Released in time for Sir David Attenborough’s 99th birthday and showcasing the broadcaster’s iconic voice alongside Colin Butfield’s equally engaging narration, this listen shines as a significant addition to the repertoire of a true audio legend. Ocean spans the seven seas—plus a century’s worth of personal insights—to examine the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. Ultimately, it immerses listeners in the nostalgic comfort of a nature documentary, with a splash of optimism for future conservation efforts, making it a perfect vessel for exploring urgent global issues without spiraling into an eddy of anxiety.

In My Friends, Fredrik Backman crafts a touching dual-timeline story about four teenagers—Joar, Ted, Ali, and "the artist"—who find solace together on a forgotten pier. Their summer days become immortalized in a painting that changes a young woman’s life decades later. Narrator Marin Ireland beautifully renders these intertwined stories of friendship and transformation. Backman's signature style shines as he explores how art connects us across time, while depicting the beautiful mess of human relationships. This novel broke my heart and mended it simultaneously, leaving me changed for the better by the journey.

If you’re looking for your next favorite podcast, look no further than The Unusual Suspects with Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell. Featuring unfiltered conversations with trailblazing business leaders, sports legends, and creative powerhouses at the top of their game, each episode goes far beyond the surface-level stories of success we’re all used to hearing. With award-winning producer Kenya Barris and bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell at the helm, listeners get unparalleled access to the insights and success stories of their guests, resulting in nine conversations that feel like master classes in ambition, creativity, and perseverance.

This is a real “once you see it, you can’t unsee it” type of listen, with both the deprogramming power of a recovery memoir and the storytelling verve of the best narrative nonfiction. Renowned Dutch historian and Davos troublemaker Rutger Bregman is here to convince you—through a tour of pivotal historical moments when humans radically changed society for good—that the world also needs your talents, and it needs them now. His message is delivered with brutal honesty, a huge dose of optimism, and perhaps just a dash of needed shaming (narrated by the aptly cast Dutch American voice actor Boris Hiestand). Bregman warns you at the start of his book that you might actually regret listening, because "once you put it down, you might just have to change your life." If that’s not a dare, I don’t know what is.

Check out our interview with Rutger Bregman.

As politically sharp and utterly heartbreaking as the rest of the Hunger Games series, Sunrise on the Reaping reaffirms Suzanne Collins’s gift for dystopian world-building and complex character development. This prequel follows a teenaged Haymitch Abernathy as he is selected to participate in the second Quarter Quell, setting in motion his lifelong role in the rebellion. Actor Jefferson White (Yellowstone) brings the fan-favorite character to life with a warm, masterful narration that balances the longing and optimism of youth with a wry edge, his performance laying bare not only the deadly stakes of the Games but the undying promise of hope and love in spite of it all.

Grammar is magic in this fairy tale—but not the grammar you’re thinking of, the stuffy subject of our elementary school days. In this story, grammar is the beauty and power of the way words meld together, play off one another, and construe meaning. What makes it extra special in audio (especially as this is, first, a story about sisters) is original music performed by Amal El-Mohtar and her own sister, Dounya, with gorgeous vocals from narrator Gem Carmella.

Check out our interview with Amal El-Mohtar.

This epistolary novel captivated me from the first letter. While the premise may sound less than exciting, I found following seventysomething Sybil Van Antwerp through her correspondence absolutely thrilling. Sybil is brilliantly bold. She writes to family, friends, and strangers, including authors like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. As her physical world shrinks, her emotional landscape expands—diving deeper into the past and opening up to new possibilities. The full-cast audiobook, led by Maggi-Meg Reed as Sybil, transported me from simply envisioning a solitary woman at her desk to experiencing a world of letter-writing full of meant-to-be-heard voices. What a delight!

Perfect for fans of true crime and reality television alike, Not a Very Good Murderer is a standout audio documentary from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow that unravels the stranger-than-fiction story of a former beauty queen at the center of a killer conspiracy. But the alleged murder plot of the title is only one of the mysteries, secrets, and scandals that swirl around socialite Cece Doane. Farrow’s singular voice and inimitable perspective guide listeners through every turn of this deftly reported character study, and his ability to vet, research, and compellingly unfold a narrative makes for an absorbing work of investigative storytelling.

