Local bookseller recommendations

Intimations

By: Zadie Smith

Narrated by: Zadie Smith

Length: 1 hour 50 minutes

Abridged: No

“[Smith’s] slim collection of essays captures this peculiar moment with startling clarity. . . . The personal and political intermingle for a powerful indictment of America’s social systems.” —TIME, The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020

“While quarantined amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Smith penned six dazzling, trenchant essays burrowing deep into our... Read more

She Came to Slay

By: Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Narrated by: Robin Miles & Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Length: 3 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

In the bestselling tradition of The Notorious RBG comes a lively, informative, and illustrated tribute to one of the most exceptional women in American history—Harriet Tubman—a heroine whose fearlessness and activism still resonate today.

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading... Read more

Hula

By: Jasmin Iolani Hakes

Narrated by: Mapuana Makia

Length: 10 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Audiofile Magazine Earphones Award Winner • Named a Best Book of the Summer by Harper's Bazaar and ELLE“Stunning…an intricately built novel that spans decades, moving in and out of a collective voice, while also telling Hi’i’s deeply personal and devastating story of trying to find her way.” –Los Angeles Times“A full-throated chant for Hawai'i.... Read more

She Come By It Natural

By: Sarah Smarsh

Narrated by: Sarah Smarsh

Length: 4 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

In this Time Top 100 Book of the Year, the National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Heartland “analyzes how Dolly Parton’s songs—and success—have embodied feminism for working-class women” (People).

Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane factories, Sarah Smarsh witnessed firsthand the particular... Read more

How to Resist Amazon and Why

By: Danny Caine

Narrated by: Danny Caine

Length: 3 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

When a company's workers are literally dying on the job, and its business model relies on preying on local businesses and even their own companies, and its CEO is the richest person in the world while its workers make minimum wage with impossible quotas...wouldn't you want to resist? Danny Caine, owner of Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas,... Read more

The Vulnerables

By: Sigrid Nunez

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

Length: 5 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER 

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, HARPER'S BAZAAR, VOGUE, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICE, THE IRISH TIMES, NEW REPUBLIC AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

The New York Times–bestselling, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through brings her singular voice to a story about modern life and connection

“I am... Read more

The Emperor and the Endless Palace

By: Justinian Huang

Narrated by: Dylan J. Locke, Will Dao & Telly Leung

Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

"A sweeping triumph in queer romance." –Booklist

“What if I told you that the feeling we call love is actually the feeling of metaphysical recognition, when your soul remembers someone from a previous life?”

In the year 4 BCE, an ambitious courtier is called upon to seduce the young emperor—but quickly discovers they are both ruled by blood, sex... Read more

XOXO

By: Axie Oh

Narrated by: Greta Jung

Length: 9 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Jenny’s never had much time for boys, K-pop, or really anything besides her dream of being a professional cellist. But when she finds herself falling for a K-pop idol, she has to decide whether their love is worth the risk. A modern forbidden romance wrapped in the glamorous and exclusive world of K-pop, XOXO is perfect for fans of Jenny Han and... Read more

Speak of the Devil

By: Rose Wilding

Narrated by: Colleen Prendergast

Length: 10 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Seven women, inextricably linked by one man, must figure out which of them killed him in order to protect one another in this electrifying debut thriller.

New Year’s Eve, 1999.

Seven women are gathered in a hotel room at midnight; a man's head sits in the center of the floor. They all had a motive to kill Jamie Spellman. They all swear they... Read more

Inheritance of Scars

By: Crystal Seitz

Narrated by: Nina Yndis

Length: 15 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

Belladonna meets Norse mythology in this gorgeous dark fantasy debut that follows a teen who accidentally awakens an imprisoned draugr and must follow him into a deadly magical forest to rescue her grandmother.

Never go beyond the stave church.

Within Tiveden Forest, bloodthirsty monsters known as draugr lurk behind every tree, and secrets run... Read more

Weird but Normal

By: Mia Mercado

Narrated by: Mia Mercado

Length: 6 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Birth control. Body hair removal cream. Boobs. It’s all weird, but also pretty normal.Navigating racial identity, gender roles, workplace dynamics, and beauty standards, Mia Mercado's hilarious essay collection explores the contradictions of being a millennial woman, which usually means being kind of a weirdo. Whether it’s spending $30 on a... Read more

The Eyes Are the Best Part

By: Monika Kim

Narrated by: Jaine Ye

Length: 9 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of afemale serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Hermother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her... Read more

