Performed by JD Jackson

"Like Whitehead’s The Intuitionist, Alyssa Cole’s When No One Is Watching or Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl, Reprieve straddles genres in the best possible way. . . . Sure to spark conversation and debate at book clubs across the land." –LOS ANGELES TIMES

“An eventual American classic that is unrelenting in its beauty and incisive cultural critique.” – KIESE LAYMON

Recommended by New York Times • Los Angeles Times • Esquire • O Quarterly • Boston Globe • Harper’s Bazaar • Shondaland • The Millions • Crimereads • XTRA • Tor • Literary Hub • and more!

A chilling and blisteringly relevant literary novel of social horror centered around a brutal killing that takes place in a full-contact haunted escape room—a provocative exploration of capitalism, hate politics, racial fetishism, and our obsession with fear as entertainment. 

On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize—a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants.

Those who were present on that fateful night lend their points of view: Kendra Brown, a teenager who’s been uprooted from her childhood home after the sudden loss of her father; Leonard Grandton, a desperate and impressionable hotel manager caught in a series of toxic entanglements; and Jaidee Charoensuk, a gay international student who came to the United States in a besotted search for his former English teacher. As each character’s journey unfurls and overlaps, deceit and misunderstandings fueled by obsession and prejudice are revealed, forcing all to reckon with the ways in which their beliefs and actions contributed to a horrifying catastrophe.

An astonishingly soulful exploration of complicity and masquerade, Reprieve combines the psychological tension of classic horror with searing social criticism to present an unsettling portrait of this tangled American life.

REPRIEVE By James Han Mattson

Performed by Carly Robins

"Sheer delight, filled with humor, warmth and heart… I loved everything about it." —New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne on The Magnolia Sisters

Spend the holidays in Magnolia, North Carolina, where two lonely hearts find exactly what they need for Christmas.

Angi Guilardi needs a man for Christmas—at least, according to her mother. What she really needs is to grow her fledgling catering business. Partnering with Magnolia’s Wildflower Inn holds promise, but when her mother falls ill, Angi’s pulled back to the responsibility of the family restaurant. While she balances work and her eight-year-old son, romance is the last thing on her mind…until Angi runs into Gabriel Carlyle.

Back in town to help his grandmother at her flower shop, Gabriel has no plans to stick around Magnolia, especially after he bumps into one of his childhood bullies. Sure, Angi's all grown up and gorgeous now, and when they find themselves under the mistletoe, their chemistry is undeniable. But it’ll take more than a Christmas miracle for Angi to break through the defenses of Gabriel’s well-guarded heart and find a love built to last.

Bonus Novella

The magic of Christmas may be what helps a down-to-earth schoolteacher and a good-time firefighter see each other in a new light just in time for the holidays, in Michelle Major's A Carolina Christmas.

The Carolina Girls

Book 1: Wildflower Season

MISTLETOE SEASON By Michelle Major

Performed by Lola James

Being snowbound at Christmas leads to holiday sparks in this Sambrano Studios novel by USA TODAY bestselling author Adriana Herrera.

She’s snowed in at Christmas…

with a man she must resist!

Casting director Perla Sambrano knows Gael Montez is the perfect actor for her new film project. As long as she forgets his oh-so-tempting allure and keeps her heart out of it. Because their chemistry’s no act and she needs to be careful…

The Montez men hurt the women they love. Or so Gael believes. Keeping things professional with Perla is the only way to protect her. Until a snowstorm strands them together, leading to an unplanned Christmas fling that lands them both on the naughty list!

From Harlequin Desire: A luxurious world of bold encounters and sizzling chemistry.

Love triumphs in these uplifting romances, part of the Sambrano Studios series:

Book 1: One Week to Claim It All
Book 2: Just for the Holidays...

JUST FOR THE HOLIDAYS By Adriana Herrera

Read by Karen White, Erin Mallon

Three fan-favorite Jill Shalvis novellas are together for the first time in this holiday anthology!


One Snowy Night

It’s Christmas Eve and Rory Andrews is desperate to get home to her family. Problem is, her only ride to Lake Tahoe comes in the form of the annoyingly handsome Max Stranton, her long-time crush, and his big, goofy, lovable dog. A long road trip in a massive blizzard might be just what they need to face their past…and one steamy, snowy night is all it takes to bring Max and Rory together at last.

Holiday Wishes

When Sean O’Riley shows up for his older brother’s bachelor weekend, the last person he expects to see is Lotti Hartford, the woman he lost his virginity to a decade ago. As the weekend continues, Sean realizes he wants to leave his hook-up life behind, but can he convince Lotti to open her heart to him again?

