Listen Up!
Exceptional audio books for teens on CD, MP3 & Playaway
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The Austin Public Library now offers audio books on Playaway. You must provide your own headphones and 1 AAA battery. To browse the teen collection of Playaways go to Advance Search in FindIt and select the following: material format: select "Audiobook Playaway" age level: select "Teen - Y" Click on Search and browse our teen Playaway collection. |
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The Abhorsen Trilogy (first book is Sabriel) Sabriel, the daughter of the necromancer Abhorsen, must journey into the mysterious and magical Old Kingdom to rescue her father from the Land of the Dead. awards: 2005 YALSA Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults subjects: Fantasy, Magical Thinking, Magic |
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Airborn Matt Cruse has the life he has always dreamed of as a cabin boy on the Aurora, a luxury passenger airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean. Then one night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies who are completely real and utterly mysterious. awards: 2007 YALSA Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults, Michael L. Printz Honor-2005, Texas Lone Star Reading List-2006, ALA Best Books for Young Adults-2005, ALA Notable Children's Books-2005, ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers-2005, subjects: Canadian fiction, Pirates, Airships, Animals |
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The Boyfriend List: (15 guys, 11 shrink appointments, 4 ceramic
frogs, and me, Ruby Oliver) A Seattle fifteen-year-old explains some of the reasons for her recent panic attacks, including breaking up with her boyfriend, losing all her girlfriends, tensions between her performance-artist mother and her father, and more. award: ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers-2006 subjects: Dating, High schools, Friendships |
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Bucking the Sarge Deeply involved in his cold and manipulative mother's shady business dealings in Flint, Michigan, fourteen-year-old Luther keeps a sense of humor while running the Happy Neighbor Group Home For Men, all the while dreaming of going to college and becoming a philosopher. awards: 2005 Children's Notable Recordings subjects: Business enterprises, Fraud, Group homes, Mothers, People with mental disabilities, African Americans |
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The Canning Season While Ratchet Clark's life has never been precisely normal, her mother's decision to send her to visit two ancient great aunts in Maine for the summer is weird even by her family's standards. As the summer unfolds, her aunts fill Ratchet in on all the details of their memorable lives, including servants eaten by bears, a groom dumped at the altar, and their mother's gruesomely ingenious suicide. awards: 2003 National Book Award, Publisher's Weekly Best Children's Books: 2003, ALA Best Books for Young Adults: 2004 subjects: Great aunts, Maine |
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Catalyst Eighteen-year-old Kate, who sometimes chafes at being a preacher's daughter, finds herself losing control in her senior year as she faces difficult neighbors, the possibility that she may not be accepted by the college of her choice, and an unexpected death. awards: 2003 Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults, Tayshas Reading List: 2005, ALA Best Books for Young Adults: 2003 subjects: High Schools, Neighborliness, Death, Fathers and Daughters |
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The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare Introduction -- Romeo & Juliet (Act II, Scene ii) -- Henry V (Act III, Scene i) -- The comedy of errors (Act III, Scene ii) -- The tempest (Act I, Scene ii) -- Pericles (Act I, Chorus) -- Macbeth (Act I, Scene i) -- A midsummer night's dream (Act V, Scene i) -- King Lear (Act V, Scene iii) -- The winter's tale (Act III, Scene ii) -- Hamlet (Act III, Scene i) -- Conclusion. |
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The Compound Eli and his family have lived in the Compound for six years. The world they knew is gone. Eli's father built the Compound to keep them safe. Now, they can't get out. He won't let them. Dad asked me if I wanted to see more of the Compound. I didn't. We would have to wait fifteen years before it would be safe to go outside. Which left more than enough time to see the rest of the Compound. Our new world. A world I would soon hate. awards: 2009 Texas Lone Star Reading List subjects: Fathers, Deception, Psychopaths |
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Dragon Rider After learning that humans are headed toward his hidden home, Firedrake, a silver dragon, is joined by a brownie and an orphan boy in a quest to find the legendary valley known as the Rim of Heaven, encountering both friendly and unfriendly creatures along the way and struggling to evade the relentless pursuit of an old enemy. awards: 2005 Children's Notable Recordings subjects: Dragons, Animals-mythical, Fantasy |
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Feed In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble. subjects: Science fiction |
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Golden Compass Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. award: Carnegie Medal-1996 subjects: Missing persons, Kidnapping, Arctic regions |
