
Atavists: Stories
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $27.43
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Hillary Huber
-
Devon Sorvari
-
Patrick Zeller
-
Pete Cross
-
By:
-
Lydia Millet
About this listen
A fast-moving, heartbreaking collection of linked stories that evokes the joy and alienation between generations and classes in the era of mass overwhelm.
From Lydia Millet—“the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” (Chicago Tribune)—comes an inventive new collection of short fiction. Atavists follows a group of families, couples, and loners in their collisions, confessions, and conflicts in a post-pandemic America of artificially lush lawns, beauty salons, tech-bro mansions, assisted-living facilities, big-box stores, gastropubs, college campuses, and medieval role-playing festivals.
The various “-ists” who people these linked stories—from futurists to insurrectionists to cosmetologists—include a professor who’s morbidly fixated on an old friend’s Instagram account; a woman convinced that her bright young son-in-law is watching geriatric porn; a bodybuilder who lives an incel’s fantasy life; a couple who surveil the neighbors after finding obscene notes in their mailbox; a pretentious academic accused of plagiarism; and a suburban ex-marathoner dad obsessed with hosting refugees in a tiny house in his backyard.
©2025 Lydia Millet (P)2025 Dreamscape MediaListeners also enjoyed...
-
Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
-
-
Sublime Collaboration
- By Phip Herrick on 11-20-24
-
The Strange Case of Jane O.
- A Novel
- By: Karen Thompson Walker
- Narrated by: Jay Myers, Alex Sarrigeorgiou
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. Three days after her first visit to a psychiatrist, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.
-
-
The performances were soul-reaching
- By Laurie E. Barshay on 03-29-25
-
Stone Yard Devotional
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Wood
- Narrated by: Ailsa Piper
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
-
-
A profound inward journey
- By Kathlene barrett on 02-17-25
By: Charlotte Wood
-
Sleep
- A Novel
- By: Honor Jones
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a dazzling new talent, the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.
-
-
Best “literary fiction” book in years
- By Lydia Paddon on 05-30-25
By: Honor Jones
-
We Loved It All
- A Memory of Life
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed novelist Lydia Millet’s first work of nonfiction is a genre-defying tour de force that makes an impassioned argument for people to see their emotional and spiritual lives as infinitely dependent on the lives of nonhuman beings.
-
-
Grief, hope, and love
- By M. McGregor on 11-29-24
By: Lydia Millet
-
Flesh
- A Novel
- By: David Szalay
- Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead.
-
-
Everything
- By Amazon Customer on 04-06-25
By: David Szalay
-
Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
-
-
Sublime Collaboration
- By Phip Herrick on 11-20-24
-
The Strange Case of Jane O.
- A Novel
- By: Karen Thompson Walker
- Narrated by: Jay Myers, Alex Sarrigeorgiou
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. Three days after her first visit to a psychiatrist, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.
-
-
The performances were soul-reaching
- By Laurie E. Barshay on 03-29-25
-
Stone Yard Devotional
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Wood
- Narrated by: Ailsa Piper
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
-
-
A profound inward journey
- By Kathlene barrett on 02-17-25
By: Charlotte Wood
-
Sleep
- A Novel
- By: Honor Jones
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a dazzling new talent, the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.
-
-
Best “literary fiction” book in years
- By Lydia Paddon on 05-30-25
By: Honor Jones
-
We Loved It All
- A Memory of Life
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed novelist Lydia Millet’s first work of nonfiction is a genre-defying tour de force that makes an impassioned argument for people to see their emotional and spiritual lives as infinitely dependent on the lives of nonhuman beings.
-
-
Grief, hope, and love
- By M. McGregor on 11-29-24
By: Lydia Millet
-
Flesh
- A Novel
- By: David Szalay
- Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead.
-
-
Everything
- By Amazon Customer on 04-06-25
By: David Szalay
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Exit Zero
- Stories
- By: Marie-Helene Bertino
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness—haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.
-
The Float Test
- A Novel
- By: Lynn Steger Strong
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.
