Literary Criticism bestsellers

How Sondheim Can Change Your Life

By: Richard Schoch
Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
Length: 6 hours 55 minutes

An “incisive…heartwarming 1�7 (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of the powerful and universal lessons from the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, the genius behind such musical theater masterworks as Company, West Side Story, and Into the Woods.

Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, but for countless fans around the world, he is... Read more

How to Write Like a Writer

A Sharp and Subversive Guide to Ignoring Inhibitions, Inviting Inspiration, and Finding Your True Voice

By: Thomas C. Foster
Narrated by: David de Vries
Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

The New York Times bestselling author of the beloved classic How to Read Literature Like a Professor teaches you how to write everything from a report for your community association to a meaningful memoir in this masterful and engaging guide.Combing anecdotes and hard-won lessons from decades of teaching and writing—and invoking everyone from... Read more

The Art of Cruelty

A Reckoning

By: Maggie Nelson
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
Length: 8 hours 49 minutes

Today both reality and entertainment crowd our fields of vision with brutal imagery. The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the twentieth-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn... Read more

Letters to a Young Poet

By: Rainer Maria Rilke
Narrated by: Dan Stevens & Max Deacon
Length: 1 hour 51 minutes

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, read by Max Deacon and Dan Stevens.

At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these... Read more

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics: Series 5-8

More comical tales from Ancient Greece and Rome

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 7 hours 25 minutes

Four more series of Natalie Haynes' BBC Radio 4 show taking a comic look at the ancient world

Author, broadcaster and 'rock star classicist' Natalie Haynes is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome. In these four series, she explores some of the most prominent historical and mythological figures from the classical world, telling... Read more

Lord of the Flies

CliffsNotes

By: Maureen Kelly
Narrated by: Nick Podehl
Length: 3 hours 29 minutes

The CliffsNotes study guide on William Golding's Lord of the Flies supplements the original literary work, giving you background information about the author, an introduction to the work, a graphical character map, critical commentaries, expanded glossaries, and a comprehensive index, all for you to use as an educational tool that will allow you... Read more

Project 2025

An Objective Analysis of Policy Proposals and its Potential Impact on Everyday Life

By: Lois Alarcon
Narrated by: Caleb Steele & Sean Lester
Length: 11 hours 18 minutes

What does the future hold for America under Project 2025?
Go into the heart of one of the most talked-about initiatives shaping the nation’s direction today.
This in-depth, nonpartisan analysis reveals the Heritage Foundation’s ambitious blueprint and deciphers how these policy proposals could reshape the lives of everyday Americans. From economic... Read more

How to Read Novels Like a Professor

A Jaunty Exploration of the World’s Favorite Literary Form

By: Thomas C. Foster
Narrated by: Tristan Wright
Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

The follow-up and companion volume to the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor—a lively and entertaining guide to understanding and dissecting novels to make everyday reading more enriching, satisfying, and funOf all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed . . . and fretted over. From Miguel de... Read more

Oedipus Rex - King of Thebes

By: Sophocles
Narrated by: Matt Montanez
Length: 1 hour 33 minutes

"Oedipus Rex" (Ancient Greek: Οἰδίτ1�7ους Τύραννος, Oidipous Tyrannos), also known as "Oedipus the King" or "Oedipus the Tyrant," is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed about 429 BC (noted classicist Gilbert Murray, translator of this version of the play, rendered the title as "Oedipus, King of Thebes"). It was the second in... Read more

Burning Questions

Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021

By: Margaret Atwood
Narrated by: Margaret Atwood & Full Cast
Length: 18 hours 59 minutes

“Atwood is brilliant--obviously, yes, but wonderfully so, nonetheless. These pieces took me to somewhere I have never traveled on the wings of a goddess. She informs, scolds, gives warnings, and inspires action. She talks about books she's written and books others have written. She speaks with authority and humility. I listen with awe and gratitude. Read more

Pandora's Jar

Women in the Greek Myths

By: Natalie Haynes
Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

“Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of . . . but read on!”�1�7�Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's TaleThe national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships returns with a fascinating, eye-opening take on the remarkable women at the heart of classical stories Greek... Read more

Bad Feminist

Essays

By: Roxane Gay
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

“Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there.”  �1�7� Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?A New York Times BestsellerBest Book of the Year: NPR  1�7 Boston Globe  1�7... Read more

The Monster and the Mirror

Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell

By: K.J. Aiello
Narrated by: K.J. Aiello
Length: 9 hours 58 minutes

Revelatory memoir and cultural criticism that connects popular fantasy and our perceptions of mental illness to offer an empathetic path to compassionate care Growing up, K.J. Aiello was fascinated by magical stories of dragons, wizards, and fantasy, where monsters were not what they seemed and anything was possible. These books and films... Read more

