8 Great Audiobooks to Listen to This Month

Read by: Elle Fanning
Length:  10 hrs, 21 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

This semi-comic novel about a new teen mom (Margo) who starts an Only Fans account is made much more amusing because it’s read by Elle Fanning of The Great. Her quirky dryness infinitely elevates Thorpe’s narrative, which seems to imagine that it’s more offbeat and Miranda July than it actually is. (Note the title.) The best parts here focus on Margo’s relationship with her estranged dad, Jinx, a one-time professional wrestler who offers to babysit the infant while Margo’s career takes off. Fanning is so fun to listen to, however, that it’s easy to ignore the novel’s pedestrian plot twists.

Read by: the author
Length:  12 hrs, 19 mins
Speed I listened: 2x

In this new memoir, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director Griffin Dunne talks a lot about his penis and his sexual adventures. I was hoping for a bit less penis talk and more about his relationship with his father, Dominick Dunne, and his aunt, Joan Didion. But this book — and Dunne’s simultaneously wise and naïve narration — is provocative and compelling. His family chest is filled with secrets and lies, ironies and tragedies, ones that made me increasingly empathic about the perils of a Hollywood upbringing.

Read by: the author and Justin Price
Length:  9 hrs, 57 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

Do you need another reminder that online dating sucks? I doubt it. But, stories about catfishing are endlessly fascinating. And for those of us who dip our toes into the Tinder pond, it’s all too easy to get deeply engaged with a potential significant other you’ve never met. Just earlier this year, I wasted plenty of time chatting with a guy in Copenhagen — even after he told me he had never heard of Anna Karenina. Akbari’s internet odyssey involves Ethan, a Jewish guy from New Jersey who seems perfect, even if he flies off the handle for no reason every so often. You can feel how much Akbari, reading her own exchanges with “Ethan,” still wishes he existed even now.

Read by: Eileen Stevens
Length: 4 hrs
Speed I listened: 1.7x

One thing I’ll say about this brief but fascinating memoir is I wish Ciment, the author, had read it herself. The material, about Ciment rethinking her dalliance, at 16, with the 46-year-old painter who would eventually become her husband, is put at a bit of a distance by the narration from audiobook veteran Stevens. But I couldn’t help thinking that maybe that disconnect actually enhanced the experience. Ciment uncomfortably reassesses her previous writings about the relationship, and though you’d like to come out the other side understanding life and love, maybe you just can’t.

Read by: the author
Length:  15 hrs, 14 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.4x

It’s hard to put my finger on what makes this memoir by the actor who famously played Kramer on Seinfeld so compelling. I think it’s that Richards comes off as quite thoughtful and raw. Here, he seems unabashedly honest and circumspect, for better or for worse. (His familial relationships, for instance, sit on the same shelf as Griffin Dunne’s, above.) Richards is often searching for a way to understand the world, which, of course, he knows he’ll never find. His intellectual passions here run from Joseph Campbell to Rumi to Carl Jung. Some of the book’s most interesting elements arrive as Richards builds Kramer into a full-fledged character, down to the two pairs of vintage Doc Martens he wore filming the entire run of the show. And through the narration, Richards seems to learn how to find himself, too.

Read by: Joel Leslie
Length:  11 hrs, 59 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.7x

Since I started writing this column over three years ago, I’ve discovered, much to my surprise, that I quite enjoy a clever romance novel. But even I get overwhelmed by the sameness of the genre, especially the punny titles with the ever-so-slightly sophisticated New Yorker–inspired illustrated covers. The truth is that I need some guidance, too. So after reading a few early positive reviews, I tried this one, a novel that could actually benefit from better cover art and a wittier title because it’s just that good. It’s an unlikely romance, set in 1960, between Mark Bailey, a dapper newspaper writer with an affinity for Shirley Jackson, and Eddie O’Leary, a baseball player whose best friend is his mom and who’s having a particularly rough season. Read nimbly by Joel Leslie, by the end, I wasn’t sure which of the fictional fellers I wanted to marry more. I just know I didn’t want it to end. Swoon.

Read by: the author
Length:  6 hrs, 43 mins.

