Literary Fiction Audiobooks | Literature

"Brought to you by Penguin. A searing, sunlit debut about the powerful bonds that make and break an Iranian-American family Three young brothers leave Los Angeles in the dead of night for Iran, taken by their father from their mother to a country and an ancestral home they barely recognize. They return to the Valley months later, spit back into American life and changed in inexorable ways. Under the dazzling light of the California sun, our protagonist, the youngest brother, begins to piece together a childhood shattered by his father's violence, a queer adolescence marked by a shy, secret love affair with a boy he meets on the basketball court, and his ever-changing status as a Muslim in America at the turn of the new millennium. Lyrical and open-hearted, I WILL GREET THE SUN AGAIN is an unforgettable portrait of a family being torn apart, and a boy emerging from its ashes. 'I WILL GREET THE SUN AGAIN is exquisite, heart-breaking, incredibly beautiful. The whole narrative thrums with a bright, warm longing. You can feel the sunshine of LA and Iran, the rhythm of Khashayar J Khabushani's voice. This is a novel to return to again and again.' Caleb Azumah Nelson, award-winning, bestselling author of OPEN WATER ©2023 Khashayar J. Khabushani (P)2023 Penguin Audio"

Khashayar J. Khabushani (Author), Sean Rohani (Narrator)

Audiobook

But the Girl

"Brought to you by Penguin. I used to have this line I saved and brought out for grant applications and writers festivals - that having been Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina and Esther Greenwood all my life, my writing was an opportunity for the reader to have to be me. Irreverent, witty and wise, But the Girl is a coming-of-age story about not wanting to leave your family behind Girl was born on the very day her parents and grandmother immigrated from Malaysia to Australia. The story goes that her mother held on tight to her pelvic muscles in an effort to gift her the privilege of an Australian passport. But it's hard to be the embodiment of all your family's hopes and dreams, especially in a country that's hostile to your very existence. When Girl receives a scholarship to travel to the UK, she is finally free for the first time. In London and then Scotland she is meant to be working on a PhD on Sylvia Plath and writing a postcolonial novel. But Girl can't stop thinking about her upbringing and the stories of the people who raised her. How can she reconcile their expectations with her reality? Did Sylvia Plath have this problem? What even is a 'postcolonial novel'? And what if the story of becoming yourself is not about carving out a new identity, but learning to understand the people who made you who you are? ©2023 Jessica Zhan Mei Yu (P)2023 Penguin Audio"

Jessica Zhan Mei Yu (Author), Nikita Waldron (Narrator)

Audiobook

Prophet

"Brought to you by Penguin. Daring, surprising and superbly plotted, this is a fresh, thrilling page-turner from a dynamic new duo in genre fiction Your happiest memory is their deadliest weapon. THIS IS PROPHET. It knows when you were happiest. It gives life to your fondest memories and uses them to destroy you. But who has created it? And what do they want? An all-American diner appears overnight in a remote British field. It's brightly lit, warm and inviting but it has no power, no water, no connection to the real world. It's like a memory made flesh - a nostalgic flight of fancy. More and more objects materialise: toys, fairground rides, pets and other treasured mementos of the past. And the deaths quickly follow. Something is bringing these memories to life, then stifling innocent people with their own joy. This is a weapon like no other. But nobody knows who created it, or why. Sunil Rao seems a surprising choice of investigator. Chaotic and unpredictable, the former agent is the antithesis of his partner Colonel Adam Rubenstein, the model of a military man. But Sunil has the unique ability to distinguish truth from lies: in objects, words and people, in the past and in real time. And Adam is the only one who truly knows him, after a troubled past together. Now, as they battle this strange new reality, they are drawn closer than ever to defend what they both hold most dear. For Prophet can weaponise the past. But only love will protect the future. ©2023 Helen Macdonald & Sin Blaché (P)2023 Penguin Audio"

Helen MacDonald, Sin Blaché (Author), Charlotte Davey, Jake Fairbrother, Ryan Forde Iosco (Narrator)

