Audible Original Stories

"Just three dates. That's all I'm asking. One boy shares your sense of humor. Another has similar interests and ideals. The third boy has a helpful heart like yours." When Aditi Gupta comes home late from work as a pediatric resident one night and her grandfather offers this pitch, she reluctantly agrees. She's far too busy with med school to be dating, and besides, she dreams of a love for the ages, like her parents, not an arranged marriage. And yet she finds herself agreeing to three dates because she loves her grandfather. All she has to do is make herself utterly ineligible.

The annual Valentine’s Day singles soiree is always a big money-maker for Eloisa Giordono’s winery. What could be more romantic than looking for love at a quaint family vineyard on the most romantic night of year? Well, just about anything as far as Eloisa is concerned. She’s a Valentine’s Day Grinch who thinks it’s the lamest, most clichéd holiday ever invented. But Eloisa is thrown for a loop when a sexy, self-described hopeless romantic shows up at the singles soiree and keeps her captivated.

There’s a dress in Daisy’s closet. Silver. Low-backed. Tiny spaghetti straps. She’ll wear it to prom on the arm of Harris Zandari, the most gorgeous senior at her school. How did quiet, barely-there Daisy, land Harris Zandari? She watched him. She watched him so closely, and for so long, that she saw things no one else did. She saw through his charm, his bright, smiling face, to the sad, broken person underneath just waiting for the perfect sad, broken girl to complete him. Daisy was that girl. 

Refresh is an explosive, powerful short story about a near-future dystopia in which citizens can commodify every waking moment of their lives with computer-generated augmented reality. But this ubiquitous, game-changing technology can create dangerous consequences, especially for society’s most vulnerable people.

Meditations with Miya Blue is an upbeat, irreverent story of a wellness influencer living her best (sponsored) life. That is, until a very un-Zen series of events threatens to pull the thread of Miya's calm and unravel her carefully woven world.

Motherhood isn’t easy, especially when you’re a mother of a Black son. Ten years ago, Cheryl jumped at the chance to send her son, Javonte, to an exclusive boarding school in New England - far away from Atlanta and the violence of the city streets. It was the American dream, or was it? Now settled in Vermont, Javonte is married and well-employed, but Cheryl hardly ever sees him, and when she does, her own son seems like someone she only used to know.

Sinead - who is both resilient and vulnerable, insightful and insecure - spends her days supporting her ailing mother and appeasing Emerson, the man who owns her house and the diner where she works. She wants nothing more than to leave the town her own dark history is bound up in, but Emerson asserts his power over her, thwarting her progress at every turn. One day, Tobias, a mysterious rambler from the east coast, walks into the diner, and Sinead makes the impulsive decision to invite him into her life and home.

County Sheriff Brody Hayes is in the midst of a missing person's call - for a five-month-old baby. Deep in the mountains of his hometown, Bowie, Wyoming, Brody's desperate search for the helpless child through a worsening snowstorm leads him on an even greater journey - one through his memories of his childhood, his brother, his son, and a life for himself that he thought was lost.

Ever since Alana Diaz adopted her cat Furrari, she has found herself in a feud with her infuriating neighbor, whom she knows only by the name on the passive aggressive notes he leaves on her door - R. Jones. Alana works hard all day, and the last thing she needs when she finally relaxes on her balcony with a glass of wine and her new furry roommate is her neighbor’s dog barking his head off.  

After getting unceremoniously dumped by his boyfriend, the last thing Cooper Evans wants is to return to his hometown of Big Rock, Montana, to be in his best friend’s wedding. But he agreed to be her bridesmate (her male maid of honor), and a promise is a promise. What he didn’t expect is to run into his high school crush, who’s out of the closet and a smoking hot cop to boot.

From Steven Millhauser, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler and one of the most imaginative and essential voices of our time, comes a fable about a race of miniature people and the way of life they have come master within our own. By turns enchanting and provocative, The Little People explores the fascination and unease the little people create in us, examines our private desire to disappear into their world, and reveals what happens when our personal and romantic lives inevitably collide.

In this riveting tale of looming apocalypse, Pup is living off the grid for the summer with her parents on an island off the coast of Maine, when all three of them face the hardest decisions of their lives. Across the water one night they can see homes burning and hear gunfire. Pup and her parents, with their goat and chickens and garden and their dog, Opey, have no contact with the mainland, except for boat runs into town. 

Like many well-to-do Upper East Siders over the age of 65, esteemed art appraiser Percival Skinner had planned to spend his retirement living off his savings. But a market correction has left him living below his prior means. One day he’s visited by a dapper fixer in search of a famous work by a Renaissance master. Skinner knows the work well: The original was owned by his ancestor, and was passed down through his family over the generations. If, as an intermediary, he can coordinate a sale, a small fortune awaits. Problem is, he might not be the only one on the make.

Gianna Costa is an infamous attorney who has made a name for herself defending high-profile celebrities from sexual assault allegations. But what occurs in the private life of a woman who is known by some as a traitor to her own gender and others as a fast-pass to absolution? When a man from Gianna's past walks into her office looking for support, she is forced to reconcile with a memory she thought she'd left behind.  

New Yorkers Paul and Darren have planned a winter holiday in Venice. But when their five-year marriage suddenly unravels, Paul endeavors to make the trip alone, despite his heartbreak and anxiety. Far outside his comfort zone, Paul has a mission: to see if he can be adventurous, fearless, free. In short, to become someone new. Soon after arriving in Italy, he notices a small, scruffy, self-assured dog trotting alongside a canal with the confidence he so desperately wants for himself. This street dog and his instincts for survival lend Paul’s trip a singular purpose.

You’re Not a Girl in a Movie is a new collection of powerful poems by Hala Alyan, winner of the Arab American Book Award in Poetry and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In these nine extraordinary poems, Alyan wrestles with the intimate themes that have driven her acclaimed body of work to date: the aching loss of homeland, the image and worth of women, and the violence of love. In Beirut, Brooklyn, and roads in the American West, she unravels the effects of decades of war and displacement on love and human worth and identity.

It’s 1929 in New York City. In an apartment high above Lexington Avenue, the painter Georgia O’Keeffe feels stuck. At 42, she should be at the apex of her powers as an artist, and yet something is missing. Her husband - the gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, who helped build her reputation in the art world - has grown needy and insecure, not to mention unfaithful. More than this, her work has lost its fire, and she knows it. The calla lilies and poppies for which she is revered now seem careful, predictable.

In "People in Hell Want Ice Water" - an eerie and suspenseful short story about connection, trust, and self-preservation - a random hookup amidst the COVID-19 pandemic brings two lonely people together when they need it most. Colin is an immunocompromised software engineer living alone in Los Angeles when he meets Martha on an early morning walk. She’s irreverent and mysterious, and although Colin knows better than to invite a stranger into his house, it’s been over 40 days since he’s been touched, and he can’t resist the temptation.

From the award-winning author of Chemistry comes a sharp and poignant short story that follows a young medical student working in clinical research and grappling with the realities of a future in her chosen field. 

In this captivating historical novella narrated by Tony Award-winning actress Cynthia Erivo, New York Times best-selling author Patti Callahan Henry celebrates the life of the mother of modern nursing and one of history's greatest heroines: Florence Nightingale. In this poignant story, a young woman has just discovered her divine purpose to become a nurse, and struggles to make that dream a reality. While traveling abroad with her close friend, Selina Bracebridge - another strong woman living an unconventional life - a rare opportunity arises for Florence to practice medicine.