Explore every episode of the podcast Free Audiobook: Because Folding Laundry Is More Exciting With a Story

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Title: What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea
Author: Fara Dabhoiwala
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 0:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-27-2025
Publisher: PGRH UK
Genres: History, Politics, World, Political Advocacy

Summary:
Brought to you by Penguin. ‘Free Speech!’ is a clarion call all over the world, yet what it means today is more contested than ever. Many cultures regard it as dangerous: in China, India, and across the Islamic world, unorthodox views about politics, sex, and religion are repressed and people are often punished for expressing them. Even in the western world, where it is held up as a core value, there is widespread discord and disagreement about what freedom of expression means. Amidst perennial imbalances of power, continually evolving cultural taboos, dramatic new technologies and a fast-changing global media landscape, where free speech comes from, and how we might think about it, are critical questions. Through the lens of history, What Is Free Speech? shows us that freedom of speech is not an absolute form from which societies and regimes have drifted or dissented at different times, but something more complicated and interesting. Our modern conceptions of press and speech liberty, Dabhoiwala shows, were invented in Britain around 1700. The real history of freedom of expression is a story of countless fascinating men and women whose lives have shaped its principles and practices over the past 300 years – slaves and imperialists, poets and philosophers, plutocrats and revolutionaries. Ranging across Europe, North America and South Asia, and not neglecting other parts of the world, Dabhoiwala rejects celebratory platitudes about the past and present of free expression. Instead, his book explains how to think more deeply about free speech as a global as well as a local question — by tracing how we got into our current predicaments, showing that history complicates our contemporary presumptions, and suggesting fresh possibilities for the future. © Fara Dabhoiwala 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

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Title: Lover Forbidden
Author: J.R. Ward
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-25-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, Romantasy

Summary:
The aristocracy is making a run for the throne in this latest thrilling, star-crossed paranormal romance entry in J.R. Ward’s #1 New York Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series. When Lyric goes out for the night, she’s not ready for a brush with death—and she’s really not ready for the male who comes out of nowhere and saves her. Her family, especially her father, Qhuinn, are so relieved she’s okay, but all she can think about is her mysterious savior. Without telling anybody, she seeks out Devlin, and they are immediately drawn to one another. Her near-death experience has given her a fresh appreciation for life and the desire to live it to its fullest, but she has no idea that he’s hiding a secret—or that he could be the key to ending the war between the Black Dagger Brotherhood and the lessers forever.

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Title: Adaptable: The Surprising Science of Human Diversity
Author: Herman Pontzer
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 0:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-25-2025
Publisher: PGRH UK
Genres: Non-Fiction, Science & Technology, Biology & Chemistry, Social Science

Summary:
Brought to you by Penguin. A groundbreaking tour of the overlooked science of human diversity Real diversity isn’t skin deep. Over the past 100,000 years, as humans expanded into every biome on the planet, our bodies have been fine-tuned to our local environments. Our ability to adapt is at the heart of being human and the engine of our diversity. As an evolutionary anthropologist working with human populations around the globe, Herman Pontzer has conducted research that reveals the wonder of our biological diversity, documenting the connections between lifestyle, landscape, local adaptations, and health. In this book, he takes us on a tour of the human body and the surprising ways in which it survives in an uncertain world: from the Andean groups who have developed increased lung capacity to the Sama divers who have larger spleens. With so much variation that can be handed down genetically, for better or worse, the way we understand our biology holds huge importance for how we understand our world and one another, including the biggest questions of our day, such as social inequality. Eye-opening and profound, Adaptable is a revolutionary reappraisal of an overlooked science. © Herman Pontzer 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

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Title: Nowhere: A Novel
Author: Allison Gunn
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-25-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction & Literature, Mystery, Thriller & Horror, Paranormal, LGBTQ+

Summary:
Mare of Easttown meets The Outsider in this spine-tingling and twisty debut about a series of disappearances in a small, fundamentalist town and what one broken family must do to remain together as dark forces close in. After losing her young son in an accident, Rachel Kennan throws herself into her career as police chief of a small Virginia town to avoid focusing on her grief. Meanwhile, her husband, Finn, a washed-up writer whose alcoholism led to the devastating tragedy that changed everything, struggles to redeem himself before his family completely falls apart. Their two daughters are the only things keeping Rachel and Finn together, but the girls have demons of their own. At the same time, a disturbing crime rocks their tightknit, religious community, sending Rachel chasing leads in a place that does not take kindly to outsiders. When an ominous force in the forest starts calling to the children, fear spawns hate among the townspeople, placing the Kennan family directly in the line of fire. Left with no choice but to rely on each other, Rachel and Finn must come together to face threats inside and out. A haunting family saga and a disquieting horror debut, Nowhere draws from Appalachian folklore to caution us that true terror is what we bury in our own hearts.

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Title: Story She Left Behind: A Novel
Author: Patti Callahan Henry
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary Women

Summary:
Inspired by a true literary mystery, New York Times bestselling author of the mesmerizing The Secret Book of Flora Lea returns with the sweeping story of a legendary book, a lost mother, and a daughter’s search for them both. In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother. By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother’s vanishing, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London’s most deadly natural disasters—the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson’s family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind. Told in Patti Callahan Henry’s lyrical, enchanting prose, The Story She Left Behind is a captivating novel of mystery and family legacy that captures the profound longing for a mother and the evergreen allure of secrets.

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Title: Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing
Author: Joshua Hammer
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Middle East, History & Culture, Language Instruction, Language Arts

Summary:
A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. It was one of history’s great vanishing acts. Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost. London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up. Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before. From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.

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Title: Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America
Author: Clay Risen
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 15:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: History, North America, Global Politics, Russia

Summary:
As relevant as it is comprehensive, Red Scare tells the story of McCarthyism and the Red Scare—based in part on newly declassified sources—by an award-winning writer of history and New York Times reporter. The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, coupled with the terrifying onset of the Cold War. This defining moment in American history, unlike any that preceded it, was marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies. Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in 1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, opportunism, courage, and delirium of those years through the lives and experiences of a cast of towering historical figures, including President Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and many more individuals known and unknown. Red Scare takes us beyond the familiar story of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists to a fuller understanding of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived threat from the left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a result. An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.

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Title: Luminous
Author: Silvia Park
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction & Literature, Family Life

Summary:
A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human. Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret. On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before. While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.

