40 of the best audiobooks on Audible to listen to now
Looking for you latest spoken-word listen? Here are our top picks.
If you love reading, but you find you never have enough free time to curl up with a book, then an audiobook is the perfect solution. Keeping your hands and eyes free to get on with other tasks, they are the perfect accompaniment to commutes, housework, exercising or even drifting off to sleep.
Leading the audiobook revolution is Amazon's Audible, a service that boasts a vast catalogue of classics, new releases, cult favourites and best-sellers. These have all been given the audiobook treated — and are often narrated by the authors themselves. You're certainly not short on choice, when looking through titles on Audible.
So, in order to nudge you in the right direction, we've put together a list of our favourite audiobooks on Audible — which are all available to buy and stream now. We've including a range of fiction, memoir, drama, crime, comedy and plenty more besides, and we're confident that you'll see something that takes your fancy.
Although Audible is first and foremost a subscription service, you can still pay for one-off audiobooks without subscribing — all we'll say is that it's far better value for money in the long run to pay for a monthly subscription. To find out more, don't miss our how does Audible work explainer. We've also picked out our favourite free podcasts on Audible too.
Check back for regular updates...
Listen for less – Audible deals in the Prime Early Access sale
From the 10th October until 18th December, you can get Audible for just £2.99 a month! For your money, you’ll get one monthly credit to spend on an audiobook of your choice, plus access to countless free audiobooks and podcasts.
Whether you want classic literature, cracking comedy or true crime – there’s something for everyone.
40 of the best audiobooks on Audible
The Vanishing Half
By: Brit Bennett
Narrated by: Shayna Small
Length: 11 hours and 34 minutes
This story follows the intersecting lives of the twin Vignes sisters who run away from their small Southern black community in the US, at age 16. 10 years on, one sister has returned to live in their community while the other passes for white and gets married elsewhere, keeping her past a secret. The plot spans the 1950s to the 1990s across generations, as the sisters’ daughters’ own lives eventually intersect.
Last Tang Standing
By: Lauren Ho
Narrated by: Catherine Ho
Length: 12 hours and 38 minutes
Andrea Tang has a top job as a lawyer, she lives in an affluent neighbourhood and has the perfect boyfriend. She has done everything a good Chinese daughter should have, but then things go wrong at work, she finds herself in debt and suddenly becomes the last single person in her family. Que meddling and match-making from everyone around her.
Little Fires Everywhere
By: Celeste Ng
Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
Length: 11 hours and 27 minutes
If you aren’t already familiar with the book, you may have heard about the hit series Little Fires Everywhere starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. In Shaker Heights, Ohio, Elena Richardson lives a seemingly perfect suburban life. After renting a house to single mother Mia, the two women’s families become close until they find themselves on opposing sides of an adoption debate. Things unravel as Elena tries to dig into the secrets of Mia’s past.
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
By: Reni Eddo-Lodge
Narrated by: Reni Eddo-Lodge
Length: 5 hours and 53 minutes
Reni Eddo-Lodge’s best-selling book began as a viral blog post about how discussions of race and racism are often shut down by those unaffected by it. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race explores what it is to be a person of colour in Britain and delves into issues around white privilege, black history, institutional racism and more.
From 25th May to 30th June 2020, Audible’s profits from this title and others on their anti-racism list will be donated to charities working against social inequality in the UK.
Grown Ups
By: Marian Keyes
Narrated by: Marian Keyes
Length: 17 hours and 3 minutes
The three Casey brothers lead apparently glossy, successful lives with their wives and children, making up one big happy extended family. However, not everything is as it seems and when Cara, one of the brothers' wives, gets concussion she can’t help but spill out all their secrets.
I Am Not Your Baby Mother
By: Candice Brathwaite
Narrated by: Candice Brathwaite
Length: 5 hours and 40 minutes
Candice Brathwaite began blogging about motherhood after she fell pregnant and found the parenting forums, magazines and other spaces were not diverse. I Am Not Your Baby Mother is a guide to life as a black mother from pregnancy through to starting school, navigating micro-aggression, unconscious bias and more at each stage.
The Other Wife
By: Claire McGowan
Narrated by: Karen Cass
Length: 9 hours and 44 minutes
Pregnant and alone with her jealous husband, Suzi becomes fast friends with her new neighbour Nora. However, Suzi harbours a terrible secret and suspects Nora may know what it is. Meanwhile, Elle seems to have the perfect life. In reality, she’s killed before and will do it again if it means keeping hold of her husband. The strangers are brought together in a shocking event which will change all of their lives forever.
