Best Audiobooks Narrated by a Full Cast
There’s something particularly engrossing about a well-narrated audiobook. When you get that perfect combination of narrator and story, it can be magical. The only thing that’s arguably better is when a novel gets the full-cast treatment. It doesn’t happen that often, but when you listen to your first audiobook with a full cast, it feels like a genuine game changer. The interplay of the different voices and the rhythm of the dialogue can put a whole new spin on even the most well-loved novel. Here are a few of the best audiobooks with a full cast.
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Add to BookshelfLincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders
Read by George Saunders, Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, Carrie Brownstein, Don Cheadle, Lena Dunham, Bill Hader, Kirby Heyborne, Keegan-Michael Key, Julianne Moore, Megan Mullally, Susan Sarandon, Ben Stiller and Various
George Saunders’s long-awaited first novel certainly didn’t disappoint. Thankfully neither does the audiobook – which we’re quickly counting as one of the best audiobooks of all time. Voiced by an absurdly expansive cast that includes the likes of Nick Offerman, Julianne Moore, and Don Cheadle, this recording, much like the novel, is a surreal examination of grief and loss that just needs to be experienced.
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Daisy Jones & The Six: Reese’s Book Club
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Read by Jennifer Beals, Benjamin Bratt, Judy Greer and Pablo Schreiber
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity … until now.
The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.
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Hour of the Witch
by Chris Bohjalian
Read by Grace Experience, Saskia Maarleveld, Danny Campbell, Cassandra Campbell, Arthur Morey, Mark Deakins, Julia Whelan, Kaleo Griffith, Kirby Heyborne, Rebecca Lowman and Mark Bramhall
A young Puritan woman — faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul — plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense. This twisting, tightly plotted novel is a timely and terrifying story of socially sanctioned brutality and the original American witch hunt.
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Oak Flat
by Lauren Redniss
Read by Lauren Redniss, Darrell Dennis, Kyla Garcia, Kimberly Guerrero, Hillary Huber, Ann Marie Lee, Elizabeth Liang, Crystle Lightning, Jon Lindstrom, A. Martinez, John H. Mayer, Arthur Morey, Tanis Parenteau and Various
A powerful work of visual nonfiction about three generations of an Apache family struggling to protect sacred land from a multinational mining corporation, by MacArthur “Genius” and National Book Award finalist Lauren Redniss, the acclaimed author of Thunder & Lightning.
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Good Talk
by Mira Jacob
Read by Mira Jacob, Kivlighan de Montebello and Full Cast
A bold, wry, and intimate graphic memoir about American identity, interracial families, and the realities that divide us, from the acclaimed author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing.
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A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
by Holly Jackson
Read by Bailey Carr, Marisa Calin, Michael Crouch, Gopal Divan, Robert Fass, Kevin R. Free, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Carol Monda, Patricia Santomasso, Shezi Sardar, Amanda Thickpenny and Various
Everyone is talking about this addictive must-read mystery with shades of Serial and Making a Murderer about an investigation turned obsession, full of twists and turns and with an ending you’ll never expect.
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Four Hundred Souls
by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
Read by Various
A chorus of extraordinary voices comes together to tell one of history’s great epics: the 400 year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present — edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.
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A Burning: A Read with Jenna Pick
by Megha Majumdar
Read by Vikas Adam, Priya Ayyar, Deepti Gupta, Ulka Simone Mohanty, Soneela Nankani and Neil Shah
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise — to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies — and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.
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Sleeping Giants
by Sylvain Neuvel
Read by Various
Given the narrative structure of Sleeping Giants, it’s a perfect candidate for the full-cast audiobook. Told through a series of interviews, journal entries, newspaper articles, etc., the use of multiple readers truly brings the story to life. Sleeping Giants is a beguiling piece of speculative fiction centering around the push to understand the discovery of a giant metal hand beneath the earth. Hearing multiple narrators give a voice to the deepening mystery lifts the story in some fascinating ways.
