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Best Audiobooks for Road Trips

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Are you looking for the best audiobooks for road trips? We pulled together 30 great audiobooks for a solo long drive, couples road trip, or even a mix of adults and older teens. It’s important to note that not every book on the list is family-friendly. If you’re traveling with children, we recommend switching to our list of the best audiobooks for family road trips!

Three angled book covers with Mary Jane in the middle

To help you pick out a great book to listen to on the road, we broke down our book recommendations into a few different segments. Whether you love listening to contemporary fiction, historical fiction, memoirs, or a touch of fantasy, you’ll find the best audio book for your road trip below.

To help you select the perfect length book for your drive, you’ll find the recorded length of each book under the narrator. The times are accurate if the book is played at 1x speed.

However, when starting each book, try different listening speeds to find the right balance for everyone. Often, books sound more natural when played at a higher speed, which reduces listening time. But, if anyone in the car has trouble processing audio, it might help to slow down the narrator.

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Best Audiobooks for Road Trips

Contemporary Fiction (Including Mystery/Suspense)

Whether you want a scary thriller,  family drama, or humorous adventure for your travels, this section has the perfect listen!

Historical Fiction

From the Great Depression and WW2 to the 1970s, our historical fiction audiobook recommendations work well for both avid and reluctant readers. This makes them perfect for road trips when one of the passengers is hesitant to listen on the go. Because they quickly transport you to a different place and time, they often draw in new readers/listeners. 

Light Fantasy, Magical Realism, & Sci-Fi

Sometimes it's fun to escape reality a bit. While the Harry Potter Series is perfect for a trip with the entire family, the books in this section are geared toward adults or older teens. While readers generally love or hate the Sci-Fi and Magical Realism genres, these books are great for anyone willing to temporarily suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy a phenomenal story.

Memoirs & Other Non-Fiction

From Amy Poehler and Tina Fey to Michelle Obama, memoirs read by the author are consistently great in the audio version. We outline some of our favorites below, along with some other stand-out nonfiction books that will make a long car ride fly by. We also have more audiobook memoir suggestions here.

If you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, use it as a resource for free audiobooks on your next road trip. We have a list of the best Kindle Unlimited Audiobooks here! And if you’re wondering about the pros and cons of Audible subscriptions, we can help with that too. For totally free audiobooks, be sure to talk to your local library!

We hope you enjoyed our list of the best road trip audiobooks. Don’t forget to check out our list of audiobooks for the whole family!

White background with black text reading 30 Great Audiobooks for Road Trips over the covers of 4 books.

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