
Colored Television
A Novel
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 $20.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Kristen Ariza
-
By:
-
Danzy Senna
About this listen
A brilliant dark comedy about love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial-identity-industrial complex from the bestselling author of Caucasia
Jane has high hopes that her life is about to turn around. After a long, precarious stretch bouncing among sketchy rentals and sublets, she and her family are living in luxury for a year, house-sitting in the hills above Los Angeles. The gig magically coincides with Jane’s sabbatical, giving her the time and space she needs to finish her second novel—a centuries-spanning epic her artist husband, Lenny, dubs her “mulatto War and Peace.” Finally, some semblance of stability and success seems to be within her grasp.
But things don’t work out quite as hoped. Desperate for a plan B, like countless writers before her Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood. When she finagles a meeting with Hampton Ford, a hot producer with a major development deal at a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer,” and together they begin to develop “the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies.” Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.
Funny, piercing, and compulsively listenable, Colored Television is Senna’s most on-the-pulse, ambitious, and rewarding novel yet.
©2024 Danzy Senna (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Caucasia
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at school. Despite their differences, Cole is Birdie's confidant, her protector, the mirror by which she understands herself. Then their parents' marriage collapses.
-
-
Wanted it to be better
- By AmyP33 on 05-27-25
By: Danzy Senna
-
Orbital
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Sarah Naudi
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.
-
-
Dull
- By ELLEZEE on 02-03-24
By: Samantha Harvey
-
Three Days in June
- A Novel
- By: Anne Tyler
- Narrated by: J. Smith-Cameron
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.
-
-
Simple, Enjoyable, performed 5 stars
- By PM on 02-14-25
By: Anne Tyler
-
Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
- A Personal History
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 1968 marriage of Danzy Senna's parents, a white woman with Boston blueblood lineage and the son of a struggling black single mother, was a metaphor of a hopeful era. Both were writers and activists in the civil-rights movement. But the marriage was followed eight years later by one of the ugliest divorces in Boston's history. Decades later, Senna looks back at the opposing American histories that her parents had tried so hard to overcome.
-
-
wonerful
- By Kcsiki on 03-24-20
By: Danzy Senna
-
Erasure
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days."
-
-
A Rollercoaster That Never Descends
- By Amazon Customer on 01-07-24
By: Percival Everett
-
Piglet
- A Novel
- By: Lottie Hazell
- Narrated by: Rebekah Hinds
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.
-
-
Revelation through Food
- By M.A. on 10-07-24
By: Lottie Hazell
-
Caucasia
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at school. Despite their differences, Cole is Birdie's confidant, her protector, the mirror by which she understands herself. Then their parents' marriage collapses.
-
-
Wanted it to be better
- By AmyP33 on 05-27-25
By: Danzy Senna
-
Orbital
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Sarah Naudi
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.
-
-
Dull
- By ELLEZEE on 02-03-24
By: Samantha Harvey
-
Three Days in June
- A Novel
- By: Anne Tyler
- Narrated by: J. Smith-Cameron
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.
-
-
Simple, Enjoyable, performed 5 stars
- By PM on 02-14-25
By: Anne Tyler
-
Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
- A Personal History
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 1968 marriage of Danzy Senna's parents, a white woman with Boston blueblood lineage and the son of a struggling black single mother, was a metaphor of a hopeful era. Both were writers and activists in the civil-rights movement. But the marriage was followed eight years later by one of the ugliest divorces in Boston's history. Decades later, Senna looks back at the opposing American histories that her parents had tried so hard to overcome.
-
-
wonerful
- By Kcsiki on 03-24-20
By: Danzy Senna
-
Erasure
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days."
-
-
A Rollercoaster That Never Descends
- By Amazon Customer on 01-07-24
By: Percival Everett
-
Piglet
- A Novel
- By: Lottie Hazell
- Narrated by: Rebekah Hinds
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.
-
-
Revelation through Food
- By M.A. on 10-07-24
By: Lottie Hazell
-
Dream Count
- A Novel
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sandra Okuboyejo, A'rese Emokpae, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship.
-
-
A slow burn
- By Cheryl on 05-25-25
-
Shred Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Betsy Lerner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
-
-
Fairly common storyline
- By Placeholder on 10-22-24
By: Betsy Lerner
-
Good Material
- A Novel
- By: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Arthur Darvill, Vanessa Kirby
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…
-
-
not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-24
By: Dolly Alderton
-
Long Island Compromise
- A Novel
- By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.
