Best Books of 2023

The Future

By: Naomi Alderman
Narrated by: Guinevere Turner, Natalie Naudus, Jeremy Bobb, Santino Fontana, Graham Halstead, Lorelei King, Fred Sanders & Naomi Alderman
Length: 13 hours 3 minutes

“The Future by Naomi Alderman is a near-future thriller that just keeps surprising you. I loved her debut, so I expected great things, but she managed to exceed those expectations. Tech moguls have arranged the world to just keep amassing more power, and a small group sets out to undermine them. Every time you think you know the whole story,... Read more

White Cat, Black Dog

Stories

By: Kelly Link
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Dan Stevens, Dominic Hoffman, Kristen Sieh, Ish Klein, Tanya Cubric & Patton Oswalt
Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

“Kelly Link is a national treasure. These stories are like prismatically unsettled and modern versions of familiar tales, equipping each eerie element with a hefty dose of the banal, like any of these tales can happen in your living room--even if they're mired in a post-apocalyptic wasteland or peopled by robots on an abandoned asteroid. Stunning... Read more

Whalefall

A Novel

By: Daniel Kraus
Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

“A completely addictive page turner! I consumed it in one big gulp! Marvelous! Read more

The Wager

A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

By: David Grann
Narrated by: Dion Graham & David Grann
Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

“Since a lot of the book is drawn from actual sailor's diaries, listening to it feels like you're hearing a salty sea dog's confessional! Apart from that it's got everything you'd want in a swashbuckling adventure: mutiny, shipwreck, scurvy and colonialist criticism. Read more

Tom Lake

A Novel

By: Ann Patchett
Narrated by: Meryl Streep
Length: 11 hours 22 minutes

“Wonderful little slice of life about a mother sharing her youth with her three daughters. A book you can reread as you age and get something new out of it each time. Read more

The Sun Walks Down

A Novel

By: Fiona McFarlane
Narrated by: Emma Jones
Length: 12 hours 57 minutes

“A riveting read. I was grabbed by the landscape, the characters and the premise right off the bat. Set in South Australia in the 1880's, it's the story of a missing child and the varied crowd that searches for him amid the backdrop of the mountains and desert of the outback. I couldn't put it down. Read more

Starling House

A Reese's Book Club Pick

By: Alix E. Harrow
Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
Length: 12 hours 25 minutes

“This pulled me in from the start and didn't let go. Starling House is a modern Gothic fairytale with the atmosphere of a classic haunted house story combined with social commentary on life in a small, Southern town plagued with economic inequality, racism, and ecological concerns. The characters are not always likeable, but you'll root for them... Read more

Soil

The Story of a Black Mother's Garden

By: Camille T Dungy
Narrated by: Camille T Dungy
Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

“Having had the honor of attending one of the release events and getting to listen author herself read, I can confidently say this audiobook comes as a close second. I’ve also read the print edition and enjoy the map and photography. Soil is a magnificent meditation on the interconnections of life all around us, starting from the beautiful and... Read more

The Road to Roswell

A Novel

By: Connie Willis
Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky
Length: 14 hours

A delightful novel about alien invasions, conspiracies, and the incredibly silly things people are willing to believe—some of which may actually be true—from the Nebula and Hugo award-winning author of Blackout and All Clear

“An absolute blast with abundant humor, copious references to old westerns, and . . . a delightful, intergalactic twist on... Read more

River Spirit

By: Leila Aboulela
Narrated by: Waceke Wambaa
Length: 11 hours 34 minutes

When Akuany and her brother Bol are orphaned in a village raid in South Sudan, they’re taken in by a young merchant Yaseen who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As a revolutionary leader rises to power—the self-proclaimed Mahdi, prophesied redeemer of Islam—Sudan begins to slip from the grasp of... Read more

Poverty, by America

By: Matthew Desmond
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 5 hours 40 minutes