“This book is read by Whoopi. C’est moi,” says the author, giving Bits and Pieces a goose from the start. Goldberg’s memoir is subtitled “My Mother, My Brother, and Me,” and, though it includes some of her zany Hollywood adventures, it’s mostly about “the two most magnificent people I ever knew.” Sure, I grew up with Sister Act and Ghost, but this audiobook affected me so deeply because I feel the same way about my late mom as Goldberg does about hers. “I will never get over her,” she says very early on, giving her recollections a palpable poignancy and an unexpected wiseness. “It’s possible that nothing in this book happened. Or that nothing that I’ve written happened the way I said it did.” Yes, there’s plenty of sadness here. When Goldberg was quite young, her mother was placed in a psychiatric hospital. They didn’t talk for two years. But one of the through-lines of the audiobook is Goldberg’s constant, infectious laughter. Though you want to cry, it’s much more cathartic to giggle along with her. I just loved this.

Read by: Whoopi Goldberg
Length: 10 hrs, 17 min.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

Whoopi Goldberg loves audiobooks, or so she says in her new memoir (see above). She doesn’t sleep very much, and she listens to them in bed at night. She also is a John Grisham superfan, which is how she ended up narrating the author’s latest. In this one, Grisham’s third in the Camino Island series, the bookseller Bruce Cable gives the writer Mercer Mann a copy of a self-published book by Lovely Jackson. It’s about how Jackson’s runaway-slave ancestors came to inhabit a nearby island. This Grisham series tends to have a lighter touch than some of his more fast-paced legal thrillers, so Goldberg is an interesting choice. It takes a few beats to connect her voice with the material. But though she has become more of a “personality” these days, she seems to grow more comfortable with the characters. After all, she’s an EGOT and a class-act performer. Maybe this year she’ll win an Audie, too.

Read by: Jessie Buckley
Length: 9 hrs, 28 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

It’s a bit of a bummer that New York audiences don’t get to experience the Irish actor Jessie Buckley unravel on stage as Sally Bowles in the new Cabaret revival on Broadway. In movies like Men and The Lost Daughter, she’s proved quite remarkable at playing characters who find themselves at the end of their tether. Ellis Lacey, our main character in this sequel to Brooklyn, is at loose ends, too. (The role was played by Saoirse Ronan in the 2015 film.) It’s 1976 in Lindenhurst, New York. Ellis is in her 40s with two older kids, and her Italian American husband has gotten another woman pregnant. Refusing to raise the child as her own, Ellis journeys back to Ireland to see her mother and, incidentally, reconnect with an old flame. The love triangle Ellis creates is knotty, and Buckley’s narration, both soft and circumspect, makes this audiobook completely gripping till its final moments.

Read by: Gwyneth Keyworth and others
Length: 3 hrs, 50 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

This novel has a lot to recommend it, but some particularly palatable things are (1) it’s short enough to listen to during a care ride to a weekend away; (2) it still packs an emotional punch despite its length, making it less a snack and more of a full meal; and (3) it’s set on a remote Welsh island, so, occasionally, our main storyteller (a teenager named Manod) drifts into actual Welsh. A dead whale washes up on the shore, and, with the arrival of a married couple of ethnographers, Manod’s life suddenly seems bigger than it had ever been. Keyworth’s narration is as mellifluous as it gets, even when it’s quietly devastating.

Read by: the author
Length: 8 hrs, 26 mins
Speed I listened: 2x

The whole Ozempic/Mounjaro/Wegovy conversation is maddening. Should I take it? Does anyone have it in stock? Will my insurance cover it? Is she on it? Why is she taking it if she’s thin? It’s so exhausting that I definitely didn’t want to read this book. I also wanted to hate it. I started listening with the intention of shutting it off after 15 minutes, if not less. But it turns out this book is just as much about the craze as it is about Hari, a British Swiss journalist. He struggles with the medication, both physically and mentally. His confessional vocal style mixed with his reporting about our perceptions of beauty make this totally absorbing.

Read by: Georgia Maguire
Length: 8 hrs, 46 mins
Speed I listened: 1.8x

The charm of this light thriller, set in a small English coastal city and about the perils of Tinder dating (here called Connector), comes from the excellent matching of the sharp voice of the male author with Maguire’s wry narration. Gwen Turner is trying to open an on-the-go coffee van. After “the Hen do from hell,” she gets caught up in a string of bad dates that become worse, especially after the guys keep turning up dead. Both Gwen and Maguire are great fun, especially when it comes to the actress’s different voices for the loser-ly fellows she encounters. Even Maguire’s British pronunciation of words like “harem” (as “har-eem”) and “urinal” (as “ur-ine-al”) adds to the general jocularity.

