Planet of the Blind
By Stephen Kuusisto
Narrated by: Brian Keeler
Length: 5 hours 40 minutes
Blindness in the 195Os was a social stigma. Stephen's mother wanted a normal life for him, so he fought desperately to uphold the illusion of sight. For a child frantic to fit in, each day was an exhausting pretence. He managed to ride a bike, when even reading involved pressing his nose to the page and painfully forcing his eyes to... Read more »
House of Prayer No. 2
A Writer's Journey Home
By Mark Richard
Narrated by: Mark Richard
Length: 6 hours 34 minutes
Award-winning author Mark Richard delivers a fascinating and unique memoir. Born in the South with deformed hips, Richard was tagged a "special" child. Nothing was expected of him. But as a young man, he decided to strike out and experience as much of our strange world as he possibly could. "No one writes like him. His prose style is both... Read more »
Stealing Buddha's Dinner
By Bich Minh Nguyen
Narrated by: Alice H. Kennedy
Length: 7 hours 55 minutes
Beginning with her family’s harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner follows Bich Nguyen as she comes of age in the pre-PC-era Midwest. Filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, Nguyen’s desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food – Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies. More... Read more »
In Pharaoh's Army
Memories of the Lost War
By Tobias Wolff
Narrated by: Michael Kramer
Length: 5 hours 32 minutes
Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive, the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his own illusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye for detail, pitiless candor and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life a modern classic. Read more »
Autobiography of a Face
By Lucy Grealy
Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
Length: 5 hours 55 minutes
"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."
At age nine, Lucy... Read more »
The Third Rainbow Girl
The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia
By Emma Copley Eisenberg
Narrated by: Emma Copley Eisenberg
Length: 10 hours 32 minutes
The Third Rainbow Girl
“In this thoughtful and immersive chronicle of the 1980 murders that thrust West Virginia’s Pocahontas County into the national spotlight, Eisenberg seeks to better understand not only the crimes and their aftermath, but also the lasting impact the region (which she came to know independent of her inquiry) had on her. A complex and captivating read, The Third Rainbow Girl weaves true crime with memoir to stunning effect.”
Tove Holmberg, Powell's Books
The Fact of a Body
A Murder and a Memoir
By Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Narrated by: Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Length: 10 hours 37 minutes
The Fact of a Body
“Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich didn't set out to investigate murder of six-year-old Jeremy Guillory in Louisiana; it was the case she happened upon as a young law school intern in 1992. In a fascinating twist, this becomes not only the true story of a heinous crime for which the perpetrator is in prison, but also of the investigation that unlocks the author's memories of her own youth, a childhood in which she and her sisters were repeatedly sexually abused by their maternal grandfather. As Marzano-Lesnevich moves backward and forward in time between the young man who killed Jeremy and her own life, the reader is swept along on a current of dismay and awe: dismay that human beings can do these things to each other, and awe that the author could face such demons and move on. I've never read another book like this.”
Anne Holman, The King's English
Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing
Essays
By Lauren Hough
Narrated by: Cate Blanchett & Lauren Hough
Length: 9 hours 10 minutes
Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing
“Lauren Hough has led a more interesting life than you, but no need to be jealous: this life includes growing up traveling the world in a sex cult, getting kicked out of the Air Force under Don't Ask Don't Tell, and a 7 day stint in the SHU without even having her arrest processed. And as a former cable guy and gay bar bouncer, she has seen more of the weird, wild, and insufferable parts of human nature than most of us ever will. The essays in this book are Hough processing the terror of being gay in the South and in the military in the 90s, the trauma and shame of her childhood (it took her longer to come out as a cult survivor than it did to come out as a lesbian) and learning, through all of the noise and violence, to stop trying to fit in for the sake of love and belonging and instead finding the liberation in just being herself. Hough does all of this with essays as poignant as they are laugh-out-loud funny, with a singular voice that is ready to call out the bullshit. (CW: rape, child sexual assault, violence against LGBT folk.)”
Rachel, The Book Table
Heavy
An American Memoir
By Kiese Laymon
Narrated by: Kiese Laymon
Length: 6 hours 17 minutes
Heavy
“"I wanted to write a lie," Kiese Laymon says in the opening pages of his brutal, beautiful memoir, Heavy. The book is written in the second person, addressed to his mother, with whom Laymon shares a turbulent, intimate relationship. She feeds his mind with books, but critiques the way Laymon feeds his body as he struggles with his weight. She is his best friend, yet demands excellence through regular beatings. And yet, Laymon's complicated love for his mother is absolute. It is palpable in his voice as he reads the words he wrote for his mother, as he tells you his story of being a black boy, a black man, in Mississippi and America. This is a book that will knock you flat on your back. This is a book that will make you sob in the grocery store. Laymon had me captivated from the very first word he spoke. It was a privilege to listen.”
Maggie, Square Books