Adult Novels

Apex Hides the Hurt

By: Colson Whitehead
Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

Best-selling author Colson Whitehead has been a finalist for numerous prestigious honors, including the Pulitzer Prize. His works are lauded for their insight into the state of race in America. Here, a small Midwestern town is having an identity crisis-should they have a new techno-savvy name or a name honoring the freedmen who founded the town?... Read more

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute... Read more

The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club)

A Novel

By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by: Joe Morton
Length: 14 hours 14 minutes

“Ta-Nehisi Coates understands something big and he understands it better than anyone else right now. The Water Dancer led me on a journey up and down the landscape of American slavery with a narrative that feels like The Book of Exodus meets, well, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Over 400 pages I have cried, I have laughed, I have been educated, and I have... 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

Sing, Unburied, Sing

A Novel

By: Jesmyn Ward
Narrated by: Kelvin Harrison, Jr., Chris Chalk & Rutina Wesley
Length: 8 hours 22 minutes

“Sing, Unburied, Sing is a dark and gorgeous song of love and heartbreak, haunting and tragic and disorienting in its timelessness. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill anchors Ward's tale to Mississippi today, which is almost indistinguishable from its notorious yesterday, a present and past (ironically) made more alive in the novel by ghosts and... Read more

Children of Virtue and Vengeance

Legacy of Orisha: Book #2

By: Tomi Adeyemi
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 13 hours 27 minutes

*The spectacular sequel to Audie Award Audiobook of the Year Children of Blood and Bone*

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

"Bahni Turpin exquisitely narrates the second book in this fantasy series, Legacy of Orïsha. Her steady pace and West African accent draw us into the story of Zélie, a Maji warrior, and Princess Amari--both of whom fight... Read more

Children of Blood and Bone

Legacy of Orisha: Book #1

By: Tomi Adeyemi
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 17 hours 44 minutes

“A sprawling fantasy teeming with deep and meaningful magic. One of the things I like most about this debut is that it raises very real and important issues of our time through multiple character's perspectives. No character is one-dimensional, and every character must learn from failure and introspection to become who they were meant to be. Read more

Echoes of A Distant Summer

By: Guy Johnson
Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
Length: 31 hours 42 minutes

The son of Maya Angelou, Guy Johnson is a critically acclaimed author and poet in his own right. Echoes of a Distant Summer is the story of Jackson St. Clair Tremain, a San Francisco civil servant who thought he had left his old life far behind. In 1982, Jackson is summoned to Mexico to confer with his dying grandfather, the brutal hustler King... Read more

Standing at the Scratch Line

By: Guy Johnson
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 25 hours 40 minutes

Raised in the steamy bayous of New Orleans in the early 1900s, LeRoi "King" Tremain, caught up in his family’s ongoing feud with the rival DuMont family, learns to fight. But when the teenage King mistakenly kills two white deputies during a botched raid on the DuMonts, the Tremains’ fear of reprisal forces King to flee Louisiana.
King thus... Read more

Oyinkan Braithwaite (My Sister the Serial Killer) with Bridgett Davis at Greenlight Bookstore

By: Oyinkan Braithwaite
Narrated by: Bridgett Davis
Length: 45 minutes

Oyinkan Braithwaite discusses her smash hit debut My Sister the Serial Killer -- a short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel that encompasses both sibling rivalry and anti-patriarchal catharsis -- onstage with previous podcast guest Bridgett M. Davis, author of The World According to Fannie Davis (Recorded at the Fort Greene store on August 5,... Read more

Parable of the Sower

Earthseed: Book #1

By: Octavia E. Butler
Narrated by: Lynne Thigpen
Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Octavia E. Butler paints a stunning portrait of an all-too-believable near future. As with Kindred and her other critically-acclaimed novels, Parable of the Sower skillfully combines startling visionary and socially realistic concepts. God is change. That is the central truth of the Earthseed movement, whose... Read more

Life After Death

A Novel

By: Sister Souljah
Narrated by: Nia Long
Length: 16 hours 1 minute

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller
Instant USA TODAY Bestseller

The long-anticipated sequel to Sister Souljah’s million copy New York Times bestseller The Coldest Winter Ever.

Winter Santiaga hit time served. Still stunning, still pretty, still bold, still loves her father more than any man in the world, still got her hustle and high fashion... Read more

Freshwater

By: Akwaeke Emezi
Narrated by: Akwaeke Emezi
Length: 6 hours 42 minutes

An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of... Read more

Transcendent Kingdom

A novel

By: Yaa Gyasi
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 8 hours 40 minutes

“Gifty immigrated from Ghana, grew up in Alabama, and is working on a PhD in neuroscience at Stanford, where she experiments with mice. She has always felt she wasn’t cool enough or white enough, and tries to prove her value through her brilliance. She tells her raw and powerful story of racism, addiction, mental illness, and especially faith and... Read more

Homegoing

A novel

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

“AN EXCELLENT LISTEN. Read more

American Dirt (Oprah's Book Club)

A Novel

By: Jeanine Cummins
Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
Length: 16 hours 55 minutes

“Amazing. Incredible. Every American (every human) should read this. It's going to win every award and be every book club pick in 2020, as it should be. Nothing more needs to be said, really. The audiobook was FANTASTIC. Read more

Akata Warrior

Nsibidi Scripts: Book #2

By: Nnedi Okorafor
Narrated by: Yetide Badaki
Length: 12 hours 42 minutes

A year ago, Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian girl, was inducted into the secret Leopard Society. As she began to develop her magical powers, Sunny learned that she had been chosen to lead a dangerous mission to avert an apocalypse, brought about by the terrifying masquerade, Ekwensu. Now, stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny is... Read more

Akata Witch

Nsibidi Scripts: Book #1

By: Nnedi Okorafor
Narrated by: Yetide Badaki
Length: 8 hours 49 minutes

Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she has albinism. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing—she is a "free agent" with latent mystical power. Soon she's part of a... Read more