Fiction - Literary audiobooks

Firelight

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 28 minutes

Abridged: No

A mother and her son dream of a life beyond their means in this classic short story by Tobias Wolff."Firelight" tells the story of a mother and her son who are spending the afternoon viewing apartments on a chilly day in Seattle, Washington. The two have no intention of renting one—they can only afford to live in a meager boarding house.... Read more

The Night in Question

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 21 minutes

Abridged: No

A story of siblings and faith from short-story master Tobias WolffFrances has always been protective of her younger brother Frank. The children of a brutal father and a sick, defenseless mother, Frances fought to keep her brother safe. And throughout all of his adult failings—from drug addiction to near-fatal car crashes—she has stood by his... Read more

Powder

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 9 minutes

Abridged: No

With his marriage on the rocks, a father takes his son skiing for the weekend. After insisting on staying just a bit longer—despite a growing blizzard—the boy's father finds they're snowed in at the resort, the road blockaded by state troopers. To what lengths will he go to keep his marriage intact? Read more

Lady’s Dream

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Lady, suffocating in the car on a hot summer's day, slips into a feverish dream. Robert, her husband, watches her slip into unconsciousness as he drives. He's a soldier, a man of principle, well-educated and well-adjusted. But Robert is also a man with an agenda; he has married this young, wild lower-class girl to spite his father, and now he... Read more

Smorgasbord

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 32 minutes

Abridged: No

García, the wealthy, swaggering son of a foreign dictator, invites two lower-class boys from his boarding school to have dinner in New York along with his Spanish-speaking stepmother, Linda. When the group decides to go to a kitschy, unpretentious Swedish smorgasbord rather than a fine restaurant, García refuses to leave the limousine, still... Read more

The Chain

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 31 minutes

Abridged: No

When Gold's daughter is viciously attacked by a neighbor's dog and barely escapes with her life, Gold's world is torn open. Haunted by the incident and unable to convince local authorities to take action, he agrees to a friend's offer of retaliation. When he feels compelled to return the favor, one bad turn leads to another—and this time, Gold... Read more

Two Boys and a Girl

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 33 minutes

Abridged: No

Gilbert saw Mary Ann first, but the second time he sees her she is dancing with his best friend, Rafe. The three of them begin hanging out all the time, driving around in the car Rafe got as a present for getting into Yale. But when Rafe goes out of town, Gilbert and Mary Ann keep the tradition going, seeing movies and going on drives … in... Read more

The Other Miller

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Miller is unlucky. That's why he's in a foxhole with the rest of Bravo Company. That's why his dad is gone and his mother remarried. That's why his teeth are falling out. Then, when the first sergeant tells Miller his mother has passed away, Miller thinks he's finally gotten lucky. Surely it's another Miller's mother, and now he can get away... Read more

Sanity

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 24 minutes

Abridged: No

April's father, a psychology professor, has had a breakdown and has landed in the Alta Vista State Hospital. Her stepmother, Claire, is just waiting for him to get out so she can leave on a trip to Italy—a trip April is worried Claire won't come back from. She needs Claire, at least until she finishes high school. She needs her not just as a... Read more

Flyboys

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 34 minutes

Abridged: No

In this short story from Our Story Begins, three friends confront their relationships to one another as they work on plans to build their very own airplane.Clark's parents are rich, supplying the boys with all they need to follow their pursuits, making films and building catapults. Meanwhile, Freddy's family is dealing with the loss of his older... Read more

Mortals

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Mr. Givens' obituary is nothing remarkable, hardly something to remember at all. He led a quiet life, served in the Army, was married to the same woman for forty-two years, and worked at the same job practically his whole life. He wasn't a baseball player or a movie star, he was the furthest thing from a celebrity. In fact, the only thing... Read more

Say Yes

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Ann's friends envy her. None of their husbands even lift a finger to help with the household chores. Ann's husband is different, though. Then a simple hypothetical conversation while they wash and dry the dishes causes Ann to see her husband in a different light—and causes him to rethink the way two people can know one another. Read more

