If you’re looking to get into audiobooks, a good place to look for recommendations is the Audie Awards, presented annually by the Audio Publishers Association. They recognize the very best in narration, production, and storytelling across every genre imaginable. Here are 5 Award winners that I’ve listened to, and loved.
Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games #0.5), Suzanne Collins
Narrated by Jefferson White
2026 Audie Award Audiobook of the Year
Yes, the origin story of Haymitch is the Hunger Games prequel I didn’t know I needed, but I’m so glad the author wrote! Sunrise on the Reaping follows the back story of previous winner and mentor for District 12, how he got chosen, and eventually won the games … and what happened after he returned home. Everything that made the original series so successful is present in this book too – characters you love and hate with a passion and tense anticipation as events unfold where the stakes are survival, life and death. The audiobook narrator does a wonderful job to immerse us in the story and bring through the nuances of the characters.
As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games – the Second Quarter Quell – fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. In District 12, sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy is just trying to make it through the day and be with the girl he loves. But when he’s reaped into an arena designed to be deadlier than any before, we witness how the Games and the Capitol shape not just bodies, but minds.
Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes #0), Travis Baldree
Narrated by Travis Baldree
2025 Audie Award Fantasy
Bookshops & Bonedust was released after the first book in the series, Legends & Lattes, but as a prequel. The audiobook narrated by the author is exactly what a “cozy fantasy” is supposed to be and feel like. A world where you get to know the characters, feel the sense of community and friendship, fight bad guys with bad magic, and come out on top. I mean … the setting inlcudes a small town, a bookshop and a bakery … can you get any cozier than that!
Viv’s career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk — so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it. What’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do? Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be exactly what she needs. Still, adventure isn’t all that far away: a suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.
James, Percival Everett
Narrated by Dominic Hoffman
2025 Audie Award Literary Fiction & Classics
James is a retelling of the classic novel, Huckleberry Finn, told from the point of view of James, the enslaved companion of Huck. Reading a book about slavery is never easy, and this novel is graphic in its reminders. But it’s a book I couldn’t put down. There are so many subtleties the author shares that made the story for me – the way the slaves played up the “dumb” speech expected of them – this was even more apparent in the audiobook version – the secrets they kept, the inner dialogues, the complexities of relationships, the tightrope the slaves walked for almost every waking minute of the day. I was a little befuddled that James, a runaway slave, didn’t have more near misses in being caught, but overall, definitely recommend, and I can see why there’s so much hype around this book.
A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father. Thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive promise of the Free States.
Later, Stephen King
Narrated by Seth Numrich
2022 Audie Award Mystery Winner
Later is Stephen King’s addition to the Hardcase Crime books… but it’s still written by STEPHEN — FUCKING — KING — so what you get is a thriller with a young boy that can see the dead. It’s a short novel and pretty much like candy in that you’ll eat it up, get your fill… and be left wanting more from King. I liked the story — we all know that King is incredible at portraying characters, the details and their vices, as well as making them memorable — and he does so here (with primary and secondary characters to boot). He’s also phenomenal at storytelling and the flow of a story. So yeah — I loved this one. BUT (there is a but) — it could have been longer — can you imagine I’m saying that about a King novel?! The ending… I wanted more. And that’s all I’ll say here.
The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine, as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.
Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries #5), Martha Wells
Narrated by Kevin R. Free
2021 Audie Award Science Fiction
It calls itself Murderbot, but only when no one can hear. It worries about the fragile human crew who’ve grown to trust it, but only where no one can see. It tells itself that they’re only a professional obligation, but when they’re captured and an old friend from the past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.
Drastic action it is, then.
This is the first full length Murderbot novel. The others in the series are well-known and loved novellas. I’ve experienced the entire series as audiobooks and the narrator has been brilliant at bringing the character, Muderbot, to life … the snark, recalcitrance, grumpy and media obsession. In Network Effect, we finally get a much fuller story with space exploration and alien abductors and sentient killware and contamination by alien remnants. But what we have at the heart of this story is, of course, the issue of personhood and interpersonal relationships and friendship. There’s action, there’s drama, there’s a mystery, the pace is blazing — love, love, love!
These books are very different from each other – a Hunger Games prequel, a cozy fantasy about bookshops, a Pulitzer Prize winner reimagining Huckleberry Finn, a supernatural crime thriller, and a sci-fi series about a sarcastic robot – and yet every single one of them was extraordinary enough to be recognized by the most prestigious audiobook award in the industry.