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Goose Girl Princess Anidori, on her way to marry a prince she has never met, is betrayed by her guards and her lady-in-waiting and must become a goose girl to survive until she can reveal her true identity and reclaim the crown that is rightfully hers. award: Texas: Lone Star Reading List-2005 subjects: Fairy tales, Princesses, Human-animal communication |
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A Great and Terrible Beauty After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma returns to England, after many years in India, to attend a finishing school where she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world. award: Texas: Tayshas Reading List-2006 subjects: Magic, Supernatural, Boarding schools, England--Social life and customs--19th century |
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How to Build a House Seventeen-year-old Harper Evans hopes to escape the effects of her father's divorce on her family and friendships by volunteering her summer to build a house in a small Tennessee town devastated by a tornado. subjects: Building, Interpersonal Relation, Divorce, Stepfamilies, Voluntarism, Tennessee |
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Impossible When seventeen-year-old Lucy discovers her family is under an ancient curse by an evil Elfin Knight, she realizes to break the curse she must perform three impossible tasks before her daughter is born in order to save them both. subjects: Magic, Elves, Teenage pregnancy, Teenage mothers |
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Into Thin Air The first-hand account of the catastrophic expedition up Mt. Everest which claimed the lives of 5 mountain climbers. subjects: Mountaineering Accidents - Everst, Mount (China and Nepal), Krakauer, Jon, Mount Everest Expedition (1996) |
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Monster While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken. awards: 2001 Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults, Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books: 2000, Michael L. Printz Award: 2000 subjects: Trials (Murder), Prisons, Self-perception, African Americans |
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One Whole and Perfect Day As her irritating family prepares to celebrate her grandfather's eightieth birthday, sixteen-year-old Lily yearns for just one whole perfect day together. awards: Michael L. Printz Honor: 2008 subjects: Grandparents, Brothers and sisters, Australia |
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Princess Diaries Fourteen-year-old Mia, who is trying to lead a normal life as a teenage girl in New York City, is shocked to learn that her father is the Prince of Genovia, a small European principality, and that she is a princess and the heir to the throne. subjects: Princesses, Fathers and daughters, Identity, Teenage girls, Diaries |
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Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood Sammy Santos and Juliana Rios live amongst the racism, discrimination, and everyday violence during the Vietnam years of the 1960s in a small town in southern New Mexico. awards: 2007 YALSA Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults, Americas Book Award-2004 subjects: Death, Grief, Violence, Mexican Americans |
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Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie While navigating his first year of high school and awaiting the birth of his new baby brother, Scott loses old friends and gains some unlikely new ones as he hones his skills as a writer. subjects: Self-confidence, Conduct of life, Authorship, Brothers, High Schools |
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Stuck in Neutral Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel, who suffers from severe cerebral palsy and cannot function, relates his perceptions of his life, his family, and his condition, particularly as he believes his father is planning to kill him. awards: 2002 Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults, ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: 2001, Michael L. Printz Honor: 2001, subjects: Cerebral Palsy, Physically Handicapped, Euthanasia |
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Sweethearts After losing her soul mate, Cameron, when they were nine, Jennifer, now seventeen, transformed herself from the unpopular fat girl into the beautiful and popular Jenna, but Cameron's unexpected return dredges up memories that cause both social and emotional turmoil. subjects:Love, Popularity, Schools, Family problems, Weight control, Psychological abuse |
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Thirteen Reasons Why When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death. subjects: Suicides, High schools, Interpersonal relations |
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The Wednesday Wars During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in. awards: Texas: Lone Star Reading List : 2009, John Newbery Honor Book : 2008 subjects: Shakespeare; Junior high school; coming of age |
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Wee Free Men A young witch-to-be named Tiffany teams up with the Wee Free Men, a clan of six-inch-high blue men, to rescue her baby brother and ward off a sinister invasion from Fairyland. awards: SLJ Best Books for Children-2003, ALA Best Books for Young Adults-2004, ALA Notable Children's Books-2004 subjects: Discworld (Imaginary place), Witches, Fairies |
List updated September 2009—Joanna Nigrelli