Desert Breakdown, 1968

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Mark's parents have never done a thing for him. When he got out of the army and married Krystal, they were against it, just as they are against his moving to Los Angeles. But Mark has a dream, a dream of being an entertainer, of having a show in Las Vegas. So he packs Krystal and their son, Hans, into their car and starts driving from Arizona to... Read more

Leviathan

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Two drugged-out couples contemplate life and morality in "Leviathan," a classic short story by the masterful Tobias Wolff.For Helen's thirtieth birthday party, her husband decides to throw her a small party. Armed with booze and three grams of cocaine, the four partyers—Helen, her husband, and another couple—spend the night and the next morning... Read more

Soldier’s Joy

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 39 minutes

Abridged: No

A powerful tale of life after war by short-story master Tobias WolffHooper, a Vietnam veteran, finds himself at an army base in Washington State. His days are uneventful, filled with mundane duties, empty conversations, and the occasional jaunt with a married woman.A phone call in the middle of the night breaks Hooper's predictable routine. One... Read more

The Liar

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 37 minutes

Abridged: No

One of Tobias Wolff's classic tales, "The Liar" is the story of a deceitful teenage boy and his religious, resolute mother.James is a liar. He enjoys inventing fantastic stories about his family, particularly his mother. Margaret is orderly, stubborn, and judgmental—a woman who throws rocks at hungry bears and never misses four o'clock Mass. She... Read more

Hunters in the Snow

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 30 minutes

Abridged: No

An unnerving tale of self-absorption and deception by short-story master Tobias WolffThree friends are leaving the suburbs of Spokane on a hunting trip. Kenny is the prankster, harsh and mean. Frank is laid-back and full of idealism. Tub is overweight, sensitive, and the brunt of everyone's jokes. Searching for tracks in the snow, the trio has... Read more

Next Door

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 11 minutes

Abridged: No

An introspective story of neighbors, movies, and marriage from short-story master Tobias WolffLying stiffly in their separate beds, a husband and his wife are woken in the middle of the night to the sound of their fighting neighbors. There are three of them—a man, a woman, and a young child. With their blasting stereos, violent interludes, and... Read more

In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Tobias Wolff's masterful short story about one woman's quiet revenge on the pomposity and arrogance of academiaMeticulous, funny, eccentric—Mary has always been mindful of the complex role she plays as a professor of history. Her lectures are carefully written out beforehand; her departmental loyalties ambiguous. She is so careful, in fact, that... Read more

City of Bohane

By: Kevin Barry

Narrated by: Kevin Barry

Length: 8 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa First Novel Award

Winner of the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award


Forty years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower... Read more

Outside the Lines

By: Amy Hatvany

Narrated by: Candace Thaxton & Corey Brill

Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

A gripping novel about a woman who sets out to find the father who left her years ago, and ends up discovering herself.

When Eden was ten years old she found her father, David, bleeding on the bathroom floor. The suicide attempt led to her parents’ divorce, and David all but vanished from Eden’s life. 

Twenty years later, Eden runs a successful... Read more

At Last

By: Edward St. Aubyn

Narrated by: Alex Jennings

Length: 5 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Now a 5-Part Limited Event Series on Showtime, Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Blythe Danner

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • One of TIME's Top 10 Fiction Books of the Year • Named One of the best books of the Year by The Telegraph and Esquire

Here, from the writer described by The Guardian as "our purest living prose stylist" and... Read more

The People of the Ruins

By: Edward Shanks

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

Length: 9 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising in 1924, ex-artillery officer and physics instructor Jeremy Tuft awakens 150 years later - in a neo-medieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Not only have his fellow Londoners forgotten most of what humankind used to know, before civilization... Read more

The Patrick Melrose Novels

By: Edward St. Aubyn

Narrated by: Alex Jennings

Length: 21 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

An Atlantic Magazine Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

"The Melrose Novels are a masterwork for the twenty-first century, written by one of the great prose stylists in England." —Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely BonesFor more than twenty years, acclaimed author Edward St. Aubyn has chronicled the... Read more