What I Know for Sure
By: Oprah Winfrey
Narrated by: Oprah Winfrey
Length: 3 hours and 53 minutes
Oprah Winfrey has shared wisdom with readers in her O magazine column for 14 years. Now, her updated essays have been collated into this book and organised into themes such as gratitude, joy, connection and resilience. In this audiobook, Oprah Winfrey narrates her own words directly to listeners to impact nuggets of inspiration.
A History of Britain in 21 Women
By: Jenni Murray
Narrated by: Jenni Murray
Length: 8 hours and 28 minutes
Journalist and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Jenni Murray has combined the achievements of 21 influential women, to explain how each of them impacted different aspects of British history. The profiles include author Jane Austen, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, designer Mary Quant, monarch Queen Elizabeth I and more.
Girl, Woman, Other
By: Bernardine Evaristo
Narrated by: Anna-Maria Nabirye
Length: 11 hours and 7 minutes
Bernardine Evaristo’s best-selling Girl, Woman, Other won The Booker Prize in 2019. The plot follows the lives of 12 characters in Britain as they search for something missing from their lives. The stories take place at various points over the past 100 years and in different locations the length and breadth of the country.
Normal People
By: Sally Rooney
Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
Length: 7 hours and 36 minutes
The multi-awarding winning novel from Sally Rooney, Normal People has been adapted into a hit TV series for BBC Three. Released as a box-set, the show had viewers across the country hooked. This audiobook of the original novel narrates the story of young couple Connell and Marianne who grew up in the same rural Irish town. We follow their relationship through university into life beyond as they grapple with love, privilege and life together.
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
By: Christy Lefteri
Narrated by: Art Malik
Length: 8 hours and 37 minutes
When their home city is torn apart, beekeeper Nuri and his artist wife Afra must make a dangerous journey towards a new, uncertain future in Britain, to join Nuri’s cousin who teaches beekeeping to fellow refugees. Afra is now blind because of the horrors she has seen and the couple must fight to survive in a broken world and find their way back to each other again.
Gotta Get Theroux This: My Life and Strange Times on Television
By: Louis Theroux
Narrated by: Louis Theroux
Length: 13 hours and 12 minutes
For more than two decades Louis Theroux has shone a light on distinctive characters and diverse pockets of society. Through TV interviews and his own documentary series, the journalist has forged an unexpectedly successful career as a journalist, which he reflects on with honesty and humour in his memoir. The audiobook adaptation is narrated by Theroux himself.
The Family Upstairs
By: Lisa Jewell
Narrated by: Tamaryn Payne, Bea Holland, Dominic Thorburn
Length: 9 hours and 37 minutes
This crime thriller is set in a home in wealthy Chelsea, London. Three bodies lie on the kitchen floor and have been there for several days. Upstairs, a happy, well-fed baby lies awake in her cot. What happened in that house and who has been looking after the baby?
Becoming
By: Michelle Obama
Narrated by: Michelle Obama
Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
From growing up on the Southside of Chicago to balancing the demands of motherhood and work, this intimate and powerful memoir by the first African American First Lady of the United States tells the stories that helped shape Michelle Obama's journey and allowed her to create the most open and inclusive White House in American history.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
By: Mark Manson
Narrated by: Roger Wayne
Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
"F*ck positivity" is the mantra Mark Manson preaches in his bestselling self-help guide, the ultimate antidote to today's culture of positive thinking. Not everyone is special, Manson tells us, and real-life doesn't award you a gold medal just for showing up — but by learning and accepting our own weaknesses and limitations, we can confront once-painful truths and learn true courage.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying
By: Marie Kondo
Narrated by: Lucy Scott
Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
Have you mastered the KonMari method? Have you learnt how to 'spark joy' in your home and everyday life? Millions of people have attested to the life-changing impact of declutterer extraordinaire Marie Kondo, whose self-help guide on the power of tidying-up has transformed homes across the globe. The guide also promises to help you shed negative aspects of your life, even helping you to lose weight or end a bad relationship.
A Game of Thrones
By: George RR Martin
Narrated by: Roy Dotrice
Length: 33 hrs and 45 mins
In the first book in George RR Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (the inspiration behind HBO's hit TV series) Martin weaves together multiple sprawling storylines from across the fictional kingdom of Westeros. The battle for the Iron Throne spells intrigue, betrayal and bloodshed, and no character or family is safe from harm.
