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The ReadDown

The Best Audiobooks by Black Authors

by Editorial Staff

Masterful storytellers meet gripping narrators in this collection of audiobooks by Black authors. From rich multigenerational novels to inspiring nonfiction and everything in between, you won’t believe your ears!

  1. 1
    Kin: Oprah's Book Club Book Cover Picture
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    Kin: Oprah’s Book Club

    by Tayari Jones

    Read by Angel Pean and Ashley J. Hobbs

    A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage — Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
    Kin: Oprah's Book Club Book Cover Picture
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  2. 2
    The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store Book Cover Picture
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    The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

    by James McBride

    Read by Dominic Hoffman

    From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them. “A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel … Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing” (Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review).
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  3. 3
    James (Pulitzer Prize Winner) Book Cover Picture
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    James (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

    by Percival Everett

    Read by Dominic Hoffman

    A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before.
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  4. 4
    The Exes: A GMA Book Club Pick Book Cover Picture
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    The Exes: A GMA Book Club Pick

    by Leodora Darlington

    Read by Amaka Okafor, Avita Jay, Leodora Darlington, Sebastian Humphreys and Yasmin Mwanza

    Who hasn’t wanted to murder an ex — figuratively, at least? In this explosive debut thriller, a woman’s seemingly perfect romantic life is on the verge of collapse as she uncovers a hidden history surfacing dark secrets that have deadly consequences.
    The Exes: A GMA Book Club Pick Book Cover Picture
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  5. 5
    The Balancing Act Book Cover Picture
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    The Balancing Act

    by Nedra Glover Tawwab

    Read by Nedra Glover Tawwab

    From the bestselling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace, a relatable guide to understanding codependency, enmeshment, and what it means to get our needs met for real. Discover new ways to identify your needs, navigate conflict, and find more harmony and trust with your spouse or partner, close friends, family members, and the other important people in your life.
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  6. 6
    Matriarch: Oprah's Book Club Book Cover Picture
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    Matriarch: Oprah’s Book Club

    by Tina Knowles

    Read by Tina Knowles, Beyoncé, Solange, Kelly Rowland and Angie Beyincé

    Here is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, loss and perseverance, and the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. Matriarch is one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America — and the wisdom that women pass on to each other, mothers to daughters, across generations.
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  7. 7
    Feel Free Book Cover Picture
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    Feel Free

    by Zadie Smith

    Read by Nikki Amuka-Bird

    From Zadie Smith, one of the most beloved authors of her generation, a new collection of essays. Arranged in five sections — In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free — this collection poses questions we immediately recognize, offering a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith’s own life. This is literary journalism at its zenith.
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  8. 8
    Before the Ever After Book Cover Picture
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    Before the Ever After

    by Jacqueline Woodson

    Read by Guy Lockard

    National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson’s stirring novel-in-verse explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed and the cost of professional sports on Black bodies.
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  9. 9
    Harlem Rhapsody Book Cover Picture
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    Harlem Rhapsody

    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    Read by Robin Miles

    She found the literary voices that would inspire the world … The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance, written by Victoria Christopher Murray, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Personal Librarian.
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  10. 10
    The Message Book Cover Picture
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    The Message

    by Ta-Nehisi Coates

    Read by Ta-Nehisi Coates

    The renowned author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell — and the ones we don’t — shape our realities. Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world — and our own souls — and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
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  11. 11
    Junie: A GMA Book Club Pick Book Cover Picture
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    Junie: A GMA Book Club Pick

    by Erin Crosby Eckstine

    Read by Angel Pean

    As the Civil War looms, a young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost in this “poignant story of love, family, and friendship [that] celebrates the power of liberation” (People).
    Junie: A GMA Book Club Pick Book Cover Picture
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  12. 12
    Pure Innocent Fun Book Cover Picture
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    Pure Innocent Fun

    by Ira Madison, III

    Read by Ira Madison, III

    In this nostalgic and raucous collection of sixteen original essays, Ira Madison III — critic, television writer, and host of the beloved Keep It podcast — combines memoir and criticism to offer a brand-new pop-culture manifesto. Brimming with a profound love for a bygone culture and alternating between irreverence and heartfelt insight, Pure Innocent Fun, like all the best products of pop culture, will leave you entertained and surprisingly enlightened.
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  13. 13
    Good Dirt Book Cover Picture
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    Good Dirt

    by Charmaine Wilkerson

    Read by January LaVoy

    The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club pick.
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  14. 14
    Original Sins Book Cover Picture
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    Original Sins

    by Eve L. Ewing

    Read by Robin Miles and Eve L. Ewing

    Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: To maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.
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  15. 15
    The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Book Cover Picture
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    The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

    by Colson Whitehead

    Read by JD Jackson and Colson Whitehead

    This follow-up to The Underground Railroad brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
    The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Book Cover Picture
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