
Great Black Hope
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Justice Smith
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Rob Franklin
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By:
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Rob Franklin
About this listen
“Incandescent…full of sentences I want to cut out and glue to my forehead.”—Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!
“A novel of crime—with a gripping pace, propelled by a question that needs answering—and a timeless coming-of-age story.”—Rumaan Alam, bestselling author of Entitlement
“A masterpiece…At once fresh and original while delighting the reader with hints of Franzen, McInerny, Baldwin. This novel—a whodunit, a coming-of-age, a New York novel—heralds the arrival of a rarefied talent.”—Elin Hilderbrand, bestselling author of Swan Song
A gripping, elegant debut novel about a young Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest, from an electrifying new voice.
An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.
It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it’s not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life—drawn back into the city’s underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future.
Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta’s Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.
©2025 Rob Franklin (P)2025 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Simone is the star of Edwards University’s creative writing department: renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department. But when Ethan and the department administrative assistant Abigail have sex, Simone and Ethan’s faith in their flawless marriage is rattled.
By: Emily Adrian
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Bug Hollow
- A Novel
- By: Michelle Huneven
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
When Sally Samuelson was eight years old, her golden boy brother Ellis went missing the summer he graduated high school. Ellis finally turned up at the bucolic Bug Hollow, a last gasp of the beautiful Northern California counterculture in the seventies. He had found joy in the communal life there, but died in a freak accident weeks later. From that point, the world of the Samuelsons never spins on the same axis, especially after Julia, Ellis’s girlfriend from Bug Hollow, shows up pregnant on their doorstep.
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Breezy but not deep
- By Mother Of Hope on 06-24-25
By: Michelle Huneven
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The Devil Three Times
- A Novel
- By: Rickey Fayne
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Robin Miles, Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
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My new favorite-One for all the recovering evangelicals out there
- By Leah Leone on 06-16-25
By: Rickey Fayne
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The Hole
- By: Hye-Young Pyun, Sora Kim-Russell - translator
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In this tense, gripping novel by a star of Korean literature, Oghi wakes from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house.
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really dark stuff
- By Melissa Eisner on 02-02-21
By: Hye-Young Pyun, and others
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The Compound
- A Novel
- By: Aisling Rawle
- Narrated by: Lucy Boynton
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart?
By: Aisling Rawle
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The Great Mann
- A Novel
- By: Kyra Davis Lurie
- Narrated by: Ian Hackney
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In 1945, Charlie Trammell steps off a cross-country train into the vibrant tapestry of Los Angeles. Lured by his cousin Marguerite’s invitation to the esteemed West Adams Heights, Charlie is immediately captivated by the Black opulence of L.A.’s newly rechristened “Sugar Hill.” Settling in at a local actress’s energetic boarding house, Charlie discovers a different way of life—one brimming with opportunity—from a promising career at a Black-owned insurance firm, the absence of Jim Crow, to the potential of an unforgettable romance. But nothing dazzles quite like James “Reaper” Mann.
By: Kyra Davis Lurie
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King of Ashes
- A Novel
- By: S. A. Cosby
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.
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True Noir
- By Steven Lifland on 06-22-25
By: S. A. Cosby
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People Like Us
- A Novel
- By: Jason Mott
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.
By: Jason Mott
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Among Friends
- A Novel
- By: Hal Ebbott
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
It’s an autumn weekend at a comfortable New York country house where two deeply intertwined families have gathered to mark the host’s fifty-second birthday. Together, the group forms an enviable portrait of middle age. The wives and husbands have been friends for over thirty years, their teenage daughters have grown up together, and the dinners, games, and rituals forming their days all reflect the rich bonds between them.
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Boredom
- By Avid series reader on 06-28-25
By: Hal Ebbott
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Kakigori Summer
- A Novel
- By: Emily Itami
- Narrated by: Ami Okumura Jones
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Rei, Kiki, and Ai are three sisters divided by distance and circumstance. Ambitious Rei works in finance in London; Kiki is the single mother of a young son, working in a retirement home in Tokyo; and Ai, the youngest, is a peripatetic Japanese music idol. Having lost both parents, one way or another, the sisters rely on each other as family, far-flung as they are.
By: Emily Itami
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