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection
By: Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen Fry (introductions)
Narrated by: Stephen Fry
Length: 71 hrs and 57 mins
Stephen Fry lends his instantly-recognisable voice to Conan Doyle's equally recognisable hero, the eponymous private detective blessed with an altogether superior intellect and a flair for dramatics. The ultimate collection of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, including four novels and five short story collections, this includes Fry's personal introductions to each of the nine titles.
Sunshine and Sweet Peas in Nightingale Square
By: Heidi Swain
Narrated by: Karen Cass
Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
The perfect holiday read (or in this case, listen), bestselling author Heidi Swain's heart-warming stories are the ideal antidote to life's more humdrum realities. Swain's heroine Kate has run away to Norwich in an effort to escape her husband, but she soon finds herself drawn in to village life, where the arrival of developers could spell disaster to the locals' traditional way of life.
This Is Going to Hurt
By: Adam Kay
Narrated by: Adam Kay
Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
At turns a brutal, uncomfortable and hilarious listen, Adam Kay's secret diaries of his life as a junior doctor have proved a national phenomenon, providing an inside-look into birth, death and everything in-between on and off the hospital ward – and Kay spares the listener none of the grisly or (at times) nauseating details that once made up his working life.
Sapiens
By: Yuval Noah Harari
Narrated by: Derek Perkins
Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
Planet Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, but in that time only one creature has managed to truly conquer and dominate the globe in the way that we, homo sapiens, have. Yuval Noah Harari offers a fascinating look into our history as a species, examining in detail mankind's journey from the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, before asking where we're headed in the years to come.
12 Rules for Life
By: Jordan B Peterson
Narrated by: Jordan B Peterson
Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
Billed as an "antidote to chaos", clinical psychologist Jordan B Peterson (perhaps most widely know for his critiques of political correctness) explores how to find meaning in life, drawing from psychology, the Bible, philosophy, modern romantic relationships and mythology in order to create his 12-step guide to how to live not necessarily a happy life, but a deeply meaningful one.
The Butterfly Effect
By: Jon Ronson
Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
Bestselling author Jon Ronson's podcast examines the butterfly effect: what happened when a Belgium teenager made porn free and easily accessible — and what the longterm consequences are. Ronson's other original podcast, The Last Days of August, is also available on Audible, as are his various books, including The Psychopath Test and The Men Who Stare at Goats.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
By: Bill Bryson
Narrated by: Bill Bryson
Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
How did we go from The Big Bang to civilisation? How did humans go from nothing at all to, well, something? How did time and space create us? Bill Bryson sets out to discover the answers to all the big questions, from where the centre of the Earth is, to how continents have changed over the past millions of years and, with them, natural life as we know it.
How to Win Friends & Influence People
By: Dale Carnegie
Narrated by: Andrew MacMillan
Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
Published over 70 years ago, this iconic self-help book is still helping people to become more successful at life and in their careers. Dale Carnegie offers six techniques to make people like you, in addition to tips and tricks to help you bring others round to your way of thinking — all without provoking resentment. A quick listen of this will have you jumping off the Tube to go out and pursue your dream career.
Terry Pratchett: BBC Radio Drama Collection
By: Terry Pratchett
Narrated by: Ensemble cast, including Martin Jarvis, Sheila Hancock, and Anton Lesser
Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
If you missed out on BBC Radio 4's full-cast dramatisations of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels the first time around, never fear. Boasting a star-studded cast, this collection gathers together all six radio adaptations, which bring to life such classics as Mort, Night Watch, Guards! Guards! and Eric, in addition to bonus tale Only You Can Save Mankind, from the Johnny Maxwell series.
Good Omens
By: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
Narrated by: Martin Jarvis
Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
Are you ready for Armageddon? The apocalypse will be happening next Saturday, but not if one unlikely celestial pairing (a Bentley-driving demon and a rather fussy angel) can help it. Veteran actor Martin Jarvis narrates Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett's brilliant fantasy novel.
Alan Partridge: Nomad
By: Alan Partridge
Narrated by: Alan Partridge
Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
Alan Partridge's travel book, narrated by the man himself in his decidedly unique style, should come with a printed warning, as it's likely to cause uncontrollable snorts of laughter on the listener's commute. The comic character created by Steve Coogan turns 30 this year, so what better time to reacquaint yourself with the man, the myth, the legend that is Partridge?
