Throughout the year, our audiobooks columnists and editors log some serious hours of listening time. (And if we sometimes play the audiobooks at 1.5x speed, hoping to make our way through more titles faster, we’ll never tell.) These 12 picks, for readers of all stripes and all ages, were among our favorites this year.
FICTION
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count (Random House Audio, 19 hours and 4 minutes) feels deeply personal in audio form, which adds a striking confessional tone to the story of four African women coping with modern life in America and Nigeria. The author narrates the novel’s first section as Chiamaka, a travel writer enduring the Covid-19 pandemic alone, in a rich, languid manner that matches the character’s wandering inner monologue. Three other readers—Sandra Okuboyejo, A’rese Emokpae, and Janina Edwards—add their own touches as two of Chia’s friends and her housekeeper, weaving each woman’s story into a compassionate and unblinking reality.
The parallels to modern capitalism in Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel (Random House Audio, 11 hours and 42 minutes) make this novel feel like a chilling blueprint for the future. Flying home to Los Angeles after a conference, Moroccan American archivist Sara Hussein is detained by authorities after an algorithm from an implanted device identifies her as a crime risk, landing Sara in a detainment camp. The excellent Frankie Corso reflects every nuance of Sara’s shifting moods as she moves from fear and frustration to hard-won resolve. As the voice of bureaucracy, Barton Caplan is the maddening embodiment of corporate indifference.
Julia Whelan, Marisa Calin, and Katie Leung narrate V.E. Schwab’s sapphic supernatural novel, and each hones in on what makes its doomed characters get under your skin in powerful and disturbing ways. In Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (Macmillan Audio, 18 hours and 26 minutes), three women are linked across centuries. In their attempts to escape the societies that denigrate them, each finds that freedom comes at an unthinkable cost. This is a compelling story about love and hunger, about the lengths women will go to be valued and live at the mercy of nothing but their desires.
Mick Herron’s latest novel marks reader Gerard Doyle’s ninth time guiding listeners through the world of washed-up British spies and the author’s wicked dark humor, inventive plotting, and maze of idiosyncratic “slow horses,” led by the grotesque but crafty Jackson Lamb. In Clown Town (Recorded Books, 12 hours and 4 minutes), an explosive secret threatens to upend M15 and Slough House, and, as always, Doyle navigates Herron’s trademark cynical worldview with impeccable comic timing and—dare we say it?—a startling moment of empathy from the least expected source. Once again, this series displays the ideal marriage of material and narrator.—CONNIE OGLE
NONFICTION
One of the audio delights of the year is E. Jean Carroll’s memoir of the litigation she brought against Donald Trump for sexual assault that occurred in the mid-1990s. Now in her 80s, Carroll gives her all to the reading, sometimes exulting, sometimes near tears. In Not My Type: One Woman vs. A President (Macmillan Audio, 9 hours and 2 minutes) the gifted humorist delivers a blow-by-blow account of the trial, with killer descriptions of everyone, from Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba Esq., she of the stiletto heels and “stupendous” cheekbones, to Judge Lewis Kaplan, whose eyebrows become a character in their own right.
Phil Hanley is a former Armani runway model and popular stand-up comedian, who, despite the challenge of severe dyslexia, has written an excellent memoir and reads it aloud himself. The audiobook of Spellbound: My Life as a Dyslexic Wordsmith (Macmillan Audio, 7 hours and 37 minutes) preserves some of the bloopers and practice reads, interweaving them between the chapters to give an ongoing sense of the uniquely arduous process. Hanley has an important story to tell about learning disabilities, and he tells it with passion and candor.
Arundhati Roy’s reading of her extraordinary memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me (Simon and Schuster Audio, 11 hours and 29 minutes), will pull you in from its first lines, spoken in elegantly accented yet intimately confiding tones. The book is essentially a love letter to the complicated mother whom the author left home at 18 to escape. Roy’s account of the creative process behind her acclaimed 1997 novel,The God of Small Things, is stunning and humbling to hear. An international bestseller that won the Booker Prize, the book drew a severe reaction in India. “There were the usual calls for me to be arrested, hanged, shot, and so on.” Through it all, Mrs. Roy loomed large in the author’s mind.
After sweet introductions by Beyoncé, Solange, adopted daughter Kelly Rowland, and niece Angie Beyincé, Tina Knowles—known as Badass Tenie B in her youth—take over narration of her immersive and inspiring memoir. Matriarch (Penguin Random House Audio, 17 hours and 16 minutes) begins with her formative years on Galveston Island, an idyllic childhood scarred by systemic racism. Her storytelling style is perfectly suited to oral delivery, covering her own early musical career; her rollercoaster history with first husband, Mathew Knowles; and the story of how her shy little daughter revealed her leviathan talent and became an iconic star.—MARION WINIK
YOUNG READERS
Fan favorite Bahni Turpin delivers again with her tender narration of the middle-grade verse novel All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson (Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2 hours and 14 minutes). Turpin’s warm, measured delivery hits just the right note as she conveys the range of emotions expressed by Sage, a 13-year-old girl in New York City whose friend Angel died in a tragic accident. The first two lines—“I didn’t know / best friends could die”—set the tone for this story of growth and resilience in the wake of trauma that shows the power of community connection.
A Japanese classic from the 1970s by one of its most beloved and prolific authors for young people, The Village Beyond the Mist (Tantor Media, 3 hours and 14 minutes) is an enchanting fantasy. Narrator Sarah Skaer, who grew up in Japan, brings the right balance of gravity and whimsy to Sachiko Kashiwaba’s novel, which was translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa. Her sweet voice invites listeners to settle in and be transported to the mysterious hidden village of Misty Valley, where sixth grader Lina Uesugi meets eccentric characters and settles into a delightfully topsy-turvy world that’s reminiscent of Alice’s Wonderland.
Teens don’t need to be theater kids to get swept away by Lily Anderson’s latest madcap horror novel, Showstopper (Listening Library, 7 hours and 17 minutes,), brilliantly narrated by Keylor Leigh. Each summer, Camp Ghostlight pulls off the seemingly impossible: staging a full musical in just three weeks. With 30 driven young stars vying for the best roles in Riverdale, feelings are running high—and that’s before people start being killed by someone in a commedia dell’arte mask. Leigh’s smooth, upbeat narration is the perfect match for the book’s blend of snarky humor, witty banter, and sheer terror.
Narrator Jayne Entwistle’s trans-Atlantic background is an ideal fit for the YA paranormal If Looks Could Kill by Julie Berry (Simon & Schuster Audio, 15 hours and 24 minutes). Entwistle’s range vividly brings to life characters of disparate ages, social classes, and nationalities, making the Victorian era–settings of London’s East End and New York City’s Bowery feel fresh and authentic. Berry imaginatively weaves together the stories of Jack the Ripper, who leaves London for New York after being attacked by a Gorgon, and Pearl and Tabitha, Salvation Army members who are trying to rescue a girl from a brothel.—LAURA SIMEON
Connie Ogle is a writer in Florida. Marion Winik hosts NPR’s Weekly Reader podcast. Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.
