Literary Fiction Audiobooks | Literature

"A New York Times Editors' Choice * One of The Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fiction of 2023 * One of Chicago Public Library's Favorite Books of the Year * A LitHub Best Book of 2023 From the author of Infinite Country—a New York Times bestseller and a Reese's Book Club pick—comes a "rich and compelling" (The Washington Post) collection of ten exquisite, award-winning short stories set across the Americas and linked by themes of migration, sacrifice, and moral compromise. Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother's bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami, to life-altering ends. "If you're looking for a collection that will touch your heart and make you look at your fellow humans more generously, this one's a can't-miss" (Good Housekeeping). Author Patricia Engel is "a wonder" (Lauren Groff) and these intimate and panoramic stories bring to life the liminality of regret, the vibrancy of community, and the epic deeds and quiet moments of love."

Patricia Engel (Author), Aida Reluzco, Alejandra Reynoso, Anthony Rey Perez, Cynthia Farrell, Dominique Franceschi, Frankie Corzo, Gary Tiedemann, George Newbern, Gisela Chipé, Inés Del Castillo, Patricia Engel (Narrator)

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The Deluge

"A New York Times Notable Book "This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting." —Stephen King From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity. In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come. From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity's last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have."

Stephen Markley (Author), Aida Reluzco, André Santana, Aven Shore, Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Gibson Frazier, Joy Osmanski, Melissa Redmond, Neil Shah, Pete Simonelli, Shakira Shute, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Soneela Nankani, Stephen Graybill (Narrator)

Audiobook

Please Report Your Bug Here: A Novel

"“An unexpected, inventive, heartfelt riff on the workplace novel—startup realism with a multiverse twist.” —Anna Wiener, author of Uncanny Valley 'Torian Brackett shines in his performance of this debut novel. Showing his impressive range as a narrator, Brackett deftly switches between descriptions of picturesque San Francisco neighborhoods and Block's endless questions about his priorities and future.'- AudioFile Introducing Josh Riedel's adrenaline-packed debut novel about a dating app employee who discovers a glitch that transports him to other worlds Once you sign an NDA it's good for life. Meaning legally, I shouldn't tell you this story. But I have to. A college grad with the six-figure debt to prove it, Ethan Block views San Francisco as the place to be. Yet his job at hot new dating app DateDate is a far cry from what he envisioned. Instead of making the world a better place, he reviews flagged photo queues, overworked and stressed out. But that's about to change. Reeling from a breakup, Ethan decides to view his algorithmically matched soulmate on DateDate. He overrides the system and clicks on the profile. Then, he disappears. One minute, he’s in a windowless office, and the next, he’s in a field of endless grass, gasping for air. When Ethan snaps back to DateDate HQ, he’s convinced a coding issue caused the blip. Except for anyone to believe him, he’ll need evidence. As Ethan embarks on a wild goose chase, moving from dingy startup think tanks to Silicon Valley’s dominant tech conglomerate, it becomes clear that there’s more to DateDate than meets the eye. With the stakes rising, and a new world at risk, Ethan must choose who—and what—he believes in. Adventurous and hypertimely, Please Report Your Bug Here is an inventive millennial coming-of-age story, a dark exploration of the corruption now synonymous with Big Tech, and, above all, a testament to the power of human connection in our digital era. A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company."

Josh Riedel (Author), Torian Brackett (Narrator)

Audiobook

Moonrise Over New Jessup

"Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a thought-provoking and enchanting debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the civil rights movement in Alabama. It's 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their "side of the woods." In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup's longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple's expulsion-or worse-from the home they both hold dear. But as Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup's political power, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town. Jamila Minnicks's debut novel is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America. Readers of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half and Robert Jones, Jr.'s The Prophets will love Moonrise Over New Jessup. "With compelling characters and a heart-pounding plot, Jamila Minnicks pulled me into pages of history I'd never turned before." -Barbara Kingsolver "An immersive and timely recasting of history by a gloriously talented writer to watch. You will fall in love with New Jessup: the town and the book." -Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of The Revisioners"

Jamila Minnicks (Author), Karen Chilton (Narrator)

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Little Miseries: This Is Not a Story About My Childhood

"Sometimes misery is little, and sometimes it is epic and yawning, capable of swallowing every childhood memory. There are the miseries the Castles will talk about—old family lore about a great great great uncle who was split in two while connecting railroad cars—and the misery none of them will face. There are days at the lake, placid except for inexplicable tension the parents won't address and the three Castle children don't have names for. There are stories about sex and gore at cocktail parties, around bonfires, at sleepovers, in classrooms, and in the newspaper. Everyday growing pains are shadowed by the abduction of a local girl, reports of a massacre of nurses, and the harm done by strangers and by those who are charged to care for children. To survive childhood is to survive all of these miseries and tragedies—because growing up means waking up to a world that can be random and brutal. With some thematic overlap with Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm or what Mad Men would have been like if Sally Draper got to tell her side of the story, Little Miseries is set in Iowa and Minnesota in the 60s and 70s, a time and place when parents didn’t talk much to their children but certainly talked around them—while dipping into whiskey or rum punch, whether on a long drive, on the beach, or in the comfort of their own home. Little Miseries is a tribute to what it means to come into awareness, to be a part of a family unit, and to bear responsibility for those you loved and who have been harmed along the way."

Kimberly Olson Fakih (Author), Elizabeth Cottle (Narrator)

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Death Comes for the Archbishop

"In 1851, Father Jean Marie Latour becomes the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. While the area is American by law, it's still Mexican and Indian by custom and belief. During the years that follow, Latour tirelessly but gently spreads his faith while facing external and internal obstacles. Loosely based on the life of Jean-Baptiste Lamy and the construction of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, this novel chronicles the events that occur after the capture of the southwest by American forces during the Mexican-American war."

