Summer Reading 2021: Audiobook Appreciation

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell's award-winning research. She's patient and gentle and obedient. She's everything Evelyn swore she'd never be. And she's having an affair with Evelyn's husband. Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up. Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty. Sarah Gailey's The Echo Wife is "a trippy domestic thriller which takes the extramarital affair trope in some intriguingly weird new directions."--Entertainment Weekly 

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, Angie Thomas's searing debut about an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances addresses issues of racism and police violence with intelligence, heart, and unflinching honesty. Soon to be a major motion picture from Fox 2000/Temple Hill Productions.

A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship.

Twenty-something Allie Simon is used to playing by the rules—until Chicago's most sought-after, up-and-coming culinary genius, Benji Zane, walks into her world and pulls her into his. The only thing more renowned than Benji's mouthwatering masterpieces are his equally luscious good looks. With razor-sharp wit and searing insight, Emily Belden serves up a deliciously dishy look behind the kitchen doors of a hot foodie town, perfect for fans of Sweetbitter and The Devil Wears Prada.

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer. For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta offers insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting-edge research can help you heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age. Keep Sharp debunks common myths about aging and cognitive decline, explores whether there's a "best" diet or exercise regimen for the brain, and explains whether it's healthier to play video games that test memory and processing speed, or to engage in more social interaction. Discover what we can learn from "super-brained" people who are in their eighties and nineties with no signs of slowing down--and whether there are truly any benefits to drugs, supplements, and vitamins. Dr. Gupta also addresses brain disease, particularly Alzheimer's, answers all your questions about the signs and symptoms, and shows how to ward against it and stay healthy while caring for a partner in cognitive decline. 

Fred Daniels, a black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago neighborhood and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from the precinct and takes up residence in the sewers below the streets of Chicago. This is the simple, horrible premise of Richard Wright's scorching novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, a masterpiece that he was unable to publish in his lifetime.

The inspiring true story of the first Girl Scout troop founded for and by girls living in a shelter in Queens, New York, and the amazing, nationwide response that it sparked. Giselle Burgess was a young mother of five trying to provide for her family. Though she had a full-time job, the demands of ever-increasing rent and mounting bills forced her to fall behind, and eviction soon followed. Giselle and her kids were thrown into New York City's overburdened shelter system, which at times, felt more like a prison than a home. Giselle had worked for the Girl Scouts and had the idea to establish a troop in the shelter, and with the support of a group of dedicated parents, advocates, and remarkable girls, Troop 6000 was born. New York Times journalist Nikita Stewart settled in with Troop 6000 for more than a year, at the peak of New York City's homelessness crisis in 2017, getting to know the girls and their families and witnessing both their triumphs and challenges. 

The Lakey sisters are perfect opposites. After their mother died and their father was lost in grief, Willa had no choice but to raise her sister, Harper, and their brother, Lucas. Then, as an adult, she put her own life on hold to nurse Harper through a terrifying illness. Now that Harper is better and the sisters are living as roommates, Willa has realized her dream of running her own bakery and coffee shop. Harper, on the other hand, is always on the go. When Harper announces her plan to summit Mount Rainier, Willa fears she may be pushing herself too far. Harper, for her part, urges Willa to stop worrying and do something outside of her comfort zone. Life has more challenges in store for them all, but both sisters will discover that even in the darkest moments, family is everything. A New York Times Bestseller. 

An instant New York Times Bestseller. Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don't know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of "when" decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork. Timing, it's often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science. Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. 

In Upright Women Wanted, award-winning author Sarah Gailey reinvents the pulp Western with an explicitly antifascist, near-future story of queer identity. Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her--a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.