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Title: Renegade Grief
Author: Carla Fernandez
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Non-Fiction, Health & Wellness, Psychology, Death & Bereavement

Summary:
From grief quests to Dungeons & Dragons to altar making and dinner parties, Renegade Grief is a profound and vulnerable exploration of care practices and rituals that empower grievers in a culture that expects us to simply “give it time.” So, you’ve lost someone. At first, there is an outpour of support and phone calls and care packages. But after the services are done and the phone stops ringing, there is a quiet in the air and an expectation to get on with your life as previously planned. The problem is that death has a way of making all plans go out the window. Renegade Grief offers the support in this next stage of grieving—when you feel isolated in your loss and are figuring out how to navigate it. Shaped by her own experience with the death of her father and her time cofounding The Dinner Party, a leading grief support organization for young people, Carla Fernandez pushes back on the death-denying culture we live in and encourages you to explore how the intensity (or shittiness) of a loss experience can transform into a source of deep connection, personal purpose, and creative expression. Through inspiring stories of real grievers, patterns from across history, and fresh science, Renegade Grief enlivens you with the permission and possibility to explore your grief in your own unique way and reminds you that you’re not alone in doing it. Renegade Grief is an indispensable resource for people at any stage of the grieving process and with Carla’s candid and compassionate guidance, you learn that life after loss isn’t about the futile attempt of arriving at some other side. Rather, it’s about building your community, adjusting to change, and finding the way for your grief to become a pathway into your own version of a soulful life.

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Title: Witness 8: A Novel
Author: Steve Cavanagh
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Mystery, Thriller & Horror, Suspense

Summary:
This riveting psychological thriller from master of twists Steve Cavanagh, author of the “unguessable and unputdownable” (Alex Michaelides, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Kill For Me, Kill for You, asks: What if the witness was more twisted than the killer? Something is wrong with Ruby Johnson. A former resident of the ultra-elite Manhattan upper class, Ruby now works as a maid in the type of houses she used to live in. Unassuming, she sees everyone’s dirty secrets from the inside of their beautiful, renovated brownstones. But when Ruby witnesses a murder, she has wicked plans in mind that don’t involve telling the authorities the truth. Eddie Flynn, streetwise ex con-artist-turned-defense attorney, is the only lawyer in New York City willing to take on hopeless cases. And none is more hopeless than John Jackson’s—the gun that killed his neighbor found, with Jackson’s DNA, in his own home. Flynn and his unconventional team will need to use every trick they know to keep an innocent man from being locked up. But to save his client’s life, Eddie must first protect his own, as the scariest organized criminals in the city are out for his head. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell and Megan Miranda, Witness 8 is a fresh knockout page-turner from an author who is “the real deal” (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

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Title: Manor of Dreams
Author: Christina Li
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Family Life, Asian American Literature

Summary:
Mexican Gothic meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in Christina Li’s haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it. They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But silence can be deadly. Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse. Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood home: Vivian’s sprawling, Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead—one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement. In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of this unhappy reunion, Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, only to realize they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late? Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with forbidden romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream—and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot.

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Title: Women on Platform Two
Author: Laura Anthony
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Contemporary Women, Family Life

Summary:
In 1970s Dublin, all forms of contraception are strictly forbidden, but an intrepid group of women will risk everything to change that in this sweeping, timely novel inspired by a remarkable and little-known true story. Dublin, 1969: Maura has just married Dr. Christy Davenport and they look forward to growing their family. But as her husband’s vicious temper emerges, Maura worries that her home might never be safe for a child. Meanwhile, her close friend Bernie, a mother of three, learns the devastating news that if she conceives again, her health complications could prove fatal. Dublin, 2023: A close call makes Saoirse realize that she may never want to be a mother. Little does she know that only a few decades ago, a group of women made this option possible for her. And she’s about to meet one of them… The Women on Platform Two is a haunting, powerful story of feminine resistance and resilience that reminds us all of where we started—and how far we still have to go.

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Title: Me, But Better
Author: Olga Khazan
Narrator: Olga Khazan
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Non-Fiction, Self Development, Health & Wellness, Psychology

Summary:
Is it really possible to change your entire personality in a year? The Atlantic journalist Olga Khazan proves that it is in Me, But Better, which covers her year-long experiment in personality change. Perfect for fans of 10% Happier and Year of Yes. In recent years, Olga Khazan had been spiraling toward an existential crisis. Though she treasured her loving, long-term relationship and her dream job, she often caught herself snatching dissatisfaction from the jaws of happiness. Her neurotic overachieving had always been a professional asset, but lately, Olga felt that her brittle disposition could shatter under the weight of just one more thing. She knew something had to give—but was it really possible to change her entire approach to life? In Me, But Better, Olga embarks on a year-long experiment to see if it’s truly possible to change your personality, sample size: one. Scientifically, personality consists of five sliding-scale traits: extroversion (how sociable you are); conscientiousness (how self-disciplined and organized you are); agreeableness (how warm and empathetic you are); openness (how receptive you are to new ideas and activities); and neuroticism (how depressed or anxious you are). But research shows that you can alter these traits by consistently behaving in ways that align with the kind of person you’d like to be. And that, in turn, can make you happier, healthier, and more successful. So, for one year, Olga decided to fake it until she made it. She reluctantly clicked “yes” on a bucket list of new experiences, from meditation to improv to sailing, that forced her to at least act happy, healthy, and well-adjusted, in the hope that she would actually become those things. With a skeptic’s eye, Olga brings you on her personal journey through the science of personality, presenting evidence-backed techniques to change your mind for the better. Based on her viral article in The Atlantic, Me, But Better is a probing inquiry into what it means to live a fulfilling life, and how you can keep diving into change, no matter how uncomfortable it feels.

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Title: History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to Covid-19
Author: Edna Bonhomme
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: History, Non-Fiction, North America, Science & Technology, Social Science

Summary:
A deeply reported, insightful, and literary account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body. Epidemic diseases enter the world by chance, but they become catastrophic by human design. With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health. Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease. Based on in-depth research and cultural analysis, Bonhomme explores Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola, and COVID-19 amidst the backdrop of unequal public policy. But much more than a remarkable history, A History of the World in Six Plagues is also a rising call for change.

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Title: Malinalli: A Novel
Author: Veronica Chapa
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Romance, Fiction & Literature, General, Historical, Multicultural & Interracial

Summary:
An imaginative retelling of the triumphs and sorrows of one of the most controversial and misunderstood women in Mexico’s history and mythology, perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow and Zoraida Córdova’s The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina. A real-life historical figure, the woman known as Malinalli, Malintzin, La Malinche, Doña Marina, and Malinalxochitl was the Nahua interpreter who helped Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés communicate with the native people of Mexico. When indigenous leaders observed her marching into their cities, they believed she was a goddess—blessed with the divine power to interpret the Spaniards’ intentions for their land. Later, historians and pop culture would deem her a traitor—the “Indian” girl who helped sell Mexico’s future to an invader. In this riveting, fantastical retelling, Malinalli is all of those things and more, but at heart, she’s a young girl, kidnapped into slavery by age twelve, and fighting to survive the devastation wrought by both the Spanish and Moctezuma’s greed and cruelty. Blessed with magical powers, and supported by a close-knit circle of priestesses, Mali vows to help defend her people’s legacy. In vivid, compelling prose, debut author Veronica Chapa spins an epic tale of magic, sisterhood, survival, and Mexican resilience. This is the first novel to reimagine and reinterpret Malinalli’s story with the empathy, humanity, and awe she’s always deserved.

