Literary Criticism bestsellers

Meet Me in the Margins

A Rom-Com for People Who Love Books

By: Melissa Ferguson
Narrated by: Talon David
Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

“I've LOLed many times while listening to this enemies-to-lovers romance about books. I almost predicted the twist but was thrown off by a character I never suspected. This book would be great for readers who would prefer a non-steamy read. I felt for Savannah as I learned more about her family's dynamic and how she has tried to navigate it.... Read more

Monsters

A Fan's Dilemma

By: Claire Dederer
Narrated by: Claire Dederer
Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

“What do we do with the great art of monstrous men (and women)? Do we throw away all of its merit, determining it filthy and unworthy of our admiration? Do we separate the art from the artist, and the impact it’s had on society? Studying a variety of influential figures of the past, and the acts they committed, author Clare Dederer tackles this... Read more

Trick Mirror

Reflections on Self-Delusion

By: Jia Tolentino
Narrated by: Jia Tolentino
Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

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

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

By: George Saunders
Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, BD Wong & Renée Elise Goldsberry
Length: 14 hours 43 minutes

“This masterclass for writers is also a masterclass for readers, and you don't have to be a writer to enjoy it. Through his wise insights on storytelling, Saunders sent me away with an understanding of why I enjoy reading what I do, how stories work, and how to be a better storyteller (and human) in all rights. Read more

Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies

How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature

By: Elizabeth Winkler
Narrated by: Eunice Wong
Length: 14 hours 28 minutes

An “extraordinarily brilliant” and “pleasurably naughty” (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be.

The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most... Read more

One in a Millennial

On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In

By: Kate Kennedy
Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

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

The Art of Language Invention

From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building

By: David J. Peterson
Narrated by: David J. Peterson
Length: 10 hours 26 minutes

An insider’s tour through the construction of invented languages from the bestselling author and creator of languages for Legendary's Dune, the HBO series Game of Thrones and the Syfy series Defiance

From master language creator David J. Peterson comes a creative guide to language construction for sci-fi and fantasy fans, writers, game creators,... Read more

Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik
Narrated by: Lili Anolik
Length: 12 hours 45 minutes

“"Art, my God, Joan, I'm embarrassed to mention it in front of you, you know, but you mentioned burning babies in locked cars so I can mention Art." Eve Babitz to Joan Didion, 1972. In this blazing memoir, one feels like they're out for drinks discussing '70s Hollywood sleaze, female chauvinist pigs, and Charles Manson with your wildly messy and... Read more

Pandora's Jar

Women in the Greek Myths

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

“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

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Essays

Picador Modern Classics

By: Joan Didion
Narrated by: Maya Hawke
Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

“In this snapshot of mid-century American culture, Didion, deliberate and unabashed, takes the reader on journeys across the United States - from Newport, to Sacramento, to Hollywood, to Hawaii, and back to San Francisco - digesting political unrest, youthful buoyancy, and fundamental questions of morality and human responsibility. Her essays... Read more

Wonderworks

The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature

By: Angus Fletcher
Narrated by: Jacques Roy
Length: 15 hours 11 minutes

“What if we imagined the history of literature not as a long line of various texts, but rather as a series of brilliant inventions each designed to address a critical human dilemma? How do you heal a broken heart, face death with courage, or live a life of purpose? Science struggles to help us address these issues, but we also turn time and again... Read more

The Black Box

Writing the Race

By: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

“One of our finest historians shows how African Americans have used the written word to shape their realities, resisting the confines of the 'Black Box'. Read more

All Things Are Too Small

Essays in Praise of Excess

By: Becca Rothfeld
Narrated by: Ruth Crawford
Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as decluttering, mindfulness, David Cronenberg, sadomasochism, and women who wait. All Things Are Too Small is brilliant cultural and literary critic Becca Rothfeld’s plea for derangement: imbalance, obsession,... Read more

A Wilder Shore

The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson

By: Camille Peri
Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
Length: 16 hours 14 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE PICK

“Engrossing . . . [A] richly researched and vivid double portrait.” —Phyllis Rose, The Atlantic

“A love story, an adventure story, two literary biographies in one; A Wilder Shore is these things and more—and it's very, very good.” —Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha... Read more

Minor Feelings

An Asian American Reckoning

By: Cathy Park Hong
Narrated by: Cathy Park Hong
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

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

The Anatomy of Genres

How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

By: John Truby
Narrated by: Nick Mondelli
Length: 22 hours 16 minutes

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

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

Revised and Expanded edition

By: J. R. R. Tolkien
Narrated by: Samuel West, Mike Grady & Chris Smith
Length: 29 hours 1 minute

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world’s greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of... Read more

Bibliophobia

A Memoir

By: Sarah Chihaya
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

“A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.”—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

“A must for the obsessive reader.”—Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably... Read more

The Language of the Night

Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan & Michael Crouch
Length: TBA

Featuring a new introduction by Ken Liu, this revised edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s first full-length collection of essays covers her background as a writer and educator, her thoughts on writing, and her commentary on literary science fiction and fantasy and their future.

