The 25 Best Amazon Prime Day Deals on Books (and an Audible Subscription) - Esquire
When you think about Prime Day deals, chances are you think about Instant Pots, televisions, and dirt-cheap Alexa devices. But behind every flashy gadget deal is a lesser-known sale you can't afford to miss. Because Prime Day isn't just about tech or cookware—it also means seriously slashed prices on books. From cookbooks to collectibles to literary fiction, there's a sale for every kind of reader.
We've taken the liberty of weeding through Amazon's Prime Day offerings to bring you the best discounted books to scoop up right now. We've also scouted deals on books we love here at Esquire that are ringing in at way less than the list price right now. Whether you like to read on paper or listen via audiobook, don't waste any time—get shopping before the books sell out, and you'll be reading on a beach before you know it.
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Libertie, by Kaitlyn Greenidge
$17.13 (36% off)
Inspired by the life of one of the first Black female physicians in the United States, this mesmerizing novel (an Esquire Best Book of 2021) begins in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, where Libertie Sampson is expected to follow her mother's path in the medical field, despite her musical calling. When a Haitian doctor proposes marriage, promising to live as her equal in Haiti, she elopes with him, only to discover that colorism and sexism reign supreme on the island. Freedom in all its forms comes under Greenidge's powerful lens: freedom from oppression, freedom to choose one's own path, freedom to love and forgive. What emerges from her careful study is a powerful, transporting story about self-determination in an oppressive world.
The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments Box Set, by Margaret Atwood
$28.99 (12% off)
If you missed The Testaments, Atwood's long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, scoop this budget-friendly set to get caught up—and go all the way back to the beginning while you're at it. In The Testaments, Atwood returns fifteen years later to the reproductive dystopia of Gilead, where three women converge to challenge an oppressive government showing signs of moral rot.
A Man & His Car, by Matt Hranek
$18.87 (53% off)
Behind every glossy hotrod is a story—or so argues Matt Hranek, who lovingly assembled this collection of photographs and interviews about unforgettable cars and the men who cherish them. You or any car lover in your life will fall hard for this keepsake volume, now retailing at Amazon for over half off, with testimony from Jay Leno, Snoop Dogg, and many more.
The Mountains Sing, by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
$13.51 (50% off)
With the epic, multi-generational sweep of Pachinko or East of Eden, The Mountains Sing tells the engrossing story of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. In one dimension of the novel, Trần Diệu Lan tells her granddaughter the tragic story of her youth, when she and her family were forced to flee their ancestral farm during the Land Reform; in another dimension, the impressionable granddaughter, Hương, recounts her coming of age story during the Vietnam War. Rich and luminous, informed by a storied land's national life, this panoramic novel soars through the valleys of heartbreak and the peaks of hope.
Paul Hollywood's Bread, by Paul Hollywood
$18.99 (53% off)
Do you love to hate The Great British Baking Show's steely-eyed villain? Do you also love carbs? Then Hollywood's bread bible is the book for you. Snag it on Prime Day for close to half off, and you'll be mastering gluten showstoppers like ciabatta, pizza dough, and soda bread in no time.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
$11.69 (10% off)
Collectible editions listed at this price point rarely look this stunning. You've likely read The Great Gatsby before, but there's no time like the summer to lose yourself anew in Fitzgerald's unforgettable story of decadence, dangerous dreams, and American excess.
The Chronicles of Narnia Box Set: Full-Color Collector's Edition, by C.S. Lewis
$40.85 (37% off)
Whether you're looking to relive your childhood or share The Chronicles of Narnia with a young reader, you couldn't find a better deal than this collectible seven-book set, featuring sumptuous full-color illustrations from Pauline Baynes, the series' original artist. Lewis' seminal stories about compassion, courage, and hope come to life in these lovingly rendered editions.
Girlhood, by Melissa Febos
$22.74 (16% off)
In this powerful blend of memoir, reportage, scholarship, and cultural history, Febos examines the harmful narratives of girlhood, from "empty consent" to adolescent bullying. What emerges is a dazzling cartography of the violence, shame, and control visited on young women, at the expense of their happiness and freedom. Febos charts a liberating way forward in this galvanizing book, clearing a path for women to feel rage, power, and pleasure.
His Only Wife, by Peace Adzo Medie
$15.62 (40% off)
In this funny, ferocious send-up of Cinderella, Medie finds her heroine in Afi Tekple, a poor seamstress whose widowed mother has arranged an advantageous marriage to Eli, a wealthy businessman from Accra. But when Afi moves to the city, she gets more than she bargained for: She is married by proxy, with Eli's brother standing in as the groom, then left alone in a luxurious apartment while Eli cavorts with his mistress. In the months before Eli shows himself, Afi enrolls in fashion school and blossoms into a career woman, leading to a powerful confrontation when Eli finally surfaces. Medie's novel crackles with wit, wisdom, and a thoughtful meditation on Ghana's changing values.