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Title: Innkeeper's Song
Author: Peter S. Beagle
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Romance, Epic Fantasy, Romantasy

Summary:
An epic fantasy series—now available as one volume—that follows three women of legendary skill on a quest to save the world’s most powerful wizard and the innkeeper’s assistant whose heartbreak will bear witness from the author of the bestselling The Last Unicorn. On a night like any other, three mysterious women arrive to an inn separately, one with a fox that is more than it seems. Karsh, the innkeeper, has no choice but to let the tangled drama unfold beneath his roof. His stable boy, Rosseth, is so mesmerized by the three cloaked women, a warrior nun, a fabled adventurer, and a girl who was saved from drowning, that he soon uncovers a deep secret that was better off remaining hidden. And then there is Tikat, overwhelmed by tragedy, who continues his journey to the inn, refusing to let death bring an end his love. Told in alternating points of view, fantasy master Peter S. Beagle has crafted an unforgettable novel of heartbreak and hope.

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Title: Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan
Author: Richard Overy
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 0:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-06-2025
Publisher: PGRH UK
Genres: History, World, North America, Asia

Summary:
Brought to you by Penguin. ‘Enemy cities were pulverized or fried to a crisp. It was something they asked for and something they got.’ In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final outburst of violence from the air. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final, terrible flourish to try to end the war. What place the firebombing and atomic bombs have in explaining Japan’s surrender has remained a hot area of debate ever since. Richard Overy’s remarkable new book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombs. The popular view that bombing worked in this case has now to be set in a broader context of what was happening in Japan in the months before surrender. The easy equation ‘bombing equals surrender’ is no longer viable. This book explores the way in which the willingness to kill civilians and destroy cities became normalized in the course of a horrific war as moral concerns were blunted and scientists, airmen, and politicians endorsed a strategy of mass destruction they would never have endorsed before the war began, But it also engages with the new scholarship that shows how complex the effort to end the war was in Japan, where ‘surrender’ was entirely foreign to Japanese culture. This book puts together firebombing, atomic bombing, and the Japanese search for an end to the war into a single, striking narrative. © Richard Overy 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

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Title: Persians
Author: Sanam Mahloudji
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Family Life

Summary:
An irreverent and deeply-felt debut novel about a family confronting a past that is both keeping them together and preventing them from breaking free. Meet the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies. First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose who stayed in Tehran during the revolution. She lives in a shabby apartment, paranoid and alone. Except when she is visited by Niaz, her Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter who takes her debauchery with a side of purpose, and yet somehow manages to survive. Elizabeth’s daughters left for America in 1979: Shirin, a charismatic yet outrageous event planner in Houston who considers herself the family’s future, and Seema, a dreamy idealist-turned-housewife languishing in the chaparral-filled hills of Los Angeles. And then there’s the other granddaughter Bita, the self-righteous but lost law student spending her days in New York City eating pancakes and quietly giving away her belongings. When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up being bailed out of jail by Bita, the family’s brittle status quo is cracked open. Shirin embarks upon a grand but half-baked quest to restore the family name. But what does that even mean in a country where the Valiats never mattered? Will they ever realize that life is more than just an old story? These are five women who are pulled apart and brought together by revolution. Here is their past, present, and future. By turns satirical and philosophical, traveling from the 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s, The Persians is a mordantly funny, heartbreakingly sad, and profoundly searching portrait of a family in crisis at the turn of the century, an American family saga reinvented.

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Title: Trouble with Anna
Author: Rachel Griffiths
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Contemporary Women

Summary:
“A witty, charming, delight of a book!” —Evie Dunmore, USA TODAY bestselling author A tart young woman and an arrogant lord collide in this flirty, sexy, and remarkably modern historical romance, perfect for fans of Bridgerton. Anna didn’t intend to ride in a high-stakes horse race or start up a betting ring. She certainly didn’t mean to find herself in so many darkened corners with Lord Julian Ramsay, quarreling and kissing. But when her grandfather’s strange will stipulates that Anna must marry or she’ll be left broke, there’s nothing she won’t do to win her fight for independence. Even go head-to-head with Lord Ramsay, with her own heart as the prize. Fans of the slow burn will devour this frenemies-to-lovers story perfect for fans of Sarah MacLean and Evie Dunmore.

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Title: Tilt: A Novel
Author: Emma Pattee
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Mystery, Thriller & Horror, Suspense, General

Summary:
Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing debut about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety. Last night, you and I were safe. Last night, in another universe, your father and I stood fighting in the kitchen. Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk. Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life. A propulsive debut, Tilt is a primal scream of a novel about the disappointments and desires we all carry, and what each of us will do for the people we love.

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Title: Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball
Author: John W. Miller
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Sports & Recreation, Biography & Memoir, Baseball

Summary:
“Baseball books don’t get any better than this...Earl Weaver has at last been given his due.” —George F. Will The first major biography of legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver—who has been described as “the Copernicus of baseball” and “the grandfather of the modern game”—The Last Manager is a wild, thrilling, and hilarious ride with baseball’s most underappreciated genius, and one of its greatest characters. Long before the Moneyball-era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968–1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing. Weaver was the first manager to use a modern radar gun, and he pioneered the use of analytical data. By moving 6’4” Cal Ripken, Jr. to shortstop, Weaver paved the way for a generation of plus-sized superstar shortstops, including Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. He foreshadowed almost everything that Bill James, Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and hundreds of other big brain baseball types would later present as innovation. Beyond being a great baseball mind, Weaver was a rare baseball character. Major League Baseball is show business, and Weaver understood how much of his job was entertainment. Weaver’s outbursts offered players cathartic relief from their own frustration, signaled his concern for the team, and fired up fans. In his frequent arguments with umpires, he hammed it up for the crowds, faked heart attacks, ripped bases out of the ground, and pretended to toss umpires out of the game. Weaver also fought with his players, especially Jim Palmer, but that creative tension contributed to a stunning success, and a hilarious clubhouse. During his tenure as major league manager, the Orioles won the American League pennant in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1979, each time winning over 100 games. The Last Manager uncovers the story of Weaver’s St. Louis childhood with a mobster uncle, his years of minor league heartbreak, and his unlikely road to becoming a big league manager, while tracing the evolution of the game from the old-time baseball of cross-country trains and “desk contracts” to the modern era of free agency, video analysis, and powerful player agents. Weaver’s career is a critical juncture in baseball history. He was the only manager to hold a job during the five years leading up to, and five years after, free agency upended baseball in 1976. Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. In his retirement, he even admitted that “if he had been an umpire, he would have thrown himself out of more games than he actually was.” Belligerent, genius, infamous—The Last Manager tells the story of one man who left his mark on the game for generations.

