The Best Audiobooks of July 2025  

Don’t let that ice-cold-looking bathtub on the cover fool you—our top pick for the heat of July is this feverish thriller, a sequel from bestselling author Ruth Ware. Inviting back familiar characters from her mega-hit, The Woman in Cabin 10, this time to a luxury hotel in Switzerland, Ware delivers another riveting page-turner. Award-winning narrator Imogen Church returns, delivering a highly believable turn as British journalist Lo Blacklock and mastering accents, dialogue, and pace as this thrilling mystery takes dark turn after dark turn. 

The year of Onyx Storm continues with this stunning dramatized adaptation from GraphicAudio®, the audiobook publisher that designs each of their productions to be a “movie in your mind.” Production values on this Part 2 soar higher than Basgiath War College’s dragon riders. It features over 60 (really!) deeply invested narrators, along with cinematic music and sound effects. Even if you’ve read the print version, and even if you’ve listened to the other excellent audiobook edition, this fully immersive experience will transport to you a higher level of excitement and adventure, the most appropriate and most gratifying way we think the Empyrean Series can be enjoyed. 

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel first achieved critical and commercial success with her graphic memoir, Fun Home, which was later adapted to the stage and won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. Although Fun Home doesn’t (yet) have an audiobook version, Bechdel now gifts us her newest book, Spent, in audio from the get-go with a star-studded full cast. Bechdel plays the lead role of “Narrator,” alongside actress/singer Jenn Colella, writer/actor/comedian Ali Liebegott, artist and Bechdel’s wife Holly Rae Taylor, and more than 10 others. Delivering heaps of laughs, this quirky story boasts all the ingredients Bechdel’s readers love as it takes on modern-day issues and introduces a familiar cartoonist named Alison Bechdel running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont. 

A contemporary spin on the classic locked-room whodunnit, Party of Liars is the perfect summer read for fans of those other masters of women-leaning twisty suspense, Freida McFadden and Jeneva Rose. The setting is an extravagant Sweet Sixteen birthday party at a cliffside mansion, but the killer guest list means not everyone who arrived will get to leave. Earphones Award winner Saskia Maarleveld anchors a talented cast of narrators, who make you work hard to uncover which characters you would never want to invite to your own party. 

Debuting next month, this 75th anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury’s seminal work, The Martian Chronicles, is now available for pre-order. Not only is a re-visit to this classic work of science fiction instructive and thought-provoking as rocket launches and trips to space have recently become almost commonplace, but the publisher has promised some incredibly special narrators to lift these new versions to the stratosphere.  

Grady Hendrix’s bestseller from 2020 gets the full audio immersive treatment in this second GraphicAudio® production on our list. Described as Steel Magnolias meets Dracula, this horror novel about a women’s book club that must do battle with a mysterious newcomer to their small Southern town is deliciously enhanced by a superb full cast, and the sound design will make you cringe, squeal, and laugh in all the right places. 

Millie Fleur Saves the Night is targeted at kids but trust us: it’s 26 minutes of pure enjoyment for anyone who appreciates and revels in the tradition of quirky characters in beloved children’s books that have become classics for all ages. Elizabeth Knoweldon deservedly earned an Earphones Award for last year’s Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden,and she is just as brilliant narrating this sequel about embracing the magic of nighttime. The Edward Gorey-esque language combined with just-the-right creepy sounds and music make us extremely comfortable predicting that this audiobook will swiftly join its predecessor as a favorite and an award winner. 

We chose this book for our list before the recent conflict with Iran, but now it is even more relevant. Author Sepideh Gholian is an Iranian journalist and activist, currently incarcerated in Evin Prison in Tehran. She was arrested in November 2018, during a strike by workers and was severely tortured in detention. In 2023, a video went viral of her removing her hijab and calling for the downfall of Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader. In prison, Gholian and other women endure hard work, violence, and humiliation. And yet, they find time to bake to console each other and hope for the future. Listen to this because it’s unlike any other story you have ever heard. Listen to this because it’s humanizing. Listen to this because it’s important to give voice to those who often cannot be heard. 

This deeply researched presidential biography is a follow-up to the author’s study of Jackie Kennedy, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret. Here, the focus is on how John F. Kennedy’s private relationships strongly impacted his public decisions. It draws on many interviews and unpublished manuscripts to delve into the Kennedy family’s dynamics from before and during JFK’s political career. There is an emphasis on JFK’s many relationships with women and an honest accounting of his many flaws. Author Taraborrelli reads an introduction, while Golden Voice Narrator Robert Petkoff does the heavy lifting with his characteristic seamless and smooth embrace of many facts and details, which allows listeners to gain a much more thorough understanding of one of the most influential world leaders of the 20^th century.