My Name Is Iris

By: Brando Skyhorse

Narrated by: Alejandra Reynoso

Length: 8 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

“Brilliant.” —The Washington Post * “Nuanced and compelling.” —The New York Times

From the PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author of The Madonnas of Echo Park, an engrossing dystopian novel set in a near-future America where mandatory identification wristbands turn second-generation immigrants into second-class citizens—“a well-imagined allegory of... Read more

Long Time Gone

By: Charlie Donlea

Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny

Length: 9 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

In this engrossing, masterfully twisting new thriller from the #1 internationally bestselling author, a forensics trainee learns through a DNA test that she mysteriously disappeared as a baby thirty years ago—and her life is still in danger …When Dr. Sloan Hastings submits her DNA to an online genealogy site for a research assignment, her goal... Read more

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?

By: Séamas O'Reilly

Narrated by: Séamas O'Reilly

Length: 5 hours

Abridged: No

A heart-warming and hilarious family memoir of growing up as one of eleven siblings raised by a single dad in Northern Ireland at the end of the Troubles. Séamas O’Reilly’s mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten (!) brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the... Read more

Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

By: Annabel Abbs

Narrated by: Ell Potter & Bianca Amato

Length: 11 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERGood Housekeeping Book Club Pick * A Country Living Best Book of Fall * A Washington Post Best Feel-Good Book of the Year * One of the New York Times's Best Historical Fiction Novels of FallIn a novel perfect for fans of Hazel Gaynor’s A Memory of Violets and upstairs-downstairs stories, Annabel Abbs, the award-winning... Read more

The Last White Man

By: Mohsin Hamid

Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid

Length: 3 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ”

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, VOGUE, AND NPR

“Perhaps Hamid’s most remarkable work yet … an extraordinary vision of human possibility.” –Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies

“Searing, exhilarating … reimagines Kafka’s iconic The Metamorphosis for our racially charged... Read more

Off the Edge

By: Kelly Weill

Narrated by: Xe Sands

Length: 7 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

“A deep dive into the world of Flat Earth conspiracy theorists . . . that brilliantly reveals how people fall into illogical beliefs, reject reason, destroy relationships, and connect with a broad range of conspiracy theories in the social media age. Beautiful, probing, and often empathetic . . . An insightful, human look at what fuels... Read more

Birding to Change the World

By: Trish O'Kane

Narrated by: Cheryl Smith

Length: 13 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment.Trish O’Kane is an accidental ornithologist. In her nearly two decades writing about justice as an investigative journalist, she'd never paid attention to nature. But then Hurricane Katrina destroyed her New... Read more

Within These Wicked Walls

By: Lauren Blackwood

Narrated by: Nneka Okoye

Length: 8 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

REESE'S BOOK CLUB FALL 2021 YA PICK

"Lauren Blackwood’s can’t-miss debut is a magical, Ethiopian-inspired remix of Jane Eyre." - Harper's Bazaar

What the heart desires, the house destroys...

Andromeda is a debtera—an exorcist hired to cleanse households of the Evil Eye. She would be hired, that is, if her mentor hadn’t thrown her out before she... Read more

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe

By: Carlos Hernandez

Narrated by: Anthony Rey Perez

Length: 9 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Rick Riordan Presents a brilliant sci-fi romp with Cuban influence that poses this question: What would you do if you had the power to reach through time and space and retrieve anything you want, including your mother, who is no longer living (in this universe, anyway)?

In order to heal after his mother's death, Sal learned how to meditate. But... Read more

How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?

By: Anna Montague

Narrated by: Cynthia Nixon

Length: 8 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

A funny and moving novel about love, loss, and new beginnings found on an unlikely road tripMost days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime colleagues, whose playful bickering she mediates. She’s mourning the recent loss of her best friend,... Read more

A Spindle Splintered

By: Alix E. Harrow

Narrated by: Amy Landon

Length: 3 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

"Amy Landon's lively narration unites present-day Ohio and Perceforest, a fairy-tale realm, in this immersive reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty universe." - AudioFile Magazine

USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow's A Spindle Splintered brings her patented charm to a new version of a classic story. Featuring Arthur Rackham's original... Read more

From the Desk of Zoe Washington

By: Janae Marks

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 Kids Indie Next List * Parents Magazine Best Book of the Year * Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book of the Year * SLJ Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Best Book of the Year * Junior Library Guild Selection * Edgar Award Nominee * Four Starred Reviews * Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year * An Indie Bestseller *From debut... Read more