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Title: Outmaneuvered: America's Tragic Encounter with Warfare from Vietnam to Afghanistan
Author: James A. Warren
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: History, North America, Military

Summary:
From a celebrated military historian, a highly engaging and thought-provoking exploration of why the United States has failed again and again in irregular wars and military campaigns from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Since the early 1960s, the United States has fought in four major wars and a cluster of complicated and bloody irregular warfare campaigns. The majority have ended in failure, or something close to it. Why has the US been so ineffective, despite the American armed forces being universally recognized as the best in the world? Most scholars and analysts believe that the primary cause of our abysmal war record since Vietnam has been the US military’s overwhelmingly conventional approach to conflict, which favors kinetic operations, highly mobile precision firepower, and sophisticated systems of command and control. Here, James Warren argues that a much more formidable obstacle to success has been pervasive strategic ineptitude at the highest levels of decision-making, including the presidency, the national security council, and the foreign policy community in DC. Time and time again, American presidents have committed military forces to operations in foreign countries whose politics and cultures they did not fully understand. Presidents of both political parties, including Johnson, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama have overestimated the capacity of US forces to alter the social and political landscape of foreign nations, and underestimated the ability of insurgents and terrorists to develop effective protracted war strategies that, in time, sap Washington’s will to carry on the fight. In the War on Terror, Warren asserts that senior military officers have been complicit in extending bankrupt strategies by refusing to speak truthfully about them to their civilian bosses. So have the American people, who lost interest in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and refused to press their president and congress to bring an end to two futile conflicts. Warren advocates for a less hubristic foreign policy and a broader conception of warfare as a political and military enterprise. For readers of political, military, and US history—as well as anyone interested in international relations and geopolitical strategy—this book offers unparalleled insights into America’s prior—and potentially future—military conflicts.

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Title: Unworthy: A Novel
Author: Agustina Bazterrica
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 4:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 03-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction & Literature, Literary Fiction, General, Apocalyptic & Dystopian

Summary:
The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos. From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe. But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened? A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.

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Title: Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
Author: Rebecca Romney
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 15:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Fiction & Literature, Literary Criticism, Women

Summary:
From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure that introduces readers to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves. Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. But Austen wasn’t a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers—and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen’s work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn’t a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes such a stir in Mansfield Park is a real one by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. In fact, the phrase “pride and prejudice” came from Frances Burney’s second novel Cecilia. The women that populated Jane Austen’s bookshelf profoundly influenced her work; Austen looked up to them, passionately discussed their books with her friends, and used an appreciation of their books as a litmus test for whether someone had good taste. So where had these women gone? Why hadn’t Romney—despite her training—ever read them? Or, in some cases, even heard of them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon? Jane Austen’s Bookshelf investigates the disappearance of Austen’s heroes—women writers who were erased from the Western canon—to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer including Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth—and recounts Romney’s experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen’s. Romney collects the once-famed works of these forgotten writers, physically recreating Austen’s bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels.

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Title: Antique Hunter's Death on the Red Sea: A Novel
Author: C.L. Miller
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Thriller & Horror, Detective Stories, Cozy Mystery

Summary:
In this follow-up to the USA TODAY bestselling “utterly charming mystery” (Robyn Harding, author The Party) The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, Freya Lockwood and Aunt Carole are on the hunt once again to return priceless stolen antiques and catch a dangerous criminal abord a cruise ship. When a painting vanishes from a maritime museum and a dead body is found nearby, the newly established Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency, Freya Lockwood and her Aunt Carole, are called to investigate. Following a lead that takes them aboard a glamorous antiques cruise sailing toward the Red Sea in Jordan, they quickly discover that the ships art gallery is filled with stolen antiquities. Each antique is also listed in Freya’s late mentor’s journals that detail unsolved cases. In chasing a murderer with a stolen painting, they may have found something more sinister than they could’ve imagined… Their hunt soon turns deadly when they learn the enigmatic and dangerous art trafficker named The Collector could be on board. But on a ship full of antiques enthusiasts—plus some unexpected familiar faces—will Freya and Carole be able to discover the Collector’s identity and stop his murderous plans before the ship docks? Or will the killer strike again?

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Title: Witch of Whispervale
Author: R. A. Salvatore
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Epic Fantasy

Summary:
From the legendary author and creator of Drizzt Do’Urden comes the next installment in the New York Times bestselling DemonWars fantasy series, about the traitorous invasion by the Xoconai of the eastern realms of Corona. However, the heroes of the last war against their demon god may be forgotten, but they are not powerless. Treaties are discarded as the full invasion of the Xoncai has begun and war returns to Corona. Consolidating resistance on land in Behren and within the abbeys as a last stand against the golden warriors is the catalyst for the return of the most powerful gem-wielding witch the world has ever known. Yet, as the rumor of a witch of gemstone magic reaches the Xoconai they send a hunter, so brutal he is known as the Coyote, to find her in this novel set at the beginning of a new war in R. A. Salvatore’s bestselling world of heroic fantasy.

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Title: Halo: Empty Throne
Author: Jeremy Patenaude
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 14:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio / Halo Books
Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy

Summary:
An original novel set in the Halo universe—based on the New York Times bestselling video game series! 2559. It has been a year since the rogue artificial intelligence Cortana seized control of the Domain, an otherworldly dimension housing a vast information network. With an array of Forerunner weapons at her disposal, Cortana set out to enforce an authoritarian peace on the civilizations of the galaxy. But as the United Nations Space Command flagship Infinity prepares to strike against Cortana at Zeta Halo, another plan has also been set in motion. An ancient access point hidden on a seemingly insignificant human colony has become the focus of a parallel effort to claim the Domain and its immeasurable capabilities. The UNSC, however, needs a key: a living, forsaken product of an old war. As a new generation of heroes rise to meet this challenge, and Cortana's pursuit of control reaches a desperate and sudden crescendo, a cunning, ruthless warrior emerges from the shadows of the Banished, who has vowed to fill the new power vacuum by any means necessary…

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Title: Disposable: America's Contempt for the Underclass
Author: Sarah Jones
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: History, Non-Fiction, Politics, North America, Social Science, Public Policy

Summary:
In a compelling blend of personal narrative and in-depth reporting, New York magazine senior writer Sarah Jones exposes the harsh reality of America’s racial and income inequality and the devastating impact of the pandemic on our nation’s most vulnerable people. In the tradition of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Andrea Elliot’s Invisible Child, Disposable is a poignant exploration of America’s underclass, left vulnerable by systemic racism and capitalism. Here, Sarah Jones delves into the lives of the essential workers, seniors, and people with disabilities who were disproportionately affected by COVID-19—not due to their age or profession, but because of the systemic inequality and poverty that left them exposed. The pandemic served as a stark revelation of the true state of America, a country where the dream of prosperity is a distant mirage for millions. Jones argues that the pandemic didn’t create these dynamics, but rather revealed the existing social mobility issues and wealth gap that have long plagued the nation. Behind the staggering death toll are stories of lives lost, injustices suffered, and institutions that failed to protect their people. Jones brings these stories to the forefront, transforming the abstract concept of the pandemic into a deeply personal and political phenomenon. She argues that America has abandoned a sacrificial underclass of millions but insists that another future is possible. By addressing the pervasive issues of racial justice and public policy, Jones calls for a future where no one is seen as disposable again.

