The Best Audiobooks of 2025

AudioFile is thrilled to share our picks for the best Fiction and Best History & Nonfiction audiobooks of the year. These are standout, thoughtful performances of important and compelling titles. Consider them your can’t-miss listens of 2025!

For the full list of 2025 Best Audiobooks, visit AudioFile’s website.

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FICTION

Amity by Nathan Harris | Read by André Santana, Angel Pean
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Hachette Audio | 12.25 hrs.]

Narrators André Santana and Angel Pean add emotional depth to this moving story. In the aftermath of the Civil War, emancipated siblings Coleman and June cannot escape the Harper family of Baton Rouge. Mr. Harper, seeking his fortune in a Mexican silver mine, forces June to accompany him. Santana and Pean excel in distinguishing each character and fully immersing listeners in this gripping story. Their performances elevate the novel to unforgettable heights.

The Antidote by Karen Russell | Read by Elena Rey, Sophie Amoss, Mark Bramhall, Shayna Small, Jon Orsini, Natasha Soudek, Karen Russell, James Riding
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 17 hrs.]

Karen Russell, the magical realism and prose virtuoso, conjures the American Dust Bowl. Her vibrant imaginings are voiced by a stellar cast. Sophie Amoss shimmers as the Antidote, a “prairie witch” who takes verbal deposits; Asphodel Oletsky, a teen recently orphaned when her mom was murdered, is vividly portrayed by Elena Rey; and the masterful Mark Bramhall inhabits the sane, sensitive, long-suffering wheat farmer, Harp Oletsky. The audiobook’s action occurs between two immense weather events six weeks apart in 1935—an epic dust storm dubbed “Black Sunday” bookended by a torrential rain and flood.

Big Chief by Jon Hickey | Read by Shaun Taylor-Corbett
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 10 hrs.]

Loss haunts this powerful story of politics, corruption, and loyalty. Narrator Shaun Taylor-Corbett performs this debut novel with just the right tone, style, and tempo. He voices the angsty Mitch Caddo with a sure sense of his conflicted life as a “fixer” for the fictional Passage Rouge Nation. The plot revolves around the days just before a tribal election when issues arise involving tribal membership and past suspect business dealings. Taylor-Corbett delivers the dialogue with restraint and intelligence and is masterful in bringing this compelling novel to life.

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan | Read by Michael Crouch
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 15.75 hrs.]

Golden Voice Narrator Michael Crouch brings his expert skills to this complex historical drama. While WWII still rages in the Pacific, a secret spanning generations begins in Bonhomie, Ohio. Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt, who are married to other people, share a kiss in a hardware store upon the news of victory over Germany, and this starts a massive trickle-down effect throughout generations of their two families. Crouch’s smooth narration powerfully dramatizes how one moment can change everything.

Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine | Read by Angel Pean
[Random House Audio | 13.5 hrs.]

Narrator Angel Pean’s stand-out performance is essential here. Her storytelling skill is consistently riveting, fully embodying these characters and the detailed and occasionally magical world they inhabit. Junie, an enslaved girl in 1800s Alabama, lives with the loss of her sister, Minnie, whose death is a weight on her conscience. An encounter with Minnie’s ghost changes Junie’s life, opening a new path that could include escaping her captors.

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan | Read by David Rintoul, Rachel Bavidge
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Recorded Books | 11 hrs.]

Narrators David Rintoul and Rachel Bavidge perform with distinct British styles as this speculative novel jumps around in time. Rintoul portrays Tom, who lives in the 22nd century, when the diminished world has experienced climate catastrophes and been ravaged by AI-controlled wars. Rintoul’s professorial tone and diction strongly suggest an interior life of the mind. Bavidge captures Vivien’s 21st-century conflicts, sensuality, and intellect. She’s the wife of famous poet Francis Blundy, whose lost work, “A Corona for Vivien,” provides the subplot of Tom’s search for it a century later.

NONFICTION

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt | Read by Edoardo Ballerini
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Recorded Books | 9.75 hrs.]

Author Greenblatt and Golden Voice Edoardo Ballerini match well in this insightful biography of Shakespeare’s predecessor and early model, playwright Christopher Marlowe. Little is known for certain about Marlowe’s life, or more mysteriously, his murder at age 29. His sparse biography is fleshed out and enriched by a marvelous evocation of Elizabethan theater before and during his brief career—and his impact on a string of his contemporaries, particularly Shakespeare.

The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 by Rick Atkinson | Read by Grover Gardner, Rick Atkinson
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 32.5 hrs.]

Author and narrator are both at their best here. Few accounts of the great struggle for independence are so fully and vividly recounted, or so penetrating. Washington is the dominating figure, always admirable, but on a human scale, with his share of shortcomings and pretensions. Lafayette, Arnold, even John Hancock—the dusty names step out of the shadows and down from their pedestals. Golden Voice Gardner’s flawless delivery marks this as one of the year’s hallmark listening experiences.

Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations by Alton Brown | Read by Alton Brown
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 7 hrs.]

Add “outstanding audiobook narrator” to Brown’s impressive resumé. He performs his “essays and ruminations” smoothly and wittily. His range of interests is expansive: blue crab (eat the soft shell variety), martinis (be wary of ice), Japanese cuisine (seek it out), and more.  But it’s his funny and quirky opinions that stay with the listener. A master of the bon mot, he tells stories creatively with an excellent pace and tone.

Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church by Kevin Sack | Read by William DeMeritt
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 15 hrs.]

William DeMeritt’s commanding performance is the perfect complement to Kevin Sack’s tenth anniversary tribute to the 9 slaughtered members of Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church. This work is also a tribute to the rich and inspiring story of the Black church in America—a story laden with hope and hardship. This masterful history of endurance is brought forth by DeMeritt with somber resonance and emotional intensity.

Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing | Read by Robin Miles, Eve L. Ewing
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 12.25 hrs.]

Kudos to the author, publisher, and narrator of this audiobook. Author Ewing delivers her introduction, which sets up the arguments. She then turns the body of the text over to Golden Voice narrator Robin Miles. Miles is a gifted performer whose tone, tempo, and cadence enhance the dark truths of this provocative work. Ewing, who is a scholar and poet, indicts American schools as historically rigged against Black and Native American students.

We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore | Read by Jill Lepore
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Recorded Books | 24 hrs.]

The U.S. Constitution is under threat, but it has a self-contained aspect that can right the ship of state if only we will let it: the amendment process. Harvard historian Jill Lepore contends the country’s guiding document was not born fully developed and shouldn’t be treated as a static entity. It’s like the best of college lectures—clear and well structured. Lepore’s pace makes it easy for listeners to absorb her main points and to appreciate the bits of humor and colorful historical tidbits that enliven her text.