“We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark;... Read more

There Plant Eyes

A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness

By: M. Leona Godin
Narrated by: M. Leona Godin
Length: 11 hours 7 minutes

From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight.
 
There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture,... Read more

The Spook who Sat by the Door

By: Sam Greenlee
Narrated by: Dion Graham & Natiki Hope Pressley
Length: 6 hours 6 minutes

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

Words Are My Matter

Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a Writer’s Week

By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: Laural Merlington
Length: 13 hours 16 minutes

Words Are My Matter gathers talks, essays, introductions to beloved books, and book reviews by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of our foremost public literary intellectuals. A must-listen collection, Words Are My Matter is a manual for investigating the depth and breadth of contemporary fiction—and, through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary... Read more

Furies

Stories of the wicked, wild and untamed - feminist tales from 16 bestselling, award-winning authors

By: Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith, Emma Donoghue, Kirsty Logan, Chibundu Onuzo, Caroline O'Donoghue, Linda Grant, Susie Boyt, Stella Duffy, Kamila Shamsie, Helen Oyeyemi, Rachel Seiffert, CN Lester, Claire Kohda, Eleanor Crewes & Annie Hodson
Narrated by: Anna Bentinck, Charles Armstrong, Gabrielle Glaister, Katie Leung, Laura Aikman & Shaheen Khan
Length: 8 hours

'Wonderful . . . all killer, no filler' Red Magazine
'Dazzling stories, as inventive as they are inspiring' Daily Mirror
'Where power and feminist rage meet' Stylist
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A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers:

Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue,... Read more

Black Women Writers at Work

By: Claudia Tate
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
Length: 9 hours 31 minutes

Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the twentieth century.



Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker,... Read more

Changing My Mind

Occasional Essays

By: Zadie Smith
Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
Length: 12 hours 25 minutes

"[These essays] reflect a lively, unselfconscious, rigorous, erudite, and earnestly open mind that's busy refining its view of life, literature, and a great deal in between." —Los Angeles Times

Split into five sections--Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering--Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both... Read more

My Life in Middlemarch

By: Rebecca Mead
Narrated by: Kate Reading
Length: 9 hours 37 minutes

A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth—Middlemarch—and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories.Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded... Read more

The Things They Carried

CliffsNotes

By: Jill Colella
Narrated by: Tim Wheeler
Length: 4 hours 18 minutes

This CliffsNotes study guide on Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried supplements the original literary work, giving you background information about the author, an introduction to the work, a graphical character map, critical commentaries, expanded glossaries, and a comprehensive index, all for you to use as an educational tool that will allow... Read more

Leaves of Grass

By: Walt Whitman
Narrated by: Mel Foster
Length: 15 hours 55 minutes

Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." And Ralph Waldo Emerson found Leaves of Grass "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed," calling it a "combination of the Bhagavad Gita and the New York Herald." Published at the author's own... Read more

Thalia Book Club: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Thalia Book Club

By: Marilynne Robinson
Narrated by: James Wood
Length: 1 hour 23 minutes

Marilynne Robinson discusses and reads from her book Gilead with James Wood. Read more

Star Trek Psychology

The Mental Frontier

By: Travis Langley
Narrated by: Paul Boehmer & Natasha Soudek
Length: 7 hours

The next entry in Sterling's Popular Culture Psychology series features twenty chapters and exclusive interviews with cast members and Rod Roddenberry. In a fun and accessible way, Star Trek Psychology delves deep into the psyches of the show's well-known and beloved characters. The trailblazing franchise spans five TV series, thirteen films,... Read more

Culture Creep

Notes on the Pop Apocalypse

By: Alice Bolin
Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
Length: TBA

""This book re-framed my entire adolescence. I highly recommend you read it."" — LING MAFrom the critically acclaimed author of Dead Girls (“stylish and inspired”—New York Times Book Review), a sharp, engrossing collection of essays that explore the strange career of popular feminism and steady creep of cults and cult-think into our daily... Read more

Understanding Superhero Comic Books

A History of Key Elements, Creators, Events and Controversies

By: Alex Grand
Narrated by: Alex Grand
Length: 13 hours 43 minutes

This work dissects the origin and growth of superhero comic books, their major influences, and the creators behind them. It demonstrates how Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America and many more stand as time capsules of their eras, rising and falling with societal changes, and reflecting an amalgam of influences. The book covers in detail the... Read more

Everything Must Go

The Stories We Tell About the End of the World

By: Dorian Lynskey
Narrated by: Dorian Lynskey
Length: 14 hours 49 minutes

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

German Literary History for Beginners an Exciting and Entertaining Journey Through German Literature From the Middle Ages to the Present Day

