24 Engaging Full Cast Audiobooks

Book Summary

Skeeter has returned home from college to her family’s cotton plantation where – despite trying to act like a proper Southern lady – she seems to constantly disappoint her mother. 

Her true ambition, however, is to be a writer. The only job she’s able to find is one she is completely unqualified for – writing a housekeeping advice column for the local paper. Having virtually no experience of her own with housekeeping, Skeeter turns to her friend’s maid, the very poised Aibileen, for help. 

As she gets to know Aibileen and Aibileen’s friend, the very sassy Minny, more intimately, Skeeter is inspired to help tell their stories, and she pitches the idea to write the narratives of 12 Black maids – a very risky project for all of them.

Book Summary

When Lucy in Dallas and Greta in Berlin each have a tough week, these former strangers find themselves impulsively setting up a house swap. Thanks to martinis and desperation, the women find themselves exchanging Southern charm and barbecue for European sophistication and schnitzel.

As part of the exchange, Greta’s daughter Emmi and Lucy’s son Jack get tossed into each other’s orbits, where they both discover secrets they can’t ignore. But it’s not just the teens who need each other. Greta’s biggest career achievement is in jeopardy, and Lucy’s past with a hot Viking named Bjørn invades her present.

Book Summary

Dominic Salt is the caretaker of Shearwater, a tiny island near Antarctica that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. The island was once full of researchers, but due to rising sea levels, Salt and his three children are now the last inhabitants, working to pack up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground.

Although they are surrounded by natural beauty, the isolation of the island has taken its toll on each of the Salt children: 18-year-old Raff, who is suffering his first heartbreak; 17-year-old Fen, who spends her nights on the beach among the seals; and 9-year-old Orly, who is obsessed with botany. As they prepare for their future, Dominic can’t help looking toward the past and the loss that drove his family to Shearwater in the first place.

During one of the worst storms the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the family nurses Rowan back to life, their feelings toward her shift from suspicion to affection. The feeling is mutual as Rowan begins to fall for the Salts, but she’s not telling them the whole truth about how she wound up on Shearwater. When she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic has dark secrets of his own.

As storms gather force over the island, will they be able to trust one another enough to work together to protect the precious seeds before it’s too late?

Book Summary

Twenty years ago, when she was a teenager, Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished. Ever since, she’s been searching for clues or closure, including her career choice, which allows her to search for other missing girls.

Now, she has a glimmer of hope. Local teenager Ellie has been found by hikers. Shockingly, she was still alive in the Washington woods two years after her disappearance. Even though she’s now safe, Ellie won’t reveal where she was or who she was with.

Book Summary

In this charming debut novel, Widower Tova works at the Sowell Bay Aquarium to occupy her mind and time. She takes pride in cleaning perfectly every night, even though she doesn’t need the money. She loves all the aquarium life but forms a special bond with the intelligent (and curmudgeonly) octopus named Marcellus.

He’s just as surprised to feel friendly toward this human who visits him nightly. Soon, he connects the sadness he sees in her with something he saw in the ocean long ago. Can he help her solve the mystery of her son’s disappearance 30 years ago?

Book Summary

This novel follows lifelong friends Riley, a Black television journalist, and Jen, a white woman married to a police officer. They’ve known each other since kindergarten, and in adulthood, they remain as close as sisters. But their bond is tested when Jen’s husband is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager, an incident that Riley (who is poised to become one of Philadelphia’s first Black female anchors) is assigned to cover for her news station.

As the story unfolds from alternating perspectives, we see the strain on their friendship as they confront uncomfortable truths about privilege, systemic racism, and their own identities.

Book Summary

In the final year of WW1, Jessie took a leave of absence from her job at the New York Public Library(NYPL) to work for Anne Morgan’s charity – the Committee for Devastated France (CARD). This international group of women was rebuilding devastated French communities just miles from the front. While she’s shocked to be so close to the fighting that she can hear the shelling, Jessie persevered to set up the first French children’s libraries by turning ambulances into bookmobiles and training the first French female librarians. Then, she disappears.