Audiobook

In Bloom: 'A beautiful tale of resilience' Heat

"Preorder THEM GIRLS, the breathtaking new Eva Verde novel, coming Spring 2026. A deeply affecting novel, In Bloom tells of strength, survival, forgiveness, resilience and determination, and the fierce love and unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters. Delph has kept herself small and quiet as a form of self-protection, ever since the love of her life Sol's untimely death left her pregnant and alone at the age of twenty-four. Theirs was such a once-in-a-lifetime love, that the loss of her soulmate broke her heart ‒ and almost broke her, too. Years on, Delph's protective bubble bursts when her daughter Roche moves out of the flat Delph shares with her partner Itsy and in with her estranged nan, Moon. Now that it's just the two of them, the cracks in Delph and Itsy's relationship begin to grow. Feeling on the outside of the bond between her fierce-yet-flaky tarot-reading mother and volatile martial-arts-champion daughter, Delph begins questioning her own freedom. Is her life with Itsy all it seems? And has keeping small and safe truly been her choice all these years…? Praise for In Bloom: 'I'm a sucker for a mother-daughter tale at the best of times and In Bloom certainly didn't let me down. Bittersweet, funny, very real. I couldn't put it down' Louise Hare 'Sensitively explores the lives of three generations of women as they search for freedom from guilt and regret. In this novel of hope and love Eva Verde shows that there is always the potential for a second chance' Sarah Armstrong, author of The Moscow Wolves series 'A beautiful tale of resilience' Heat 'A really powerful, beautifully written story about three generations of working class women with each character so vividly drawn that they leap off the page' Red Online 'Raw and insightful' Good Housekeeping Praise for Lives Like Mine: 'Londoner Eva Verde's Lives Like Mine explores the theme of a school-run affair and the complications and joys it brings to a dual-heritage mother struggling with her intolerant in-laws' Independent 'A bitter sweet story of longing and self-discovery, of deceit and regret. Visceral, authentic and funny, Eva's prose reads like something between a conversation and a confession. An exciting new voice and a joy to read' Kit de Waal 'Eva's writing breaks new ground in a confident and original voice, with a sharp eye for detail, wonderful characterisation and some seriously badass humour' Yvvette Edwards, author of the Man Booker Prize longlisted novel, A Cupboard Full of Coats "

Eva Verde (Author), Ayesha Antoine (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sea Change

"For fans of Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea 'Absolutely stunning . . . Full of longing, mystery, fear and hope. I loved this book to pieces!' - Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face Ro is stuck. She's just entered her thirties, she's estranged from her mother, and her boyfriend has just left her to join a mission to Mars. Her days are spent dragging herself to her menial job at an aquarium, and her nights are spent drinking sharktinis (mountain dew and copious amounts of gin, plus a hint of jalapeno). With her best friend pulling away to focus on her upcoming wedding, Ro's only companion is Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus who also happens to be Ro's last remaining link to her father, a marine biologist who disappeared while on an expedition when Ro was a teenager. When Dolores is sold to a wealthy investor intent on moving her to a private aquarium, Ro finds herself on the precipice of self-destruction. Wading through memories of her youth, Ro has one last chance to come to terms with her childhood trauma, recommit to those around her, and find her place in an ever-changing world. 'Utterly original' - Bryan Washington, author of Memorial 'Sea Change stole my big weirdo heart' - Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl"

Gina Chung (Author), Jeena Yi (Narrator)

Audiobook

Anam

"'A profound meditation on forgiveness and forgetting . . . Dao's extraordinary debut novel combines fiction and history to chronicle his Vietnamese grandparents' traumatic life.' - The Observer Moving from 1930s Hanoi through wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, a deeply moving novel of memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, exile and home. Born to a Vietnamese family based in Melbourne, the narrator is haunted by the story of his grandfather whose ten-year imprisonment by the Communist government in Vietnam's notorious Chi Hoa prison looms large over his own place in the world and his choice to become a human rights lawyer. As he oscillates between identities of his Australian upbringing and his Vietnamese heritage, it is the death of his grandfather in a Parisian suburb and the birth of his daughter that crystallize the strands of thought that have shaped his life. André Dao's Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten by archives and by families. As the grandson sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about: a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them as well? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting?"

