Listening to books is a great way to get more stories into your life. If you’re not yet a fan, consider the format’s many benefits. To help you get started with audiobooks, we’ve rounded up some great stories that are especially good to hear. These titles are available instantly on hoopla.
Fiction
Select a linked title to view and borrow the audiobook on hoopla with your Bloomfield Township Public Library card. If you’re new to this digital service, follow the steps in our hoopla guide to get started. Note: hoopla allows simultaneous checkouts, so there’s never a wait!
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And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious “U.N. Owen.” At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead. Stranded by a violent storm and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . they begin to die. Who among them is the killer? -
Nothing to See Here / Kevin Wilson
Read by award-winning narrator Marin Ireland, this is an very funny novel about a young woman who finds meaning in life when she begins caring for two children with remarkable abilities. -
Remarkably Bright Creatures / Shelby Van Pelt
A luminous debut novel about a widow’s unlikely friendship with a giant Pacific octopus reluctantly residing at the local aquarium—and the truths she finally uncovers about her son’s disappearance 30 years ago. -
Sankofa / Chibundu Onuzo
Masterful in its examination of freedom, prejudice, and personal and public inheritance, this is a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home and found something more complex in its place. -
Small Things Like These / Claire Keegan
It’s December 1985 in a small Irish town. Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, he makes a discovery that forces him to confront his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. -
Their Eyes Were Watching God / Zora Neal Hurston
One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, this novel sparkles with wit, beauty, and wisdom. It is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. This classic is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1937. Read by actress Ruby Dee. -
Tom Lake / Anne Patchett
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a summer theater company nearby. This novel is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Read by Meryl Streep. -
The Women / Kristin Hannah
When 20-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s brother ships off to serve in the Vietnam War, she impulsively joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. Raised on idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing.
Nonfiction
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Calypso / David Sedaris
Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation on middle age and mortality. This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk, and Sedaris’ darkest and warmest book yet. Read by the author. -
Four Thousand Weeks / Oliver Burkeman
Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” the author introduces listeners to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude—to make the most of our days, weeks, and years on earth. -
The Happiest Man on Earth / Eddie Jaku
Jaku was a teenager during the terrifying violence of Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938). For the next seven years, he faced unimaginable horrors in Buchenwald and Auschwitz, and on a forced death march. The Nazis took everything from him—his family, friends, and country. But they did not break his spirit. Against all odds, he survived. At 100, he considered himself the happiest man on earth. -
Hidden Figures / Margot Lee Shetterly
A compelling account of the previously unheralded but pivotal contributions of Black women mathematicians to America’s space program. Though segregated from their white male counterparts, they made groundbreaking contributions to NASA. -
I Am Malala / Malala Yousafzai
Yousafzai was ten years old when the Taliban took control of the once-peaceful area of Pakistan where she lived with her family. Suddenly music was a crime. Women weren’t allowed to go to the market. Girls couldn’t go to school. But she was raised to fight for what she believed and she fought for her right to be educated. On October 9, 2012, she was shot point-blank while riding the bus on her way home from school. No one expected her to survive. This is her story. -
Not My Father’s Son / Alan Cumming
With ribald humor, wit, and incredible insight, Cummings integrates stories from a difficult childhood in Scotland with his experiences as a film, television, and theater star. At times suspenseful, deeply moving, and wickedly funny, this memoir will make you laugh even as it breaks your heart. Read by the author. -
Radium Girls / Kate Moore
1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous-the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive-their work-was in fact slowly killing them. -
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? / Dr. Julie Smith
Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, Smith provides the tools to navigate common life challenges and take charge of your emotional and mental health.
