The Mission of the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.
1-20of35results PREVIOUS12NEXT
  • Play Lord of Misrule
    AUDIOBOOK
    Lord of Misrule
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Fiction, 2010

    Lord of Misrule

    • UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 10 mins)
    • By Jaimy Gordon
    • Narrated By Myra Lucretia Taylor
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (50)
    Performance
    (27)
    Story
    (27)

    At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts are all struggling to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters -- scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain -- through a year and four races at Indian Mound Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia.

    Fran says: "Worthy of the National Book Award"
  • Play Just Kids
    AUDIOBOOK
    Just Kids
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2010

    Just Kids

    • UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 54 mins)
    • By Patti Smith
    • Narrated By Patti Smith
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (503)
    Performance
    (429)
    Story
    (421)

    Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late 60s and 70s and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.

    Rick says: "Exceptional. Deeply honest and thoughtful."
  • Play Mockingbird
    AUDIOBOOK
    Mockingbird
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Young People's Literature, 2010

    Mockingbird

    • UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 20 mins)
    • By Kathryn Erskine
    • Narrated By Angela Jayne Rogers
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (32)
    Performance
    (20)
    Story
    (21)

    In Mockingbird—a poignant gem by acclaimed author Kathryn Erskine—a talented young artist struggles to overcome a disability. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, 10-year-old Caitlin faces a range of social and emotional challenges. The unexpected death of her caring brother makes matters even worse, but will the memory of his words of wisdom and the help of a compassionate counselor be enough to enable her to connect with others?

    L. says: "Wonderful story of Healing"
  • Play Let the Great World Spin
    AUDIOBOOK
    Let the Great World Spin
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Fiction, 2009

    Let the Great World Spin

    • UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 16 mins)
    • By Colum McCann
    • Narrated By Richard Poe, Gerard Doyle, Carol Monda, and others
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (927)
    Performance
    (288)
    Story
    (293)

    A Pushcart Prize-winning author and contributor to the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and GQ, Colum McCann is renowned for his carefully constructed character studies. No exception, Let the Great World Spin follows the fortunes of a menagerie of New Yorkers through a day in 1974 - the day of Philippe Petit's death defying tightrope walk between the newly built Twin Towers.

    Robert says: "An essential addition to your Audible library."
  • Play The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
    AUDIOBOOK
    The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2009

    The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

    • UNABRIDGED (28 hrs and 44 mins)
    • By T. J. Stiles
    • Narrated By Mark Deakins
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (141)
    Performance
    (65)
    Story
    (65)

    In The First Tycoon, Stiles offers the first complete, authoritative biography of this titan, and the first comprehensive account of the Commodore's personal life. It is a sweeping, fast-moving epic, and a complex portrait of the great man. Vanderbilt, Stiles shows, embraced the philosophy of the Jacksonian Democrats and withstood attacks by his conservative enemies for being too competitive. He was a visionary who pioneered business models.

    john says: "Great! If you can get through it..."
  • Play Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
    AUDIOBOOK
    Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Young People's Literature, 2009

    Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

    • UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 38 mins)
    • By Phillip Hoose
    • Narrated By Channie Waites
    Overall
    (11)
    Performance
    (7)
    Story
    (7)

    On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Mont-gomery, Alabama. Shouting "It's my constitutional right!" as police dragged her off to jail, Claudette Colvin decided she'd had enough of the Jim Crow segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a young child.

    Talia says: "The funny yet touching story of women leders!"
  • Play Shadow Country: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend
    AUDIOBOOK
    Shadow Country: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Fiction, 2008

    Shadow Country: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend

    • UNABRIDGED (40 hrs and 25 mins)
    • By Peter Matthiessen
    • Narrated By Anthony Heald
    Overall
    (324)
    Performance
    (98)
    Story
    (96)

    Inspired by a near-mythic event on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the 20th century, Shadow Country re-imagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.

    John says: "Engrossing, Rich and Powerful"
  • Play The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
    AUDIOBOOK
    The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2008

    The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

    • UNABRIDGED (30 hrs and 40 mins)
    • By Annette Gordon-Reed
    • Narrated By Karen White
    Overall
    (216)
    Performance
    (76)
    Story
    (73)

    This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.

    Dianne says: "Fascinating"
  • Play Tree of Smoke: A Novel
    AUDIOBOOK
    Tree of Smoke: A Novel
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Fiction, 2007

    Tree of Smoke: A Novel

    • UNABRIDGED (23 hrs and 10 mins)
    • By Denis Johnson
    • Narrated By Will Patton
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (335)
    Performance
    (77)
    Story
    (77)

    This is the story of William "Skip" Sands, CIA, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong, and the disasters that befall him. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert and into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, this is a story like nothing in our literature.

    Madeleine StMichael says: "Moby Redux"
  • Play Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
    AUDIOBOOK
    Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2007

    Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

    • UNABRIDGED (21 hrs and 25 mins)
    • By Tim Weiner
    • Narrated By Stefan Rudnicki
    Overall
    (1740)
    Performance
    (379)
    Story
    (376)

    This is the book the CIA does not want you to read. For the last 60 years, the CIA has maintained a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, never disclosing its blunders to the American public. It spun its own truth to the nation while reality lay buried in classified archives. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Tim Weiner offers a stunning indictment of the CIA, a deeply flawed organization that has never deserved America's confidence.

