoft should stop treating its... Read more

H Is for Hawk

By: Helen Macdonald

Narrated by: Helen Macdonald

Length: 11 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

The instant New York Times bestseller and multiaward-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald’s story of adopting and raising one of nature’s most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide.When Helen Macdonald’s father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer captivated by hawks... Read more

Life from Scratch

By: Sasha Martin

Narrated by: Andi Arndt

Length: 8 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Sasha Martin set herself a rather ambitious goal: to cook—and eat—her way around the world with 196 recipes from 196 countries in 196 weeks. Enter Global Table Adventure, a project that proves to be more than just a culinary challenge as Sasha attempts to navigate the vicissitudes of marriage, motherhood, and life’s failures and successes, all... Read more