Best of 2021

Crying in H Mart

A Memoir

By: Michelle Zauner
Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
Length: 7 hours 22 minutes

“I was struck by just how much I loved this book for how it walks through grief not as a way to leave it behind, but as a way to remember its exact shape. I’m grateful for its funny, self-deprecating, and wise observations, and for its difficult beauty. Read more

Afterparties

Stories

By: Anthony Veasna So
Narrated by: Jason Sean
Length: 6 hours 56 minutes

“I enjoyed this book of short stories about the lives of Khmer refugees and their American born children in California’s central valley. Each story makes the reader feel like they are embedded in a particularly family--the tension between the American born children and their parents who escaped the genocide sets the backdrop to many, but the... Read more

A Little Devil in America

Notes in Praise of Black Performance

By: Hanif Abdurraqib
Narrated by: JD Jackson
Length: 9 hours 38 minutes

“I loved Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America. This essential book explores a handful of Black performers—some world-famous, others everyday people—across a wide variety of disciplines, seamlessly woven into snippets and stories from Hanif’s own life about Black culture and the performance of Blackness. JD Jackson’s low and easy narration... Read more

The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

By: Nathaniel Ian Miller
Narrated by: Olafur Darri Olafsson
Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

“Poor misanthropic Sven, his great Arctic adventures tend toward the bumbling and catastrophic, but he persists in his dream to be alone in the great north - only to find that the few friends (including a very shaggy dog) he has made in his travels are what he needs most. It's a lovely, wry and insightful novel, and Olafur Dari Olafsson's deep... Read more

Cloud Cuckoo Land

A Novel

By: Anthony Doerr
Narrated by: Marin Ireland & Simon Jones
Length: 14 hours 51 minutes

“I loved this book so much. The intersection of the various stories surrounding a profound awareness of the importance of books was perfect. I also appreciated the weaving of the classic tale intertwined all throughout the book. Each character's story could have been a book all by themselves, but having them all together was brilliant. This is a... Read more

Exhalation

Stories

By: Ted Chiang
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman, Amy Landon & Ted Chiang
Length: 11 hours 21 minutes

“WOW. My first experience with Ted Chiang absolutely blew me out of the water. Each story left me with wide eyes and a racing mind, running to my husband to read a passage so we could both be knocked over with wonder. Exhalation filled me with so many questions about our collective past, present, and future, I’ll be coming back to this book again... Read more

Harlem Shuffle

A Novel

By: Colson Whitehead
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 10 hours 35 minutes

“A wonderful evocation of a time and place, which is not to say it doesn't have the tension of a crime thriller. It's fun to ride along with Ray, who may be more than a little bent, but will likely become your favorite furniture salesman, nevertheless. Read more

Razorblade Tears

A Novel

By: S. A. Cosby
Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
Length: 12 hours 22 minutes

“At once gritty and graphic, tender and heart wrenching, Razorblade Tears is the story of two fathers hardened by life circumstances and their respective prejudices who seek vengeance against those who killed their gay sons. The audio was perfection. We NEED this novel to be on the big screen, with Denzel Washington playing Ike. Read more

Bewilderment

A Novel

By: Richard Powers
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

“An homage to the heartbreaking Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, this intimate story of a grieving father and his troubled son is an intelligent and touching story of tragedy and hope. Read more

The Darkness Knows

A Novel

By: Arnaldur Indridason
Narrated by: Sean Barrett
Length: 8 hours 48 minutes

"Fans of Nordic noir will enjoy this performance. For those new to the genre and looking for an easy start, Barrett offers an expert entry into a world of danger and intrigue." –AudioFile Magazine

Retired detective Konrad returns to a haunting cold case in The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason, the "undisputed King of the Icelandic thriller."... Read more

Velvet Was the Night

By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Narrated by: Gisela Chípe
Length: 9 hours 51 minutes

“A slow-moving crime noir set against the political backdrop of 1970’s Mexico City. The lives of a secretary and a hit man converge when an art student goes missing. Gisela Chipe did an excellent job maintaining the atmosphere throughout the narration. Utterly intriguing and cinematic. Read more

Iron Widow

Iron Widow: Book #1

By: Xiran Jay Zhao
Narrated by: Rong Fu
Length: 12 hours 13 minutes

“This book was amazing, brutal, unique, and horrific. The audio book was absolutely fantastic. There was so much representation and so many difficult topics and situations handled really well. The characters are extremely morally grey but it made it so intriguing to never know what they were going to do next. I will definitely be recommending... Read more

Three Girls from Bronzeville

A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood

By: Dawn Turner
Narrated by: Janina Edwards
Length: 11 hours 45 minutes

A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book
A Best Book of 2021 by BuzzFeed and Real Simple

An “unmissable” (Vogue), “exceptional” (The Washington Post), and “evocative” (Chicago Tribune) memoir about three Black girls from the storied Bronzeville section of Chicago that offers a penetrating exploration of race, opportunity, friendship,... Read more

Dumb Money

The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees (Previously Published as The Antisocial Network)

By: Ben Mezrich
Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

From the author of the book that became the iconic The Social Network movie, here is the definitive take on one of the wildest stories ever --  the David-vs.-Goliath GameStop short squeeze, a tale of fortunes won and lost overnight, marking an unforgettable event in financial history.

Bestselling author Ben Mezrich offers a gripping,... Read more

A Promised Land

By: Barack Obama
Narrated by: Barack Obama
Length: 29 hours 9 minutes

“No one really needs my blurb to help sell this book, but I wanted to give it anyway, especially for the audiobook, narrated by Barack Obama himself. If you want to know his incredible knowledge and wisdom that guided him through major decisions, and also hear him drop a few F-bombs, you need to listen to this fantastically written book. Read more

Kitchen Confidential

Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

By: Anthony Bourdain
Narrated by: Anthony Bourdain
Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote "Don't Eat Before You Read This" in The New Yorker, he spared no one's appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door. In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded the appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet that lays out his twenty-five years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine.

From his... Read more

We Keep the Dead Close

A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence

By: Becky Cooper
Narrated by: Becky Cooper
Length: 15 hours 46 minutes

“As much a journey for the writer as it is for the reader, this book solves a murder but leaves us with many unanswered questions. We Keep the Dead Close challenges us to question our assumptions as well as the paths we use to arrive at those assumptions. Delving into the academic culture of Harvard, the misogyny of the 1960s, and the burgeoning... Read more

Mexican Gothic

By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
Length: 10 hours 39 minutes

“If what you loved about "Northanger Abbey" was its sly twist on the gothic romance, you're going to love this new setting for an old gem. Set in 1950's Mexico, it follows a capable but callous young woman who agrees to check on a cousin in exchange for tuition for a master's degree, then begins to discover what inspired the cousin's apparent... Read more

Rabbits

A Novel

By: Terry Miles
Narrated by: Christine Lakin
Length: 14 hours 5 minutes

“The game is like no other; The playing field: the world. The players: anyone who is willing and able to spot inconsistencies throughout recorded human history. The common theory among secret player chatrooms is that the winner will receive their heart’s desires. But the cost for playing could be your very life. Based off and inhabiting the same... Read more

Broken Horses

A Memoir

By: Brandi Carlile
Narrated by: Brandi Carlile
Length: 10 hours 2 minutes

“For Brandi Carlile fans, her memoir Broken Horses is an intimate look into her life and her music. I always pull up songs mention in books I am reading, but in this case, the Libro.fm audiobook makes it even better. Brandi not only reads, but sings throughout the book. Read more