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Title: Dressmakers of London
Author: Julia Kelly
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction, Contemporary Women

Summary:
The author of the “enthralling” (Woman’s World) The Lost English Girl returns with a heartfelt new novel about estranged sisters who inherit their late mother’s dress shop in World War II London. Isabelle Shelton has always found comfort in the predictable world of her mother’s dressmaking shop, Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, while her sister Sylvia turned her back on the family years ago to marry a wealthy doctor whom Izzie detests. When their mother dies unexpectedly, the sisters are stunned to find they’ve jointly inherited the family business. Izzie is determined to buy Sylvia out, but when she’s conscripted into the WAAF, she’s forced to seek Sylvia’s help to keep the shop open. Realizing this could be her one chance at reconciliation with her sister, Sylvia is determined to save Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions from closure—and financial ruin. Through letters, the sisters begin to confront old wounds, new loves, and the weight of family legacy in order to forge new beginnings in this lyrically moving novel perfect for fans of Genevieve Graham and Lucinda Riley.

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Title: How to Get Along with Anyone: The Playbook for Predicting and Preventing Conflict at Work and at Home
Author: Jim Guinn
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Business & Economics, Non-Fiction, Self Development, Management & Leadership, Health & Wellness, Psychology

Summary:
Defuse any heated conflict by learning which of the five conflict styles you are and how to resolve even the most sensitive dispute with this must-read guide. The average American worker spends 156 hours a year engaged in the kind of moderate to intense workplace conflict that adversely impacts both performance and health. Managers spend twenty-six percent of their time addressing and resolving conflicts on their team—the equivalent of chewing up one full workday each week. But what if it didn’t need to be like this? What if there was a way to spend less time in stressfully interpersonal interactions and more time on the things that really matter? Through three decades of building and facilitating team chemistry for Fortune 500 companies, professional sports franchises, schools, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and families—Drs. Jim Guinn and John Eliot have reduced the time and cost of conflict resolution. With this on-the-ground experience combined with industry-leading science and research, Guinn and Eliot discovered people respond to conflict in one of five ways: avoid, compete, analyze, collaborate, or accommodate. Because our responses are ingrained byproducts of the subcortex in action, they are predictable. If you can predict how someone will behave in a given circumstance, you can formulate a game plan. The secret is knowing which of the five patterns someone is wired to use when smacked by a stressor. How to Get Along with Anyone is a pragmatic hands-on book to help you determine conflict types so you can navigate the arguments that emerge in day-to-day life. You’ll learn the formula for identifying your coworkers’ and loved ones’ conflict styles and how to use this information to foster better communication and more effective, collaboration. Filled with fun, engaging examples and actionable techniques, How to Get Along with Anyone teaches you how to predict and prevent escalated conflict, arming you with practical tools for flipping the script on sticking points to nurture stronger and more meaningful relationships.

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Title: Elegy, Southwest
Author: Madeleine Watts
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-18-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Literary Fiction, Contemporary Women

Summary:
A timely and urgent novel following a young married couple on a road trip through the American southwest as they grapple with the breakdown of their relationship in the shadow of environmental collapse, for fans of Rachel Cusk and Sigrid Nunez. In November 2018, Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest. While wildfires rage, the married couple make their way through Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, tracing the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry. Over the course of their trip, Eloise, beginning to suspect she might be pregnant, helplessly witnesses Lewis’s descent as he struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never quite felt at home. Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.

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Title: Wages For Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise
Author: Emily Callaci
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 0:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-13-2025
Publisher: PGRH UK
Genres: History, Non-Fiction, World, Social Science

Summary:
Brought to you by Penguin. 'The women of the world are serving notice! We want wages for every dirty toilet, every indecent assault, every painful childbirth, every cup of coffee and every smile. And if we don’t get what we want, we will simply refuse to work any longer!' Launched in the early 1970s in the United States, Italy and the UK, Wages for Housework was a political movement making the case that women who did all the care work at home deserved to be paid. Like many revolutionary ideas, it remained an unfulfilled promise. It is a feminist path not taken. Here historian Emily Callaci tells the enthralling story of this international campaign and its intellectual roots by exploring the lives of its key figures. We follow Selma James and Mariarosa Dalla Costa as they lay the foundations of the movement, then explore how Silvia Federici reframed the campaign in the context of 1970s New York, while Wilmette Brown and Margaret Prescod brought the insights of Black feminism, expanding the movement even further with an anti-imperialist perspective. Uncovering fascinating stories and debates thanks to new archives and interviews, Callaci takes us deep inside the heart of the campaign, reaching across Europe, America and Africa. She shows how these women imagined potential futures under capitalism — and beyond — as the questions they raised continue to resonate today. What would it be like to live in a society that rewarded caring for people as much as consumption? How would we relate to the natural world if, rather than emphasizing productivity and growth, we valued maintenance and repair? And what would the women of the world do with their lives if they had more time? © Emily Callaci 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

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Title: Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication
Author: Andrew Brodsky
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Business & Economics, Self Development, Career Development, Negotiation & Communication, Health & Wellness

Summary:
Discover the ultimate guide on when (and how) to use virtual communication tools, from video to instant messaging and everything in between, written by management professor at The University of Texas at Austin and leading expert on virtual communication Andrew Brodsky. Andrew Brodsky is here to tell you that, yes, that meeting could have been an email. And that email? Maybe it should have been a voice memo (really!). And your camera—it’s okay to turn it off, sometimes even better. Many of us give far too little thought to how we communicate virtually at work—just going with the flow when we see another Zoom meeting has been added to our calendar or accepting the late night email chains as normal. And this has consequences: from employee burnout due to back-to-back-to-back video calls, to lack of connection with our colleagues or customers, to potential for embarrassment or misunderstandings with the wrong message forwarded or a tweet gone viral. Despite our increasing reliance on communication technology for our work, until now, there has been no guide for navigating it. Which brings us to Ping. In this accessible book for workers of all stripes—remote, hybrid, and those who work fully in person, yet use communication technologies as part of their jobs—Brodsky dives into the big questions we all have: Which communication modes are the best for which situations? How can we interact most productively and authentically? How do we build relationships at a distance? How can we increase workplace inclusion using these technologies? And finally, how can we best deal with conflict via virtual communication? Split into three parts, each section of Ping tackles core components of how to better navigate communication challenges and technology in contemporary workplaces. Every chapter highlights an important challenge faced when using communication technologies, like how to start new relationships or how to negotiate virtually. With entertaining stories, interviews from top business leaders, and Brodsky’s cutting-edge social science research on remote communication tools, Ping is an indispensable guide for today’s modern workplace.

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Title: Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family and Second Chances
Author: Kevin Fagan
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Non-Fiction, Politics, Social Science, Public Policy, Political Advocacy

Summary:
In the tradition of Stephanie Land and Matthew Desmond, a powerful and deeply reported narrative of homelessness, despair, and hope. Kevin Fagan’s The Lost and the Found, set in San Francisco—one of the wealthiest cities in America—takes an empathic, character-driven approach to exploring the human side of what’s behind the homelessness epidemic. An award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee who has covered homelessness for decades and spent extensive time on the streets for his reporting, Fagan experienced it himself as a young man and brings a deep understanding to the crisis. He introduces us to Rita and Tyson, telling the deeply moving story of two unhoused people rescued by their families with the help of Fagan’s reporting, and their struggle to pull themselves out of homelessness and addiction, ending with both enormous tragedy and triumph. But The Lost and the Found is not just a story of individuals experiencing homelessness, it is also a compelling look at the link between homelessness and addiction, and an incisive commentary on housing and equality. Fagan shines a sharp light on this national calamity, and in sharing Rita and Tyson’s stories, The Lost and the Found has the potential to change the way we see and help the homeless.