Splinters

Another Kind of Love Story

By: Leslie Jamison
Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
Length: 8 hours 32 minutes

“Leslie Jamison is a truth-teller and this memoir about splitting with her husband and raising her infant daughter in her first year of life was absolutely gripping. Read it for the specificity of detail, the masterful descriptions of emotional and psychological shifts, and for her powerful prose. A knock-out! Read more

Novelist as a Vocation

By: Haruki Murakami
Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe
Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller—and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

"Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you... Read more

A Wilder Shore

The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson

By: Camille Peri
Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
Length: 16 hours 14 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE PICK

“Engrossing . . . [A] richly researched and vivid double portrait. 1�7  1�7/i>Phyllis Rose, The Atlantic

“A love story, an adventure story, two literary biographies in one; A Wilder Shore is these things and more—and it's very, very good.” �1�7�Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha... Read more

 1�7i>How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. 1�7br>
“A book that doesn’t seek to shut down the current literary discourse so much as shake it up. 1�7 (The New York Times Book... Read more

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need

By: Jessica Brody
Narrated by: Jessica Brody
Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

The first novel-writing guide from the best-selling Save the Cat! story-structure series, which reveals the 15 essential plot points needed to make any novel a success.

Novelist Jessica Brody presents a comprehensive story-structure guide for novelists that applies the famed Save the Cat! screenwriting methodology to the world of novel writing.... Read more

The Black Box

Writing the Race

By: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

“One of our finest historians shows how African Americans have used the written word to shape their realities, resisting the confines of the 'Black Box'. Read more

Mythology

By: Edith Hamilton
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Dive into the timeless tales of gods and heroes in this bestselling A-to-Z encyclopedia detailing classic myths and legends—perfect for curious readers and academics alike. Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture-the... Read more

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

Revised and Expanded edition

By: J. R. R. Tolkien
Narrated by: Samuel West, Mike Grady & Chris Smith
Length: 29 hours 1 minute

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world’s greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of... Read more

Year of the Monkey

By: Patti Smith
Narrated by: Patti Smith
Length: 4 hours 31 minutes

“Thanks to Libro.fm I just spent six hours with Patti Smith in my car. There is no better balm for getting unstuck than to listen to someone clearly enlivened by aging, loss, death and elections. Admittedly, Patti's global walkabout In The Year of the Monkey, a memoir of her life approaching the age of 70, often blurs dream and reality - and I've... Read more

How to Think Like a Woman

Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind

By: Regan Penaluna
Narrated by: Angie Kane
Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

As a young woman growing up in Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: Who are we, and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academic—the first step, she believed, to becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What she didn’t... Read more

The Uptown Local

Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: A Memoir

By: Cory Leadbeater
Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
Length: 6 hours

A brilliant debut memoir about a young writer—struggling with depression, family issues, and addiction—and his life-changing decade working for Joan DidionAs an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days... Read more

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

A Journey Through the Deep State

By: Kerry Howley
Narrated by: Nikki Massoud
Length: 7 hours

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST  1�7 A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR  1�7 A VANITY FAIR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable. 1�7  1�7 The New York Times

A wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America—from the acclaimed author of Thrown

Who are you? You are data... Read more

Dorothy Parker in Hollywood

By: Gail Crowther
Narrated by: Samantha Desz
Length: 7 hours 48 minutes

“Talent never comes easy, even when it seems so on the surface. Dorothy Parker is revered for her fast wit and sharp tongue, abilities that didn't always serve her well in real life. This book tells the important part of her life away from the Algonquin Roundtable: Hollywood, where she did some of her best work, often without credit - and lived... Read more

Bibliophobia

A Memoir

By: Sarah Chihaya
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

“A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.”�1�7�Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

“A must for the obsessive reader.”�1�7�Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably... Read more

The Language of the Night

Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan & Michael Crouch
Length: TBA

Featuring a new introduction by Ken Liu, this revised edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s first full-length collection of essays covers her background as a writer and educator, her thoughts on writing, and her commentary on literary science fiction and fantasy and their future.

“We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark;... Read more

How to Read a Book

The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

By: Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
Narrated by: Edward Holland
Length: 15 hours 25 minutes

A CNN Book of the Week: “Explains not just why we should read books, but how we should read them. It’�1�7�1�7/b>s masterfully done. 1�7 —Farheed Zakaria

Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic... Read more