Read by: George Weightman and Katie Leung
Length: 10 hrs, 22 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

With echoes of Outlander and Kate and Leopold, a civil servant in the U.K. gets a job to shepherd a time-traveling 19th-century explorer into the 21st. Leung, a Scottish actress who starred as Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films, is the British Cambodian unnamed narrator. Weightman drops in occasionally to take us through Commander Graham Gore’s expedition to the Arctic. I often chuckled at the slice of life, fish-out-of-water moments, like when Gore learns about Spotify, and I was surprisingly tickled by the romantic elements, too.

Read by: Will Patton
Length: 20 hrs, 12 mins
Speed I listened: 1.6x

I don’t know if there’s a better match between narrator and material than Will Patton is for Stephen King. He’s such a creepy vocal presence that you don’t mind that he reads every story in this collection. Most of them are from the perspective of older guys, like Patton, chronicling particularly unsettling moments in their lives. One guy has periodic visits with a mystical “Answer Man,” but always seems to ask the wrong question. Another, a character from Cujo, is haunted by twin boys supposedly murdered by snakes. I will say I wasn’t scared one bit by “The Turbulence Expert,” about a fellow with the ability to clear air turbulence. That is, until I saw this news story about a Singapore Airlines flight from London. Eek.

Read by: the author
Length: 11 hrs, 1 min.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

For a period, in Los Angeles, I ran a self-help book club. A handful of friends and I met a few times to chart how we were changing and growing, basically until we got tired of listening to each other talk. But it gave room to discuss what was bunk in Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements and how to apply the valuable stuff. If anything would make me start that club again it would be Love Life. This book is mostly about being single and finding healthy relationships, though at a certain point it verges — and, please excuse the fromage — into a handbook on how to develop a healthy relationship with yourself. Hussey dances around the idea that he’s a reformed cad, and that perspective only heightens the potency of his narration. This is candid, no-frills straight talk, and I’m here for it.

Read by: the authors and Barbara Flynn
Length: 12 hrs, 5 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.3x

Even when Dame Judi Dench talks about Shakespeare — which is basically the entire premise of this book — the 89-year-old actress has a filthy mouth. That means her collaborator here had to excise a lot of F-words from each page of his manuscript before sending it to the editor. (One among many that remain: “The Merchant of fucking Venice.”) Some other delightful details: Dench claims she’s been trying, for years, to teach her parrot the “to be or not to be” speech from Hamlet. She also thinks Miss Piggy would make a great Phoebe in As You Like It. “I’d go and see the play if she was doing it for sure,” Dench says. Most of Dench’s part is read, fairly seamlessly, by the British actress Barbara Flynn. The actress shows up for some interstitial Shakespeare line readings and a genius post-book chat. It’s all glorious.

Read by: Miranda Raison
Length: 10 hrs, 30 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

In a more nonfiction-heavy month, this novel made me chuckle. Lauren comes back from a party only to discover that her husband has been replaced by a different husband. She soon learns that if she sends one husband up to the attic, another one will come down. There’s a Midnight Library–meets–Taylor Jenkins Reid feeling here, which is a great combination. And Raison’s brittle British voice makes it all the more witty.

Read by: the author
Length: 6 hrs, 8 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.7x

The saga starts when Suleyman, a Turkish journalist, is dumped by her boyfriend on their way to an abortion clinic in Queens. Soon, she discovers the “chain” of women the man has deceived, stealing their money, time, and dignity along the way. I’d have liked to hear more anecdotes from the women whom Suleyman befriends through her journey and perhaps less pontificating on gender and relationships in 2024. Although Suleyman doesn’t have the wide-eyed humor of Reesa Teesa on TikTok, her narration brings a palpably chilling authority to a story she shouldn’t have to tell.

Read by: the author
Length: 4 hrs, 16 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.6x

I’ve relied on Anne Lamott for wisdom since I read her writing memoir, Bird by Bird. Apparently, she teaches a Sunday-school class in Northern California. I’d love to matriculate, even if, frankly, my interest in religion is rather minimal. She’s just so dynamic and insightful when it comes to life, especially interpersonal relationships and everyday perseverance. There’s nothing quite like having her as both the good cop and the bad cop chatting right in your ear. This audio gave me an acerbic new line when I wonder if something is “fair.” “Fair,” writes Lamott, “is where the pony rides are.”

