Run out of great podcasts to listen to? Looking for something a bit weightier? Audiobooks could be the perfect solution. Whether you're driving to work or wandering the streets, this selection will keep you entertained. With A-list actors providing the narration and a host of new productions of old favorites, there's never been a better time to start listening. Should you want to read actual pages, give WIRED's guides to the best sci-fi books and the best fantasy books a try.
By Siddhartha Mukherjee
You may think a book subtitled “A Biography of Cancer” would not be the lightest of listens, and you would be right, but that doesn’t make it any less brilliant. Siddhartha Mukherjee does a remarkable job of charting the history of this complex disease, weaving together the narrative with stories from his own experience as an oncologist. It’s a triumph precisely because it never loses sight of the people at the heart of the story: the researchers who pushed forward and found treatments in unusual places and the patients and their families who faced losing everything.
By Amit Katwala
Penned by WIRED's Amit Katwala, with spine-tingling narration by Matt Reeves, Tremors in the Blood tells the true story of two murders—one in San Francisco in 1922, the other in Chicago in 1935—and how they intersect with the creation of the polygraph machine. The book combines true crime elements, tense gunfights, and courtroom drama with science and history as it explores how the inventors of the lie detector—a rookie cop, a teenage magician, and a visionary police chief—ended up unleashing a power they couldn't control.
By David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas is a difficult book to get through, there’s no doubt about that. But the beauty of audiobooks is that they make getting through such novels a breeze. Cloud Atlas spans a number of centuries and is told from the perspective of six interconnected characters. The tonal shift from flowery 19th-century prose to the incomprehensibly simplistic final chapter comes across beautifully in audio form. Best of all, each tale is read by a different narrator, bringing the book to life better than the novel's polarizing film adaptation ever could.
By Lucy Foley
A modern murder mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie, The Hunting Party sees a group of friends—Londoners, Oxford graduates, just the worst people—heading up to a remote lodge in Scotland for their annual New Year’s Eve get-together. Things quickly take a dark turn, and with the lodge cut off from the outside world, it’s up to the place's only two staff members to piece together what happened, all while battling dark secrets of their own. It’s a fun, slightly ridiculous story—and you will probably hate some of the main players, but it works well for audiobook because the story switches between different characters, each with their own voice actor. Just don’t listen if you’re somewhere remote.
By Stephen Fry
Greek mythology can at times feel a little impenetrable. There are just too many gods, goddesses, and nymphs—all with countless stories of love, wrath, and revenge. Stephen Fry makes it easily digestible by picking out key events and adding dialogue to modernize them. Though your head will boggle at the complex family tree of the Greek deities, you’ll learn about the legends that inspired millennia of writers, from Shakespeare to Rick Riordan.
By Graham Greene
Set during the blitz, Graham Greene's classic novel is a semi-autobiographical account of an adulterous man's jealousy toward his lover. When she breaks off their tryst, he's consumed by insecurity and hires a private investigator, suspecting she is seeing someone else. It's based in no small part on a notorious affair Greene himself conducted with Catherine Walston, the wife of a prominent Labour MP. This real-life context and Greene's customary skill combine for one of his most highly regarded works. It's narrated expertly by Colin Firth, who is perfectly cast to voice the inner monologue and lamentable pettiness of Maurice Bendrix.
By Caitlin Moran
If you are a woman, you should have already read this book. But if you don't have time to read it right now, let Caitlin Moran do it for you. Her awkward, autobiographical account tackles hair removal, getting fat, tiny pants, and being one of too many siblings in a way that will leave you cringing one minute and laughing the next.
By David Sedaris
If you're a fan of David Sedaris' previous books and podcasts, strap in: You're about to have (possibly) the best one-sided conversation of the year. But if you don't want to hoot with laughter on public transport, this is not the book for you. In Calypso, Sedaris delivers a barrage of sheer brilliance with his remarkably deadpan voice. A quest to feed his benign tumor to a snapping turtle; disastrous family gatherings at his dream holiday home, dubbed the Sea Section; and his wildly inappropriate compulsion to buy useless fashion (including a toilet brush hat)—all of these stories are here. Sedaris has built his essays on the weird and wonderful things of everyday life, but with Calypso he bravely exposes ugly flaws with the same panache as his finest quips. You'll walk away transformed.
By Anthony Daniels
Since Star Wars first premiered in 1977, millions of people have met, loved, and loathed the now-iconic golden droid C-3PO from a galaxy far, far away. Inside the minute hinges of C-3PO’s suffocatingly tight metal costume was Anthony Daniels, who acts as a soft-spoken guide with a unique backstage pass to the intricate world unveiled on screen. In a deeply personal account of the personalities behind the iconic movie series, Daniels unveils how he became an accidental star of the franchise, the pain and challenges of being trapped in a golden cage, and the friendships he made along the way.
By Bill Bryson
Travelogue master Bill Bryson has retired to the library in recent years, and his gentle Midwestern tones are perfect for audiobooks. In his latest book, The Body, Bryson takes a characteristic approach familiar to his readers, unearthing fascinating, disgusting, and hilarious nuggets of information about our bodies. He explores everything from genetics to our immune system, all in a soothing voice that will keep you calm while you panic-Google various ailments.
