Discover Exceptional Audiobooks with these Earphones Award Winners 

This debut psychological novel received raves from Gillian Flynn and Louise Penny, was a New York Times bestseller, and became a Netflix film starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, and Julianne Moore. Filled with unexpected twists worthy of its homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, the plot calls for a narrator who can express minute-to-minute tension.  

From AudioFile: “Narrator Ann Marie Lee delivers the tightly wound heroine with precision, increasing her pace and raising her pitch when she sees an act of violence in a neighbor’s house. Lee makes [the lead character’s] struggle to remain sane in an insane world moving and believable.” 

Who doesn’t love a rock-n-roll romance? Rebecca Yarros, author of the Empyrean series, does! She said, “Hot chemistry, fantastic writing, realistic character flaws, triumphs, and family drama—Xio Axelrod never misses a beat!” The girl band The Lillys is on the road again in this follow-up to Axelrod’s The Girl with Stars in her Eyes. This time, the focus is on the band’s drummer, Kayla, who falls for the tour bus driver, Ty, and the crackling conversational chemistry between readers Tyla Collier and Benjamin Charles makes me want more sequels featuring this well-matched duo. 

From AudioFile: “[The narrators] offer different approaches . . . creating a robust listening experience. Collier sprinkles her performance with pep and fire, while Charles gives a lively performance at a smooth pace.”  

At B&N Audiobooks, we are big fans of everything GraphicAudio produces—their immersive productions create unique theatrical-like audiobook experiences. Master of fantasy novels, Brandon Sanderson, has called this epic fantasy title an “excellent fantasy debut, with engaging world-building and a good mix between action and character.” The audiobook employs over 30 narrators, who convincingly bring to life a world where the price of using magic is a memory. Part two, The Two-Faced Queen, also uses the same large richly talented cast. 

From AudioFile: “Every character is given a unique and lively voice. The story races forward, and twists are punctuated with sound effects, all scored with a subtle soundtrack. Action sequences unfold like a movie, with dramatic moments being given special attention.”  

C.S. Lewis’s Narnia tales continue to enthrall almost 75 years after their debut, and this entrancing work of historical fiction uses this classic series as an opportunity to delve into the impact that favorite books can have on us throughout our lives. Using a touching brother-sister relationship as its core, the book imaginatively introduces C.S. Lewis as a main character, and narrator Fiona Hardingham showcases great range as she portrays his Irish accent, as well as several other characters’ nuanced British speech patterns.  

From AudioFile: “A must-listen for every Narnia or C.S. Lewis fan.” 

This is a highly entertaining short story collection from the beloved author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. David Rintoul takes Smith’s wit and humor to a whole new level in a narrative approach that is crisp, relatable, and inspiring in its agility across a large swath of diverse characters. 

From AudioFile: “Rintoul’s characterizations enhance the story even more. A sneaky priest, a conniving Australian actress, a not-so-dutiful Turkish son, a middle-class suburban woman and the working-class gal next door who are engaged in a battle of wits–the personalities are rendered in aural technicolor and with real-world timing.” 

I started and finished reading most of Agatha Christie before I was twelve, and now I’m re-engrossed all over again, thanks to the audio versions. As Hercule Poirot would say, “there is no such thing as Death, really, you know, only Change,” and hearing Christie’s intricate plots and wonderfully eccentric casts emerge in a completely new way is an exciting change. This classic locked-room mystery is voiced sumptuously by multi-Audie Award-winner Simon Jones. 

From AudioFile: “Jones’s interpretation of Poirot is impeccable. The elaborate setup and mis-directions of Christie’s 1926 novel offer a master class in mystery writing, and Jones’s performance leaves listeners fully satisfied.” 

This spine-tingling short story offers a twist on the traditional haunted house tale by introducing a house that speaks for itself. Rose House doesn’t only contain tools imbued with artificial intelligence, like those many of us use unthinkingly every day, but it is a thinking piece of AI. Rose House is uninhabited, and yet it contacts authorities to report a dead body within its walls. Terrifying, right? With artificial intelligence infiltrating our lives in so many ways that we don’t yet fully understand, the only way to describe this story is as part fiction and part philosophical musings on what it means to be human. 