Willa Cather (Author), Pete Cross (Narrator)

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The Shards

"A sensational new novel from the bestselling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city. His first novel in 13 years, The Shards is Bret Easton Ellis at his inimitable best. Los Angeles, 1981 –17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends, even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equalled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. Can he trust his friends – or his own mind – to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, Bret spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret’s life at 17 – sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage."

Bret Easton Ellis (Author), Bret Easton Ellis (Narrator)

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Hotel Milano: Booker shortlisted author of Europa

"Brought to you by Penguin. From the bestselling writer of Italian Ways, Europa and The Hero's Way, a story set during the first days of lockdown in Europe, about the unexpected kindness of strangers and one man's emotional reckoning. Milan, 2020. Drawn abruptly from his reclusive life in London for a friend's funeral, Frank finds himself in the eye of a pandemic he had barely registered on the news. From the relative comfort of his balcony at Hotel Milano, he surveys the train station across the piazza, seeing the mad dash for the last trains, hearing the sirens and watching the police stop people in the street. He feels himself remote from it all. Then, one night, the sound of a child's footsteps leads him to discover a family sheltering secretly above him: a family who need his help. As the days pass, this reserved and difficult man begins to open himself to others. Faced with the task of saving a life, he must also take stock of his own. ©2023 Tim Parks (P)2023 Penguin Audio"

Tim Parks (Author), Sean Baker (Narrator)

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Night Letter

"Eighteen-year-old Travis Hollister is always the stranger who comes to town. As a twelve-year-old escaping a disordered and unhappy home, Travis left the Midwest to spend a summer with his grandparents in the Deep South. There he met Delia, the love of his life, who, tragically, was beyond his reach for two reasons—she was his aunt and she was sixteen years old. That summer made Travis guilty of crimes discovered and undiscovered. For his public wrongs, he did time, six years in a Nebraska reform school. For his undiscovered wrongs, he suffers mightily and wants desperately to be shriven. Can he achieve redemption or is he bound for the hell on earth he can imagine all too well? Released from reform school and driven by his need to rejoin the human community, he returns a stranger to Panama City, Florida, searching for Delia. Who is she now? What have the years done to her? Will she welcome the return of Travis or fear it? Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” In the course of this story, Travis learns that other people can also be salvation. Amid a cast of characters struggling with their own needs, desires, tragedies, and, yes, crimes, Travis finds violence, hatred, vengeance, and, in greater measure, friendship, honor, loyalty, and at least a glimpse of the road to redemption."

Sterling Watson (Author), Nick Walther (Narrator)

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[Spanish] - Humo

"Una mujer, un niño y una gata conviven en una cabaña en pleno bosque, calladamente la mayor parte del tiempo, pues el niño apenas habla. No tienen contacto con nadie, excepto por las visitas de un hombre que les trae provisiones de vez en cuando. No son familia, pero juntos salen adelante. Fuera, la naturaleza se está volviendo impredecible: el paisaje deslumbrante que rodea a los protagonistas adquiere a veces matices siniestros. Ellos subsisten con lo que obtienen de un huerto que cada vez da menos frutos, y con lo que consiguen del bosque inmediato. A lo lejos, en las ciudades, parece que también hay extrañas turbulencias, cuya amenaza se proyecta sobre la cabaña. José Ovejero nos presenta a estos personajes solitarios, sin alma de héroes, y nos hace reflexionar sobre el sentido de la vida, los lazos que nos unen a las personas de nuestro entorno y la capacidad de sobrevivir en situaciones adversas."

José Ovejero (Author), Marta Rodríguez (Narrator)

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[Spanish] - Las mujeres del Flanagans

"Las mujeres del Flanagans es la segunda parte de la fascinante historia de uno de los hoteles más emblemáticos de Londres. Londres, Nochevieja de 1982. Es la década de 1980, el desenfreno y las fiestas nocturnas están a la orden del día. Como cada año, el lujoso hotel Flanagans da la bienvenida al nuevo año, y los invitados bailan y beben bajo el resplandor de las lámparas de cristal. Las nuevas propietarias, Elinor y Emma, han luchado mano a mano y han hecho grandes sacrificios por el hotel, pero, aunque han conseguido alcanzar su objetivo, el precio a pagar ha sido muy alto. Oscuros secretos que podrían destruir su amistad amenazan con salir a la luz. ¿Podrán superar este nuevo revés del destino? ¿Sobrevivirá el hotel si se descubre la verdad sobre las propietarias?"

åsa Hellberg (Author), Anna Mestre (Narrator)

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The Age of Goodbyes

"By one of Southeast Asia's most exciting writers, The Age of Goodbyes is a wildly inventive account of family history, political turmoil, and the redemptive grace of storytelling. In 1969, in the wake of Malaysia's deadliest race riots, a woman named Du Li An secures her place in society by marrying a gangster. In a parallel narrative, a critic known only as The Fourth Person explores the work of a writer also named Du Li An. And a third storyline is in the second person; 'you' are reading a novel titled The Age of Goodbyes. Floundering in the wake of 'your' mother's death, 'you' are trying to unpack the secrets surrounding 'your' lineage. The Age of Goodbyes is the acclaimed debut by Li Zi Shu. The winner of multiple awards and a Taiwanese bestseller, this dazzling novel is a profound exploration of what happens to personal memory when official accounts of history distort and render it taboo."

Li Zi Shu (Author), Catherine Ho (Narrator)

Audiobook

Literary Fiction Audiobooks in Literature