By Adam Kay
This diary of life on the medical frontlines by junior-doctor-turned-comedian Adam Kay sold more than a million copies in print and shone a light on the chaotic and compassionate world of the UK's NHS. The audiobook is read by Kay—who first came to fame in the mid-2000s with a Tube-strike-inspired parody of “Going Underground” by The Jam that he made while part of comedic musical duo Amateur Transplants. The audio version includes extra diary entries about Kay's life in the hospital ward.
By Philip Pullman
The long-awaited follow-up to Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy shows the protagonist of those books, Lyra Belacqua, much earlier in life. The action of the first part of this new trilogy, The Book of Dust, follows Malcolm Polstead—an 11-year-old living on the outskirts of Oxford—as he’s swept away in a flood of biblical proportions while trying to protect the infant Lyra from mysterious assailants. The audiobook is read by Michael Sheen, who brings his customary energy to Pullman's wild tale.
By Ben Aaronovitch
Set in modern-day London, the series follows copper Peter Grant as he’s slowly introduced to the world of magic lurking beneath the city’s streets. If you’re reluctant to dive into a tale of wizard’s hats and magic wands, don’t worry—author Ben Aaronovitch approaches the premise like a scientist, and Grant conducts controlled experiments that would put the stars of CSI to shame. The audiobooks, expertly narrated by Kobna-Holdbrook Smith, are a pleasure, particularly when the series ventures into the jazz world in book two, Moon Over Soho.
By George Saunders
Acclaimed short story writer George Saunders’ first foray into long fiction was a huge critical success. He won the 2017 Man Booker prize for his portrayal of a grieving Abraham Lincoln, harangued by ghosts after his son’s death. The audiobook has a suitably stellar cast, featuring Susan Sarandon, Lena Dunham, Ben Stiller, and a host of other famous—and slightly less famous—actors. There are 166 cast members in total.
By William Boyd
If you're after an easy listen, William Boyd's James Bond novel Solo fits the bill. In a fictional African nation, an aging Bond goes undercover as a journalist in an attempt to foil a separatist movement. Read skillfully by actor Dominic West, the novel is set in 1969 and offers a pleasant antidote to the modern Bond movies while benefiting from an excellent villain in Kobus Breed, a ruthless mercenary on whom Bond seeks revenge.
By Douglas Adams
The BBC's radio adaptations of Douglas Adams' seminal comedy works are legendary and all six series—one for each book—are available on Audible. With each clocking in at around two-and-a-half to three hours, complete with brilliant music, sound effects, and full cast, they're the perfect way to enjoy the adventures of the last surviving man from Earth and his alien “friends” through your headphones. If you'd rather experience the books in full, all six are also available with narrations from Stephen Fry and Martin Freeman, who played Arthur Dent in the movie adaption.
By Margaret Atwood
Narrated by Elizabeth Moss, the star of the ongoing television adaptation, The Handmaid’s Tale is an increasingly powerful reminder of the thin ice the modern, relatively liberal society we live in rests upon. Margaret Atwood’s novel has spawned countless imitators since it was first published in 1985, but its description of Offred’s life in Gilead and the slow ratcheting back of progress that led society to that point remains chilling.
By John le Carré
Written by John le Carré, A Legacy of Spies acts as both prequel and sequel to one of his earliest novels, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold—famously adapted into a film starring Richard Burton. Here a now-retired intelligence officer is summoned to London to defend his actions during a Cold War operation in which a British agent was killed. Decades later, the agent’s son is suing the British government for wrongful death, and the bureaucratic apparatus is desperate to shift the blame. It’s an absorbing listen, thanks to le Carré’s skill in building character and tension, and it’s further enhanced by the deft narration of actor Tom Hollander.
By Frank Herbert
In 2012, WIRED readers voted Dune the best science-fiction novel of all time. It’s also the best-selling of all time and has inspired a mammoth universe, including 18 books set over 34,000 years. The series takes place 20,000 years in the future in galaxies stuck in the feudal ages, where computers are banned for religious reasons and noble families rule whole planets. Frank Herbert focuses on the planet Arrakis, which holds a material used as a currency throughout the universe for its rarity and mind-enhancing powers.
By Neil Gaiman
Neverwhere is a tale of London—not the city you know, but the London Below, a city unseen by the majority yet no less real, populated by the ignored, lost, and forgotten. It's a world that Richard Mayhew, a Scottish expatriate to the Big Smoke, slips into when he helps Door, a young woman on the run from unstoppable assassins who have killed her entire family. Now invisible and forgotten by London Above, Richard and Door—along with the trickster Marquis de Carabas and the stoic Hunter—must travel across Night's Bridge, seek an audience at the Earl's court, and acquire a rare key from the Black Friars for the angel Islington if either of them has a hope of returning to their former lives. Gaiman's urban fantasy takes the metropolis of London and rebuilds it into a unique realm of mythology, one that will leave you wondering what's really happening, a half-glance out of sight, the next time you find yourself wandering around the city. The audiobook is read by Gaiman himself, while a full-cast audio drama offers a more immersive journey through London Below.
- Russia inches toward its splinternet dream
- A bold idea to stall the climate crisis—by building better trees
- Forcing WhatsApp and iMessage to work together is doomed to fail
- As Covid restrictions end, offices have a sick-pay problem
- War is calling crypto’s ‘neutrality’ into question
- The watch world has gone mad (in a good way)
This article was originally published by WIRED UK