-
-
Tolstoy was wrong
- By tallybroom on 06-01-25
-
Mother River
- By: Can Xue, Chen Zeping - translator, Karen Gernant - translator
- Narrated by: Tim Lounibos, Rachel Yong
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Mother River, Can Xue, one of China's most daring and visionary writers, invites us into a surreal landscape where reality is as fluid as a river itself. This collection of thirteen stories weaves together vivid, dreamlike narratives that challenge our perceptions of time, identity, and existence.
By: Can Xue, and others
-
Hellions
- stories
- By: Julia Elliott
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson, Matt Godfrey
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript. In rural South Carolina, an alligator named Dragon becomes a beloved pet for a precocious, tough-talking twelve-year-old. During a long, muggy July, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills.
-
-
Each story is better than the last
- By Anonymous User on 04-20-25
By: Julia Elliott
-
A Children's Bible
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders - including Eve, who narrates the story - decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.
-
-
Not sure what to make of this
- By CCC on 10-20-20
By: Lydia Millet
-
The Pretender
- A Novel
- By: Jo Harkin
- Narrated by: John Hollingworth
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the tumultuous period of the Tudors' ascent, The Pretender brings to life the little-known story of Lambert Simnel. From humble beginnings as a peasant boy, Lambert's life takes an astonishing turn when, at just ten years old, he becomes a claimant to the English throne as one of the last of the Plantagenet line. As Lambert navigates the treacherous waters of royal intrigue and court life, complex themes of identity, power, and destiny unfold, weaving a tapestry of ambition and survival in a world where the stakes couldn't be higher.
-
-
Brilliant Simply Brilliant
- By C. Sanders on 05-10-25
By: Jo Harkin
-
Exit Zero
- Stories
- By: Marie-Helene Bertino
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness—haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.
-
The Float Test
- A Novel
- By: Lynn Steger Strong
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.
-
-
Tolstoy was wrong
- By tallybroom on 06-01-25
-
Mother River
- By: Can Xue, Chen Zeping - translator, Karen Gernant - translator
- Narrated by: Tim Lounibos, Rachel Yong
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Mother River, Can Xue, one of China's most daring and visionary writers, invites us into a surreal landscape where reality is as fluid as a river itself. This collection of thirteen stories weaves together vivid, dreamlike narratives that challenge our perceptions of time, identity, and existence.
By: Can Xue, and others
-
Hellions
- stories
- By: Julia Elliott
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson, Matt Godfrey
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript. In rural South Carolina, an alligator named Dragon becomes a beloved pet for a precocious, tough-talking twelve-year-old. During a long, muggy July, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills.
-
-
Each story is better than the last
- By Anonymous User on 04-20-25
By: Julia Elliott
-
A Children's Bible
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders - including Eve, who narrates the story - decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.
-
-
Not sure what to make of this
- By CCC on 10-20-20
By: Lydia Millet
-
The Pretender
- A Novel
- By: Jo Harkin
- Narrated by: John Hollingworth
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the tumultuous period of the Tudors' ascent, The Pretender brings to life the little-known story of Lambert Simnel. From humble beginnings as a peasant boy, Lambert's life takes an astonishing turn when, at just ten years old, he becomes a claimant to the English throne as one of the last of the Plantagenet line. As Lambert navigates the treacherous waters of royal intrigue and court life, complex themes of identity, power, and destiny unfold, weaving a tapestry of ambition and survival in a world where the stakes couldn't be higher.
-
-
Brilliant Simply Brilliant
- By C. Sanders on 05-10-25
By: Jo Harkin
-
Terrestrial History
- A Novel
- By: Joe Mungo Reed
- Narrated by: Dave Gillies, Lianne Walker
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It is a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah's help. Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough—and then things go terribly wrong.
-
-
Good book, but not for Audio
- By Paul on 05-16-25
By: Joe Mungo Reed
-
Love in Infant Monkeys
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Michael Brusasco, Pete Cross, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants - all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. In this critically acclaimed collection, Lydia Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture.