“Desmond challenges readers to recognize how they benefit from poverty through low cost goods, services, and systemic structures that benefit those who already have resources (no surprise - they also have roots in racism and misogyny!). He reminds us that both the rich and poor benefit from government assistance, but only programs for the poor... Read more

The Pole

By: J.M. Coetzee
Narrated by: Colin Mace
Length: 3 hours 31 minutes

“In The Pole, Witold, a Polish pianist, meets a Spanish socialite, Beatrice, after playing a small concert for her organization in Barcelona. Struck by her, Witold pursues her from a distance through short notes. Eventually they meet again. Told in Coetzee’s spare prose, it is, like many of his novels, a story of the other, each individual’s... Read more

Owner of a Lonely Heart

A Memoir

By: Beth Nguyen
Narrated by: Beth Nguyen
Length: 5 hours 27 minutes

Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily • Selected by Time, NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book of 2023

“This book…is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by... Read more

Our Share of Night

A Novel

By: Mariana Enriquez
Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
Length: 27 hours 16 minutes

“A masterpiece of supernatural horror.”—The Washington Post
“An enchanting, shattering, once-in-a-lifetime reading experience.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

ONE OF TIME AND THE ATLANTIC’S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S TEN BEST HORROR BOOKS OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • GOOD MORNING... Read more

Our Migrant Souls

A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”

By: Héctor Tobar
Narrated by: André Santana
Length: 7 hours 33 minutes

A new audiobook by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.

"Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino" assembles the Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar's... Read more

No Two Persons

A Novel

By: Erica Bauermeister
Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik, Braden Wright, Carol Jacobanis, Cassandra Campbell, Gabra Zackman, George Newbern, Jesse Vilinsky, Max Meyers, Rachel L. Jacobs & Stephen Graybill
Length: 8 hours 54 minutes

“Skillfully written interconnected short stories that reveal the serendipitous impact of a single book on the lives of 10 people, beginning and ending in an unexpected way with the author. The mood is bittersweet, with loss threading throughout, but the melancholy is tempered by hope, connection, and the readerly joy of discovery. It's a... Read more

Never Whistle at Night

An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

By: Shane Hawk & Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Narrated by: Erin Tripp, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Joelle Peters, Kaniehtiio Horn, Lisa Cromarty, Maika Harper, Shane Ghostkeeper, Sheldon Elter & Tara Sky
Length: 13 hours 23 minutes

“From spine tingling creatures to monstrous humans, this collection of short stories covers so many different tales from a group of Indigenous voices that I'm excited to read more from. Each new story had me on the edge of my seat with a variety of thrills, horrors and the constant reminder that darkness and evil exist in many shapes. Read more

Mott Street

A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

By: Ava Chin
Narrated by: Ava Chin
Length: 11 hours 34 minutes

“Essential reading for understanding not just Chinese American history but American history—and the American present.” —Celeste Ng, #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere

* TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 * San Francisco Chronicle's Favorite Nonfiction * Kirkus Best Nonfiction of 2023 * Winner of the Chinese American Librarians... Read more

Looking Glass Sound

By: Catriona Ward
Narrated by: Christopher Ragland & Katherine Fenton
Length: 12 hours 58 minutes

“I love Ward’s writing. It’s intelligent and rife with unreliable narrators and characters. We do not see things as they are. This latest book, like those previous, dabbles with mental instability. Don’t trust what you see. The truth is present on every page, but I bet you interpreted it inaccurately. Omg. Is this what I love about her books?? I... Read more

Light Bringer

A Red Rising Novel

Red Rising: Book #6

By: Pierce Brown
Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds
Length: 30 hours 8 minutes

Darrow returns as Pierce Brown’s New York Times bestselling Red Rising series continues in the thrilling sequel to Dark Age.

“Brown’s plots are like a depth charge of nitromethane dropped in a bucket of gasoline. His pacing is 100% him standing over it all with a lit match and a smile, waiting for us to dare him to drop it.”—NPR, on Dark Age

“The... Read more