I’m an audiobook obsessive. Over half the books I indulge in each year are on audio. And while I used to focus mainly on nonfiction, the last few years I’ve fallen in love with fiction on audio—especially when performed by a narrator who knows what they’re doing. There’s nothing quite like getting lost in a story being read to you. Below are some of my favorite audiobooks, read by narrators who are some of the best in the business, including some I am honored to work with on my own stories. —Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Atmosphere
A riveting fictionalized take on the very real Jessie Redmon Fauset, the literary editor of The Crisis, the NAACP’s magazine, during the Harlem Renaissance. Come for the brush with history, stay for Robin Miles’s incredible ability to bring it to life by reading, reciting poetry, and singing.
Ann Patchett read by Meryl Streep, I mean what else could you possibly need to know? It’s as beautiful as you hope it to be.
An audiobook about the making of an audiobook, written by one of the biggest, baddest audio narrators to ever do it? Julia Whelan knocks this out of the park as both the writer and narrator here. I can’t recommend it enough.
Edoardo Ballerini is one of my favorite male narrators working today. Here he reads Amor Towles’s incredible stories with the complexity, richness, and specificity of character they all deserve. Plus, J. Smith-Cameron reads one of the most memorable stories in this collection.
Toni Morrison’s only short story, read by the incomparable Bahni Turpin. This is a layered puzzle of a story, that must have presented great challenges for any audio narrator in how to perform it. But no surprise that Turpin does it stunningly. Zadie Smith writes and reads the introduction. This one is really special.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is an author of bestselling novels that include Carrie Soto Is Back, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and Daisy Jones and the Six, which became a limited series on Amazon Prime.