From AudioFile: “Raquel Beattie narrates a dystopian horror novella with subtle elements of mystery. Beattie creates a wholly unsettling persona for Rose House, giving just enough menace to the flat AI tone so that the unnatural state of its existence is forcefully driven home . . . a performance that will linger.” 

Popular science writer Mary Roach has been described as the science teacher we all wish we had in high school because she asks the basic questions we are thinking, as well as cool questions we never thought to ponder. She makes the answers accessible using humor, simplicity, and a not-infrequent use of delightful disgustingness. In this bestselling and highly praised title (including Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 by The Washington Post), Roach applies her inveterate skills of investigation to all types of interactions or conflicts between humans and nature—curious bears, hungry elephants, jaywalking moose, vandal gulls, danger trees, and much more. 

From AudioFile: “[Roach] is a remarkably skilled narrator with a pleasant mid-range voice. She reads with verve, and her phrasing and pacing keep the text moving while enabling our laughter or stunned amazement. Roach also re-creates accents, conversations, and speech patterns like the best mimic.” 

If you are already a fan of commentator and storyteller Mo Rocca, then you know his trademark style is to offer insightful commentary filtered through wit, humor, and (usually) a sense of admiration. And, of course, you know his unmistakable voice, which is a character all its own in this audiobook version of Rocca’s same-named podcast. Here, his intriguing and well-researched topic is dead people and “dead” things that fascinate him—from founding fathers and long-ago celebrities to dragons and discos.  

From AudioFile: “Colorful and full of ironic humor, this work will make you smile and think. It’s a showcase for the author’s finely tuned insights about people, sensitivity to cultural context, and narrating talent.” 

Judi Dench on Shakespeare. Repeat: Judi Dench on Shakespeare! If you are a fan of either, or, more likely, both, this is all you need to know.  

From AudioFile: “Each chapter thoroughly explores a play and Dench’s role in it. Her wit and impish nature will have listeners in stitches. The final segment has Dench (in her own voice) and [co-narrator] O’Hea engaged in friendly, very funny, squabbling. Informative, educational and altogether brilliant listening!” 

Author and narrator of The Humanity Archive, Jermaine Fowler, is not a trained historian, and yet his book became a New York Times history bestseller. This makes sense because what Fowler is is a podcaster, storyteller, son of two teachers, and a “self-proclaimed intellectual adventurer.” His focus in The Humanity Archive is a very broad look at Black history—from Africa thousands of years ago to 20^th-century America, but he makes everything very accessible to any kind of reader through “small” stories of individuals, mostly those who have previously been overlooked. Each story he tells is compelling for its details as well as for the larger connections he makes to important big-picture themes about how we memorialize history. 

From AudioFile: “This is not a passive listen—narrator Jermaine Fowler commands the attention of his audience . . . The intellectually rigorous audiobook is ultimately about humanity and how an accurate understanding of history can move us forward.” 

Almost every weekday morning, I listen to a Beatles’ 4-pack of songs and trivia show on a local radio program, and on weekends, I always catch Breakfast with the Beatles, even if it’s during the evening replay. (Yes, I can stream their music any time, of course, but I still prefer the magic of hearing them over live airwaves.) I know the Fab Four’s birthdates, have attended multi-day Beatles conferences, and subscribe to podcasts that recount the band’s fame literally day-by-day. Despite my lifelong fandom, All You Need Is Love presents new material to learn and love because a team of solid narrators presents almost ten hours of never-before-published revelations from interviews conducted in the 1980s with Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, their inner circle, and others who were close to the Beatles personally or professionally. It’s not an exaggeration to call this deep oral history an emotional listening experience and an historic milestone in the understanding of one of the most influential bands of all time. 

From AudioFile: “This is one of those audiobooks you can’t shut off and will never forget.”