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Showing 21 - 40 of 44 items
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Essays, Anthologies
Human-narrated audio
Over seven decades, John McPhee has set a standard for literary nonfiction. Assaying mountain ranges, bark canoes, experimental aircraft, the…
Swiss Army, geophysical hot spots, ocean shipping, shad fishing, and dissident art in the Soviet Union, among myriad other subjects, he has consistently written narrative pieces of immaculate design. In Tabula Rasa, McPhee looks back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, reflecting wryly upon projects he began but never completed or published. Collected and augmented, these pieces form a "reminiscent montage" of a writing life. This volume includes, among other things, a frosty encounter with Thornton Wilder, interrogative dinners with Henry Luce, glimpses of the allure of western Spain, fireworks over the East River as seen from Malcolm Forbes's yacht, the evolving inclinations of the Tower of Pisa, the islands in the river delta of central California, teaching in a pandemic, and persuading The New Yorker to publish an entire book on oranges. The result is a fresh survey of McPhee's singular planet
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Romance, Humourous fiction
Human-narrated audio
Includes a special introduction by USA TODAY bestselling author, Mia Sosa, author of The Worst Best Man and The Wedding…
Crasher! It's the end of the world as they know it—or so they think... When an international warning siren accidentally goes off, convincing everyone that a meteor shower may just be the end of life as they know it, six couples—friends, exes, crushes and rivals—must take shelter. Inhibitions are abandoned, confessions are made and love blossoms, but what happens when the world doesn't end? Filled with humor, heat and hope, this riveting collection of interconnected multicultural stories by acclaimed authors Lane Clarke, Farah Heron, Taj McCoy, Charish Reid, Sarah Smith and Denise Williams beautifully explores the secrets we carry with us—and the joy we discover when we let go and reach for the stars. Two NASA specialist exes forced to reunite under pressure. Competing food stall owners face no escape—from each other or their shared past. Two law students learn just how strongly opposites attract between the library stacks. A pair of literature lovers confront long-held feelings under the covers of a bookstore bunker. A songwriter discovers her newly hired contractor hits all the right notes. Trapped on campus, former college rivals entertain their reignited spark
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Fantasy, Animal stories, Adventure stories
Human-narrated audio
Clay has had his fill of home life. A global plague has brought the world to a screeching halt, and…
with little to look forward to but a summer of video-calling friends, vying with annoying sisters for the family computer, and tuning out his parents' financial worries, he's only too happy to retreat to the woods. From the moment the elegant little dog with the ornate collar appears like an apparition among the trees, Clay sees something uncanny in her. With this mysterious Elphinore as guide, he'll glimpse ancient secrets folded all but invisibly into the forest. Each day the dog leads Clay down paths he never knew existed, deeper into the unknown. But they aren't alone in their surreal adventures. There are traps and terrors in the woods too, and if Clay isn't careful, he might stray off the path and lose his way forever. Heartfelt and exhilarating, wry and poignant, this story seamlessly merges the fantastic and the familiar in a tale both timely and timeless
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Politics and government, Economics, Social issues
Human-narrated audio
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative…
and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. “Urgent and accessible . . . Its moral force is a gut punch.”— The New Yorker A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Oprah Daily, Time, Chicago Public Library Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow. Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom
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Biography
Human-narrated audio
"Fermentation expert Sandor Katz's hearty voice punctuates Lori Prince's overall narration of this picture book. It's a biography of Katz,…
who moved to a "community of queer folk" in Tennessee in search of a healthy life after his HIV diagnosis. He has become famous for his recipes for fermented foods... The whole package fizzes with briny verve." – AudioFile Magazine
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Fantasy, LGBTQ+ fiction, Adventure stories
Human-narrated audio
Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance…
and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job. But then a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away. Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They're also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats. Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire
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Multi-cultural fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, General fiction
Human-narrated audio
Lamb's family strives to better their lives in Jackson, Mississippi, in the late 1930s. Lamb's mother is a hard-working, creative…
seamstress who cannot reveal she's a lesbian. Lamb's brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north—if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature. Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naïve. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures of a white girl who loans her a book she loves, she sets a off a calamitous series of events that pulls in her mother, charming hustler uncle, estranged father, and brother—and ends in a lynching. Told with nuance and subtlety, avoiding sensationalism and unnecessary brutality, this young-adult novel from celebrated author Lesa Cline-Ransome pays homage to the female victims of white supremacy
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Biography, Customs and cultures, United States history, Social issues
Human-narrated audio