Read by: Edoardo Ballerini and J. Smith-Cameron
Length: 13 hrs, 23 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

I’m in the minority, but I’ve had a hard time getting into Amor Towles’s novels, like A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility. The short fiction here does the trick. Table for Two is split between stories that take place in New York City and a linked few that take place in Los Angeles. I preferred the New York stories, especially one called “The Bootlegger” read buoyantly by the actress J. Smith-Cameron (Succession). It’s about the fallout when a guy gets angry at his seatmate at Carnegie Hall for secretly recording the orchestra on stage. An O. Henry–like tale called “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett,” about a whippersnapper who finds himself forging signatures for a rare book seller, is also read with great élan by Ballerini, an audiobook stalwart.

Read by: the author
Length: 6 hrs, 22 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

I was often scared and anxious listening to this book, about the 2022 incident in which Rushdie was stabbed at a lecture in New York and his subsequent recovery. But being scared and anxious while listening to an audiobook is a good thing. It means I’m riveted. The author’s voice has a magical quality, too, especially when he’s talking insightfully about life, death, and all the terrifying moments in between.

Read by: the author
Length: 10 hrs, 48 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.6x

Celebrity memoirs are a surprisingly effective branding tool. I usually finish these books caring more about the celebrity than I did when I started. Examples: Rob Lowe, Henry Winkler, John Stamos, Pamela Anderson, and many others. What made listening to Rebel Wilson’s book such a grounding, worthwhile experience is that I liked her less, even if I related to many of her problems (daddy issues, weight fluctuation, social insecurity, etc.). I couldn’t help but find Wilson’s anecdotes awkward as she writes about losing her virginity; driving around Beverly Hills wearing her $900 Dita sunglasses in her Mercedes G Wagon with illegally tinted windows; and calling out people she doesn’t like as “coke-sniffing sexist dickheads.” It’s performed like it’s written, with great (and sometimes exhausting) earnestness, making it yet another fascinating artifact of the post-COVID Hollywood-memoir boom.

Read by: the author
Length: 6 hrs, 5 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

This collection of essays focused on the weirdness of contemporary life and popular culture is a bit peripatetic, moving briskly from subjects such as Taylor Swift to Joan Didion to old toxic relationships (i.e., three important things I care about). I especially enjoyed hearing her talk about that last topic, a long, complicated entwinement with a guy she calls “Mr. Backpack.” But my Jerry Maguire, you-complete-me moment comes when Montell uses the expression “woo-woo schmuck” to describe a new age healer. I don’t know if I needed to hear anything else after that, but I’m glad I did.

Read by: Jessica Pimentel, Jonathan Gregg, Stacy Gonzalez
Length: 13 hrs, 36 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

I have a hard time giving props to Reese’s Book Club, but this month’s selection is a ding-ding-ding winner. It focuses mainly on two women: the fierce, forgotten, and deceased 1980s artist Anita, and Raquel, a grad student who rediscovers Anita’s work several years later. The book is clever and original, but what’s more, Pimental, a star of Orange Is the New Black, reads Anita as if she’s in a fever dream. There’s a vibrant wickedness to her performance that no doubt will make this one of the best listens of the year.

Read by: January LaVoy and Will Damron
Length: 9 hrs, 18 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.9x

Everyone thinks Lucy killed her best friend Savvy back home in Texas. Years later, with Lucy on to a new — if unexciting — life in Los Angeles, a podcast hosted by the hunky Ben Owens tries to uncover the actual murderer. A lot of thrillers these days use the murder podcast as a plot device. This production simulates one better than any audiobook I’ve listened to, to an often hilarious effect. Also, LaVoy expertly voices one of Lucy’s funniest tics: imagining how she would murder nearly every person with whom she comes in contact.

Read by: Corey Brill
Length: 15 hrs, 22 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

Scott Carson is a pseudonym for Michael Koryta, a thriller writer I’ve been obsessed with since reading Those Who Wish Me Dead. (The book is much better than Taylor Sheridan’s movie, with a plot twist I still think about.) The Carson novels have a supernatural bent, fitting in a universe reminiscent of Stephen King, but set in the Midwest, not Maine. This one’s about a suburban teenager named Marshall who interns with a private investigator to unravel clues about the disappearance of a young woman in the early aughts. Snakes factor into the plot here, which, in its dénouement, left me with a “what exactly just happened?” feeling. But the journey is creepy and trippy, enhanced by Corey Brill’s agility to slip between the canny private detective and Marshall’s innocent nostalgia.