By: Christian Möhlenkamp
Narrated by: Casey Wayman
Length: 1 hour 10 minutes

This book is intended for readers who are looking for an introduction to the confusing diversity of German literature. The chronological order chosen is best suited for this purpose because, in contrast to topic- or genre-oriented ordering procedures, it shows a genesis and traces the genealogy of German literature. The fact that Goethe's novel... Read more

Bad Feminist

Essays

By: Roxane Gay
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

“Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there.”  — Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?A New York Times BestsellerBest Book of the Year: NPR • Boston Globe •... Read more

The Monster and the Mirror

Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell

By: K.J. Aiello
Narrated by: K.J. Aiello
Length: 9 hours 58 minutes

Revelatory memoir and cultural criticism that connects popular fantasy and our perceptions of mental illness to offer an empathetic path to compassionate care Growing up, K.J. Aiello was fascinated by magical stories of dragons, wizards, and fantasy, where monsters were not what they seemed and anything was possible. These books and films... Read more

Splinters

Another Kind of Love Story

By: Leslie Jamison
Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
Length: 8 hours 32 minutes

“Leslie Jamison is a truth-teller and this memoir about splitting with her husband and raising her infant daughter in her first year of life was absolutely gripping. Read it for the specificity of detail, the masterful descriptions of emotional and psychological shifts, and for her powerful prose. A knock-out! Read more

Year of the Monkey

By: Patti Smith
Narrated by: Patti Smith
Length: 4 hours 31 minutes

“I’m convinced that Patti Smith is the reincarnation of some spiritual mystic. Someone like Joan of Arc or Hildegard von Bingen. At this point I am committed to only listening to her audiobooks because her words are even more powerful in her own dreamy cadence. I sound like a school girl mooning over her first loved celebrity but, I can’t say... Read more

Novelist as a Vocation

By: Haruki Murakami
Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe
Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller—and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

"Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you... Read more

How to Read Now

Essays

By: Elaine Castillo
Narrated by: Elaine Castillo
Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

“How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories.”

“A book that doesn’t seek to shut down the current literary discourse so much as shake it up.” (The New York Times Book... Read more

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need

By: Jessica Brody
Narrated by: Jessica Brody
Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

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

Red Comet

The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

By: Heather Clark
Narrated by: Laura Jennings
Length: 45 hours 26 minutes

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.

“One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read." —Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed

With a... Read more

Burning Questions

Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021

By: Margaret Atwood
Narrated by: Margaret Atwood & Full Cast
Length: 18 hours 59 minutes

“Atwood is brilliant--obviously, yes, but wonderfully so, nonetheless. These pieces took me to somewhere I have never traveled on the wings of a goddess. She informs, scolds, gives warnings, and inspires action. She talks about books she's written and books others have written. She speaks with authority and humility. I listen with awe and gratitude. Read more

Jane Austen at Home

A Biography (250th Birthday Edition)

By: Lucy Worsley
Narrated by: Lucy Worsley
Length: 17 hours 17 minutes

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, Lucy Worsley has written a new Introduction to her Sunday Times Bestselling biography - the book that leads us into the rooms from which our best-loved novelist quietly changed the world.

This telling of the story of Jane's life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the... Read more

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

A Journey Through the Deep State

By: Kerry Howley
Narrated by: Nikki Massoud
Length: 7 hours

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A VANITY FAIR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.” – The New York Times

A wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America—from the acclaimed author of Thrown

Who are you? You are data... Read more

Divine Might

Goddesses in Greek Myth

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

“Natalie Haynes writes as if she knows these goddesses personally, and this audiobook is her telling us all their secrets. I found myself falling back in love with greek mythology, and looking at it's female deities in new lights, for better and for worse. Read more

Orwell's Roses

By: Rebecca Solnit
Narrated by: Rebecca Solnit
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

“An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.” —Margaret Atwood

“A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker.” —Claire... Read more

A Room of One's Own

By: Virginia Woolf
Narrated by: Frances Butt
Length: 4 hours 25 minutes

A Le Monde 100 Books of the Century book Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time. … [Woman] pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon... Read more

Recognizing the Stranger

On Palestine and Narrative

By: Isabella Hammad
Narrated by: Isabella Hammad
Length: 2 hours 28 minutes

Nine days before October 7, 2023, award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of... Read more

The Real Lolita

The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World

By: Sarah Weinman
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

“Any fan of Nabokov’s Lolita will be enthralled by Sarah Weinman’s investigation of the real-life kidnapping and sexual assault that became the basis for the 20th-century masterpiece. Weinman dives deep into the archives to piece together the ties between fact and fiction, even when the author or the victim’s family refused to discuss history.... Read more