We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker
$16.79 (40% off)
Duchess Day Radley, a self-professed thirteen-year-old "outlaw" struggling to care for her younger brother and single mother, will stick with you beyond the very last page of this harrowing novel. In their coastal California town, Duchess receives protection from the police chief, a man haunted by providing testimony that put his best friend Vincent in prison. When Vincent walks free, this unlikely convergence of characters is brought to a reckoning, making for a pulse-pounding story about how the past is never really past.
The Great Passage, by Shion Miura
$10.19 (32% off)
Translated from the original Japanese, this prize-winning novel traces the thirteen-year process of making a dictionary, as observed through the lives of the publishers and linguists hard at work on the 2,900-page tome. As they collaborate on this labor of love, the novel's characters unearth poignant truths about how words are a living thing—and the very foundation of our lives. Snag it now for 26 percent off as a Prime Day deal, then check out the feature film and animated television series.
Life, by Lu Yao
$9.52 (36% off)
At long last, we have an English translation of the novella that swept China off its feet. Though Lao published only two books in his lifetime, both were considered masterpieces, catapulting him to national celebrity and earning him the prestigious Mao Dun Literature Prize. In the semi-autobiographical Life, we meet Gao Jialin, a community teacher at an agonizing crossroads: move to the city after his job is terminated and leave his first love, or stay in his rural village, where life is familiar and comfortable? When Gao Jialin rejects rural life and falls in love with a cityslicker, a surprise visit from his first love causes his two lives to clash. Evocatively imagined and resistant to easy answers, Life is a masterful meditation on transformation: personal, professional, and national.
Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming
$11.99 (20% off)
All twelve of Fleming's James Bond novels—and the two short story collections in which Bond appears—are listed on Amazon as Prime Day deals, clocking in at 25 percent off. Whether you're a collector looking to round out your bookshelf or a newbie to the franchise, this is the most cost-efficient way to stock up. Start your journey with Casino Royale, the unforgettable novel that introduced 007 to the world, changing spy fiction forever.
World Travel, by Laurie Woolever
$21.00 (40% off)
In World Travel, longtime Anthony Bourdain collaborator Laurie Woolever uses ephemera from Bourdain's life on screen and in letters to produce a foodie travel guide to over forty countries. Bourdain's charms loom as large as ever, with his powers of observation turned toward everything from the fish markets of Seoul to Oaxacan sauces. If you haven't resumed traveling yet, take an imagined gourmand's journey in your mind, courtesy of Bourdain's inside scoop. When you've finished reading, check out our interview with Woolever, who explained how she stitched her late friend's words into something new.
A Promised Land, by Barack Obama
$23.23 (48% off)
The biggest book of 2020 was Barack Obama's long-awaited memoir, a doorstopper that made headlines with its record-breaking $65 million advance. In these eloquent 768 pages, Obama provides powerful reflection on the state of the American project, along with key insights and new information about pivotal moments in the Obama Administration. A Promised Land spans Obama's early political career in Chicago, his history-making presidential run in 2008, and concludes with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. With 768 pages ahead of you, it's best to start sooner rather than later.
Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam
$11.75 (58% off)
Before Alam's outstanding third novel becomes a Netflix series, read the book, which is currently over half off. In this white-knuckled story, a white family's getaway to a rented Hamptons home is disrupted by the midnight arrival of an older Black couple, who claim to own the home and ask to stay the night, as New York City has become shrouded in total darkness during an ominous blackout. With an apocalypse looming outside their walls, together the two families must endure an uncomfortable dark night of the soul, wrestling with their suspicions of one another while forming fragile bonds. Riveting and claustrophobic, Leave the World Behind invites us to sit with our discomfort and reflect on our own rushed judgments, delivering a dazzling and dark examination of family, race, class, and what matters most when the impossible becomes possible. If you find yourself falling hard for the novel, check out Alam's tips and tricks for writers here at Esquire.
The Man Who Lived Underground, by Richard Wright
$17.01 (26% off)
Earlier this year, Esquire investigated the forces of racism and discrimination behind the eighty-year publication delay of Richard Wright's lost novel. The book is now retailing for 25 percent off at Amazon, meaning that there's no better time to get up to speed. In the novel, Wright poses provocative questions: What if you could look at life from outside of life? What would you see? In this masterwork from one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, a Black man named Fred Daniels is apprehended by the police, brutally tortured, and forced to sign a confession for a violent crime he did not commit. To escape his captors, Daniels flees into the city's underground sewers, where he transforms into someone else entirely. Beneath an unfair world, Daniels tunnels into the basements of local establishments, leading him to startling truths about morality, injustice, and what matters most when the world's systems are stripped away. Though the novel was written in the 1940s, its visceral vision of crime and punishment continues to hold modern resonance.