Read by: Risa Mei
Length: 9 hrs, 23 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

I loved the audio of Sutanto’s novel Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, so I’m inclined to follow her anywhere. This is the third in a series about Meddy Chan and her meddling family, but it’s the first I’ve listened to. I’m sure the humor of this cozy mystery — about a missing Chinese New Year envelope in Jakarta — jumps off the page when you read it, but as narrator, Risa Mei truly elevates the experience to laugh-out-loud, even giving each of the four “aunties” a distinct personality. A delight, whether you like dim sum brunch or not.

Read by: the author
Length: 7 hrs, 7 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

It came as a surprise to me that this memoir from RuPaul, one of the world’s more over-the-top celebrities, is actually quite sobering and subdued. Clearly, that’s how the Drag Race host wanted it. In turn, the book occasionally drags in parts, too, as Ru describes his slow and steady rise to fame, even if it was predestined by his mother, who named him RuPaul because she knew he would be a star. His drug-fueled, circuitous route to Significant Public Figure is still fascinating, just as it is to spend a few hours with a RuPaul whose performance here remains grounded.

Read by: the author
Length: 5 hrs, 3 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

This pointillistic nonfiction account of growing up as a young model in the fashion industry is candid and direct. Meaning: At times it’s sobering, and at times it’s just jaw-dropping. It also helps that Russell, now 36, pulls no punches in her narration. She is a gripping companion sharing her journey, one that often illuminates the weird and unsettling power division between agents and photographers and the beautiful women who make some of the most iconic images in the world.

Read by: Jane Oppenheimer
Length: 11 hrs, 20 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

Sometimes, you just need to listen to a book about a lady from Boca Raton who finds her husband in flagrante delicto with another woman and starts her life over in big, bad New York City. Sylvia gave up her dream to be a wedding planner years before, but it’s not going to elude her this time around. There are plenty of contrivances here — especially Sylvia’s obsession with Sex and the City — but every so often, Sylvia’s path zigs where you expect it to zag. That’s no small feat. Meanwhile, Jane Oppenheimer gives all of Yablon’s characters plenty of quirky life outside of South Florida, including Sylvia’s best friend, a widowed cabaret pianist named Evie who becomes her roommate.

Read by: Krizia Bajos
Length: 8 hrs, 42 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

This zany book follows Izzy, a failed Pitbull (the singer) impersonator who’s now decided his life needs to be a lot more Scarface. Like Carl Hiaasen, the author gets South Florida just right, here focusing on all the looney-tune characters in Izzy’s Miami existence. I may be yelling “timber” here, but the text is only heightened by Krizia Bajos, who is Cuban and Miami-born. She truly makes the already riotous references to Pitbull songs and Al Pacino lines just effervescent.

Read by: Kate Berlant
Length: 5 hrs, 26 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.65x

I love the Canadian writer Sheila Heti — especially her last novel, Pure Colour, in which she grapples with the death of her father. This is a different kind of book. It’s basically a scrambling of the author’s diaries, but all of the sentences that start with the same letter, A to Z, are placed in alphabetical order. I read about a third of it and I loved its deliberate weirdness, one that I could really only imbibe in small portions. When I saw that the genius comedian Kate Berlant would be narrating the audiobook, I decided to finish it by listening instead. Heti has definitely produced a deliberately weird experiment, but hearing it out loud transforms Alphabetical Diaries into a kind of spoken-word, longform poetry. Berlant adds that extra pizazz, so you really get a window into the creative mind as it shifts quickly from moments of despair to lightbulbs of insight to incidents of sexual desire to the recollection of totally random literary facts. One of my favorites here is under “P”: “Patricia Highsmith lost her virginity at Yaddo.”

Read by: Rebekah Hinds
Length: 7 hrs, 35 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

Piglet, the affectionate but also upsetting nickname for the cookbook-author protagonist of this uncomfortable but un-turn-off-able novel, is told by her fiancé of an indiscretion just two weeks before their wedding day. Piglet isn’t ready to put the brakes on their relationship just yet, and instead she starts to go a bit out of control and maybe even to lose her mind. One of the best things about this listen is how many times Hinds, a British stage actor, needs to repeat the word “croquembouche,” a French pastry cake that Piglet is making for her own wedding reception. Every time she says “croquembouche,” the audiobook gets another kick in the pants.

