Local bookseller recommendations

The Sea Beast Takes a Lover

By: Michael Andreasen

Narrated by: Various

Length: 6 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

An astonishing fiction debut from a UC Irvine MFA graduate and recent contributor to The New Yorker.

Bewitching and playful, with its feet only slightly tethered to the world we know, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover explores hope, love, and loss across a series of surreal landscapes and wild metamorphoses. Just because Jenny was born without a head... Read more

Anne of Manhattan

By: Brina Starler

Narrated by: Carly Robins

Length: 8 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

L. M. Montgomery’s classic tale, Anne of Green Gables, gets a romantic, charming, and hilarious modern adaptation, set in New York City.After an idyllic girlhood in Avonlea, Long Island, Anne has packed up her trunk, said goodbye to her foster parents, Marilla and Matthew, and moved to the isle of Manhattan for grad school. Together with her... Read more

Priest of Bones

By: Peter McLean

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

"The first in an unmissable series, Priest of Bones is a fresh and compelling take on grimdark fantasy. Mashing together soldiers, gangsters, magic and war into a heady mix that is a hulking big brother to The Lies of Locke Lamora."--Anna Stephens, author of Godblind

The war is over, and army priest Tomas Piety heads home with Sergeant Bloody... Read more

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

By: Matthew Sullivan

Narrated by: Madeleine Maby

Length: 8 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

When a bookshop patron dies by suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this "shocking, charming, thrilling" (Associated Press) and award-winning debut novel.

Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she leads a meticulously ordered existence among her beloved... Read more

Carmilla

By: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 2 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the 19th century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era.

Carmilla is Le Fanu's famous classic vampire story which has been filmed numerous times, including Vampyre (1932), Blood... Read more

Dawnlands

By: Philippa Gregory

Narrated by: Louise Brealey

Length: 19 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Palace intrigue, defiant heroism, and a long-awaited love fulfilled from New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory in her Fairmile series.

It is 1685 and England is on the brink of a renewed civil war. King Charles II has died without an heir and his brother James is to take the throne. But the people are bitterly divided, and many do... Read more

The Reason You're Alive

By: Matthew Quick

Narrated by: R.C. Bray

Length: 5 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook offers a timely novel featuring his most fascinating character yet, a Vietnam vet embarking on a quixotic crusade to track down his nemesis from the war.After sixty-eight-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to... Read more

How to Be Human

By: Jory Fleming

Narrated by: Jory Fleming & Lyric Winik

Length: 5 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

A “beautiful and astonishing” (Walter Isaacson, # 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker) narrative that examines the many ways to be fully human, told by the first young adult with autism to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

As a child, Jory Fleming was wracked by uncontrollable tantrums, had no tolerance for... Read more

Madly, Deeply

By: Alan Rickman

Narrated by: Alfred Enoch, Bonnie Wright, Rima Horton & Stev...

Length: 19 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

"Narrator Steven Crossley elevates the book with his excellent reading, providing personality and a sharp, biting sarcasm appropriate to the material. A foreword by Emma Thompson is voiced by Bonnie Wright, and editor Taylor’s prologue is read by Alfred Enoch. Rickman’s wife, Rima Horton, provides a touching afterword." - Library Journal

“Emma... Read more

The Big Door Prize

By: M. O. Walsh

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 12 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

DON'T MISS THE SERIES NOW STREAMING ON APPLE TV+

The New York Times bestselling author of My Sunshine Away returns with a gripping and heartfelt novel about a mysterious machine that upends a small Louisiana town, asking us all to wonder if who we truly are is who we truly could be.

What would you do if you knew your life's potential? That's the... Read more

Tides

By: Sara Freeman

Narrated by: Amy Rutherford

Length: 4 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

Henfield Prize–winner and brilliant newcomer Sara Freeman debuts with an intoxicating, compact novel about a woman who walks out of her life and washes up in a seaside town. After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family and ends up adrift in a wealthy seaside town. Mired in her grief, Mara detaches from the outside world and spends her... Read more

Trinity

By: Zelda Lockhart

Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman

Length: 9 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

The Hurston-Wright Award Finalist makes her long-awaited return with this electrifying saga—as moving and indelible as The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, The Turner House, and The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois—that explores three generations of a family trying to overcome trials and trauma and free themselves from the darkness of the past.Lottie... Read more

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

By: Dominic Smith

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 9 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

A masterful new story charts the circuitous course of the sole surviving work of a female Dutch painter

This is what we long for: the profound pleasure of being swept into vivid new worlds, worlds peopled by characters so intriguing and real that we can't shake them, even long after the reading's done. In his earlier, award-winning novels,... Read more

Roxy

By: Neal Shusterman & Jarrod Shusterman

Narrated by: Michael Crouch, Megan Tusing, Shaun Taylor-Corb...