Two women with missing sisters join forces to find their respective siblings. There are no bodies. Have they been kidnapped and living in hell? Ashley Flowers sure knows her way around a twisty plot and family drama. Leads go nowhere fast. Every now and then she throws something promising the listeners’ way, but don’t be fooled by her clever storytelling. Uber-talented narrator Saskia Maarleveld doesn’t disappoint with her stellar skills. What is very touching about this story is the power of sisterhood and its unbreakable bond.

Carley Fortune has a flair for creating brilliant, atmospheric settings that make me feel like I’m truly living in the world she’s built. In One Golden Summer, we went to a beautiful lake where good things happen. Looking for the spark that she can only recall having after taking a photo one summer during her teens, Alice returns to Barry’s Bay with her recovering grandmother, hoping for a peaceful summer. Everything shifts when Charlie, the boy from the photo, comes roaring back into her life. AJ Bridel, who has performed all of Fortune’s titles, brings warmth to every deliciously slow-burning moment. As Alice and Charlie connected, I didn’t just root for their love, I felt like I was right there on the dock beside them.

Stephen Graham Jones is in a class of his own—he’s so damn good, it’s scary! (He’s also so scary, it’s scary.) But even at his level, this novel is a towering achievement. Were you thirsting for a new vampire? Meet Good Stab, a code-switching, blood-sucking Blackfeet man seeking revenge for a historical horror, based on the 1870 Marias Massacre, that left 217 of his people dead. The nested narration is flawless—Marin Ireland plays Etsy Beaucarne, who discovers the diary of her Lutheran pastor grandfather, performed by Owen Teale, who in turn recounts the disturbing confessions of Shane Ghostkeeper’s Good Stab. Haunting, ingenious, dense, and merciless, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter brings an indelible Indigenous voice to classic vampire tropes as well as an iconic new character and high-water mark from a horror legend.

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s talent is awe-inducing: both her ability to tell deeply human stories, and the research and detail that she pours into them. Atmosphere is no exception. Reid takes us to Houston in the 1980s amid the first wave of women scientists and pilots for NASA’s space exploration program. We watch our heroine Joan ascend from candidate to astronaut, fall in love, and fight to keep that love when a mission goes south. This story had a vise grip on me, particularly the moving performances of Julia Whelan and Kristen DiMercurio (I’ve developed an obsession with their delivery in the last 10 minutes of the book). Atmosphere won’t let you go once you’ve entered its orbit.

We’re all susceptible to confirmation biases—particularly in the social media age—and depending on where you look, you can make just about anyone the boogeyman responsible for all of society’s modern ills. But Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue (quite convincingly in their narration) that today’s problems are actually the consequences of yesterday’s fixes. Governments are collapsing under the weight of their own complexity, and if we’re going to meet challenges like the housing crisis, a broken health care system, and climate change, it may be time to rethink some of the well-meaning laws and systems that are stifling the path to solutions.

Tina Knowles’s aptly titled memoir, Matriarch, is a deeply personal portrait of the head of one of the world’s most high-profile families. Starting with her childhood in 1950s Galveston, Texas, Ms. Tina shares how she overcame the constraints of poverty and racism to pursue her dreams far beyond the borders of her segregated hometown. I was riveted not only by her revelatory journey but also by the raw emotion heard in her voice as she narrates the intimate details of her life story. She doesn’t hold anything back, divulging the ups and downs of her marriages, the challenges of motherhood, and the tumultuous road to her family’s success. You’re left with an awe-inspiring message of how the mothers who came before her fueled her ability to nurture her own daughters into the incredible women and mothers they are today.

Jack Bergin is back in his latest big hit, The Big Fix. This follow-up to the all-star multicast listen The Big Lie follows FBI Special Agent Jack Bergin as an old fling leads him down the rabbit hole of a violent murder case. As a fan of the more immersive audio experiences, I felt ensnared in the sounds of mid-century Los Angeles and the story’s distinct characters. Jon Hamm gives a thrilling performance alongside huge names like Alia Shawkat, Omar Epps, and Jeanne Tripplehorn, to name a few. Delivering suspense, drama, and comedy, The Big Fix feels reminiscent of everything I’ve loved about old, gritty police movies. With the no-nonsense agent that is Jack Bergin and the unique cast of characters helping him crack the case, the only thing you can do is sit back and enjoy!