André Dao (Author), André Dao (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Turnglass: The Sunday Times Bestseller - turn the book, uncover the mystery

"THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'The Turnglass is a bold, breathtaking piece of writing that absolutely nails its two books in one conceit. I doubt I'll ever read anything like it again, which is the highest compliment I can offer' Stuart Turton 'Not just a book, but an experience - one in which twists and turns are both on the page and in the very act of reading itself. Two haunting narratives conspire to create a dark, menacing tale that spans half a century of secrets as they echo back and forth - all while the sand slowly drains away . . . This is a story about stories and their perspectives, the passage of time and the slow march of the inevitable. Vivid, resonant, melancholy and beautiful' Janice Hallett 'A stunning, ingenious, truly immersive mystery. The Turnglass is a thrilling delight' Chris Whitaker Stuart Turton meets The Magpie Murders in this immersive and unique story for fans of clever crime fiction. 1880s England. On the bleak island of Ray, off the Essex coast, an idealistic young doctor, Simeon Lee, is called from London to treat his cousin, Parson Oliver Hawes, who is dying. Parson Hawes, who lives in the only house on the island - Turnglass House - believes he is being poisoned. And he points the finger at his sister-in-law, Florence. Florence was declared insane after killing Oliver's brother in a jealous rage and is now kept in a glass-walled apartment in Oliver's library. And the secret to how she came to be there is found in Oliver's tête-bêche journal, where one side tells a very different story from the other. 1930s California. Celebrated author Oliver Tooke, the son of the state governor, is found dead in his writing hut off the coast of the family residence, Turnglass House. His friend Ken Kourian doesn't believe that Oliver would take his own life. His investigations lead him to the mysterious kidnapping of Oliver's brother when they were children, and the subsequent secret incarceration of his mother, Florence, in an asylum. But to discover the truth, Ken must decipher clues hidden in Oliver's final book, a tête-bêche novel - which is about a young doctor called Simeon Lee . . . PRAISE FOR THE TURNGLASS: 'Rubin has pulled off the difficult trick of writing an ambitious novel that is also an easy, enjoyable read' The Times, Crime Book of the Month 'An intricate and thoroughly mesmerising tale of family plots and schemes across several generations' Guardian 'Your initial amazement at his ingenuity comes to sit alongside an appreciation of the heart and depth he brings to his stories. A risky idea, beautifully executed' The Telegraph"

Gareth Rubin (Author), George Greenland, Joe Eyre (Narrator)

Audiobook

California Golden: A Novel

"Two sisters navigate the thrilling, euphoric early days of California surf culture in this dazzling saga of ambition, sacrifice, and the tangled ties between mothers and daughters from the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife. "A shimmering rendering . . . pairs the surf culture of the Beach Boys with the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll of Daisy Jones & The Six."-Entertainment Weekly ("Best Books of the Summer") Southern California, 1960s: endless sunny days surfing in Malibu, followed by glittering neon nights at Whisky a Go Go. In an era when women are expected to be housewives, Carol Donnelly breaks the mold as a legendary female surfer struggling to compete in a male-dominated sport-and her daughters, Mindy and Ginger, bear the weight of Carol's unconventional lifestyle. The Donnelly sisters grow up enduring their mother's absence-physically, when she's at the beach, and emotionally, the rare times she's at home. To escape questions about Carol's whereabouts-and to chase her elusive affection-they cut school to spend their days in the surf. From her first time on a board, Mindy is a natural, but Ginger, two years younger, feels out of place in the water. As they grow up and their lives diverge, Mindy and Ginger's relationship ebbs and flows. Mindy finds herself swept up in celebrity, complete with beachside love affairs, parties at the Playboy Club, and a USO tour in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Ginger, desperate for a community of her own, is tugged into the dangerous counterculture of drugs and cults. But through it all, their sense of duty to each other survives, as the girls are forever connected by the emotional damage they carry from their unorthodox childhood. A gripping, emotional story set at a time when mothers were expected to be Donna Reed, not Gidget, California Golden is an unforgettable novel about three women living in a society that was shifting as tempestuously as the breaking waves."