    Michael says: "Flawed but Important"
  • Play The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
    AUDIOBOOK
    The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Young People's Literature, 2007

    The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

    • UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 51 mins)
    • By Sherman Alexie
    • Narrated By Sherman Alexie
    Overall
    (887)
    Performance
    (391)
    Story
    (394)

    Born poor and hydrocephalic, Arnold Spirit survives brain surgery. But his enormous skull, lopsided eyes, profound stuttering, and frequent seizures target him for abuse on his Indian reservation. Protected by a formidable friend, the book-loving artist survives childhood. And then - convinced his future lies off the rez - the bright 14-year-old enrolls in an all-white high school 22 miles away.

    Darwin8u says: "Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood"
  • Play The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
    AUDIOBOOK
    The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2006

    The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

    • UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 47 mins)
    • By Timothy Egan
    • Narrated By Patrick Lawlor
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (861)
    Performance
    (345)
    Story
    (348)

    The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region.

    Laurie says: "more than grapes of wrath"
  • Play The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party
    AUDIOBOOK
    The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Young People's Literature, 2006

    The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party

    • UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 24 mins)
    • By M.T. Anderson
    • Narrated By Peter Francis James
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (57)
    Performance
    (17)
    Story
    (18)

    He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother, a princess in exile from a faraway land, are the only people in their household assigned names. As the boy's regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians' fanatical studies.

    Shelly says: "Compelling"
  • Play Europe Central
    AUDIOBOOK
    Europe Central
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Fiction, 2005

    Europe Central

    • UNABRIDGED (31 hrs and 52 mins)
    • By William T. Vollmann
    • Narrated By Ralph Cosham
    Overall
    (22)
    Performance
    (8)
    Story
    (8)

    Assembling a composite portrait of these two warring leviathans and the terrible age they defined, the narrative intertwines experiences both real and fictional: a young German who joins the SS to expose its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich laboring under Stalinist oppression.

    Armen says: "A Must Listen"
  • Play The Year of Magical Thinking
    AUDIOBOOK
    The Year of Magical Thinking
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2005

    The Year of Magical Thinking

    • UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 5 mins)
    • By Joan Didion
    • Narrated By Barbara Caruso
    Overall
    (1025)
    Performance
    (203)
    Story
    (202)

    "Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.

    Paula says: "The Best"
  • Play The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
    AUDIOBOOK
    The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Young People's Literature, 2005

    The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

    • UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 43 mins)
    • By Jeanne Birdsall
    • Narrated By Susan Denaker
    Overall
    (90)
    Performance
    (28)
    Story
    (26)

    This summer the Penderwick sisters have a wonderful surprise: a holiday on the grounds of a beautiful estate called Arundel. Soon they are busy discovering the summertime magic of Arundel's sprawling gardens, treasure-filled attic, tame rabbits, and the cook who makes the best gingerbread in Massachusetts. But the best discovery of all is Jeffrey Tifton, son of Arundel's owner, who quickly proves to be the perfect companion for their adventures.

    Neily says: "Happy Accident"
  • Play Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
    AUDIOBOOK
    Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2004

    Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age

    • UNABRIDGED (17 hrs and 33 mins)
    • By Kevin Boyle
    • Narrated By Lizan Mitchell
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (75)
    Performance
    (27)
    Story
    (26)

    The grandson of a slave, Dr. Ossian Sweet moved his family to an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. When his neighbors attempted to drive him out, Sweet defended himself, resulting in the death of a white man and a murder trial for Sweet. There followed one of the most important (and shockingly unknown) cases in Civil Rights history. Also caught up in the intense courtroom drama were legal giant Clarence Darrow and the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

    Anthony says: "Defending Your Life"
  • Play Three Junes
    AUDIOBOOK
    Three Junes
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Fiction, 2002

    Three Junes

    • UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 55 mins)
    • By Julia Glass
    • Narrated By John Keating
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (988)
    Performance
    (149)
    Story
    (149)

    Three Junes is a vividly textured symphonic novel set on both sides of the Atlantic during three fateful summers in the lives of a Scottish family. Three Junes "almost threatens to burst with all the life it contains...extraordinary," says Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours.

    Dagmar says: "Beautiful Narration of a Wonderful Story!"
  • Play Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1
    AUDIOBOOK
    Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2002

    Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1

    • UNABRIDGED (18 hrs and 41 mins)
    • By Robert A. Caro
    • Narrated By Grover Gardner
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (233)
    Performance
    (113)
    Story
    (114)

    Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his 12 years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. Once the most august and revered body in politics, by the time Johnson arrived the Senate had become a parody of itself and an obstacle that for decades had blocked desperately needed liberal legislation. Caro shows how Johnson's brilliance, charm, and ruthlessness enabled him to become the youngest and most powerful Majority Leader in history.

    Jeff says: "DROP JAW AMAZING!!"
  • Play The House of the Scorpion
    AUDIOBOOK
    The House of the Scorpion
    UNABRIDGED
    National Book Award Winner, Young People's Literature, 2002

    The House of the Scorpion

    • UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 43 mins)
    • By Nancy Farmer
    • Narrated By Raul Esparza
    • Whispersync for Voice-ready
    Overall
    (139)
    Performance
    (61)
    Story
    (61)

    When El Patrón dies at the age of 146,14-year-old Matt escapes Opium with the help of Celia and Tam Lin, his devoted bodyguard who wants to right his own wrongs. After a near misadventure in his escape, Matt makes his way back home and begins to rid the country of its evils.

    Allison says: "Don't let the back dissuade you!"
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