50+ Audiobooks Narrated By The Author

You might be surprised just how many audiobooks are narrated by the author – and it’s not only memoirs and autobiographies. Plenty of authors choose to read their own work to readers in the audio format, and plenty of readers prefer that to a professional voice actor’s take. Here’s my big list of 50+ audiobooks narrated by the author to queue up for your listening pleasure.

Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales

Blurb: “In Any Ordinary Day, Leigh Sales talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable. From terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she’s learned about coping with life’s unexpected blows.” Read my full review of Any Ordinary Day here.

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Blurb: “In Becoming, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her – from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it – in her own words and on her own terms.” Read my full review of Becoming here.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Blurb: “This brutally powerful, mesmerizing story is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.” Read my full review of Beloved here.

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Blurb: “Sarah Wynn-Williams, a young diplomat from New Zealand, pitched for her dream job. She saw Facebook’s potential and knew it could change the world for the better. But, when she got there and rose to its top ranks, things turned out a little different. From wild schemes cooked up on private jets to risking prison abroad, Careless People exposes both the personal and political fallout when boundless power and a rotten culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative, Wynn-Williams rubs shoulders with Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and world leaders, revealing what really goes on among the global elite – and the consequences this has for all of us.”

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

Blurb: “When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn’t. Doppelganger is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It’s for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.” Read my full review of Doppelganger here.

Empire Of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

Blurb: “The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions – Harvard; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oxford; the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis – an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of twenty-first-century greed.” Read my full review of Empire Of Pain here.

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

Blurb: “Glittering, with wit and insight, heart and humour, Dolly Alderton’s powerful debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age – while making you laugh until you fall over. Everything I know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its grubby, hopeful uncertainty.” Read my full review of Everything I Know About Love here.

Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry

Blurb: “In Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humour, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fuelled it despite seemingly having it all.” Read my full review of Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing here.

Frog by Sally Gould

Blurb: “Life as a paramedic, writes Sally Gould in this candid, witty memoir, can be traumatic, gross, dull, hilarious, magical. Based on years of meticulously kept journals, Frog is an intimate look at the human cost of the job and the cumulative effect of trauma. Sally shares a personal story that is searingly honest and truly inspiring, one which offers a heartfelt tribute to the resilience, courage and camaraderie that define the high-stakes world of emergency medicine.” Read my full review of Frog here.

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

Blurb: “Greenlights is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops. Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears. It’s a love letter. To life.”

The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do

Blurb: “Anh Do nearly didn’t make it to Australia. His entire family came close to losing their lives on the sea as they escaped from war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded boat. But nothing – not murderous pirates, nor the imminent threat of death by hunger, disease or dehydration as they drifted for days – could quench their desire to make a better life in a country where freedom existed. The Happiest Refugee tells the incredible, uplifting and inspiring life story of one of our favourite personalities. Tragedy, humour, heartache and unswerving determination – a big life with big dreams.” Read my full review of The Happiest Refugee here.

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

Blurb: “It’s a good time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven’t been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain… Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should we use Botox? Do men secretly hate us? And why does everyone ask you when you’re going to have a baby? Part memoir, part rant, in How To Be A Woman, Caitlin Moran answers the questions that every modern woman is asking.”

How To Fail by Elizabeth Day

Blurb: “Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, sport, babies, families, anger and friendship, this book is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It’s a book about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid. Uplifting, inspiring and rich in stories from Elizabeth’s own life, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals.”

Hunger by Roxane Gay

Blurb: “As a woman who describes her own body as ‘wildly undisciplined’, Roxane Gay understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.” Read my full review of Hunger here.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Blurb: “In The Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and examines them from distinct angles.” Read my full review of In The Dream House here.

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

Blurb: “From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, and the media. Invisible Women reveals how in a world built for and by men we are systematically ignoring half of the population, often with disastrous consequences. Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the profound impact this has on us all.”

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Blurb: “Know My Name is an intimate, profoundly moving memoir that exposes a patriarchal culture biased to protect perpetrators, a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and ultimately shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life. Entwining pain, resilience, and humour, this breath-taking memoir will stand as a modern classic.” Read my full review of Know My Name here.

The Land Before Avocado by Richard Glover

Blurb: “In The Land Before Avocado, Richard Glover takes a journey to an almost unrecognisable Australia. It’s a vivid portrait of a quite peculiar land: a place that is scary and weird, dangerous and incomprehensible, and now and then surprisingly appealing. It’s the Australia of his childhood. The Australia of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Let’s break the news now: they didn’t have avocado. This book will make you laugh and cry, feel angry and inspired. And leave you wondering how bizarre things were, not so long ago.”

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

Blurb: “In the land of Lapvona, the lord of the land Villiam is cheating the local villagers of their food, their water, their livelihoods. Grotesque and ridiculous, he marries the pregnant and tongueless ex-nun Agata, whom he believes will make him God, and his son will be the second Christ. It’s a land of murder, cannibalism, incest and rape. Despite all of the characters’ individual inadequacies and madness, you find yourself completely engrossed in each character’s fate.” Read my full review of Lapvona here.

Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris

Blurb: “From the unique perspective of David Sedaris comes a new book of essays taking his readers on a bizarre and stimulating world tour. From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler’s experiences. Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English countryside or marveling over a disembodied human arm in a taxidermist’s shop, in Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures that are not to be forgotten.” Read my full review of Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls here.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Blurb: “Who set fire to the Los Angeles Public Library, ultimately destroying more than 400,000 books, and perhaps even more perplexing, why? With her characteristic humour, insight and compassion, Orlean uses this terrible event as a lens through which to tell the story of all libraries – their history, their meaning and their uncertain future as they adapt and redefine themselves in a digital world. Filled with heart, passion and extraordinary characters, The Library Book discusses the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives.” Read my full review of The Library Book here.

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

Blurb: “Romy sees the future stretch out ahead of her in a long, unwavering line – until news from outside brings a ferocious urgency to her existence, challenging her to escape her own destiny and culminating in a climax of almost unbearable intensity. Through Romy – and through a cast of astonishing characters populating The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner presents not just a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary America, but an excoriating attack on the prison-industrial complex.”

Milkman by Anna Burns

Blurb: “In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.” Read my full review of Milkman here.

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

Blurb: “Helen Garner’s gritty, lyrical first novel divided the critics on its publication in 1977. Today, Monkey Grip is regarded as a masterpiece – the novel that shines a light on a time and a place and a way of living never before presented in Australian literature: communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs and sex. When Nora falls in love with Javo, she is caught in the web of his addiction; and as he moves between loving her and leaving, between his need for her and promises broken, Nora’s life becomes an intense dance of loving and trying to let go.” Read my full review of Monkey Grip here.

Mythos by Stephen King

Blurb: “No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly or brilliantly as Greek gods and goddesses. In Stephen Fry’s vivid retelling, we gaze in wonder as wise Athena is born from the cracking open of the great head of Zeus and follow doomed Persephone into the dark and lonely realm of the Underworld. Shiver in fear when Pandora opens her jar of evil torments. Listen with joy as the legendary love affair between Eros and Psyche unfolds. Read by Stephen Fry himself, Mythos captures these extraordinary myths for our modern age – in all their dazzling and deeply human relevance.” Read my full review of Mythos here.

Once Upon A Tome by Oliver Darkshire

Blurb: “Welcome to Sotheran’s, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabelled keys, poisoned books and some things that aren’t even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice. By turns unhinged and earnestly dog-eared, Once Upon a Tome is the rather colourful story of life in one of the world’s oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling, where to be uncommon or strange is the best possible compliment.”

The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Blurb: “On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions. The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad.”

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

Blurb: “With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. And today, as she reprises her most iconic role for the latest Star Wars trilogy, Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty.” Read my full review of The Princess Diarist here.

Puff Piece by John Safran

Blurb: “Philip Morris has announced they will shut down as a cigarette company, and relaunch as a health enterprise, dedicated to convincing the one billion smokers of the world to quit. The ever-curious John Safran leaves his apartment to find out what on God’s green earth is going on. Wild, hilarious and thought-provoking, Puff Piece is a probing look into Big Tobacco and the vaping industry, and how words can be literally a matter of life and death.” Read my full review of Puff Piece here.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Blurb: “In The Secret History, under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.” Read my full review of The Secret History here.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

Blurb: “The Sentence begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written. It asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book.”

A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Blurb: “Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can’t contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History Of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization – how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us.” Read my full review of A Short History Of Nearly Everything here.

Shrill by Lindy West

Blurb: “In Shrill, Lindy West recounts how she went from being the butt of people’s jokes, to telling her own brand of jokes – ones that carry with them with a serious message and aren’t at someone else’s expense. She reveals the obstacles and stereotyping she’s had to overcome to make herself heard, in a society that doesn’t think women (especially fat women and feminists) are or can be funny.” Read my full review of Shrill here.

Skint Estate by Cash Carraway

Blurb: “In Skint Estate, Cash Carraway has found her voice – loud, raw and cutting. This is a book born straight from life lived in Britain below the poverty line – a brutal landscape savaged by universal credit, zero-hours contracts, rising rents and public service funding cuts. Told with a dark lick of humour and two-fingers up to the establishment, Cash takes us on her isolated journey from council house childhood to single motherhood, working multiple jobs yet relying on food banks and temporary accommodation, all while skewering stereotypes of what it means to be working class.” Read my full review of Skint Estate here.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

Blurb: “Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty – a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre – took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. Her eye-opening memoir, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, shows how our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead).”

Sociopath by Patric Gagne

Blurb: “Ever since she was a small child, Patric Gagne knew she was different. Although she felt intense love for her family and her best friend, these connections were never enough to make her be ‘good’, or to reduce her feelings of apathy and frustration. As she grew older, her behaviour escalated from petty theft through to breaking and entering, stalking, and worse. Sociopath is at once a mesmerizing tale of a life lived on the edge of the law, a redemptive love story and a moving account of one woman’s battle to create a place for herself and a deeper understanding of people who, like her, are sociopaths.” Read my full review of Sociopath here.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Blurb: “Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Still Alice packs a powerful emotional punch and marks the arrival of a strong new voice in fiction.” Read my full review of Still Alice here.