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Title: I Lived to Tell the Story
Author: Tamika D. Mallory
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Non-Fiction, Politics, Social Science, Public Policy

Summary:
A powerful and heartfelt memoir of perseverance and triumph over tragedy from Tamika D. Mallory, trailblazing social justice leader and cofounder of the Women’s March. In this candid and defiant memoir, a follow-up to her “masterful” (Marc Lamont Hill, New York Times bestselling author) response to the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, State of Emergency, Tamika D. Mallory holds nothing back as she shares hers, the activist’s life. From early days as daughter to Black civil rights activists in Harlem, New York, to a young Black woman’s first battles against the physical and political violence she’d fight all her life, to the never-before-shared personal and professional crises launched by those forces intent on keeping her silent, this is a work of activism in motion and an unflinching story of America at the turn of the 21st century. Ultimately, I Lived to Tell the Story is a celebration of the profound truth that our hearts grow closest when we discover that the values we share are grounded in personal truths as well as high-minded aspiration.

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Title: Loca
Author: Alejandro Heredia
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-11-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Literary Fiction, General, LGBTQ+

Summary:
If Junot Diaz’s critically acclaimed collection Drown and Janet Mock’s Emmy-winning series Pose produced offspring, Alejandro Heredia’s Loca would be their firstborn. It’s 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he’s held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo. Free-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she’d escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo’s worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other. Loca follows one daring year in the lives of young people living at the edge of their own patience and desires. With expansive grace, it reveals both the grueling conditions that force people to migrate and the possibility of friendship as home when family, nations, and identity groups fall short.

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Title: Love in Exile
Author: Shon Faye
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 0:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-06-2025
Publisher: PGRH UK
Genres: Non-Fiction, Health & Wellness, Marriage & Family, Social Science, Mindfulness & Meditation

Summary:
Brought to you by Penguin. ‘We ache for love, but love eludes us. Out of this crisis comes so much of what it means to be human’ Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life. It was a fear that would erupt in destructive, counterfeit versions of the real love she craved: addictions and short-lived romances that were either euphoric and fantastical, or excruciatingly painful and unhinged, often both. Faye’s experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears. But, as she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness, she came to realize that this sense of exclusion is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our culture. Love, she argues, is as much a collective question as a personal one. Yet our collective ideals of love have developed in a society which is itself profoundly sick and loveless; in which consumer capitalism sells us ever new, engrossing fantasies of becoming more loved or lovable. In this highly politicized terrain, boundaries are purposefully drawn to keep some in and to keep others out. Those who exist outside them are ignored, denigrated, exiled. In Love in Exile, Shon Faye shows love is much greater than the narrow ideals we have been taught to crave so desperately that we are willing to bend and break ourselves to fit them. Wise, funny, unsparing, and suffused with a radical clarity, this is a book of and for our times: for seeing and knowing love, in whatever form it takes, is the meaning of life itself. © Shon Faye 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

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Title: Punished
Author: Ann-Helén Laestadius
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 13:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Romance, Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction, Multicultural & Interracial

Summary:
From the internationally bestselling author of the “extraordinary” (Fredrik Backman) novel Stolen, Punished is the harrowing story of five Sámi children who are forced to attend a government-run boarding school in 1950s Sweden and the emotional scars that haunt them thirty years later. Can abusers be redeemed? Or can they only be punished? It is the early 1950s in the Arctic Circle, and once they turn seven years old, Else-Maj, Jon-Ante, Anne-Risten, Marge, and Nilsa are taken from their families. As decreed by the Swedish state, these children of reindeer herders must attend a Sámi “nomad school,” run by vicious headmistress Rita Olsson, where they are not only stripped of their culture and language, but also physically, verbally, and psychologically abused. As the children are only allowed to return home sporadically, their parents know little of how their children are mistreated, and those who dare to speak up are silenced. Thirty years later, the five children have chosen different paths in order to survive—and forget. Else-Maj is strong in her Sámi identity but finds herself emotionally distant and has turned to religion to cope, while hypochondriac Anne-Risten now calls herself Anne and hides her heritage from her friends and community. Nilsa has become a reindeer herder like his father, but his emotions are volatile and unpredictable, even more so ever since the death of his brother. Jon-Ante is haunted by the memories of headmistress Rita and the lasting injury she left him with, unable to find where he belongs, and Marge, who is about to adopt a daughter from Colombia, is consumed by the moral struggle of removing a child from her home country. Then, suddenly, Rita Olsson turns up among them. Now a frail, elderly woman with God on her side, she pretends as though nothing ever happened. But the five former students have neither forgotten nor forgiven her. Told from five richly individual perspectives and inspired by the author’s family history, Punished is a searing, heart-wrenching novel about trauma, memory, love, and loss, written in taut prose and vibrating with righteous rage over one of the Swedish state’s greatest betrayals toward the Sámi.

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Title: Who I Always Was: A Memoir
Author: Theresa Okokon
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 6:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Women

Summary:
For fans of Aftershocks and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, a gripping and deeply honest memoir in essays, this debut collection sets out to answer the universal question of: Why am I like this? When Theresa Okokon was nine, her father traveled to his hometown in Nigeria to attend his mother’s funeral…and never returned. His mysterious death shattered Theresa as her family’s world unraveled. Now a storyteller and television cohost, Okokon sets out to explore the ripple effects of that profound loss and the way heartache shapes our sense of self and of the world—for the rest of our lives. Using her grief and her father’s death as a backdrop, Okokon delves deeply into intrinsic themes of Blackness, African spirituality, family, abandonment, belonging, and the seemingly endless, unrequited romantic pursuits of a Black woman who came of age as a Black girl in Wisconsin suburbs where she was—in many ways—always an anomaly.

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Title: All Better Now
Author: Neal Shusterman
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 14:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction, Teen, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Summary:
From New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman comes a young adult thriller about a world where happiness is contagious but the risks of catching it may be just as dangerous as the cure. A deadly and unprecedented virus is spreading. But those who survive it experience long-term effects no one has ever seen before: utter contentment. Soon after infection, people find the stress, depression, greed, and other negative feelings that used to weigh them down are gone. More and more people begin to revel in the mass unburdening. But not everyone. People in power—who depend on malcontents and prey on the insecure to sell their products, and convince others they need more, new, faster, better everything—know this new state of being is bad for business. Surely, without anger or jealousy as motivators, productivity will grind to a halt and the world will be thrown into chaos. Campaigns start up to convince people that being eternally happy is dangerous. The race to find a vaccine begins. Meanwhile, a growing movement of Recoverees plan ways to spread the virus as fast as they can, in the name of saving the world. It’s nearly impossible to determine the truth when everyone with a platform is pushing their agenda. Three teens from very different backgrounds who’ve had their lives upended in very different ways find themselves at the center of a power play that could change humanity forever.

