Staff Picks: Fall 24

The Last Action Heroes

The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage

By: Nick de Semlyen
Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
Length: 9 hours 59 minutes

The behind-the-scenes story of the action heroes who ruled 1980s and ’90s Hollywood and the beloved films that made them stars, including Die Hard, First Blood, The Terminator, and more.

“Entertaining . . . This is a book that makes you ache for the days when the movie screen belonged not to men who dress in superhero capes but to those who lift... Read more

The Rest Is Noise

Listening to the Twentieth Century

By: Alex Ross
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
Length: 23 hours 7 minutes

The scandal over modern music has not died down. While modern paintings by Picasso and Pollock sell for a hundred million or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences; yet the influence of modern sound can be felt everywhere. Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker,... Read more

Kayfabe

By: Chris Koslowski
Narrated by: Joe Hempel
Length: 9 hours 8 minutes

At twenty-six, Dom Contreras has already spent a decade jobbing through the minor leagues of professional wrestling as Hack Barlow, a three-hundred-pound axe-swinging lumberjack. As his body breaks down and his star power fades, he must invent a new gimmick before he loses the only job he's ever known. Meanwhile, Dom's seventeen-year-old sister... Read more

The Complete Stories

By: Clarice Lispector
Narrated by: various narrators
Length: 22 hours 52 minutes

Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. These stories cover her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don’t... Read more

In Praise of Good Bookstores

By: Jeff Deutsch
Narrated by: Ako Mitchell
Length: 5 hours 1 minute

This audiobook narrated by Ako Mitchell provides an eloquent and charming reflection on the singular importance of bookstoresDo we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In this beautifully written book, Jeff Deutsch—the director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the... Read more

Someone

A Novel

By: Alice McDermott
Narrated by: Kate Reading
Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

A fully realized portrait of one woman's life in all its complexity, by the National Book Award–winning author

An ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion—lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of... Read more

Lila (Oprah's Book Club)

A Novel

By: Marilynne Robinson
Narrated by: Maggie Hoffman
Length: 8 hours 57 minutes

A new American classic from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gilead and Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder.
Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside,... Read more

How to Live

Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

By: Sarah Bakewell
Narrated by: Davina Porter
Length: 13 hours 26 minutes

This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, perhaps the first recognizably modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and winegrower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them essays, meaning “attempts” or “tries.” He put... Read more

The Warmth of Other Suns

The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

By: Isabel Wilkerson
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 22 hours 40 minutes

“I'm sorry I hadn't gotten to this sooner. Wilkerson pulls together so much of what I already knew about the US but not necessarily why... a great audiobook, too. Read more

Exit West

A Novel

By: Mohsin Hamid
Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
Length: 4 hours 41 minutes

“Exit West will take your breath away as it magically weaves together a story of falling in love while the world falls apart. Spirited Nadia captures the heart of the thoughtful Saeed, but as their different paths in life converge, ordinary life gives way to the insults of war. Mohsin Hamid conveys the story of these young refugees with... Read more

Erasure

A Novel

By: Percival Everett
Narrated by: Sean Crisden
Length: 8 hours 16 minutes

“I'd only been meaning to read Erasure for 23 years, but sadly it took the confluence of a Hollywood movie and a new Percival Everett novel for me to finally get around to it. Better late than never, right? Erasure is a masterful satire about the expectations of being Black, of what Black writers are allowed to write about (spoiler alert: being... Read more

The Art Thief

A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

By: Michael Finkel
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini & Michael Finkel
Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

“How do you steal art from a museum during daytime hours, using just a Swiss Army Knife, and then simply walk out with it under your coat? This is the thrilling true crime account of maybe the greatest art thief ever, who stole more than 200 pieces worth more than $1billion so he could enjoy them at home in his attic room. What a page-turner!! Read more

I Cannot Control Everything Forever

A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art

By: Emily C. Bloom
Narrated by: Emily C. Bloom
Length: 12 hours 6 minutes

This is Emily Bloom’s journey towards and through motherhood, a path that has become, for the average woman, laden with data and medical technology. Emily faces decisions regarding genetic testing and diagnosis, technologies that offer the illusion of certainty but carry the weight of hard decisions. Her desire to know more thrusts her back into... Read more

Brideshead Revisited

By: Evelyn Waugh
Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
Length: 11 hours 33 minutes

“Brideshead Revisited is perfect for those who enjoyed the recently released movie Saltburn. Set in the period between the two world wars, this novel highlights class tensions, religious trauma, and obsession with privilege. This witty and devastating comedy of manners made me think about familial and romantic love and the lengths we’ll go to to... Read more

Almond

A Novel

By: Won-pyung Sohn
Narrated by: Greg Chun
Length: 4 hours 51 minutes

This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. One of the monsters is me.Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that—but his devoted mother and... Read more

Blackouts

A Novel

By: Justin Torres
Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez & Torian Brackett
Length: 6 hours 54 minutes

“This stunning novel explores the intimacies of queer life across generations through storytelling. Torres weaves in and out of linear time to express the rippling effects of redacting personal histories. Even though it is written as if you are hearing an old story, it feels like poetry. I felt like I was in a haze while reading and had trouble... Read more

Life on Mars

Poems

By: Tracy K. Smith
Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
Length: 1 hour 22 minutes

“One of my all-time favorite books of poetry. Tracy K Smith is a lyrical and narrative mastermind, managing to capture and utilize the spirit of all good science fiction in her still incredibly grounded poetry. Read more

Circe

By: Madeline Miller
Narrated by: Perdita Weeks
Length: 12 hours 8 minutes

“This sweeping tale of the gods and heroes of Greek mythology as seen through the eyes of a minor goddess had me from the first chapter. I listened to this as an audiobook from our audio vendor, Libro.fm. The brilliant narrator was the 29-year-old Welsh film actress, Perdita Weeks. Read more

Sea of Tranquility

A novel

By: Emily St. John Mandel
Narrated by: John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey & Kirsten Potter
Length: 5 hours 46 minutes

“Incredibly crafted mystery through time & space that attempts to answer if we exist in a simulation, or the reality that we have always accepted. Read more

Bunny

A Novel

By: Mona Awad
Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
Length: 11 hours 44 minutes

“This is a crazy weird read and that is just how I like it! Keep an open mind and let yourself fall down the rabbit hole! Read more