2025 Audie Award Finalists
Audie Awards recognize the best books in audiobook form, often elevating the written word by the audio performance. Check out a selection of the finalists for 2025, with the full list available at https://www.audiopub.org/2025audies! Annotations from AudioFile, unless otherwise attributed.
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The Evolution of Annabel Craig
FICTION When John T. Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution at the local high school in 1925, Annabel Hayes, with her marriage already strained, questions both her beliefs and her vows with her attorney husband joins the team defending Scopes. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Downloadable Audiobook
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Hamlet’s Children by Richard Kluger
FICTION A riveting new novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Kluger. A literary treasure for all World War II buffs set in Denmark during the 5-year Nazi occupation, Hamlet's Children is a major new historical novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Kluger. (Publisher description)
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The Ministry of Time
FICTION Katie Leung narrates this time-travel novel from the point of view of the unnamed protagonist, who works as a "bridge" at the British government's Ministry of Time. They have technology that allows them to pluck people out of time and are studying whether these "expats" can survive with no ill effects. The bridge is helping her expat, 1800s polar explorer Graham Gore, adapt to the future; they live together and inevitably grow closer.
Format: Downloadable Audiobook
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Rednecks
FICTION Ramiz Monsef performs this historical novel set during the Battle of Blair Mountain in the early 1920s. Lebanese American "Doc Moo" Muhanna serves as a medical doctor during the Mine Wars, tending to people in the camps and bandaging the wounds of those who were fighting against the bosses' hired guns.
Format: Downloadable Audiobook
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The Women
FICTION The sure touch of Golden Voice narrator Julia Whelan transforms Kristin Hannah’s absorbing novel about Vietnam War combat nurses into an addictive listen. An intimate portrait and a sprawling account of a searing time, the story focuses on 20-year-old Frances McGrath, who, in 1965, impetuously chooses the Army Nurse Corps over cotillions and marriage.
Format: Audiobook CD
Availability: All copies in use
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Challenger
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY Jacques Roy adeptly treads the line between measured and conversational in this excellent performance of Higginbotham's investigation of the 1986 CHALLENGER catastrophe. Roy maintains the listener's attention through detailed accounts of the science and engineering underlying the NASA space program while also bringing to life the people involved.
Format: Downloadable Audiobook
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Codename Nemo
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY The white-knuckled saga of a maverick captain, nine courageous sailors, and a US Navy task force who achieved the impossible on June 4, 1944, two days before D-Day--capturing Nazi submarine U-505, its crew, technology, encryption codes, and an Enigma cipher machine. But at any moment, the mission could have ended in disaster. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Downloadable Audiobook
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The Demon of Unrest
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY This compelling audiobook about the beginning of the Civil War gains resonance from its parallels with today's divisions and drift toward violence.
Format: Downloadable Audiobook
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The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY Listeners should not expect risqué revelations about White House liaisons. The titular loves of Theodore Roosevelt are his mother, two wives, and two sisters. These five women were instrumental in creating the man who would become one of our most popular presidents.
Format: Downloadable Audiobook
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The Showman
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY An acclaimed journalist gives readers the first inside account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team, who granted him unprecedented access. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Downloadable Audiobook
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