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Title: Calling In
Author: Loretta J Ross
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Non-Fiction, Self Development, Health & Wellness, Social Science, History & Culture

Summary:
From a pioneering Black feminist and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, an urgent and exhilarating memoir-manifesto-handbook about how to rein in the excesses of cancel culture so we can truly communicate and solve problems together. In 1979, Loretta Ross was a single mother who’d had to drop out of Howard University. She was working at Washington, DC’s Rape Crisis Center when she got a letter from a man in prison saying he wanted to learn how to not be a rapist anymore. At first, she was furious. As a survivor of sexual violence, she wanted to write back pouring out her rage. But instead, she made a different choice, a choice to reject the response her trauma was pushing her towards, a choice that set her on the path towards developing a philosophy that would come to guide her whole career: rather than calling people out, try to call even your unlikeliest allies in. Hold them accountable—but do so with love. Calling In is at once a handbook, a manifesto, and a memoir—because the power of Loretta Ross’s message comes from who she is and what she’s lived through. She’s a Black woman who’s deprogrammed white supremacists, a survivor who’s taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism. With stories from her five remarkable decades in activism, she vividly illustrates why calling people in—inviting them into conversation instead of conflict by focusing on your shared values over a desire for punishment—is the more strategic choice if you want to make real change. And she shows you how to do so, whether in the workplace, on a college campus, or in your living room. Courageous, awe-inspiring, and blisteringly authentic, Calling In is a practical new solution from one of our country’s most extraordinary change-makers—one anyone can learn to use to transform frustrating and divisive conflicts that stand in the way of real connection with the people in your life.

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Title: Doctored
Author: Charles Piller
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Business & Economics, Health & Wellness, Disorders & Diseases, Science & Technology, Medicine, Business Development

Summary:
For readers of Empire of Pain and Dopesick, an arresting deep dive into how Alzheimer’s disease treatment has been set back by corrupt researchers, negligent regulators, and the profit motives of Big Pharma. Nearly seven million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, a tragedy that is already projected to grow into a $1 trillion crisis by 2050. While families suffer and promises of pharmaceutical breakthroughs keep coming up short, investigative journalist Charles Piller’s Doctored shows that we’ve quite likely been walking the wrong path to finding a cure all along—led astray by a cabal of self-interested researchers, government accomplices, and corporate greed. Piller begins with a whistleblower—Vanderbilt professor Matthew Schrag—whose work exposed a massive scandal. Schrag found that a University of Minnesota lab led by a precocious young scientist and a Nobel Prize–rumored director delivered apparently falsified data at the heart of the leading hypothesis about the disease. Piller’s revelations of Schrag’s findings stunned the field and the public. From there, based on years of investigative reporting, Doctored exposes a vast network of deceit and its players, all the way up to the FDA. Piller uncovers evidence that hundreds of important Alzheimer’s research papers are based on false data. In the process, he reveals how even against a flood of money and influence, a determined cadre of scientific renegades have fought back to challenge the field’s institutional powers in service to science and the tens of thousands of patients who have been drawn into trials to test dubious drugs. It is a shocking tale with huge ramifications not only for Alzheimer’s disease, but for scientific research, funding, and oversight at large.

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Title: Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America
Author: Jeff Hobbs
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Non-Fiction, World, Social Science, History & Culture

Summary:
From the bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, a powerful portrayal of American homelessness that follows a single mother of six in Los Angeles courageously struggling to keep her family together and her children in school amidst the devastating housing crisis. In the tradition of Evicted and Invisible Child, Jeff Hobbs masterfully explores America’s housing crisis through the real-life story of Evelyn. This is Hobbs’s first book since The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace that focuses on a single character and her extraordinarily illuminating journey. In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories, and college aspirations for her children even as they sleep in motels and in her car, living in fear of both her ex and the nation’s largest child welfare agency. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi Gaines, a recently trained social worker who decades earlier survived her own abusive marriage and housing crisis. Evelyn becomes one of Wendi’s first clients, and the relationship transforms them both. Told from the perspectives of Evelyn, Wendi, and Evelyn’s teenaged son, Orlando, Seeking Shelter is a powerful and urgent exploration of the issues of homelessness, poverty, and education in America—a must-read for anyone interested in understanding not just social inequality and economic disparity in our society but also the power of a mother’s love and vision for her kids.

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Title: How to Sell Out: The (Hidden) Cost of Being a Black Writer
Author: Chad Sanders
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Business & Economics, Marketing & Advertising, Non-Fiction, Social Science

Summary:
A timely, vulnerable, and cutting-edge exploration of the pressures and pitfalls of writing while Black in America in this urgently needed addition to the national conversation of race, money, and art. In the summer of 2020, when the nation was erupting in protest over the murder of George Floyd, Chad Sanders was elated. Why? After years of struggling to get his footing as a writer, he’d finally landed a New York Times op-ed. He wrote an essay about the hollow messages of concern he’d been receiving from white friends and colleagues. It went viral, and in the years that followed, he built a solid career as a creator—of books, podcasts, TV shows, and films—by mining his most painful experiences of being Black in America. Black pain for white money. For Sanders, this was a lucrative trade. One he thought he could work for the rest of his life. But it didn’t take long for him to realize he, like so many other writers, was getting the short end of the stick. In How to Sell Out, Sanders draws on his personal experiences to offer a wry, darkly comic look at the invisible realities of making a living as a Black writer who writes about race. He relays stories of his time in the tech business, his experiences in TV writers’ rooms, his childhood participation in Jack and Jill, his family and relationships, and the struggles of sharing his racial trauma in exchange for cash. Combining meditations on historical and current events and the intersection of race and class with short creative essays, Sanders sculpts a freewheeling arc that is as funny as it is moving and thought-provoking.

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Title: Source Code: My Beginnings
Author: Bill Gates
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 0:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: PGRH UK
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Science & Technology, Business

Summary:
Brought to you by Penguin. Source Code describes with unprecedented candour Bill Gates’ life from his childhood in Seattle to dropping out of Harvard aged 20 in 1975. Shortly afterwards he wrote, with Paul Allen, the programme which became the foundation of Microsoft and eventually for the entire software industry, changing the way the world works and lives. Gates writes about the centrality of family to his life – his encouraging grandmother and ambitious parents, about struggles to fit in, his rebelliousness, and the impact on him of the death of his closest friend. We see his extraordinary mind developing as a teenager, his excitement about the rapidly emerging technology of computing, and the earliest signs of his phenomenal business acumen. Source Code is a warm, wise and revealing self-portrait of one of the most influential people of our age. © Bill Gates 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

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Title: When You're Ready: A Love Story
Author: Kareem Rosser
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Biography & Memoir, Health & Wellness, Death & Bereavement

