Sam's Picks

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Abridged

By: Michael Chabon
Narrated by: David Colacci
Length: 8 hours 53 minutes

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEThe beloved, award-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a Michael Chabon masterwork, is the American epic of two boy geniuses named Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay. Now with special bonus material by Michael Chabon.A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus”... Read more

A Tale for the Time Being

By: Ruth Ozeki
Narrated by: Ruth Ozeki
Length: 14 hours 43 minutes

A brilliant, unforgettable, and long-awaited novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki

“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before... Read more

Love in the Time of Cholera

By: Gabriel García Márquez
Narrated by: Armando Durán
Length: 15 hours 40 minutes

“I am a hopeless and dedicated romantic who believes in beauty and kindness above all things. Magical realism + florid language + the knowledge that your true love is worth waiting for, no matter what the battles ahead. This book is as timely as it ever was. Read more

Arcadia

By: Lauren Groff
Narrated by: Andrew Garman
Length: 11 hours 8 minutes

Lauren Groff's acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the... Read more

Other Words for Home

By: Jasmine Warga
Narrated by: Vaneh Assadourian
Length: 3 hours 49 minutes

“The new words, tasting like America, on our lips." A beautifully-written story of a young Syrian girl's journey to Cincinnati and learning to live her everyday life of a school kid in America. Jude struggles to be brave in making new friends, in auditioning for the school play and in thinking of her brother and father back home. Read more

The Yellow Wife

A Novel

By: Sadeqa Johnson
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 9 hours 31 minutes

“The Yellow Wife was a fantastically written historical fiction novel. We follow Pheby Dolores Brown, a young woman who grew up on a plantation the daughter of the healer woman and the master. I love that Johnson's inspiration for the book came from a real woman, Mary Lumpkin. Lumpkin was a light skinned Black woman married to a prolific... Read more

The Girl with the Louding Voice

A Novel

By: Abi Daré
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
Length: 12 hours 6 minutes

“This year is overflowing with phenomenal debuts — including this one from Abi Daré. It tells the story of Adunni, a young girl in Nigeria whose dreams and ambition focus in on one thing: education. In a city where girls like her are looked down upon and considered unworthy, she comes to find that change can begin with even the smallest of... Read more

Red, White & Royal Blue

A Novel

By: Casey McQuiston
Narrated by: Ramon de Ocampo
Length: 12 hours 15 minutes

“I read this book years ago when it first came out (back in 2019) and more than a couple of time since because it's an excellent comfort read. It's romantic and so so funny. I love their banter and sexy yet incredibly tender love notes (the Prince writes some phenomenally romantic things). The supporting cast of characters is also great.... Read more

Homegoing

A novel

By: Yaa Gyasi
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 13 hours 10 minutes

“AN EXCELLENT LISTEN. Read more

The Vanishing Half

A Novel

By: Brit Bennett
Narrated by: Shayna Small
Length: 11 hours 33 minutes

“This is a beautifully written, stunning, and scandalous story about two identical black twin girls, one who runs away from home at age 16. And then their lives completely shift, as one continues living her life as a Black woman, and the other that tries to pass herself off as white. This novel came at just the right time, in the middle of the... Read more

An American Sunrise

Poems

By: Joy Harjo
Narrated by: Joy Harjo
Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo... Read more

Dreamland Burning

By: Jennifer Latham
Narrated by: Pyeng Threadgill & Luke Slattery
Length: 8 hours 17 minutes

A compelling dual-narrated tale from Jennifer Latham that questions how far we've come with race relations.

Some bodies won't stay buried.

Some stories need to be told.

When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of... Read more