Detransition, Baby, by Torrey Peters
$20.12 (25% off)
Amazon is offering Torrey Peters' bestselling debut novel at almost 40 percent off (before you buy, read an exclusive excerpt here at Esquire). In this electrifying story, three lives coalesce around an unexpected pregnancy, forcing a bittersweet examination of identity, parenthood, and family. When Ames learns that his boss-turned-lover is pregnant, he confesses that he once identified as a trans woman, then hatches a plan for his lover to co-parent with his ex-girlfriend, a lonesome "trans elder" yearning to become a mother. In this compassionate, gut-punching story, Peters leans all the way into the tragicomedy of how families and identities are formed, making for a deeply searching novel that resists easy answers.
No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood
$17.83 (29% off)
In February, Patricia Lockwood sat down with Esquire for a revealing profile, in which she took us behind the curtain of writing No One Is Talking About This, her debut novel. Never has the experience of being Extremely Online been more viscerally rendered than in this astonishing story of a viral celebrity who travels the world on the back of her popular tweets. It takes a family tragedy to reawaken her to the world beyond her screen, where she's reminded that the internet can't contain the wonders and horrors of real life. Written in a style at once lyrical and fragmentary, brimming with memes and texts, this novel locates both the profane and the profound in how we live online. No One Is Talking About This will frighten you, implicate you, and scrape your guts out, in the best way possible.
Infinite Country, by Patricia Engel
$14.80 (41% off)
Scoop up our March 2021 Esquire Book Club pick, which gives voice to three generations of a mixed-status Colombian family, torn apart by man-made borders. When Elena and Mauro move to the United States with their newborn, then decide to overstay their visas, the cruelty of deportation sunders their growing family, but never their bond. Gorgeously woven through with Andean myths and the bitter hardships of living undocumented, Infinite Country tells a breathtaking story of the unimaginable prices paid for a better life, while reckoning with the complex interior world of immigration, from questions of identity to the daily pain of longing for a home to which one might never return.
The Hemingway Stories, by Ernest Hemingway
$11.63 (32% off)
In April, we celebrated Hemingway Week to occasion the release of Hemingway, the new documentary from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. We went deep into our archives to remember Hemingway's days as an Esquire writer, when he chartered planes in order to meet deadlines; we also spoke with Burns and Novick about the troubled and tragic figure behind Hemingway's mask of masculinity, revealed anew in their film. The Hemingway Stories, a keepsake collection of Papa's best stories introduced by Tobias Wolff, is currently ringing in at 32 percent off. If you're as hooked on Hemingway as we are, don't hesitate to snag a copy.
The Hard Crowd, by Rachel Kushner
$15.99 (38% off)
You can't do much better than 38 percent off The Hard Crowd, one of our Best Books of Spring 2021. Kushner's signature literary sensibility emerges and matures in this two-decades-long collection of cultural criticism, literary journalism, and memoir, all of it proof positive of her singular way of seeing. In these nineteen forceful, blistering essays, Kushner turns her lens to everything from Jeff Koons to Denis Johnson, Palestinian refugees to Italian radical politics, classic muscle cars to San Francisco's indie music scene. And yes, of course, there are motorcycles.
Early Morning Riser, by Katherine Heiny
$16.16 (40% off)
If you're looking to pack your beach bag without spending too much on a beach read, spring for Early Morning Riser, an Esquire Best Book of 2021, on sale now. Early Morning Riser is a wry and wise novel about the intertwined romantic lives of the residents of a small Michigan town. New-in-town Jane falls hard for handyman Duncan, but struggles to come to terms with the growing knowledge that Duncan is the local casanova, having slept with nearly every woman in town. When a tragic car crash binds Jane forever to Duncan, his ex-wife, and his mysterious coworker, Heiny soars in her offbeat examination of small-town baggage and found families.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders
$14.99 (46% off)
Reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is like taking a master class with Saunders, all for the price of a discounted hardcover. Saunders has spent over two decades teaching creative writing in Syracuse University's MFA program, where his most beloved class explores the 19th-century Russian short story in translation. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, our January 2021 Esquire Book Club pick, Saunders has distilled decades of coursework into a lively and profound crash course, exploring the mechanics of fiction through seven memorable stories by Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol. In these warm, sublimely specific essays, Saunders' astounding powers of analysis come into full view, as does his gift for linking art with life. By becoming better readers, Saunders argues, we can become better citizens of the world.
Save 53% On Audible
Maybe you prefer your books piped into your ears rather than printed on a page, or you like the flexibility of being able to read while you run. If this sounds like you, sign up for Audible, Amazon's expansive audiobook platform. With Prime Day approaching, Amazon has slashed the price of an Audible membership in half, offering Prime members 53 percent off their first four months. Sign up on the cheap and cancel anytime if it's not for you.
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