Summary:
An unforgettable and heartrending love story that will break your heart and piece it back together. Kareem Rosser and Lee Lee Jones were young, beautiful, and deeply in love. Their love was a real-world romance that felt like a fairy tale: Kareem was raised in the Bottom—one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Philadelphia—while Lee Lee was raised in the wealth of the Pennsylvania suburbs. They met and fell in love in the world of horses: Kareem, a nationally ranked polo player and Lee Lee, a legacy equestrian. The world was at their feet, a lifetime of joy and adventure ahead of them. But their love story is interrupted by a devastating accident, which almost costs Lee Lee her life, and destroys every plan and dream that Lee Lee and Kareem had made together. In the months and years that follow, while Lee Lee struggles to heal, Kareem is crippled by ambiguous grief, for the woman that he loves and for the future he imagined for them both. He feels buried alive. In the space between debilitating grief and bursts of anxiety, he’s forced to finally face his demons: his tumultuous childhood, his latent mental health issues, the murders of his older brother and his best friend, and a life constantly lived in the grip of panic and fear. Honest and captivating, When You’re Ready is a narrative that honors love in all its forms: first love, parental love, renewed love, and, most importantly, self-love. With notes on unresolved loss and second chances, it’s a story that will grab you by the heartstrings and uplift your soul.

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Title: Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families
Author: Judith Giesberg
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: History, Non-Fiction, North America, Social Science

Summary:
Drawing from an archive of nearly five thousand letters and advertisements, the riveting, dramatic story of formerly enslaved people who spent years searching for family members stolen away during slavery. Of all the many horrors of slavery, the cruelest was the separation of families in slave auctions. Spouses and siblings were sold away from one other. Young children were separated from their mothers. Fathers were sent down river and never saw their families again. As soon as slavery ended in 1865, family members began to search for one another, in some cases persisting until as late as the 1920s. They took out “information wanted” advertisements in newspapers and sent letters to the editor. Pastors in churches across the country read these advertisements from the pulpit, expanding the search to those who had never learned to read or who did not have access to newspapers. These documents demonstrate that even as most white Americans—and even some younger Black Americans, too—wanted to put slavery in the past, many former slaves, members of the “Freedom Generation,” continued for years, and even decades, to search for one another. These letters and advertisements are testaments to formerly enslaved people’s enduring love for the families they lost in slavery, yet they spent many years buried in the storage of local historical societies or on microfilm reels that time forgot. Judith Giesberg draws on the archive that she founded—containing almost five thousand letters and advertisements placed by members of the Freedom Generation—to compile these stories in a narrative form for the first time. Her in-depth research turned up additional information about the writers, their families, and their enslavers. With this critical context, she recounts the moving stories of the people who placed the advertisements, the loved ones they tried to find, and the outcome of their quests to reunite. This story underscores the cruelest horror of slavery—the forced breakup of families—and the resilience and determination of the formerly enslaved. Thoughtful, heart-wrenching, and illuminating, Last Seen finally gives this lesser-known aspect of slavery the attention it deserves.

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Title: Swell
Author: Maria Ferguson
Narrator: TBD
Format: Unabridged
Length: 0:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 01-30-2025
Publisher: PGRH UK
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Poetry

Summary:
Brought to you by Penguin. Eloquent and uncompromising, Swell explores the triumphs and hardships of the journey to new motherhood – through pregnancy, miscarriage, birth and beyond In the consultation room I stared at the purple flowers in their purple vase and imagined my insides: an ocean, a cave, a storm. Maria Ferguson’s second poetry collection is a raw and powerful documentation of one woman’s experience of becoming a mother. Against a backdrop of the sounds and sensations of daily life, she longs for her own mother's embrace, observes as her body changes and charts a course through loss and wilting house plants toward recovery, empowerment and renewal. Tender, direct and winningly witty, Swell distils the poet's complex feelings surrounding family and domesticity, exploring the contending weight and levity felt as she contemplates a thrillingly unfamiliar new chapter. Ferguson is a poet as alert to the absurd as to the shattering, and these are large-hearted poems, full of life and thought. Together, they invite the reader to join them in a search for self-acceptance, for freedom from shame, and for a path to stability in increasingly uncertain times. © Maria Ferguson 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

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Title: That Friend
Author: Sabrina Brier
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 4:00:00
Language: English
Release date: 01-28-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Contemporary Women

Summary:
Written and performed by “the internet’s princess” (Dazed), Sabrina Brier’s That Friend is a singular, hilarious full-cast audiobook that follows an aspiring NYC influencer whose advice podcast takes off while her real life falls apart. Sabrina, the self-proclaimed queen of the West Village, feels destined for greatness. While her three best friends have each settled into their careers, she’s still working odd jobs to stay afloat. She dreams of channeling her immense creative potential into…something. So she decides to do what no twenty-something has ever done before—start a podcast. She has a knack for giving good advice (even if she can’t follow it herself), and as her show gains a following, she gets a taste of the internet stardom she’s always dreamed of. Meanwhile, her offline life is falling apart: her dad won’t help her pay rent for much longer; her elusive finance bro crush is always just out of reach; even her best friends can’t stand by her increasingly chaotic and narcissistic behavior, especially when she uses their real personal issues as juicy material for the show. Will her newfound fans see the cracks in her Instagram-worthy facade? Or is she so delusional that this just might work? Told with the same unique blend of wit, theatrical style, and acute emotional honesty that make her TikTok videos so wildly popular, Sabrina Brier’s That Friend explores painfully relatable relationship dynamics, and what it means to be young and fabulous in New York City. Her most ambitious project yet, Sabrina’s audio debut is a celebration of female friendship and an unforgettable listening experience.

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Title: How To Be Dateable: The Essential Guide to Finding Your Person and Falling in Love
Author: Julie Krafchick
Narrator: Unknown
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9:30:00
Language: English
Release date: 01-28-2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genres: Health & Wellness, Marriage & Family

Summary:
Does dating feel like an endless maze with no way out? Break free from the traps of modern dating and learn how to take control of your love life in this actionable, compassionate guide that will help you find your person and become your most dateable self. As creators and hosts of the hit dating podcast Dateable, Julie Krafchick and Yue Xu have made breaking down the nuances of the ever-evolving dating world, and empowering the people within it, their purpose and passion. Drawing on a decade’s worth of research from speaking to thousands of daters and world-renowned experts, Julie and Yue have come to realize that everyone is dateable—it’s just the modern dating norms that keep us from falling in love. Contrary to other dating books, How to Be Dateable isn’t a playbook of rules to follow or methods to hack your love life. But it will help you identify your dating strong suits and what’s getting in your way. To personalize your reading experience, start off with a quiz that reveals your dating archetype (are you an Achiever, Dreamer, Energizer, Maverick, or Thinker?). Then, you’ll learn how to break free from the traps that continue to get in your way (The Expectation of Love on Demand, Settling Paradox, Validation Trap, and Relationship Chicken) and how to clear your path to love. Within the book, there are case studies, personal anecdotes, exercises, and self-assuring mantras designed to help you understand your core strengths, date on your terms, and find the relationship that’s right for you. Written with the knowledge of experts and the warmth of a wise best friend, How to Be Dateable will help you create a dating life filled with joy, fulfillment, extraordinary connections, and love.