At Kirkus, we depend upon audiobooks to keep up with new books—after all, nobody can sit and read a physical book 24 hours a day. For all those in-between times—while cooking, folding laundry, walking the dog—there are audiobooks. Here are some of our top listens of the year.

FICTION

Bahni Turpin is the ideal inner voice of Aretha in Kashana Cauley’s hilarious novel The Survivalists (Brilliance Audio, 10 hours and 23 minutes), about an ambitious Black attorney who discovers that the coffee entrepreneur she’s dating lives with doomsday preppers. Aretha has never heard of Black survivalists, but she can’t argue with the idea that Black people should always prepare for the worst. Turpin’s reading is funny but also empathetic as the increasingly erratic Aretha starts to rethink her career and principles while coping with a variety of contemporary disasters.—CONNIE OGLE

Making readers care about an unsympathetic character can be tricky, but Robin Miles, who reads Dennis Lehane’s searing Small Mercies (HarperAudio, 10 hours and 23 minutes), excels at revealing the conflicted soul of Mary Pat Fennessy, the desperate mother whose teenage daughter goes missing on the eve of Boston school desegregation in 1974. Tough Mary Pat was raised in South Boston, and Miles nails her accent (she also voices the book’s other main character, a detective investigating the teen’s disappearance). But there’s more to Mary Pat than her outer shell, and Miles’ interpretation enhances Lehane’s intense, insightful window onto ingrained racism.—C.O.

Meryl Streep’s narration of Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake (HarperAudio, 11 hours and 22 minutes) is, unsurprisingly, one of the best performances of 2023. Two timelines unfold: When her grown daughters return to the family cherry orchard in Michigan during the pandemic, Lara Nelson recounts the tale of her youthful romance with movie star Peter Duke. Streep adds significant depth and richness to a story about love, marriage, and how we stumble unwittingly into our lives, highlighting small differences in tone between the young, inexperienced Lara and the mother in her late 50s. Her work underscores Patchett’s poignant elegy for the chaos of youth and her gentle reminder that we should dare to seek happiness, even in dark times.—C.O.

Reader Dion Graham is a lively, knowing presence in Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto (Random House Audio, 10 hours and 47 minutes), a rollicking story of 1970s Harlem, where crooks and scammers, hard cases and Black militants, dirty cops and crafty politicians all come crashing together as the city’s troubles ignite like a Molotov cocktail. Graham’s deep voice carries much gravitas, and he’s terrific at delivering lines like “Crooked stays crooked and bent hates straight.” This is an engaging and funny book, and Graham is the perfect mouthpiece for Whitehead’s chatty wisdom.—C.O.

NONFICTION

George: A Magpie Memoir (Simon and Schuster Audio, 8 hours and 58 minutes), written and narrated by Frieda Hughes, is the cross-species love story of the year. Though the author reveals how much she hates to be introduced as “FRIEDAHUGHES-DAUGHTER-OF-TEDHUGHES-AND-SYLVIAPLATH,” this story is all the more powerful in light of her past.  After moving to rural Wales in 2004, Hughes wondered if she and her husband would ever re-establish a social life—but those concerns receded the day she rescued a baby magpie and named it George. This diary of the two years that followed, read in her bright British accent, is audio joy.—MARION WINIK

The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism,by AdamNagourney (Penguin Random House Audio, 18 hours and 53 minutes): Devoted readers of the New York Times will quickly find themselves obsessed with this peek behind the scenes of the years 1976-2016, read with flair by Robert Petkoff. As Nagourney traces a throughline of great aspirations—and the great hubris that goes with them—we witness the rise and fall of characters such as Jayson Blair, Howell Raines, Jill Abramson, and Judith Miller as well as following the paper’s struggles with institutional racism, sexism, and the advent of the digital era.—M.W.

Once you get to know Mary Rodgers, you can imagine her saying she’s glad she died before the publication of Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (Spiegel & Grau by OrangeSky Audio, 15 hours and 45 minutes) so the wonderful actor Christine Baranski could be drafted to read it. Believe the subtitle: Mary Rodgers will alarm you, seemingly holding nothing back as she lionizes her father (musical-theater legend Richard Rodgers), vilifies her mother, and portrays, in all its dubious glory, the midcentury Manhattan theater crowd, led by her adored Stephen Sondheim. Her co-author, drama critic Jesse Green, reads his own footnotes and commentary.—M.W.

Poet Safiya Sinclair delivers an exquisite reading of her book How To Say Babylon: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster Audio, 16 hours and 46 minutes), which chronicles her coming-of-age in a Rastafarian family in rural Jamaica—one of the best audio memoirs of this or any year.  Sinclair’s voice is girlish, her Caribbean diction elegant, her rendering of patois and Rasta jargon powerful and authentic. It was a gift for language that opened the door for her, allowing Sinclair to escape the confines of Rastafarian patriarchy as a published poet in her teens. That gift infuses this narrative, too, sentence by transporting sentence.—M.W.

MIDDLE GRADE

The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln (Listening Library, 9 hours and 53 minutes): In the grand tradition of books for young logophiles such as Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, this mystery about an eccentric English family whose names have been chosen from the dictionary introduces readers to the Swifts, including Shenanigan, her sisters, Phenomena and Felicity, and their Arch-Aunt Schadenfreude. British actor Nikki Patel’s pitch-perfect delivery maintains the slower speed that’s developmentally appropriate for young listeners while still expressing all the text’s drama and hilarity. Listen now, before the sequel comes out in April 2024.—LAURA SIMEON

Barely Floating by Lilliam Rivera (Listening Library, 5 hours and 46 minutes): 12-year-old Nat’s joy at finding a synchronized swimming team where she’ll be embraced as an accomplished, determined athlete—who’s also fat and Latina—is dampened by her well-meaning parents’ concerns; the largely white sport is dominated by thin people, and they worry about the impact on her. Can she fulfill her dreams, persuade her parents, and remain true to friends who believe in her? Bilingual actor Victoria Villarreal’s narration animates Nat’s memorable story, highlighting its strong emotions and keeping listeners engaged through dramatic twists and turns.—L.S.

YOUNG ADULT

The Reunion by Kit Frick (Simon & Schuster Audio, 7 hours and 32 minutes): Take four teenagers—a pair of twins, their cousin, and a boy whose dad is marrying into the family—on a winter break trip to Cancún and throw in lots of family drama. Is it any surprise when someone goes missing? While this suspenseful thriller told through flashbacks via multiple points of view may seem like a tricky candidate for audio, the cast of talented narrators—Zac Aleman, Andre Bellido, Marisa Blake, Kurt Kanazawa, and Angel Pean—does a superb job, and listeners will easily be swept up in the story.—L.S.

All the Fighting Parts by Hannah V. Sawyerr (Recorded Books, 5 hours and 14 minutes): This honest, gut-wrenching debut novel about a teen girl who was sexually assaulted by the widely admired pastor of her church is ideal for the verse format: Each carefully chosen word and skillfully constructed phrase carries an impact that’s enhanced by the poems’ layout on the page. While that visual element is lost in the audio version, it’s more than compensated for by the cadence, rhythm, and emotional immediacy of the narration by the author, an English professor and spoken-word poet.—L.S.

Connie Ogle is a writer in Florida. Marion Winik is the host of the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.