BIPOC Authors

Black Cake

By: Charmaine Wilkerson

Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman & Simone Mcintyre

Length: 12 hours

Abridged: No

NOW A HULU STREAMING SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • Two estranged siblings delve into their mother’s hidden past—and how it all connects to her traditional Caribbean black cake—in this immersive family saga, “a character-driven, multigenerational story that’s meant to be savored” (Time).... Read more

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon

By: Kimberly Lemming

Narrated by: Hazel Addison

Length: 7 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Spice trader Cinnamon's quiet life is turned upside down when she ends up on a quest with a fiery demon in this irreverently quirky rom-com fantasy that is sweet, steamy, and funny as hell—perfect for fans of Legends & Lattes and The Dragon's Bride. 

All she wanted to do was live her life in peace—maybe get a cat, expand the family spice... Read more

The Swimmers

By: Julie Otsuka

Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama

Length: 4 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE WINNER • From the award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine comes a novel that "starts as a catalogue of spoken and unspoken rules for swimmers at an aquatic center but unfolds into a powerful story of a mother’s dementia and her daughter’s love" (The... Read more

The Palace of Eros

By: Caro De Robertis

Narrated by: Caro De Robertis

Length: 11 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Featured in “65 Queer Books You Need to Read in Summer 2024” by Electric Literature

Perfect for fans of Circe and Black Sun, this bold and subversive feminist retelling of the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros explores the power of queer joy and freedom.

Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her... Read more

Let Us Descend

By: Jesmyn Ward

Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward

Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • Instant New York Times Bestseller • Named one of the best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, Time, The New Yorker, and more.

“Nothing short of epic, magical, and intensely moving.” —Vogue • “A novel of triumph.” —The Washington Post • “Harrowing, immersive, and other-worldly.” —People
... Read more

Happiness Falls (Good Morning America Book Club)

By: Angie Kim

Narrated by: Shannon Tyo, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Thomas Pruyn...

Length: 13 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • When a father goes missing, his family’s desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another in this thrilling page-turner, a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

OPRAH DAILY’S #1 NOVEL OF... Read more

Cobalt Red

By: Siddharth Kara

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Length: 11 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

This program includes an author's note read by the author.

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all.

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the... Read more

So Let Them Burn

By: Kamilah Cole

Narrated by: Keylor Leigh & Kamali Minter

Length: 11 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Whip-smart and immersive, this Jamaican-inspired fantasy follows a gods-blessed heroine who’s forced to choose between saving her sister or protecting her homeland—perfect for fans of Iron Widow and The Priory of the Orange Tree. 
 
Faron Vincent can channel the power of the gods. Five years ago, she used her divine magic to liberate her island... Read more

Rest Is Resistance

By: Tricia Hersey

Narrated by: Tricia Hersey

Length: 5 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Disrupt and push back against capitalism and white supremacy by connecting to the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as a foundation for healing and justice. Tricia Hersey, aka The Nap Bishop, encourages us to elevate rest as a form of resistance and a divine human right.

What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too... Read more

A Magic Steeped in Poison

By: Judy I. Lin

Narrated by: Carolyn Kang

Length: 11 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Judy I. Lin's sweeping debut A Magic Steeped in Poison, first in a duology, is sure to enchant fans of Adrienne Young and Leigh Bardugo.

I used to look at my hands with pride. Now all I can think is, "These are the hands that buried my mother."

For Ning, the only thing worse than losing her mother is knowing that it's her own fault. She was the... Read more

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

By: Tia Williams

Narrated by: Mela Lee & Preston Butler

Length: 11 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

In this enchanting love story from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Days in June, a free-spirited florist and an enigmatic musician are irreversibly linked through the history, art, and magic of Harlem.