Length: 10 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

From the team that brought you the New York Times bestselling Dry comes a “gritty and unflinching” (Booklist) thriller that proves when gods play games, even love is a lie.

The freeway is coming.

It will cut the neighborhood in two. Construction has already started, pushing toward this corridor of condemned houses and cracked concrete with the... Read more

No Judgments

By: Meg Cabot

Narrated by: Piper Goodeve

Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

The storm of the century is about to hit Little Bridge Island, Florida—and it’s sending waves crashing through Sabrina “Bree” Beckham’s love life…When a massive hurricane severs all power and cell service to Little Bridge Island—as well as its connection to the mainland—twenty-five-year-old Bree Beckham isn’t worried . . . at first. She’s... Read more

The German House

By: Annette Hess

Narrated by: Nina Franoszek

Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Set against the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963, Annette Hess’s international bestseller is a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting coming-of-age story about a young female translator—caught between societal and familial expectations and her unique ability to speak truth to power—as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation’s past.If... Read more

Catan

By: Klaus Teuber

Narrated by: Evan Sibley

Length: 19 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

Written by the award-winning creator of the global board game sensation, Catan is a new adventure perfect for longtime fans and new readers alike.Norway, 860.Half-brothers Thorolf, Yngvi, and Digur have conspired to help Asla—daughter of Halldor, a powerful Viking chieftain—to escape her father’s oppressive rule. However, when they are... Read more

Hot Springs Drive

By: Lindsay Hunter

Narrated by: Emily Ellet

Length: 8 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Jackie Stinson’s best friend is dead, and everyone knows who killed her. Jackie wants to be many things, but a martyr has never been one of them. She is an ex-emotional eater and mother of four, who has finally lost the weight she long yearned to be free of. In her new, sharp-edged body, she goes by Jacqueline. But leaving her old self behind... Read more

Mother May I

By: Joshilyn Jackson

Narrated by: Joshilyn Jackson

Length: 12 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

""Chilling, thought-provoking, and hauntingly written, Mother May I kept me on the edge of my seat with its breathless race against time."" –Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl from Widow Hills""A master of domestic suspense."" —Entertainment WeeklyThe New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Never... Read more

The Little Liar

By: Mitch Albom

Narrated by: Mitch Albom

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

An Instant New York Times BestsellerBeloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with his most important novel to date, an unforgettable story of truth and lies set during the Holocaust.Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer,... Read more

The Wilderness of Girls

By: Madeline Claire Franklin

Narrated by: Rebecca Soler

Length: 11 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

An unflinching YA debut about a troubled teen who discovers a pack of feral girls in the woods and is swept up in the ensuing mystery: Are the Wild Girls of Happy Valley lost princesses from a faraway land, as they believe, or are they brainwashed victims of a deranged kidnapper?   In her ambitious debut perfect for fans of Sadie and The Hazel... Read more

I Died At Fallow Hall

By: Bonnie Burke-Patel

Narrated by: Aysha Kala

Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Anna Deerin moves to a remote Cotswold cottage to become a gardener, trying to strip away everything she’s spent all her life as a woman striving for, craving the anonymity and privacy her new off-grid life provides. But when she clears the last vegetable bed and digs up not twigs but bones, the outside world is readmitted. With it comes... Read more

I Am Legend

By: Richard Matheson

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 5 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

The basis for the film starring Academy Award nominee Will Smith, I Am Legend is a classic of horror and suspense.In I Am Legend, a terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into bloodthirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Every other man,... Read more

Our Green Heart

By: Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Narrated by: Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Length: 6 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

In this inspiring culmination of Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s life’s work as a botanist, biochemist, biologist and poet of the global forest, she delivers a challenge to us all to dig deeper into the science of forests and the ways they will save us from climate breakdown—and then do our part to plant and protect... Read more