I love to listen to audiobooks; I’m picky about my audiobooks. Anyone relate? I read more slowly on audio than I do on the page, and I want to make those hours count.
That feels especially true this time of year: we make a big deal of summer reading around here, and while I listen to audiobooks year-round there’s something special about listening to a great read in the summer.
When I’m choosing my next audiobook listen, I’m not looking for a substitute for the print book; the best audiobooks enhance the reading experience, adding layers that the print version can’t replicate. I know many of you deeply value a wonderful summer audiobook, which is why for many years now, each year’s MMD Summer Reading Guide includes an “Awesome on Audio” feature, in which I highlight that season’s standout audiobook selections, as well as draw your attention to amazing backlist audiobooks that feel just right for summer.
June is Audiobook Appreciation Month, which is a good excuse to gather up a collection of audiobooks that I’ve found to be completely perfect for my own summer listening, and might suit yours, as well. You’ll find four categories of titles in this audiobook list: three are from the 2024 MMD Minimalist Summer Reading Guide, one backlist selection has strong ties to one of this year’s Summer Reading Guide selections, one new release was almost in the Guide and feels just right for right now (especially on audio), two have appeared in our Guide’s Awesome on Audio feature. Plus I included several audiobooks I personally happened to enjoy at this time of year, right at the beginning of the summer season.
I hope the audiobooks on this list keep you company all summer long. Please tell us about the ones you’ve loved and continue to look forward to in the comments!
For more great summer reads—print and audio, new and backlist—our Summer Reading Guide is now available! Get yours here.
Standout audiobooks for summer listening
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I read this May 2023 release just days after the release of that year’s Summer Reading Guide: in his Booker-longlisted novel, Malaysian writer Eng imagines how British novelist W. Somerset Maugham came to write his short story “The Letter,” which was hugely popular in its time (largely because it was adapted into a widely-seen play and then a film starring Bette Davis). Maugham, who was vastly more successful in his day than I had realized, was known to mine real life for material, particularly the relationships of his friends and acquaintances. Here Eng focuses here on Maugham’s visit to Penang in 1921 to visit an old British friend and his wife. Shortly upon his arrival, he learns he’s lost his life savings to a bad investment, and must quickly write another novel to fund his much-desired further travels. With a novelist’s ear for scandal, he quickly suspects one of his hosts has stories to tell that he can then re-tell on the page: of her loveless marriage, her relationship with a Chinese revolutionary, and especially of her friend who will soon stand trial for murder. You don’t need to be familiar with Maugham’s work to enjoy this lush historical look at colonial Malaysia and the disrupting influence of a famous writer on the hunt for material—but you’ll likely want to read “The Letter” because of it. 11 hrs 15 mins. More info →
A 2024 MMD Minimalist Summer Reading Guide selection, and one of the weirdest, most original books I’ve read in a long time: Bradley’s gripping debut unfolds in a near future where the British government employs time travel, as administered by a clunky bureaucracy. Our unnamed narrator takes a position as companion to the devastatingly handsome Commander Graham Gore, of the lost 1845 Royal Navy Arctic Expedition. She’s hired largely because her mother was a refugee from Cambodia, as her charge is also a refugee of sorts—not from another country, but from history. At once fast-paced and deeply philosophical, Bradley weaves together a spy plot, a love story, and heaps of droll British humor as her characters converse on race, gender, inherited trauma, and imperial legacy. This is most definitely awesome on audio, as narrated by George Weightman and Katie Leung (who narrates several of summer’s fantastic new releases, and who you might remember as Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films). 10 hrs 22 mins. More info →
A 2024 MMD Minimalist Summer Reading Guide selection: Piecing Me Together author Watson wows with her adult debut. Zenzi Williams’s moving narration further enhances the reading experience. Things are finally going well for forty-year-old Lena: she has a good job, loving relationships with her parents and daughter, and a handsome fiancé she’s set to marry in just a few weeks. But his shocking confession the morning of her would-be wedding sends her reeling, and destabilizes the once-firm foundation she’s carefully built. Close female friendships and familial relationships feature prominently as Watson unpacks the beliefs surrounding beauty, love, fatness, and faith handed down from each generation to the next. Lyrical and kaleidoscopic, Watson compassionately explores what it means to love yourself, love your body, and love others, while showcasing Portland’s rich Black history. 9 hrs 9 mins. More info →
A 2024 MMD Minimalist Summer Reading Guide selection: Basketball isn’t really my thing, or so I thought—but in Abdurraqib’s hands, I couldn’t get enough of Columbus, the Cavaliers, and LeBron James. Who knew? And Abdurraqib is a magnificent narrator of his own work. In this inventive, far-reaching collection, the poet and music critic shares riveting anecdotes and fascinating details about the game itself. He also uses the ball as a jumping off point to explore a wide (wide!) variety of topics, including heroes and role models, the passage of time, the fragility of life, and the joy of rooting for the underdog. I can’t begin to capture his stupendous storytelling skills, but know this: this is my first read from the author and I’m hooked. I’ve already begun my summer project of exploring his backlist. (Just a few chapters left in They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us; I’m loving it.) 8 hrs 40 mins. More info →
