Best Audiobooks

With their built-in suspense, mystery and crime novels are ideal for audiobooks. To help identify standout listens this year, we turned to the audiobook experts at AudioFile magazine for their recommendations. Here are their top mystery and suspense audiobooks of 2025.

Picking out quality audiobooks is important. With an accomplished narrator, a good novel can be transformed into an even more moving or enjoyable experience—while a lackluster performance can ruin it. Fortunately, there's AudioFile magazine, whose editors pick out standout audiobooks throughout the year. These are their picks for the best novels of 2025.

Editors at AudioFile magazine, who reviewed more than 2,000 books in 2025, pick out their favourites in the 'history and nonfiction' category—from the American struggle for independence to the ruminations of a food celebrity.

There are few things more fun than listening to entertaining and emotion-filled love stories read by talented narrators. These are the best romance audiobooks of 2025, as chosen by editors of AudioFile magazine and including romantasy, enemies-to-lovers, and new takes on beloved classics.

There are many ways to approach narrating an audiobook, says award-winning narrator Ray Porter, but whatever the narrator’s method, they must bring conviction to the fantastical tales of sci fi. He introduces his top five choices: sci fi classics and award-winning contemporary novels, read for you by the giants of sci fi narration.

The quality and range of audiobooks has exploded in recent years and books with 'multi-voice' performances—where it can feel as if you're right here, in the middle of the action—are amongst the most exciting. Here are six of the best multi-voice audiobooks of 2024, recommended by audiobook experts AudioFile magazine.

Always looking for the perfect audiobook to listen to in the car, during exercise, or while cleaning—and never know where to start? We've got you. Our friends at AudioFile magazine have put together their definitive guide to the best audiobooks of 2024. Here are the recent fiction releases they recommend most strongly: six novels read by gifted narrators that will keep you captivated.

If you enjoy listening to books as audiobooks, it's a great time to be alive. From Rosamund Pike narrating Pride and Prejudice, Jeremy Irons reading Lolita to Meryl Streep telling the story of Heartburn, many prominent actors have signed up for performing their favourite books in unabridged versions.

If you're looking for audiobooks that help books jump off the page, AudioFile magazine's best of 2024 lists are a great place to start. Here's their list of best audiobooks for 2024 in the science fiction and fantasy genres—from dark academia to a novel set in World War I.

Mysteries and crime novels make for great listening as audiobooks, as suspense about what's going to happen next keeps you completely engaged. For advice on which ones to listen to, we turned to the audiobook experts at AudioFile magazine. Here's their list of the best audiobooks of 2024 in mystery and suspense, great choices if you're looking for a good whodunnit to listen to in early 2025.