Mistletoe in Paradise

Years after their secret fling ended, Hannah isn’t eager to see James during their families’ annual joint holiday-themed yacht adventure. But when they’re the only people who show up, James and Hannah are stuck together on the high seas for days. As the former lovers try to make the best of the Christmas snafu, they soon realize the best things in life can’t be planned, and sometimes love is sweeter the second time around.

HOLIDAY EVER AFTER By Jill Shalvis

Performed by Stacy Gonzalez

“Mayer lays bare the terrible destiny of a society obsessed with social media stalking and celebrity relationships.” —Julia Heaberlin, bestselling author of We Are All the Same in the Dark

In this raucous psychological thriller, a disillusioned millennial joins a cliquey fan club, only to discover that the group is bound together by something darker than devotion

Day after day our narrator searches for meaning beyond her vacuous job at a women's lifestyle website—entering text into a computer system while she watches their beauty editor unwrap box after box of perfectly packaged bits of happiness. Then, one night at a dive bar, she hears a message in the newest single by international pop star Adriana Argento, and she is struck. Soon she loses herself to the online fandom, a community whose members feverishly track Adriana's every move.

When a colleague notices her obsession, she’s invited to join an enigmatic group of adult Adriana superfans who call themselves the Ivies and worship her music in witchy candlelit listening parties. As the narrator becomes more entrenched in the group, she gets closer to uncovering the sinister secrets that bind them together—while simultaneously losing her grip on reality.

With caustic wit and hypnotic writing, this unsparingly critical thrill ride through millennial life examines all that is wrong in our celebrity-obsessed internet age, and how easy it is to lose yourself in it.

FAN CLUB By Erin Mayer

Read by Donald Bogle, Matthew J. Turner

Available once again, the definitive biography of the pioneering Black performer—the first nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award—who broke new ground in Hollywood and helped transform American society in the years before Civil Rights movement—a remarkable woman of her time who also transcended it.

 “An ambitious, rigorously researched account of the long-ignored film star and chanteuse. . . . Bogle has fashioned a resonant history of a bygone era in Hollywood and passionately documented the contribution of one of its most dazzling and complex performers."—New York Times Book Review

In the segregated world of 1950s America, few celebrities were as talented, beautiful, glamorous, and ultimately influential as Dorothy Dandridge. Universally admired, she was Hollywood's first full-fledged Black movie star. Film historian Donald Bogle offers a panoramic portrait of Dorothy Dandridge’s extraordinary and ultimately tragic life and career, from her early years as a child performer in Cleveland, to her rise as a nightclub headliner and movie star, to her heartbreaking death at 42.

 Bogle reveals how this exceptionally talented and intensely ambitious entertainer broke down racial barriers by integrating some of America's hottest nightclubs and broke through Tinseltown’s glass ceiling. Along with her smash appearances at venues such as Harlem’s famed Cotton Club, Dorothy starred in numerous films, making history with her role in Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones, playing opposite Harry Belafonte. Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress—the first Oscar nod for a woman of color.

But Dorothy’s wealth, fame, and success masked a reality fraught with contradiction and illusion. Struggling to find good roles professionally, uncomfortable with her image as a sex goddess, coping with the aftermath of two unhappy marriages and a string of unfulfilling affairs, and overwhelmed with guilt for her disabled daughter, Dorothy found herself emotionally and financially bankrupt—despair that ended in her untimely death.

Woven from extensive research and unique interviews, as magnetic as the woman at its heart, Dorothy Dandridge captures this dazzling entertainer in all her complexity: her strength and vulnerability, her joy and her pain, her trials and her triumphs.

DOROTHY DANDRIDGE By Donald Bogle

Performed by Tatiana Sokolov

New York Times bestselling author Lauren Dane welcomes you back to Diablo Lake, Tennessee: a town founded by witches, governed by werewolves and brimming full of secrets 

It’s autumn in Diablo Lake and the town is buzzing with preparations for Halloween, Samhain, Collins Hill Days, and the wedding of the newly elected mayor and her wolf shifter fiancé.

Ruby Thorne can’t think of a better time of year to come back for good and open the health clinic she’s been planning for the last six years. Her connection to the town and its veins of magic have snapped back into place, flooding her with a power eager to jump to her call.

She has a sense of rightness. This witch is exactly where she’s supposed to be. So it’s not much of a surprise that he comes back into her path just like he was meant to…

Damon Dooley has spent the last few years learning how to run the pack at his older brother’s right hand. There’s been upheaval. Outrage. Violence. Old rules have created a silence so crushing it’s collapsed the fabric of not just the wolf shifters, but the town as a whole.

And yet, Ruby has returned. Man and wolf agree she needs to be in their life regularly, and before long, things move from serious to something magically deeper.

Bound to one another heart and soul, both committed to what’s best for Diablo Lake, Ruby backs Damon as he pushes for much-needed change. But when something falls into Ruby’s lap and she learns the whole, terrible truth, secrets need to be spilled. How—and by whom—becomes the only question.

