Literary Criticism audiobooks

Monsters

By: Claire Dederer

Narrated by: Claire Dederer

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic and contemporary artists but dislike the artist?

"A lively, personal... Read more

Everything Must Go

By: Dorian Lynskey

Narrated by: Dorian Lynskey

Length: 14 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

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

Meet Me in the Margins

By: Melissa Ferguson

Narrated by: Talon David

Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

"Meet Me in the Margins is a delightfully charming jewel of a book that fans of romantic comedy won't be able to put down!" --Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times bestselling author of A Happier LifeYou've Got Mail meets The Proposal--this romance is one for the books.Savannah Cade's dreams are coming true. The Claire Donovan, editor-in-chief... Read more

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

By: George Saunders

Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman...

Length: 14 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

From the New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today.

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA... Read more

Minor Feelings

By: Cathy Park Hong

Narrated by: Cathy Park Hong

Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

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

Trauma Plot

By: Jamie Hood

Narrated by: Jamie Hood

Length: 9 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

From a rising literary star and the author of how to be a good girl comes a brilliant, biting, and beautifully wrought memoir of trauma and the cost of survival

"Hood descends into the terrifying dark of the unsayable with the dimmest of flashlights and returns bearing verbal gems, treasures, and marvels. Trauma Plot is a glass case of such... Read more

Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik

Narrated by: Lili Anolik

Length: 12 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Air Mail, Harper’s Bazaar, The Washington Post, and more!

Joan Didion is revealed at last in this “vivid, engrossing” (Vogue), and outrageously provocative dual biography “that reads like a propulsive novel” (Oprah Daily) revealing the mutual attractions—and... Read more

The Great War and Modern Memory

By: Paul Fussell

Narrated by: James Anderson Foster

Length: 15 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a... Read more

Jane Austen at Home

By: Lucy Worsley

Narrated by: Lucy Worsley

Length: 17 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

THE REMARKABLE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE BBC'S MISS AUSTEN: THE PERFECT GIFT FOR ANY JANE AUSTEN LOVER

Readers LOVE Jane Austen at Home:

'A "tour de force" which should be in the reading list of anyone who has either read the books or watched the film adaptations.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'This book is a delight . . . I will return to Austen's novels with a... Read more

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

By: Jessica Brody

Narrated by: Jessica Brody

Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

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

Trick Mirror

By: Jia Tolentino

Narrated by: Jia Tolentino

Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

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

High Weirdness

By: Erik Davis

Narrated by: Erik Davis

Length: 20 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

An exploration of the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson.



A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from... Read more

Hollywood's Eve

By: Lili Anolik

Narrated by: Jayme Mattler

Length: 7 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

The quintessential biography of Eve Babitz (1943-2021), the brilliant chronicler of 1960s and 70s Hollywood hedonism and one of the most original American voices of her time.

“I practically snorted this book, stayed up all night with it. Anolik decodes, ruptures, and ultimately intensifies Eve’s singular irresistible glitz.” —Jia Tolentino, The... Read more

The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1

By: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 25 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

“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 Anatomy of Genres

By: John Truby

Narrated by: Nick Mondelli

Length: 22 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

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

One in a Millennial

By: Kate Kennedy

Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

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

Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

By: Nicole Graev Lipson

Narrated by: Nicole Graev Lipson

Length: 8 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

In this intimate and riveting memoir, Best American Essayist Nicole Graev Lipson breaks through the ready-made stories of womanhood, rescuing truth from the fiction that infiltrates our lives. What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to... Read more

Pandora's Jar

By: Natalie Haynes

Narrated by: Natalie Haynes

Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

“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

The Spook who Sat by the Door

By: Sam Greenlee

Narrated by: Dion Graham & Natiki Hope Pressley

Length: 6 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Continuously available in print since 1968, this novel has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and hotly debated film. A literary classic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial inequities in the United States in the late 1960s. With its focus on the “militancy”... Read more

Jane Austen's Bookshelf

By: Rebecca Romney

Narrated by: Rebecca Romney

Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

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

The Genius of Judy

By: Rachelle Bergstein

Narrated by: Mia Barron

Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

An intimate and expansive look at Judy Blume’s life, work, and cultural impact, focusing on her most iconic—and controversial—young adult novels, from Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. to Blubber.

Everyone knows Judy Blume.

Her books have garnered her fans of all ages for decades and sold tens of millions of copies. But... Read more

The Pillow Book

By: Sei Shōnagon

Narrated by: Georgina Sutton

Length: 11 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon is a fascinating, detailed account of Japanese court life in the closing years of the 10th century. Written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture, this book enthrals with its lively gossip, witty observations and subtle impressions.

Lady Shonagon was an erstwhile rival of Lady Murasaki, whose... Read more

The Wife of Bath

By: Marion Turner

Narrated by: Marion Turner

Length: 8 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo

Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers—from Shakespeare to James Joyce,... Read more

The Brothers Grimm

By: Ann Schmiesing

Narrated by: Eve Matheson

Length: 13 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

The first English-language biography in over fifty years to tell the full, vibrant story of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, known to history as the Brothers Grimm
More than two hundred years ago, the German brothers Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) published a collection of fairy tales that remains famous the world over. It has been... Read more