This program is narrated by Dion Graham. Dion has n arrated more than 300 audiobooks and is on AudioFile 's…
list of Golden Voice Narrators, as well as in Audible's Narrator Hall of Fame. He's also won multiple Earphones and Audie Awards. " King is a major achievement. With eloquence, compassion, and grace, Jonathan Eig offers a stirringly contemporary and complex portrait of a fully human—and humane—King . . . A resounding triumph." —Peniel E. Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield "Eig has pulled off a kind of miracle. Here is the King we know, think we know and ought to know. Here is the leader, the preacher, the orator, the husband, the father, the martyr, the human being—not with melodramatic halo in place, but in all his heroic, tragic Glory. Hallelujah!" —Ken Burns Named a most anticipated book of 2023 by The Washington Post , The Millions , and Literary Hub The first full biography in decades, King mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation's most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Multi-cultural fiction, Serious and literary fiction
Human-narrated audio
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences... Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn't write…
the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel. Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena's a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena's novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn't this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That's what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can't get away from Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June's (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang's novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable
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Friendship stories, Adventure stories, Fantasy, General fiction
Human-narrated audio
Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren. Formed by human desires and fed by their worship, there are countless…
gods in the world—but after a great war, the new king outlawed them and now pays "godkillers" to destroy any who try to rise from the shadows. As a child, Kissen saw her family murdered by a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing them and enjoys it. But all this changes when Kissen is tasked with helping a young noble girl with a god problem. The child's soul is bonded to a tiny god of white lies, and Kissen can't kill it without ending the girl's life too. Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, the unlikely group must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favor. Pursued by assassins and demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning. Something is rotting at the heart of their world, and they are the only ones who can stop it.
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Folklore, fables and fairy tales, Suspense and thrillers, Friendship stories
Human-narrated audio
In a big abandoned house on a barren hill lives a skull. A brave girl named Otilla has escaped from…
terrible danger and run away, and when she finds herself lost in the dark forest, the lonely house beckons. Her host, the skull, is afraid of something too, something that comes every night. Can brave Otilla save them both? Steeped in shadows and threaded with subtle wit, The Skull is as empowering as it is mysterious and foreboding
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Suspense and thrillers, Spy stories
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Something happened in 1994 Berlin that forever changed MI5. Very few know that story and those who do will do…
anything to keep it secret. Two years ago, a hostile prime minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service. Monochrome's mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5's formidable First Desk did not become Britain's top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain. Until the eve of Monochrome's shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history. The Secret Hours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron's body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtaking secret history that Slough House fans have been waiting for
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Family stories, LGBTQ+ fiction
Human-narrated audio
From the Stonewall Honor–winning author of Like a Love Story comes a sweeping story of three generations of boys in…
the same Iranian family. Perfect for fans of Last Night at the Telegraph Club and Darius the Great Is Not Okay. 2019. Moud is an out gay teen living in Los Angeles with his distant father, Saeed. When Moud gets the news that his grandfather in Iran is dying, he accompanies his dad to Tehran, where the revelation of family secrets will force Moud into a new understanding of his history, his culture, and himself. 1978. Saeed is an engineering student with a promising future ahead of him in Tehran. But when his parents discover his involvement in the country's burgeoning revolution, they send him to safety in America, a country Saeed despises. And even worse—he's forced to live with the American grandmother he never knew existed. 1939. Bobby , the son of a calculating Hollywood stage mother, lands a coveted MGM studio contract. But the fairy-tale world of glamour he's thrust into has a dark side. Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this tale of intergenerational trauma and love is an ode to the fragile bonds of family, the hidden secrets of history, and all the beautiful moments that make us who we are today
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Family stories, General fiction, Serious and literary fiction
Human-narrated audio
In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of…
America's finest writers. "Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature." —The Guardian In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today
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Ghost and horror stories, Suspense and thrillers
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When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to…
accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl's desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie's disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.