DIABLO LAKE AWAKENED By Lauren Dane

Performed by Susan Dalian

The first in a thrilling new series from Emmy Award-winning TV Host and Journalist Tamron Hall, As The Wicked Watch follows a reporter as she unravels the disturbing mystery around the deaths of two Black girls; the work of a serial killer terrorizing Chicago.

When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she’s one step closer to her dream: a coveted anchor chair on a national network.

Jordan is smart and aggressive, with unabashed star-power, and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Her signature? Arriving first on the scene—in impractical designer stilettos. Armed with a master’s degree in forensic science and impeccable instincts, Jordan has been able to balance her dueling motivations: breaking every big story—and giving a voice to the voiceless.

From her time in Texas, she’s covered the vilest of human behaviors but nothing has prepared her for Chicago. Jordan is that rare breed of a journalist who can navigate a crime scene as well as she can a newsroom—often noticing what others tend to miss. Again and again, she is called to cover the murders of Black women, many of them sexually assaulted, most brutalized, and all of them quickly forgotten.

All until Masey James—the story that Jordan just can’t shake, despite all efforts. A 15-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned lot, Masey has come to represent for Jordan all of the frustration and anger that her job often forces her to repress. Putting the rest of her work and her (fraying) personal life aside, Jordan does everything she can to give the story the coverage it desperately requires, and that Black children rarely receive.

Jordan is convinced that there’s a serial killer on the loose and he’s hiding in plain sight.

AS THE WICKED WATCH By Tamron Hall

Performed by Kelsey Navarro

Following Spoiler Alert, Olivia Dade returns with another utterly charming romantic comedy about a devil-may-care actor—who actually cares more than anyone knows—and the no-nonsense woman hired to keep him in line.

"An absolutely witty, swoon worthy behind the scenes romp! Delightful from beginning to end!"--Julie Murphy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dumplin'

Alexander Woodroe has it all. Charm. Sex appeal. Wealth. Fame. A starring role as Cupid on TV’s biggest show, Gods of the Gates. But the showrunners have wrecked his character, he's dogged by old demons, and his post-show future remains uncertain. When all that reckless emotion explodes into a bar fight, the tabloids and public agree: his star is falling.

Enter Lauren Clegg, the former ER therapist hired to keep him in line. Compared to her previous work, watching over handsome but impulsive Alex shouldn’t be especially difficult. But the more time they spend together, the harder it gets to keep her professional remove and her heart intact, especially when she discovers the reasons behind his recklessness…not to mention his Cupid fanfiction habit.

When another scandal lands Alex in major hot water and costs Lauren her job, she’ll have to choose between protecting him and offering him what he really wants—her. But he’s determined to keep his improbably short, impossibly stubborn, and extremely endearing minder in his life any way he can. And on a road trip up the California coast together, he intends to show her exactly what a falling star will do to catch the woman he loves: anything at all.

ALL THE FEELS By Olivia Dade

Read by Read by Emily Woo Zeller, Feodor Chin

A collection of 36 extraordinary stories originally told on stage, featuring work by writers, entertainers, thinkers, and community leaders. Spanning comedy and tragedy, Alien Nation brilliantly illuminates what it’s like to be an immigrant in America.


America would not be America without its immigrants. This anthology, adapted from storytelling event “This Alien Nation,” captures firsthand the past and present of immigration in all its humor, pain, and weirdness. Contributors—some well-known, others regular (and fascinating) people—share moments from their lives, reminding us that immigration is not just a word dropped in the news (simplified to something you are “for” or “against”), but a world—rich with unique voices, perspectives, and experiences.

Travel from the Central Park playground where “tattle-tales” among nannies inspire Christine Lewis’s activism to an Alexandrian garden half a century ago courtesy of writer André Aciman. Visit a refugee camp in Gaza as described by actress and comedian Maysoon Zayid, and follow Intersex activist Tatenda Ngwaru as she flees Zimbabwe with dreams of meeting Oprah. Witness efforts from comedian Aparna Nancherla's mother to make Aparna less shy, and Orange is the New Black's Laura Gómez makes an unlikely connection in a bed-and-breakfast. 

Compelling and inspirational, Alien Nation is a celebration of immigration and an exploration of culture shock, isolation and community, loneliness and hope, heartbreak and promise—it’s a poignant reminder of our shared humanity at a time we need it greatly, and a thoughtful, entertaining tribute to cultural diversity.

ALIEN NATION By Sofija Stefanovic

Harper Audio proudly traces its roots back to 1952, when Dylan Thomas first recorded for our Caedmon label. For more than five decades, HarperAudio/Caedmon has been synonymous not only with distinguished poets reading their works, but also with equally distinguished authors and readers performing classic and contemporary texts.

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