The Surprising Power Of A Good Dumpling by Wai Chim

Blurb: “Anna Chiu has her hands full looking after her siblings and helping out at her dad’s restaurant, all while her mum stays in bed. The new delivery boy Rory is a welcome distraction and even though things aren’t right at home, Anna’s starting to feel like she could just be a normal teen. But when Mum finally gets out of bed, things go from bad to worse. In The Surprising Power Of A Good Dumpling, Anna and her family question everything they understand about themselves and each other.”

Talking As Fast As I Can by Lauren Graham

Blurb: “In Talking As Fast As I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?” She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood, the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway.”

Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan

Blurb: “Julia Whelan’s uplifting novel Thank You For Listening tells the story of a former actress turned successful audiobook narrator—who has lost sight of her dreams after a tragic accident—and her journey of self-discovery, love, and acceptance when she agrees to narrate one last romance novel. If she can learn to risk everything for desires she has long buried, she will discover a world of intimacy and acceptance she never believed would be hers.”

This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay

Blurb: “Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and the hospital parking meter earns more than you. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay’s This Is Going To Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn’t – about life on and off the hospital ward.” Read my full review of This Is Going To Hurt here.

Trace by Rachael Brown

Blurb: “Every cop has a case that dug its claws in and would not let go. For veteran detective Ron Iddles, it was his very first homicide case – the 1980 murder of single mother Maria James at the back of her Melbourne bookshop. He never managed to solve it, and it still grates like hell. In her exhaustive and exhausting 16-month investigation recounted for Trace, Rachael reviewed initial suspects, found one of her own, and prompted devastating revelations about a forensic bungle and possible conspiracies that led to calls for the coroner to hold a new inquest.” Read my full review of Trace here.

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Blurb: “A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A World War II veteran grappling with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. Four friends travelling to the moon in a rocket ship built in the backyard. Uncommon Type is a collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. They are surprising, intelligent, heart-warming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have.”

We Keep The Dead Close by Becky Cooper

Blurb: “We Keep The Dead Close is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny and murder – a tale of gender inequality in academia, a ‘cowboy culture’ among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman’s past onto another’s present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history.” Read my full review of We Keep The Dead Close here.

We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch

Blurb: “In 1994, the Rwandan government orchestrated a campaign of extermination, in which everyone in the Hutu majority was called upon to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Close to a million people were slaughtered in a hundred days, and the rest of the world did nothing to stop it. A year later, Philip Gourevitch went to Rwanda to investigate the most unambiguous genocide since Hitler’s war against the Jews. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families is a first-hand account one of the defining outrages of modern history, an unforgettable anatomy of Rwanda’s decimation.”

We’re Going To Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union

Blurb: “We’re Going To Need More Wine is a powerful collection of essays about gender, sexuality, race, beauty, Hollywood, and what it means to be a modern woman. Genuine and perceptive, Union bravely lays herself bare, uncovering a complex and courageous life of self-doubt and self-discovery with incredible poise and brutal honesty. Throughout, she compels us to be ethical and empathetic, and reminds us of the importance of confidence, self-awareness, and the power of sharing truth, laughter, and support.” Read my full review of We’re Going To Need More Wine here.

Why We Are Here by Briohny Doyle

Blurb: “After her partner and father die in quick succession, BB moves to a glamorous, condemned beachside apartment at the edge of a glittering city so memory-saturated it might be a mirage. Her plan? To rediscover the person she was before finding, and losing, the love of her life. Cinematic, heart-breaking, often hilarious, Why We Are Here is a singular love story for strange days. Doyle’s witty prose revels in the solace of the natural world, in conversing with writers who have lost and endured, and above all in the profound connection between a woman and her dog.” Read my full review of Why We Are Here here.

Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Blurb: “First published three years ago before the print edition of Women Who Run With The Wolves made publishing history, this original audio edition quickly became an underground best seller. For it’s insights into the inner lives of women, it established Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes as one of the most important voices of our time in the fields of Jungian psychology, myth, and women’s mysteries.”

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

Blurb: “Staring down the barrel of her fortieth year, Samantha Irby is confronting the ways her life has changed since the days she could work a full 11 hour shift on 4 hours of sleep, change her shoes and put mascara on in the back of a moving cab and go from drinks to dinner to the club without a second thought. In Wow, No Thank You, Irby discusses the actual nightmare of living in a rural idyll, weighs in on body negativity (loving yourself is a full-time job with shitty benefits) and poses the essential question: Sure sex is fun but have you ever googled a popular meme?” Read my full review of Wow, No Thank You here.

Year Of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Blurb: “This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year Of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her. The book also chronicles her life after—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. Yes.” Read my full review of Year Of Yes here.