Melanie Benjamin (Author), Christine Lakin (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Breakaway: A Novel

"From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner comes "a zippy rom-com with genuine heart and soul" (People) about love, family, friendship, secrets, and one woman's life-changing journey. Thirty-three-year-old Abby Stern has made it to a happy place. True, she still has gig jobs instead of a career, and the apartment where she's lived since college still looks like she's just moved in. But she's got good friends, her bike, and her bicycling club in Philadelphia. She's at peace with her plus-size body—at least, most of the time—and she's on track to marry Mark Medoff, her childhood sweetheart that she met at the weight-loss camp that her perpetually dieting mother forced her to attend. Yet Abby can't escape the feeling that something isn't right...or the memories of one thrilling night she spent with a man named Sebastian two years previously. When Abby gets a last-minute invitation to lead a cycling trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, she's happy to have time away from Mark, a chance to reflect and make up her mind. But things get complicated fast. First, Abby spots a familiar face in the group—Sebastian, the one-night stand she thought she'd never see again. Despite their undeniable chemistry, Abby is determined to keep her distance. Then there's a surprise last-minute addition to the trip: her mother, Eileen, the woman Abby blames for a lifetime of body shaming and insecurities she's still trying to undo. Over two weeks and more than seven hundred miles, strangers become friends, hidden truths come to light, a teenage girl with a secret unites the riders in unexpected ways...and Abby is forced to reconsider everything she believes about herself, her mother, and the nature of love."

Jennifer Weiner (Author), Jenni Barber, Joy Osmanski, Nikki Blonsky, Santino Fontana, Soneela Nankani (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Wren, The Wren: The Booker Prize-winning author

"Brought to you by Penguin. Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024. Carmel had been alone all her life. She had been alone since she was twelve years old. The baby knew all this. They looked at each other; one life into another life, and the baby knew exactly how alone her mother had been. Nell - funny, brave and so much loved - is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell's leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. And across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel's famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions. This is a meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A generational saga that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women in the face of promises false and true. Above all, it is an exploration of the love between mother and daughter - sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent. ©2023 Anne Enright (P)2023 Penguin Audio"

Anne Enright (Author), Anne Enright, Aoife Duffin, Liza Ross, Owen Roe (Narrator)

Audiobook

Normal Rules Don't Apply

"Brought to you by Penguin. The first story collection from Kate Atkinson in twenty years, Normal Rules Don't Apply is a dazzling array of eleven interconnected tales from the bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life In this first full collection since Not the End of the World, we meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man whose luck changes when a horse speaks to him. With clockwork intricacy, inventiveness and sharp social observation, Kate Atkinson conjures a feast for the imagination, a constantly changing multiverse in which nothing is quite as it seems. ‘What really binds these stories is their underlying theme, which has perhaps always been Atkinson’s true subject: the nature of storytelling itself’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Life in all of its surreal, tragic and comic glory is perfectly captured within these pages’ Red ‘Sublime’ Good Housekeeping ©2023 Kate Atkinson (P)2023 Penguin Audio"

Kate Atkinson (Author), Paterson Joseph (Narrator)

Audiobook

How to Care for a Human Girl: A Novel

"From "a writer at the top of her game" (The New York Times) comes a bighearted and sharply funny debut novel about two estranged sisters and the crossroads they face after becoming unexpectedly pregnant at the same time. Two years after the death of their mother, Jada and Maddy Battle both navigate unplanned pregnancies. Jada, a thirty-one-year-old psychology PhD student living in Pittsburgh, quietly obtains an abortion without telling her husband, but the secret causes turmoil in her already shaky marriage. Back home in rural Pennsylvania, nineteen-year-old Maddy, who spends her time caring for birds at a wildlife rehabilitation center, is paid off by the man who got her pregnant to get an abortion. But an unsettling visit to a crisis pregnancy center adds to her doubts about whether to go through with it. Although Maddy still hasn't forgiven Jada for a terrible betrayal, she goes to her for support, only to discover the cracks in the façade of her sister's seemingly perfect life. As their past resentments boil over, the sisters must navigate the consequences of their choices and determine how best to care for themselves and each other. With luminous prose and laser-sharp psychological insight, How to Care for a Human Girl is a compassionate and unforgettable examination of the complexities of choice, the special intimacy of sisterhood, and the bizarre ways our heated political moment manifests in daily life."

Ashley Wurzbacher (Author), Nikki Massoud, Stefanie Kay (Narrator)

Audiobook

Literary Fiction Audiobooks in Literature