Seventy years later, in 1987, Wendy is a NYPL librarian who finds a reference to Jessie in the archives. She’s immediately intrigued and begins compulsive research into Jessie’s fate.

Book Summary

Compiled by an award-winning journalist and best-selling historian, The Only Plane in the Sky paints a human portrait of 9/11, telling the story of the day as it was lived and in the words of those who lived it.

This oral history brings together never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly 500 people – including government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, family members, and friends.

Book Summary

Through the true story of a racehorse named Lexington, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks manages to weave a tale of spirit and injustice over 150 years of American history.

The book has three timelines. In 1850, you’ll meet an enslaved horse groomer, Jarrett, in Kentucky, who has a special bond with Lexington. There is also a young artist who paints images of the horse. When the Civil War erupts, the artist fights for the Union and runs into the young groom and stallion again, far from the track.

In 1954, a gallery owner on Martha’s Vineyard takes a special interest in a 19th-century equestrian oil painting, even though the artist and provenance are unknown.

In 2019, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia and a Nigerian-American art historian unexpectedly connect through a common interest in the painting as they look for clues to the origin.

Book Summary

Ruth Jefferson is a 44-year-old labor and delivery nurse with twenty years of experience at a Connecticut hospital. After being reassigned away from a patient, she learns that the parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child.

The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey the orders of her superiors based on the parents’ mandate, or does she intervene?

This story is told from three alternating points of view: Ruth, the nurse; Kennedy, her middle-aged attorney; and Turk, the newborn’s white supremacist father.

Book Summary

For twenty years, Liv has run a successful NYC wedding-planning business with her husband, Eliot. When he dies unexpectedly, Liv is shocked to learn that he’s left his half of the business to his young girlfriend, whom Liv knew nothing about. Much to Liv’s chagrin, perky Savannah shows up on her doorstep, eager to be her partner and protégée.

As Liv and Savannah struggle to find a way to work together, they each find new love in unexpected places. In addition to Liv and Savannah, we are introduced to many of the wedding vendors that they work with – the florists, caterers, servers, and musicians. In a Love Actually-style narrative, this book follows each of them as they navigate love and friendship, and we see their lives overlap at weddings throughout the city.

Book Summary

Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore lived a life as large as her name implies. As a child, she was the victim of a famous kidnapping. As an adult, she married and was widowed four times. By the end of her life, she was not only North Carolina’s richest woman but also its most notorious. When she died, she left everything to her adopted son, Camden, including her estate in the Blue Ridge Mountains, her nine-figure fortune, and her complicated legacy.

Cam wants nothing to do with the house or the money, so he rejects the inheritance and instead takes a teaching job in Colorado. There, he marries a woman named Jules, who is just as eager to escape her own messy past.

When his uncle dies a decade later, Cam finally returns home to North Carolina, only to be quickly reminded of all the reasons he left. Jules, however, thinks it’s finally time for Cam to claim everything that Ruby wanted him to have all those years before.

But they quickly learn that it’s not as simple as claiming the home and the money. Cam and Jules are quickly confronted with many rumors and questions about Ruby. What really happened to all of her husbands who died under mysterious circumstances? And how did she come to adopt Cam in the first place?

Book Summary

This novel chronicles the meteoric rise of a fictional, iconic 1970s rock band – The Six – and their beautiful lead singer, Daisy Jones. The story is told through a series of “behind the music” style interviews that will make you feel like you are right there with them in the hard-partying 70s music scene.

As you hear from each band member, the story of these complex characters unfolds, ultimately revealing the mystery behind the band’s infamous breakup.

Book Summary

Emilia Bassano had access to English theater in 1581 as Lord Chamberlain’s mistress. However, she wanted to be a playwright, not just an audience member. In 1581, that was not a role society would accept a woman to play. However, her desire to see her work on the stage was strong, so she paid a man for the use of his name. In order for her work to be seen, she had to write herself out of history.