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Suspense and thrillers, Legal stories
Human-narrated audio
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of While Justice Sleeps returns with another riveting and intricately plotted thriller, in…
which a blackmailed federal judge, a secret court and a brazen murder may lead to an unprecedented national crisis. "A thoroughly compelling take on the machinations of Washington and those covetous of power." — New York Magazine Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene is back, trying to get her feet on solid ground after unraveling an international conspiracy in While Justice Sleeps . But as the sparks of Congressional hearings and political skirmishes swirl around her, Avery is approached at a legal conference by Preston Davies, an unassuming young man and fellow law clerk to a federal judge in Idaho. Davies believes his boss, Judge Francesca Whitner, was being blackmailed in the days before she died. Desperate to understand what happened, he gives Avery a file, a burner phone, and a fearful warning that there are highly dangerous people involved. Another shocking murder leads Avery to a list of names – all federal judges – and, alarmingly, all judges on the FISA Court (the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), also known as America’s "secret court." It is this body which grants permission to the government to wiretap Americans or spy on corporations suspected of terrorism. As Avery digs deeper, she begins to see a frightening pattern – and she worries that something far more sinister may be unfolding inside the nation’s third branch of government. With lives at stake, Avery must race the clock and an unexpected enemy to find the answer. Drawn from today’s headlines and woven with her unique insider perspective, Stacey Abrams combines twisting plotlines, wry wit, and clever puzzles to create another immensely entertaining suspense novel
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Family and relationships, Poetry, Journals and memoirs
Human-narrated audio
This powerful memoir from a #1 New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medalist features poetry, letters, recipes, and other…
personal artifacts that provide an intimate look into his life and the loved ones he shares it with. In a powerfully intimate and non-traditional (or "new-fashioned") memoir, Kwame Alexander shares snapshots of a man learning how to love. He takes us through stories of his parents: from being awkward newlyweds in the sticky Chicago summer of 1967, to the sometimes-confusing ways they showed their love to each other, and for him. He explores his own relationships—his difficulties as a newly wedded, 22-year-old father, and the precariousness of his early marriage working in a jazz club with his second wife. Alexander attempts to deal with the unravelling of his marriage and the grief of his mother's recent passing while sharing the solace he found in learning how to perfect her famous fried chicken dish. With an open heart, Alexander weaves together memories of his past to try and understand his greatest love: his daughters. Full of heartfelt reminisces, family recipes, love poems, and personal letters, Why Fathers Cry at Night inspires bravery and vulnerability in every reader who has experienced the reckless passion, heartbreak, failure, and joy that define the whirlwind woes and wonders of love
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LGBTQ+ fiction
Human-narrated audio
"Erudite, intimate, hilarious, poignant . . . A gorgeously written novel of youth's promise, of the quest to find one's…
tribe and one's calling." -Leigh Haber, Oprah Daily. The Booker Prize finalist and widely acclaimed author of Real Life and Filthy Animals returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who "didn't seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection." These four are buffeted by a cast of artists, landlords, meatpacking workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of the city, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives-a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered. A novel of friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor's richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.
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Mysteries and crime stories, Suspense and thrillers, General fiction
Human-narrated audio
"Lazarre-White masterfully portrays people of multiple races, old and young. He also delivers Cosby's reflections on family, grief, and faith…
with genuine introspection and without distracting from the tense plotlines...This is a gripping, timely tale—beautifully told." — AudioFile (Earphones Award winner) The new novel from New York Times bestselling and Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author S. A. Cosby, "one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction." — The Washington Post . A Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust. Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface. Then a year to the day after Titus's election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus's deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer's possible connections to a local church and the town's harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town's Confederate history. Charon is Titus's home and his heart. But where faith and violence meet, there will be a reckoning. Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as "one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction" ( The Washington Post ). A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books
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Contemporary romance, Romance, Humourous fiction
Human-narrated audio
The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor,…
toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs. Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job. Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?