-
-
We need more from Taffy Brodesser-Akner!
- By Ximena Enriquez on 08-31-24
-
Whale Fall
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth O'Connor
- Narrated by: Dyfrig Morris, Gabrielle Glaister, Gwyneth Keyworth, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.
-
-
Excellent book for audible
- By Lilly on 01-01-25
-
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus
- A Novel
- By: Emma Knight
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she’ll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father’s—now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox—lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox’s centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents’ secret, just as she’s falling in love for the first time . . .
-
-
Terrible read terrible slow story. Shows it’s the first novel
- By Marc Nasoff on 03-04-25
By: Emma Knight
-
Dead in Long Beach, California
- A Novel
- By: Venita Blackburn
- Narrated by: Lynnette Freeman
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles—and triples—down on posing as her brother.
-
-
Great Literary Work
- By Dr Ag on 02-25-24
By: Venita Blackburn
-
Martyr!
- A Novel
- By: Kaveh Akbar
- Narrated by: Arian Moayed
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest.
-
-
One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
- By James on 04-06-24
By: Kaveh Akbar
-
Great Expectations
- A Novel
- By: Vinson Cunningham
- Narrated by: Aaron Goodson
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in this “coming of age story that captures the soul of America” (The Washington Post), the debut novel from The New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Vinson Cunningham.
-
-
Not the political story I expected
- By Aeroduncan on 12-19-24
-
Blob
- A Love Story
- By: Maggie Su
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Aimless after getting dumped by her boyfriend and dropping out of college, Vi works at the front desk of a hotel where she greets guests, refills cucumber water samovars, and tries to evade her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. Little does Vi know her life is about to be permanently transformed when she agrees to a night out with Rachel. In the alley outside the bar, Vi discovers a strange blob—a small living creature with beady black eyes.
-
-
really different
- By Jeannie Bench on 02-24-25
By: Maggie Su
-
The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
-
-
This One Should Win
- By K. Bella Bestia on 10-13-24
-
The Usual Desire to Kill
- A Novel
- By: Camilla Barnes
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983. This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.
-
-
Keep with it.
- By Criticalthinker on 05-24-25
By: Camilla Barnes
Critic reviews
"[A] brilliant, of-the-moment, just really almost perfect book."—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED
“A complex and satisfying portrait of a woman struggling with the categories that define her.”–Publishers Weekly
"I couldn’t stop turning the pages, and only when it was all over did I realize what Senna had done. Addictive, hilarious and relatable, yes, but Colored Television is after something larger and more elusive, a very modern reckoning with the ambiguities triangulated by race, class, creativity and love. She nails it."—Miranda July, author of All Fours and The First Bad Man
Editorial Review
Interview: "Colored Television" is a razor-sharp take on race and Hollywood
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Caucasia
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at school. Despite their differences, Cole is Birdie's confidant, her protector, the mirror by which she understands herself. Then their parents' marriage collapses.
-
-
Wanted it to be better
- By AmyP33 on 05-27-25
By: Danzy Senna
-
Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
- A Personal History
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 1968 marriage of Danzy Senna's parents, a white woman with Boston blueblood lineage and the son of a struggling black single mother, was a metaphor of a hopeful era. Both were writers and activists in the civil-rights movement. But the marriage was followed eight years later by one of the ugliest divorces in Boston's history. Decades later, Senna looks back at the opposing American histories that her parents had tried so hard to overcome.
-
-
wonerful
- By Kcsiki on 03-24-20
By: Danzy Senna
-
New People
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the 20th century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweetheart, are planning their wedding. They are the perfect couple, "King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom". Their skin is the same shade of beige. They live together in a black bohemian enclave in Brooklyn, where Khalil is riding the wave of the first dot-com boom and Maria is plugging away at her dissertation on the Jonestown massacre.
-
-
Different!!
- By Gabby on 11-17-17
By: Danzy Senna
-
Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Herluf Kanstrup on 09-22-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
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
-
Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
-
-
Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
-
Caucasia
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at school. Despite their differences, Cole is Birdie's confidant, her protector, the mirror by which she understands herself. Then their parents' marriage collapses.