In the present, playwright Melina Green has written a new work inspired by her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. However, four hundred years later, Melina faces some of the same challenges as Emilia. Will she also be willing to forgo credit in order to see her work performed?

Book Summary

When teenage library worker Aleisha finds a list of little-known novels in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird, she decides to read every book on the list. Each story is magical to her for different reasons.

Widower Mukesh worries about his bookworm granddaughter, Priya. To connect with her, he visits the library and meets Aleisha. When she shares the found list with him, they begin to form an unexpected friendship and discover the healing that is desperately needed for each of them.

Book Summary

This entire novel unfolds over one night in February of 1862, in the first year of the Civil War. As the fighting has gotten bloodier, the country is realizing this will be a drawn-out event. President Lincoln’s son, Willie, has been very ill and was expected to recover, but has just died. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.

From the truth of Wille’s death, author George Saunders created a historical fantasy where Willie Lincoln has found himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance.

Book Summary

Everyone knows Cate Kay as the author of a best-selling book trilogy that turned into a box office gold film series. She’s one of the most successful authors of her generation, except that no one actually knows Cate Kay, because Cate Kay doesn’t exist. Her real identity has been a carefully guarded secret until now.

Growing up, she and her best friend Amanda shared their dreams of moving to California and becoming movie stars. But before their lives can ever really begin, a tragedy shatters those dreams. Cate has been on the run ever since, using different names to craft a new future. But now a shocking revelation will force Cate to return home. It’s the only way she’ll be a whole person again.

Book Summary

This YA dual timeline read is a fictionalized account of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Rowan is a present-day 17-year-old about to start her important summer internship when workers discover a skeleton on her property during the renovation of a building.

Her story alternates with William Tillman, a 17-year-old in 1921, whose misguided attempt to “protect” a girl he had a crush on triggers more death, destruction, and division than he could have predicted.

Book Summary

Revisit the glittering Jazz Age with this atmospheric novel that reimagines The Great Gatsby from the perspective of three alternating female voices. When Jay Gatsby was found shot dead in his swimming pool in August of 1922, and a local mechanic was found dead in the woods nearby, the police viewed it as an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide. 

But then a diamond hairpin is found in the bushes around the pool, and three women suddenly become suspects – Daisy Buchanan, who once thought she’d marry Gatsby; Jordan Baker, who has a secret that could derail both her golf career and her friendship with Daisy; and Catherine McCoy, a suffragette who’s fighting for women’s rights and to protect her own sister from a terrible marriage.

This is a tale of money and power, marriage and friendship, love and desire, and ultimately murder.

Book Summary

As London is emerging from WWII, Juliet Ashton, a writer, is looking for the subject of her next book. She begins exchanging letters with a man she’s never met – a native of the island of Guernsey. Through their letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of the man and his eccentric friends. Though they range from pig farmers to phrenologists, they are all literature lovers.

As Juliet learns about their tastes in books, she also comes to understand the impact that the German occupation has had on their lives.

Book Summary

This dual-timeline novel takes you back and forth between the lives of two women. In 1985, rising star Anita was found dead in New York City. Her death is widely talked about at first, but by the time Raquel is an art student in 1998, Anita has been forgotten.

Raquel is one of the only students of color at her school, and most of the other students come from money. She has to work twice as hard for everything until she begins dating an older art student, which quickly propels her up the social ranks. But when she discovers Anita’s story, she begins seeing eerily parallels with her own life and relationship.

Book Summary

Imagine the picture-perfect wedding on a remote Irish island between a rising TV star and an intelligent magazine publisher. Despite the rough waves and spotty cell service, the wedding is sure to be idyllic, with every detail and moment planned in advance.

However, you can’t plan for old traditions and ongoing jealousy. The groomsmen are soon playing drinking games, someone may regret missing out on romance with the bride, and a bridesmaid ruins her dress – on purpose. So, when someone dies, who’s to blame?