Looking for a Great Listen? Try a 2024 Audie Award Winner
Audiobook lovers know that a great listening experience needs both engaging source material and a talented narrator. The annual Audie awards, announced last week by the Audio Publishers Association, recognizes these perfect pairings across many literary genres and serve as an ideal shortlist for your upcoming listens. You can peruse the full list of winners and get started with these below. You'll find many more fantastic audiobooks in our catalog and through our e-book/e-audiobook app, SimplyE.
Audiobook of the Year
Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story
written and narrated by Bono
Surrender is an intimate, immersive listening experience, telling stories from Bono’s early days in Dublin, to joining a band and playing sold out stadiums around the world with U2, plus his more than 20 years of activism.
Autobiography/Memoir
Making It So
written and narrated by Patrick Stewart
From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations with his indelible command of stage and screen. His long-awaited memoir, Making It So, is a revealing portrait of an artist whose astonishing life—from his humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England, to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim—proves a story as exuberant, definitive, and enduring as the author himself.
Best Fiction Narrator
Billie Fulford-Brown
for The Last Lifeboat written by Hazel Gaynor
Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters during World War II.
Best Nonfiction Narrator
Dion Graham
for King: A Life written by Jonathan Eig
In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.
Fiction
Tom Lake
written by Ann Patchett; narrated by Meryl Streep
Recalling the past at her daughters' request, Lara tells the story of a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance, which causes her daughters to examine their own lives and reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
Nonfiction
Poverty, by America
written by Matthew Desmond; narrated by Dion Graham
Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair.
Mystery
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
written by Jesse Q. Sutanto; narrated by Eunice Wong
When she discovers a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, Vera Wong, a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands, calls the police but not before swiping the flash drive from the body, setting a trap for the killer that becomes complicated by unexpected friendships with her customers.
Romance
The True Love Experiment
written by Christina Lauren; narrated by Jonathan Cole and Cindy Kay
Sparks fly when a romance writer and a documentary filmmaker join forces to craft the ultimate Hollywood love story—but only if they can keep the chemistry between them from taking the whole thing off script.
Humor
Leslie F*cking Jones
written and narrated by Leslie Jones
A candid memoir filled with vivid anecdotes: Growing up in the South, navigating stand-up comedy's challenging early days, brushes with celebrities like Chris Rock and Whoopi Goldberg, and insights on Ghostbusters, Supermarket Sweep, The Daily Show. Revealing struggles as a tall Black woman in comedy.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.