I thoroughly enjoyed this new romance and might have included in the Summer Reading Guide, but for its April 24 release date and the fact that you’ve already seen it everywhere. (I might have gasped when I saw the staggering first-week sales in Publishers Weekly!) Fan favorite narrator Julia Whelan reads Henry’s love stories, which makes them extra-enticing to audiophiles. In this emotional latest, two unlikely roommates fall in love. They move in together as a matter of convenience, because their housing and the rest of their lives are upended when their respective soon-to-be-spouses fall in love … with each other, which results in two cancelled weddings and general chaos. Of course these two new roomies are going to fall in love, but in romance it’s the journey that counts and this was a fun one. (Although it’s worth noting that reading about self-absorbed parents was sometimes painful.) The lakeside town abutting Lake Michigan has a delightful small town feel; he has a cool job at a winery and she works as a children’s librarian, which means lots of library details and story time scenes. Once again Henry manages to be insightful and unputdownable; I would call this one most similar in tone to Happy Place. 11 hrs 23 mins. More info →
With this summer’s publication of Tóibín’s companion book Long Island, many readers are revisiting this 2009 historical fiction—or finding it for the first time. (Read the two in whatever order you’d like.) In this quiet coming-of-age story, set just after the second World War, a young girl from Ireland’s County Wexford is offered the opportunity to travel to America to settle in a a Brooklyn neighborhood that’s “just like Ireland,” with the assurance of an education and a good job. She had no intention of leaving home, but can’t say this aloud, and so she goes. A poignant novel with homesickness at its heart, reminiscent of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. This contemplative work is beautiful on audio, as narrated by Kirsten Potter. 7 hrs 38 mins. More info →
I don’t remember why this May 2022 release originally caught my eye, but once I began listening to Jesse Vilinksy’s excellent narration I was immediately swept up in the story. Since then we’ve featured it as a backlist title in the Summer Reading Guide’s Awesome on Audio section. Chronologically, this story of two sisters in small-town 1990s Connecticut begins when shy Sally is just thirteen, and her bold and beautiful sister Kathy is sixteen. But on the first page of the story Sally is 28, seemingly telling her absent sister about everything that happened between then and now. (“You disappeared on a school night. Nobody was more surprised by this than me …”) Back then both girls nursed crushes on Billy Barnes, the handsome senior a year older than Kathy; when Kathy and Billy start dating, Sally drinks in all her sister’s updates on their relationship. But then a car accident involving the three teenagers kills Kathy. This is the story of what happened after, a haunting portrait of confusion, love, and grief, enhanced by the unusual second person narration. Espach’s July 2024 release The Wedding People is one of this year’s MMD Minimalist Summer Reading Guide selections. 12 hrs 17 mins. More info →
I can’t gush enough about Isabella Starr LeBlanc’s narration for this 2023 Summer Reading Guide pick! Boulley’s much-anticipated (and standalone) sophomore novel, set ten years after the events of Firekeeper’s Daughter. Unlike her studious twin, Perry Firekeeper-Birch wasn’t initially interested in the Ojibwe summer internship program, but when she incurs a big debt, she has no choice but to get to work. Her job assignment centers on her tribe’s struggle to reclaim the remains and sacred objects of her ancestors from disinterested profiteers. The more Perry learns, the more determined she becomes to right this wrong, with a little help from her friends. A heist novel that’s both thrilling and thoughtful, with a winning protagonist you’ll want to root for. 11 hrs 32 mins. More info →
Over the past few years I got into the habit of listening to the latest Hilderbrand on audio, read by longtime narrator Erin Bennett. This 2022 release is my favorite of recent years. When the story begins the titular hotel’s Gilded Age glory days are long gone: it’s a real dump (and in a fun plot twist—haunted!) when London billionaire Xavier Darling buys it sight unseen. The new owner hires local restaurateur Lizbet Keaton to make his hotel the best property on the island, if not the whole Eastern seaboard. And that means The Hotel Nantucket has to wow Shelly Carpenter, the influencer who’s become a national obsession for her blog Hotel Confidential. The influential critic regularly reviews hotels for her eighteen million followers and awards each property anywhere from one to five keys. The staff is energized by this audacious goal, because no hotel has ever earned five keys from Shelly Carpenter. To earn the coveted fifth key, they’ll have to do everything right. Super fun, and I especially enjoyed the ghost story element! 12 hrs 27 mins. More info →
A 2023 MMD Summer Reading Guide Awesome on Audio selection: This heartfelt YA enemies-to-lovers romance features hugely likable protagonists and unfolds against an equally appealing backdrop: Trinidad’s lauded Carnival celebration—and thanks to Antonevia Ocho-Coultes’s narration, you feel like you’re right there in the middle of the action. For Beatrice, known as “Tess” to her friends, Carnival is the family business: she’s a talented seamstress who designs costumes for the family masquerade band Grandeur. But after a public incident threatens Grandeur’s future, she’s forced to ask for help from skilled social media influencer Brandon, who also happens to be her nemesis. But the more the two start hanging out, the harder it is for Tess to hate him. A sweet (and chaste) love story, endearing side characters, and a modern riff on Much Ado About Nothing all add up to perfect summer reading. 10 hrs 17 mins. More info →
Have you listened to any of these yet? What audiobook releases are you looking forward to this summer? Tell us all about them in the comments section!
P.S. 18(!!!) Audiobooks I’ve enjoyed this summer, 7 Ways To Discover Your Audiobook Style, and 15 Backlist Summer Reading Guide favorites that are even better on audio. Plus check out our audiobook archives here.