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Doctor Aphra (Star Wars)
by Sarah Kuhn
Read by Emily Woo Zeller, Jonathan Davis, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Sean Kenin, Nicole Lewis, Carol Monda, Euan Morton, Catherine Taber and Marc Thompson
In this audiobook original Dr. Chelli Lona Aphra, the rogue archaeologist, is in trouble again. When Darth Vader, terror of the galaxy, unexpectedly saves her life, she finds herself a pawn in a deadly game being played by Vader and the Galactic Emperor.
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Angels in America
by Tony Kushner
Read by Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Susan Brown, Denise Gough, Beth Malone, James McArdle, Lee Pace, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Bobby Cannavale and Edie Falco
In this production, adapted especially for the listening experience, Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, and the entire cast recreate their acclaimed performances from the 2018 Tony Award-winning National Theatre revival of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. With narration by Bobby Cannavale and Edie Falco, and a musical score by Adrian Sutton, this audiobook is a compelling and immersive theatrical listening experience.
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The Starless Sea
by Erin Morgenstern
Read by Dominic Hoffman and Various
Get lost in a timeless love story set in a secret underground world — a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.
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World War Z
by Max Brooks
Read by Various
Given that World War Z is a sort of modern epistolary novel describing a zombie pandemic through a series of interviews with an agent of the United Nations, it just makes sense as a fully-cast audiobook. The inclusion of multiple narrators makes the interviews crackle and adds to the already breathless pace of the narrative.
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Inheritors
by Asako Serizawa
Read by Feodor Chin, Ren Hanami, Catherine Ho, Greta Jung, Akie Kotabe and Nancy Wu
Spanning more than 150 years, and set in multiple locations in colonial and postcolonial Asia and the United States, Inheritors paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of its characters as they grapple with the legacies of loss, imperialism, and war. Written from myriad perspectives and in a wide range of styles, each of these interconnected stories is designed to speak to the others, contesting assumptions and illuminating the complicated ways we experience, interpret, and pass on our personal and shared histories.
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When Stars Are Scattered
by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed
Read by Faysal Ahmed, Barkhad Abdi, Victoria Jamieson, Omar Mohamed, Robin Miles, Ifrah Mansour, Bahni Turpin, Hakeemshady Mohamed, Sadeeq Ali, Dominic Hoffman, Christine Avila, JD Jackson and Various
Heartbreak, hope, and gentle humor exist together in this graphic novel — now adapted for audio — about a childhood spent waiting, and a young man who is able to create a sense of family and home in the most difficult of settings. It’s an intimate, important, unforgettable look at the day-to-day life of a refugee.
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There There
by Tommy Orange
Read by Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Cuervo and Kyla Garcia
There There is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. It’s “masterful … white-hot … devastating” (The Washington Post) at the same time as it is fierce, funny, suspenseful, thoroughly modern, and impossible to put down. Here is a voice we have never heard—a voice full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. Tommy Orange has written a stunning novel that grapples with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and profound spirituality, and with a plague of addiction, abuse, and suicide.
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The Regional Office Is Under Attack!
by Manuel Gonzales
Read by Sarah Scott, Natasha Soudek, Susan Hanfield and Mike Chamberlain
This novel is bizarre, hilarious, and thrilling. Thankfully, the audiobook is as well, due in large part to the full-cast recording. It’s the story of an organization of super-powered female assassins under attack by a group of defectors. Hearing the razor-sharp interplay of the characters really just makes the whole thing sing.
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Into the Water
by Paula Hawkins
Read by Laura Aikman, Sophie Aldred, Rachel Bavidge, Daniel Weyman and Imogen Church
Into the Water is as addictive and twist-laden as you’d expect from the author of The Girl on the Train. Giving a great thriller the full-cast treatment carries the chilling suspense and secrets to a different level. The interplay of characters and the rhythm of dialogue is pitch perfect for this page-turning tale about the fallout that occurs when a single mother is found dead at the bottom of a river where a teenage girl drowned earlier in the summer. Be prepared for a marathon listening session.
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