Full-Cast Audiobooks for Listening in the Kitchen

Looking for a listen with a beat? Check out Soundtrack, an immersive audiobook for young adults (and up!) from former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds. Soundtrack transports listeners to the early 2000s, where a group of gifted New York City teens uses their talent and love of music to lift them to unexpected heights. Combined with a full cast of voices and an original soundtrack scored by GRAMMY® Award-winning composer Justin Ellington, this is a listening experience that takes the cake.

In Upward Bound, author Woody Brown has created an authentic and profoundly moving group portrait of autism and other disabilities, all illuminated by his empathy and sly sense of humor. The result is a deeply affecting novel about the interlocking lives at an adult day care center in Southern California, and the full cast audiobook narration perfectly complements the intertwining narratives.

For fans of Larry McMurtry’s classic Western Lonesome Dove and Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, Letters from Yellowstone is a warmhearted epistolary novel about a young woman who joins a field study in Yellowstone National Park at the end of the 19th century. Brimming with humor and the joys of discovery, Letters from Yellowstone is also a thoughtful reflection on environmentalism, Native American displacement, and feminism at the dawn of a new century.

What does “trans” mean, and what does it mean to be trans? This Odyssey Award winner for Excellence in Audiobook Production for Young Adults is an essential introduction to several hundred years of trans history. Deeply researched and featuring a broad range of voices, listeners will meet historical figures ranging from the controversial Roman emperor Elagabalus to the swashbuckling seventeenth-century conquistador Antonio de Erauso to veterans of the Stonewall uprising, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Moving, funny, and empowering, this remarkable compendium makes for illuminating listening anytime.

You may have seen the streaming series, but if you haven’t heard the Audie Award-nominated audiobook Daisy Jones & The Six, now’s the time. This gripping novel about the rise of an iconic 1970s rock group takes the form of a series of documentary-style interviews and instantly pulls listeners into the glamour and romance of rock n’ roll at a time when legends were made. A delicious good time.