By: Lydia Millet
-
Sister Europe
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Naema, an elderly princess dedicated to her pet causes, is in a bind: struck by a malady that maroons her in Montreux, she’s unable to host an exclusive gala dinner in Berlin to honor the author Masud al-Huzeil for his lifetime achievement in Arabic literature. Not only is she unable to attend, RSVPs have been slow to materialize, and she’s reduced to begging the ancient award winner to find some attendees at the last minute. Masud invites his old friend Demian, a native Berliner, who in turn invites his two best friends.
-
-
a look into such a different world.
- By Rochelle Jewel Shapiro on 05-15-25
By: Nell Zink
-
A/S/L
- By: Jeanne Thornton
- Narrated by: Jeanne Thornton
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1998; Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, and they are making Saga of the Sorceress, a game that will change everything, if only for the three of them. 18 years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators.
-
-
Should have hired a narrator
- By Andy on 06-03-25
By: Jeanne Thornton
-
Dinosaurs
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lydia Millet's exquisite new novel tells the story of an Arizona man’s relationship with the family next door, whose house has one wall made entirely out of glass. The story delivers attraction and love, friendship and grief. But Millet also evokes the uncanny. Through close observation of human and animal life in the desert, she captures the daunting scale of human society without losing sight of the real difference one person can make in the world. Written with humor and benevolence, Dinosaurs asks big questions: Can a person be good? Can a man be good?
-
-
I don't get it!
- By Joan on 11-11-22
By: Lydia Millet
-
Eleven Percent
- By: Maren Uthaug, Caroline Waight - translator
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the New Time, a time not so different from our own except that the men are gone. All but eleven percent of them, that is, the minimum required to avoid inbreeding. But they are safely under lock and key in “spa” centers for women’s pleasure (trained by amazons to fulfill all desires) and procreation. A few women protest that the males should be treated better–more space, better food, but all agree that testosterone cannot be allowed to roam free. The old patriarchal cities are crumbling, becoming overgrown; people now live in “round communities.”
By: Maren Uthaug, and others
-
The Bright Years
- By: Sarah Damoff
- Narrated by: Ferdelle Capistrano, Joy Osmanski, Lee Osorio
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.
-
-
Worst book. I could not finish.
- By Deb P on 06-04-25
By: Sarah Damoff
-
Fair Play
- A Novel
- By: Louise Hegarty
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott, Aoife McMahon
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A group of friends gather at an Airbnb on New Year’s Eve. It is Benjamin’s birthday, and his sister Abigail is throwing him a jazz-age Murder Mystery themed party. As the night plays out, champagne is drunk, hors d’oeuvres consumed, and relationships forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses the wrong person; someone else’s heart is broken. In the morning, all of them wake up—except Benjamin. As Abigail attempts to wrap her mind around her brother’s death, an eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin's killer.
-
-
Can’t believe I spent my credit on this
- By Tess on 05-15-25
By: Louise Hegarty
-
Down in the Sea of Angels
- By: Khan Wong
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the year 2106, climate change has altered the world, transforming borders, cities, and socioeconomic structures. Additionally, a cosmic event known as the “Bloom” has awakened psionic abilities in a small percentage of the population. One such individual is Maida Sun, who possesses the ability to know the history of objects she touches. In the course of her new job with a cultural recovery project in San Francisco, she comes across an object that plunges her into the lives of Li Nuan, a sex-trafficked girl in a Chinatown brothel in 1906, and Nathan, a tech-designer and hedonist in 2006.
By: Khan Wong
-
Zeal
- A Novel
- By: Morgan Jerkins
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, Shayna Small
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins’s extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.
-
-
Couldn't Stop
- By 253 on 05-28-25
By: Morgan Jerkins
-
Gabriele
- By: Anne Berest, Claire Berest, Tina Kover - translator
- Narrated by: Barrie Kealoha
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Époque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde.
By: Anne Berest, and others
-
The Shadow Girls
- By: Nina Laurin
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Megan Tusing
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The latest thrilling and intense psychological suspense from the bestselling author of Girl Last Seen dives into the complicated and dark world of a prestigious ballet academy and explores just how far mothers will go to make their daughters stars.
By: Nina Laurin