Read by: the author
Length: 11 hrs, 34 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

How did I know this book would be entertaining from the start? In the first few moments, Billy Dee Williams, perhaps best known to contemporary audiences for his role in the Star Wars universe, dedicates his memoir to “all my wives.” That’s how. In fairness, Williams has only been married thrice. Still, the 86-year-old sex symbol from the Diana Ross films Mahogany (1975) and Lady Sings the Blues (1975), among many other television series and films, really knows how to turn on the charm. Just the way he pronounces the name of his most famous character, Lando Calrissian, is a gorgeous hoot. And he got to wear a cape! There are a lot of surprising anecdotes here about raising children in Hollywood, growing up in a privileged family in Harlem, and the kinds of trouble he got into with some of his female co-stars on the New York stage.

Read by: Arthur Darvill and Vanessa Kirby
Length: 9 hrs, 54 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

This British breakup book owes a lot to High Fidelity, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s told from the perspective of Andy, a sort of loser, aspiring stand-up comedian, who’s just been dumped by his girlfriend. Kirby makes a short guest appearance for an hour or so toward the end, but this is mostly Darvill’s show (he won an Olivier in 2023). He makes Andy quite palatable, in a befuddled way, especially when he reads his very Nick Hornby–like list of why he shouldn’t still be dating his ex.

Read by: the author
Length: 10 hrs, 14 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

I used to cover Art Basel Miami from a social perspective for The Wall Street Journal. The free-for-all, jam-packed few days of pointless parties just made me bananas. I really enjoyed this exploration of the seemingly impenetrable art scene because Bosker really gets it. Her character studies of gallerists, painters, buyers, and up-and-comers are wry and perceptive. As the narrator of her own journey in which her subjects alternatively seek and shun her journalistic take, she is a terrifically funny tour guide. This is a real audio gem.

Read by: the author
Length: 10 hrs, 23 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

Don’t be turned off by the generic title of this filmmaking memoir from Zwick, the co-creator of Thirtysomething and the director of Legends of the Fall and About Last Night. This is dishy, juicy audio. It includes amazing stories about: Julia Roberts, who flirted with playing the lead in Shakespeare in Love when Zwick was going to direct it but basically just vanished; Matthew Broderick, who brought his mother on to rewrite Glory; and several “Guess who, don’t sue” anecdotes, many of which I rewound over and over because they’re just so absurdly Hollywood. Reading his own work, Zwick is a nice combination of amazed and shocked that he has lived to tell his own tales. He’s circumspect about his successes and failures while also keeping an honest take on a nutty industry.

Read by: Julia Whelan
Length: 14 hrs, 57 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.9x

This is a highly addictive novel about Frankie McGrath, a California nursing student who volunteers to serve in Vietnam after her brother dies there. She experiences enough soap-opera twists and turns — love, friendship, trauma, depression, and disappointment — to make you want to go watch all four seasons of the late-’80s nighttime drama China Beach, starring Dana Delaney. You’ll be out of luck — I looked and it’s not streaming. That’s okay, because all 15 hours of Hannah’s novel are compelling, made only more so by audio pro Whelan’s sensitive narration.

Read by: the author
Length: 9 hrs, 39 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.9x

Memoirs these days have become more revealing. That’s a good thing. Otherwise, why bother? This one’s about “figure skating, fucking up, and figuring it out” from the perspective of Gold, who exploded onto the Olympic circuit in 2014. Gold calls her destructive inner voice “Outofshapeworthlessloser,” which is pretty darn relatable. There’s a lot of eye-opening drama here: failures, fat shaming, ice-skating scandals, controlling parents. Gold just really goes there in her emotional narration. It’s not a particularly important takeaway, but I’d still like to know: Did Taylor Swift invite Gold over with the intention of making chocolate-chip cookies, or did she invite her over to hang out and then they ended up making chocolate-chip cookies?

Read by: the author
Length: 11 hrs, 31 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

I love talking and learning about narcissism. It’s a buzzword that comes up in so many of my conversations, but I don’t truly understand it. This self-help book, read with distinctive command by the psychologist author, is more about “identifying and healing from” our encounters with the narcissists in our lives. I find it hard to come away from any advice book completely armed for battle with the insane people in my orbit, but I hope even a small takeaway will seep through. This month I’m carrying with me the idea that you shouldn’t try to reason or argue with a narcissist. All you’ll get in return, says Durvasula, is “a large bowl of word salad with some gaslighting dressing on the side.” I’ll take a chopped salad instead, please!