Mythos
By: Stephen Fry
Narrated by: Stephen Fry
Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
Stephen Fry's epic retelling of the Greek myths covers everything from the start of the universe to the creation of the gods and monsters, right up until the age of heroes (for that, you'll have to listen to Fry's sequel, Heroes). From Zeus's battle to overthrow his despotic father and win the throne of Mount Olympus, to King Midas' fateful wish, Fry breathes new life into the classical myths.
Damned Spot
By: Audible Originals
Length: 1 hr and 40 mins
When a tragic event occurs, thoughts go out to those immediately affected: victims, friends, and family. But what about the local residents and communities who live in the same area where the event occurred? This podcast revisits the sites where memories of death and upheaval are still keenly felt, and explores what it takes for a place — and its people — to recover.
West Cork
By: Audible Originals
Length: 8 hrs
Charting an unsolved real-life murder mystery that has gripped listeners the world over, West Cork recounts the hunt for Sophie Toscan du Plantier's killer, after the 39-year-old was found murdered just days before Christmas Day in 1996 near the town of Schull in West Cork, Ireland. Listeners are introduced to a host of characters and a potential prime suspect, and are guided throughout by investigative journalist Sam Bungey and documentarian Jennifer Forde.
The Path to Pride
By: Lance Bass, Nikki Levy, Frank DeCaro, Zeke Smith
Length: 1 hr and 9 mins
Members of the the LGBTQ+ community gather in Los Angeles to share their unique stories about coming out in this hilarious and heartwarming listen. Stories range from kooky to hilarious, including that of a teenage pop star on the road with his (extremely devout) mother — but one thing that all the tales have in common is that they're bursting with Pride.
Beta Life
By: Martyn Amos, Ra Page
Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
If you've friends or family at all interested in tech, chances are you will have heard of this Black Mirror-esque podcast, which brings together 38 scientists and authors (paired together) to imagine how technology will look, and how it will affect life, in 2070. From artificial haute cuisine to synthetically grown skyscrapers and dangerous video games, everything you've ever imagined possible and more is discussed.
Genius Dialogues
By: Audible Originals, Bob Garfield
Length: 7 hrs
What makes a genius a genius? How did Lin Manuel Miranda create Hamilton, and how did a trip to India inspire inventor Amy Smith? While The MacArthur Foundation awards its famous "genius grant" every year, who exactly are these scientists, artists and educators, and what have they done to merit the title 'genius'? Bob Garfield invites fellows in to discuss their life and careers, unpicking what events shaped them.
Emma
By: Jane Austen, Anna Lea (adaptation)
Narrated by: Emma Thompson, Joanne Froggatt, Isabella Inchbald, Aisling Loftus, Joseph Millson, Morgana Robinson
Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
Narrated by Oscar-winner Emma Thompson (need we say more) and with a full supporting voice cast, this star-studded adaptation brings all of Austen's signature wit, acute observations and worldly wisdom to life. A comedy of manners, the story follows the wealthy and sheltered Emma Woodhouse who loves nothing more than matchmaking her neighbours.
So You Want to Talk About Race
By: Ijeoma Oluo
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
Narrated by Bahni Turpin, who you may know from her reading of Colson Whitehead's novel The Underground Railroad, this offers an accessible look at race in the US, tackling head-on the various issues that have dominated headlines and national discourse for decades, including race riots, the "N" word, police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement.
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Educated
By: Tara Westover
Narrated by: Julia Whelan
Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
Raised in a survivalist family in rural Idaho, Tara Westover didn't step foot into a classroom until she was 17-years-old — and yet she went on to receive a PhD from Cambridge University. A moving account of a violent, completely isolated childhood and one girl's quest for education, which would take Westover first to Harvard and then across the sea to Cambridge.
Girl, Wash Your Face
By: Rachel Hollis
Narrated by: Rachel Hollis
Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
Ever thought that everyone around you has it figured out, and that you still haven't a clue? That's just one of the 20 lies that women tell themselves and that Rachel Hollis attempts to debunk. Unpacking strategies in how to move past everyday fears and misconceptions, Hollis challenges the listener to rethink the narratives that continue to hold us back.
Jeff Wayne's The War of The Worlds: The Musical Drama
By: HG Wells, Jeff Wayne
Narrated by: Michael Sheen, Taron Egerton, Theo James, Adrian Edmondson, Anna-Marie Wayne
Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
Narrated by Michael Sheen and featuring an all-star cast, including Divergent's Theo James and Kingsman: The Secret Service's Taron Egerton, HG Wells’ class sci-fi story gets an update with Jeff Wayne’s suspenseful score. First serialised in 1897, the dramatic story follows two brothers in London who witness an alien invasion in southern England.
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