Whether you’re traveling for the holidays or just need a break from the end-of-year hustle and bustle, now is the ideal time to escape into a new audiobook — and we’re here to help you press play on the perfect listen. So kick back and enjoy the best audiobooks of 2024, both fiction and nonfiction, from compelling thrillers and candid memoirs to riveting journalistic deep dives.
Our Favorite Audiobooks of 2024
By Kaitlyn Johnston
Listen for the Lie
By Amy Tintera, narrated by January LaVoy and Will Damron. 9 hours and 18 minutes.
An audiobook bestseller, Amy Tintera’s Listen for the Lie brilliantly blends wicked humor and thrilling plot twists with spot-on podcast production techniques, creating an immersive listening experience that will keep you riveted. Years ago, Lucy’s life changed forever when someone murdered her best friend and she was found dazed and wandering the streets of her small town in Texas covered in blood. She’s tried her best to move on and leave that awful night behind. But now a popular true crime podcast is reopening the unsolved case, drawing Lucy back home to launch an investigation of her own. She can’t remember what happened that night, but she’s determined to uncover the truth — even if it means finding herself guilty.
The Fury
By Alex Michaelides, narrated by Alex Jennings. 8 hours and 8 minutes.
Three-time Olivier Award winner Alex Jennings brings Alex Michaelides’s latest murder mystery to mesmerizing life in The Fury. When a reclusive actress invites her inner circle to celebrate Easter on her private Greek island, old, buried tensions rise to the surface. The group are cut off from the mainland by a storm and stuck on the island overnight, but not everyone will survive till morning. Full of twists and thrilling turns, The Fury is an Agatha Christie–esque whodunit you won’t be able to put down — “listeners will be loath to press pause on this entirely unpredictable tale” (Bookpage, starred review).
The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice
By Dan Slepian, narrated by the author. 6 hours and 56 minutes.
In The Sing Sing Files, Dateline producer Dan Slepian brilliantly chronicles his decades-long mission to deliver justice for the wrongfully incarcerated. Slepian’s journey started back in 2002 with a lead about two men who were serving 25-to-life sentences for a murder they did not commit. The tip prompted him to launch a 20-year investigation into our broken criminal justice system, ultimately culminating in the release of six innocent men. Slepian’s book began as Letters from Sing Sing, a Pulitzer Prize–finalist podcast that we highly recommend too. The audiobook version of The Sing Sing Files is packed with bonus content, including archival audio from Sing Sing prison, letters to the author, and commentary from formerly incarcerated men.
The Sequel
By Jean Hanff Korelitz, narrated by Julia Whelan. 10 hours and 1 minute.
If you loved Jean Hanff Korelitz’s bestselling literary thriller The Plot, then you’re sure to devour its equally compelling follow-up, The Sequel. Brilliantly narrated by Julia Whelan, this audio version draws you into Anna Williams-Bonner’s wicked tale. With the climactic events of The Plot now behind her (no spoilers!), Anna decides to write her own blockbuster novel — after all, how hard can it truly be to write a bestseller? But soon after Anna’s debut hits the shelves, she receives an ominous message. Someone knows far more than they should in this wonderfully suspenseful satire set in the publishing world.
James
By Percival Everett, narrated by Dominic Hoffman. 7 hours and 49 minutes.
An instant New York Times bestseller that won the National Book Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, James offers a new perspective on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by telling the tale from Jim’s point of view. Enslaved and about to be sold, Jim decides to hide away until he can figure out how to stay with his family. But when he encounters Huck Finn, a boy on the run from his abusive father, Jim ends up with him on a raft down the Mississippi, headed for the Free States. It’s a story that many listeners will know, but in Everett’s retelling, Jim gets the chance to shine through.
Listen on Audible and Libro.fm
Absolution
By Jeff VanderMeer, narrated by Bronson Pichot. 14 hours and 52 minutes.
A surprise fourth installment to Jeff VanderMeer’s bestselling Southern Reach speculative fiction saga, Absolution ties up some of the questions left unanswered by the original three books. Actor Bronson Pichot’s narration takes listeners back to Area X with new expeditions in this brilliant cap to an otherworldly series.
Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
By Oliver Burkeman, narrated by the author. 4 hours and 4 minutes.
Oliver Burkeman offers sage advice on accepting our imperfect lives in Meditations for Mortals. With practical guidance, motivational tips, and eye-opening perspectives, Burkeman helps listeners appreciate life as it is rather than chasing an impossible state of perfection. We all have “non-negotiable limitations,” and it’s time we learn how to explore and embrace our best selves, limitations included.
All Fours
By Miranda July, narrated by the author. 10 hours and 13 minutes.
In this acclaimed bestselling novel that Vogue calls a “midlife awakening,” a female artist embarks on a cross-country road trip but ends up taking a different kind of journey instead. Author Miranda July narrates this “hot and weird and captivating” (New York Magazine) exploration of intimacy, lust, aging, womanhood, and finding yourself in new ways.
The Women
By Kristin Hannah, narrated by Julia Whelan. 14 hours and 57 minutes.
It’s 1965, America is at war, and Frances “Frankie” McGrath ships out to Vietnam with the Army Nurse Corps at just 20 years old. This is where she comes of age, amid the chaos of warring nations, and then, when she returns to the States, in a deeply divided country. The Women is an epic historical fiction tale of friendship, patriotism, and the often-overlooked sacrifices that women have made for their country.
From Here to the Great Unknown
By Lisa Marie Presley, read by Riley Keough and Julia Roberts. 5 hours and 42 minutes.
Completed with the help of her daughter, actress Riley Keough, Lisa Marie Presley’s From Here to the Great Unknown shares the singular experience of growing up with Elvis Presley for a father, as well as the grief of losing him. And that grief of losing a parent is shared by Keough as she writes out the stories her mother recorded for her memoir shortly before passing away — from Lisa Marie Presley’s childhood at Graceland to her marriage to Michael Jackson and so much more. Julia Roberts joins Keough narrating this achingly candid memoir.
Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection
By Charles Duhigg, narrated by the author. 7 hours and 28 minutes.
From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Charles Duhigg, Supercommunicators teaches listeners about the power of communication. With his guidance, you’ll learn to identify what kind of conversation you’re having and develop deeper connections within that conversation. Through research, storytelling, and practical advice, Duhigg helps listeners hone their communication skills on their way to becoming supercommunicators.
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