Read by: Patti Murin
Length: 14 hrs, 57 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.3x

I had a hard time finding audiobooks I liked this month. I loved spending time with Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) as he read a British shrink in Matthew Blake’s thriller Anna O. But I just could not follow what was happening in the story at all. Ditto for Arian Moayed (Stewy on Succession), who is great company as the narrator of Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!. But, the time and character shifts make the story a challenging listen. So it was a great relief to be immediately absorbed in Laurie Frankel’s new novel, which is, per the title, about family. Tonally on the bubbly side — there’s no time for depression here — the plot is a tad far-fetched. India Allwood is a stage actress who stars on some fantasy television series. She gives up two babies for adoption and then adopts some of her own. When her career approaches cancellation — she says something out of turn to a reporter — all her kids band together to save her. Murin, who played the original Princess Anna in Frozen on Broadway, keeps things breezy and refreshing. Her scenes of India struggling with coming into her talents at acting school — including playing a pregnant Lady Macbeth — are highlights.

Read by: Alex Jennings
Length: 8 hrs, 8 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.75x

Michaelides wrote the huge best-seller The Silent Patient, so he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve with this new novel — some more predictable than others. Elliot Chase, our unreliable narrator, owes a bit to Tom Ripley; he might also remind readers of Barry Keoghan’s character in Saltburn. Elliot obsesses over his friend Lana Farrar, a former big movie star (think Julia Roberts). They end up on vacation in Greece, and it becomes awfully cloudy to decipher what’s real and what’s a performance. At 66, Jennings, a British actor of stage and screen (The Crown), is probably too old to narrate Elliot’s nifty and treacherous rant. But, his impeccable accent keeps the already propulsive novel quite engaging, and moving like a steam train about to run you over.

Read by: Michael Braun
Length: 7 hrs, 54 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

Danielle Steel has published almost 200 books, but I’ve never read any of them. So as a resolution for 2024, I took the plunge. And you know what? I liked it. This one’s about a 62-year-old Hollywood icon, Ardith Law, who reminded me of a reclusive Michelle Pfeiffer. She has an affair with a much younger actor — I imagined Glen Powell — who has come on as her temporary assistant. (Don’t ask why.) Ardith’s story alternates with that of her estranged daughter, a plastic surgeon back in New York, who is also experiencing genuine love for the first time. Cue the butterflies, violins, and motorcycle rides to Malibu. Sometimes you just want an easy listen, and Braun’s masculine tones are like Manuka Honey.

Read by: the author and others
Length: 4 hours, 56 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

As another resolution for 2024, I figured I should make a pledge to work on some of the writing projects I can never seem to finish. Or pretend to. This “guide to staying creative, focused, and productive all year round” features aphorisms and advice from such prolific writers as Rebecca Makkai, Elizabeth McCracken, Susan Orlean, Roxane Gay, and Bryan Washington. Thanks to Attenberg’s kindly vocals, it moves swiftly and encouragingly. With hope, some of the words of wisdom seeped through into my consciousness. At least one piece did, and for that I’m grateful: “Embrace your inner good enough.”

Read by: the author
Length: 8 hrs, 43 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

Much has already been made of this uncomfortably intimate memoir about a New York couple who open their marriage. Still, I wanted to hear it for myself. Why shouldn’t I be conversant in the trend of non-monogamy, the unavoidable topic du jour, even if most of my time is spent listening to audiobooks? Winter’s adventures in dating and fooling around as a married woman with children do not disappoint. The ways she narrates a French boyfriend (terribly) and a German one (even more terribly) are priceless. As jaw-droppingly blunt as Winter is, she serves as a reminder that maybe there is such a thing as TMI. Then again, I listened to the whole thing in a single sitting, so maybe I could use more excitement in my life.

Read by: Saskia Maarleveld
Length: 9 hrs, 16 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

It’s been a long road, but I’ve finally come to accept that selections from the Reese Witherspoon Book Club are not the same as the Pulitzer Committee. Witherspoon describes this one as “everything you could want in a thriller.” I can’t go that far. This one felt kind of vague to me, as if it came out of a vape pen. The bad guy, for instance, is called Mr. Smith. But there’s definitely fun to be had in unraveling the identity of the real Evie Porter when another Evie Porter unexpectedly shows up in town. And Maarleveld, a prolific audiobook reader, heightens the excitement.