-
-
Wanted it to be better
- By AmyP33 on 05-27-25
By: Danzy Senna
-
Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
- A Personal History
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 1968 marriage of Danzy Senna's parents, a white woman with Boston blueblood lineage and the son of a struggling black single mother, was a metaphor of a hopeful era. Both were writers and activists in the civil-rights movement. But the marriage was followed eight years later by one of the ugliest divorces in Boston's history. Decades later, Senna looks back at the opposing American histories that her parents had tried so hard to overcome.
-
-
wonerful
- By Kcsiki on 03-24-20
By: Danzy Senna
-
New People
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the 20th century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweetheart, are planning their wedding. They are the perfect couple, "King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom". Their skin is the same shade of beige. They live together in a black bohemian enclave in Brooklyn, where Khalil is riding the wave of the first dot-com boom and Maria is plugging away at her dissertation on the Jonestown massacre.
-
-
Different!!
- By Gabby on 11-17-17
By: Danzy Senna
-
Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Herluf Kanstrup on 09-22-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
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
-
Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
-
-
Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
-
We Rip the World Apart
- By: Charlene Carr
- Narrated by: Tebby Fisher
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, her struggle to understand her place in the world as a person who is half-Black, half-white—yet feels neither—is amplified. Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child during the politically charged Jamaican exodus in the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily. Years later, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in.
By: Charlene Carr
-
You Dreamed of Empires
- A Novel
- By: Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer - translator
- Narrated by: Gabriel Porras
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
-
-
Confusing and Difficult to Understand
- By francine steelman on 03-02-24
By: Álvaro Enrigue, and others
-
Good Material
- A Novel
- By: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Arthur Darvill, Vanessa Kirby
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…
-
-
not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-24
By: Dolly Alderton
-
Headshot
- A Novel
- By: Rita Bullwinkel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
-
-
Wonderful Narrator
- By love it on 08-09-24
By: Rita Bullwinkel
-
Standing Heavy
- By: Gauz', Frank Wynne - translator
- Narrated by: Diontae Black
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All over the city, they are watching: Black men paid to stand guard, invisible among the wealthy flâneurs and yet the only ones who truly see. From Les Grands Moulins to a Sephora on the Champs-Élysees, Ferdinand, Ossiri, and Kassoum find their way as undocumented workers amidst political infighting and the ever-changing landscape of immigration policy. Fast-paced and funny, poignant and sharply satirical, Standing Heavy is a searing deconstruction of colonial legacies and capitalist consumption and an unforgettable account of everything that passes under the security guards' all-seeing eyes.
By: Gauz', and others
-
Bluff
- Poems
- By: Danez Smith
- Narrated by: Danez Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.
-
-
Wow!
- By Andre on 10-28-24
By: Danez Smith
-
The Book of Love
- A Novel
- By: Kelly Link
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
-
-
Great book.
- By T on 04-06-25
By: Kelly Link
-
Ghostroots
- Stories
- By: Pemi Aguda
- Narrated by: Délé Ogundiran, Ore Apampa-Araba
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties.
By: Pemi Aguda
-
Scaffolding
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Elkin
- Narrated by: Lauren Elkin
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two couples in two separate but similar times-set against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy-face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. Lauren Elkin's Scaffolding is about the way our homes hold communal memories of all their inhabitants and their stories; about the bonds we create, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways people we've loved live on in us.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Laura M on 11-14-24
By: Lauren Elkin
-
Martyr!
- A Novel
- By: Kaveh Akbar
- Narrated by: Arian Moayed
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest.
-
-
One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
- By James on 04-06-24
By: Kaveh Akbar
-
All Fours
- A Novel
- By: Miranda July
- Narrated by: Miranda July
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.
-
-
would not recommend
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-24
By: Miranda July
-
Intermezzo
- A Novel
- By: Sally Rooney
- Narrated by: Éanna Hardwicke
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret.
-
-
I felt a lot of empathy towards the excellently developed characters.
- By Hanoverian girl on 09-29-24
By: Sally Rooney
Brilliant!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Mid
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
thought provoking
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not Perfect, But Perfect for Discussion
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Liars are weak
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Nice story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I'm exhausted
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Suffer for your art?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
the story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Meh
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.