The genius of Wild Dark Shore is how it takes a Gothic premise and places it in a compelling 21st-century setting. The Salt family are the only remaining human inhabitants on a remote, weather-beaten island that’s sinking into the rising seas of climate change when a mysterious woman washes ashore looking for her missing husband. Every character has a secret, and the plot’s possibilities teeter between violence and reconciliation, making for a tense and atmospheric story, punctuated by moments of dazzling sweetness from youngest son Orly. In the expert hands of narrators Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld, and Steve West, the characters’ regrets and hopes are as palpable as the fog in this haunting, elegiac story of a family trying to hold on to their home, and each other.

Check out our interview with Charlotte McConaghy.

Our Best of the Year (So Far!) list is all about the audio—how was the story elevated by the listening experience? There is so much magic in listening to El Niño by Pam Muñoz Ryan. Our hero, Kai Sosa, is grappling with grief two years after the disappearance of his sister Cali. But when Kai finds a library book that Cali had been obsessed with, about an underwater realm and a group of mermalians protecting a lost ancient island, details from the story start to appear in his own life, giving clues as to what might have happened to Cali. The legendary children’s book author merges myth and magical realism with a contemporary narrative that’s enhanced by a mystical soundscape and the performances of Timothy Andrés Pabon and E.J. Lavery.

Check out our interview with Pam Muñoz Ryan.

After listening to Imani Perry’s impeccable discourse on the significance of this color in Black history, beginning in Africa and with dyed indigo cloth, blue will never be the same for me. When we talk about the “blues,” we’re talking about a particular note that, when added to the American music we know, becomes something else, rich in soul, and it’s not always sad. From the murky waters of the slave trade, one looked above and saw blue skies. There was hope up there. Enslaved women demanded blue cloth from their enslavers, even living under such horrific conditions. Coretta Scott’s wedding dress was blue. The connections seem endless, and it’s all brought together beautifully through Perry’s storytelling and narration.

In the much-anticipated follow-up to Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters delivers a collection of stories that interrogates everything we think we know about gender, queerness, and binaries. The result is an audio experience that plays with form as much as content, combining stories of different lengths and styles with four unique performances from Lee Osorio, Briggon Snow, Eileen Noonan, and Pyrrha Nicole. But Stag Dance is also a reminder that there’s more to us than just good or bad, forcing us to sit with the uncomfortable truths that come alongside living authentically—for better or for worse.

Check out our interview with Torrey Peters.

As a longtime follower of Mel Robbins, I can confidently say The Let Them Theory is her best listen yet. The audiobook's zen quality suggests Mel has reached a new level of personal growth. Her signature blend of relatable anecdotes and actionable advice is enhanced by a newfound depth and tranquility. Her fresh perspective on letting go is both enlightening and liberating, guiding listeners to tap into their internal approval systems. Mel's authentic narration and potentially transformative insights make this a timely tool for navigating life's complexities. It's no wonder it has resonated with millions.

Check out our interview with Mel Robbins.

Who better to write about the art of divorce than Jeneva Rose? In The Perfect Divorce, Sarah Morgan is back with new husband Bob—both being successful divorce attorneys. Yep, you read that right. When their own marriage begins to unravel, it becomes a less than “amicable split” and more War of the Roses meets Legally Blonde with a dash of Gone Girl. It’s messy, twisty, and undeniably addictive. What really sets this one apart is how fun it is—even as things spiral into chaos. The Perfect Divorce will have you binge-listening with a grin and possibly side-eyeing your spouse. Grab your popcorn (and maybe your prenup). You're in for a wild ride.

Kennedy Ryan delivers a deeply satisfying conclusion to the Skyland series with Can't Get Enough. Hendrix Barry's story was worth the wait. It’s a joy to witness our favorite rich auntie being loved outrageously by tech billionaire Maverick Bell, while still maintaining her commitments to herself, her family, and her community. Ryan's extraordinary talent lies in capturing the nuanced experiences of fortysomething women, weaving complex life challenges into a compelling romance. Narrators Wesleigh Siobhan and Jakobi Diem’s electric chemistry perfectly embodies the connection between Hen and Mav, and Ryan reads an author’s note that will bring tears to your eyes.

Check out our interview with Kennedy Ryan.

We at Audible already loved Emily Tesh for her jaw-dropping sci-fi about a space cult, Some Desperate Glory. So I was beyond excited that in The Incandescent Tesh explores one of my favorite realms of fiction: magical schools. It’s told from the perspective of the school’s headmaster, Director Walden, who is funny, practical, and kind of a badass. Narrator Zara Ramm invokes the presence of Walden’s many sides, and it’s a real treat of a listen. The Incandescent is not to be missed for any and all fantasy fans.