“The book’s calculus of love and loss is brutal, and grounds the dazzling prose and light magical element.” –– The New York Times
... Read more

A Song to Drown Rivers

By: Ann Liang

Narrated by: Natalie Naudus

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

“Exquisite and devastating. It won’t fail to move you.” —Shelley Parker-Chan, #1 bestselling author of She Who Became the Sun

Inspired by the legend of Xishi, one of the famous Four Beauties of Ancient China, A Song to Drown Rivers is an epic novel steeped in myth about womanhood, war, sacrifice, and love against all odds as the fate of two... Read more

Masquerade

By: O.O. Sangoyomi

Narrated by: Ariel Blake

Length: 13 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Set in a wonderfully reimagined 15th century West Africa, Masquerade is a dazzling, lyrical tale exploring the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future.

“[Ariel] Blake is adept at describing romantic moments, sumptuous palace finery, and bloody battles. Her characters have depth... Read more

The Cemetery of Untold Stories

By: Julia Alvarez

Narrated by: Alma Cuervo

Length: 8 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Literary icon Julia Alvarez, the international bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, returns with a luminescent novel about storytelling that reads like an instant classic.

Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her... Read more

The Return of Ellie Black

By: Emiko Jean

Narrated by: Mizuo Peck, Tessa Albertson, Nicole Lewis, Rebe...

Length: 10 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

A USA TODAY Bestseller

“The Return of Ellie Black is a page-turning suspense novel, a shrewd character study, and a captivating mystery, all at the same time. The last fifty pages are magnetic. I couldn’t put it down until I’d experienced every last twist and turn.” —STEPHEN KING

Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she... Read more

Master Slave Husband Wife

By: Ilyon Woo

Narrated by: Janina Edwards & Leon Nixon

Length: 12 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Biography

“A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class, and disability to hide in public on their journey to the North, where they... Read more

Bloodmarked

By: Tracy Deonn

Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt

Length: 22 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

An instant #1 New York Times bestseller!
“Deonn expertly weaves together a universe that both shines a light on the pervasive nature of racism and also harnesses the complexity of Black identity within this space. Deonn writes so much more than simple fantasies or Arthurian retellings.” —Booklist (starred review)

The “worthy successor to an... Read more

The Seventh Veil of Salome

By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly, Atlanta Amado, Victoria Villarre...

Length: 11 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • A young woman wins the role of a lifetime in a film about a legendary heroine—but the real drama is behind the scenes in this sumptuous historical epic from the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.

“Whenever I want to read a book I know will be good, I go to Silvia Moreno-Garcia.”—Taylor... Read more

Children of Anguish and Anarchy

By: Tomi Adeyemi

Narrated by: Cynthia Erivo

Length: 10 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award winner Cynthia Erivo narrates Tomi Adeyemi’s long-awaited conclusion to the #1 New York Times bestselling Legacy of Orïsha series.

New allies rise.
The Blood Moon nears.
Zélie faces her final enemy.
The king who hunts her heart.

When Zélie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an... Read more

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

By: Angie Cruz

Narrated by: Kimberly M. Wetherell & Rossmery Almonte

Length: 6 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

This program features original sound design.

"Together, [narrators] Almonte and Wetherell are the key to this exceptional novel. A brilliantly narrated immigrant story, spiked with heart and flair, that will have patrons rooting for Cara’s success." - Library Journal

"Rossmery Almonte's pitch-perfect narration of Angie Cruz's inventive new novel... Read more

Take My Hand

By: Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Narrated by: Lauren J. Daggett

Length: 10 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction

“Deeply empathetic yet unflinching in its gaze…an unforgettable exploration of responsibility and redemption.”—Celeste Ng

Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a searing and compassionate new novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the... Read more

Solito

By: Javier Zamora

Narrated by: Javier Zamora

Length: 17 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times Bestseller • Read With Jenna Book Club Pick as seen on Today • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography • Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award

A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this “gripping... Read more

Knife

By: Salman Rushdie

Narrated by: Salman Rushdie

Length: 6 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him
 
On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua... Read more

The Song of the Cell

By: Siddhartha Mukherjee

Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris

Length: 16 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences and the 2023 Chautauqua Prize!

Named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The Economist, Oprah Daily, BookPage, Book Riot, the New York Public Library, and more!

In The Song of the Cell, the extraordinary author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning... Read more