Fifteen RBmedia titles are finalists in the 2025 Audie Awards! The Audies, often promoted as the “Oscars of the audiobook industry,” is the premier awards program in the U.S., recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. Winners will be announced at the Audies Gala on March 4.

Fiction

Hamlet’s Children

Written by Richard Kluger
Performed by Paul Woodson
Published by Tantor

Hamlet’s Children by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Kluger, is the story of a young American’s wrenching assimilation with his Danish relatives and of how he is pinioned in the same cruel vise with his adopted countrymen as they cunningly attempt to subvert the Germans’ iron grip on their kingdom. 

 

 

 

 

Rednecks

Written by Taylor Brown
Performed by Ramiz Monsef
Published by Recorded Books

An NPR Best Book of 2024
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best Southern Book of 2024
Southern Book Prize Fiction Finalist

Award-winning novelist Taylor Brown brings to life one of the most compelling events in twentieth-century American history, reminding us of the hard-won origins of today’s unions. Rednecks is a propulsive, character-driven tale that’s both a century old and blisteringly contemporary: a story of unexpected friendship, heroism in the face of injustice, and the power of love and community against all odds.

 

Fantasy

Someone You Can Build a Nest In

Written by John Wiswell
Performed by Carmen Rose
Published by Tantor

An NPR, Washington Post, Book Riot, Library Journal and Audible Best Book of 2024

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body using a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth. However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warmhearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent coparent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

 

 

Humor

Erasure: A Novel

Written by Percival Everett
Performed by Sean Crisden
Published by Tantor

A New York Times Book Review “100 Best Books of the 21st Century”
One of The Atlantic’s “Great American Novels”

Percival Everett’s blistering satire about race and publishing, now as the Oscar-nominated film, American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Tracee Ellis Ross.

 

 

 

Science Fiction

Frontier

Written by Grace Curtis
Performed by Aven Shore
Published by Tantor

“Adventurous… and intimate.” ― Library Journal

In the distant future most of the human race has fled a ravaged Earth to find new life on other planets. For those who stayed a lawless society remains. Technology has been renounced, and saints and sinners, lawmakers and sheriffs, travelers and gunslingers, abound. Frontier is a heartfelt queer romance in a high noon standoff with our planet’s uncertian future.

 

 

 

System Collapse

Written by Martha Wells
Performed by Kevin R. Free
Published by Recorded Books

A New York Times bestseller
A Washington Post bestseller
A USA Today bestseller

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

 

 

Original Work

Hellboy And The BPRD: The Goddess Of Manhattan [Dramatized Adaptation]

Written by Christopher Golden & Thomas E. Sniegoski
Performed by a full cast
Published by GraphicAudio

In the early 1990’s, Hellboy, Liz Sherman, and Abe Sapien are drawn into a bizarre case in New York, linked both to Hellboy’s 1980 adventure with Anastasia in Brazil and to The Lobster’s encounter with the Proteus Club in 1933. A strange community of bizarre humans has been living in secret beneath Manhattan for more than sixty years. Now, though, someone is stalking them, murdering them one by one—someone who claims to be the ancient goddess Sem-Karul. With aid from the now elderly Cynthia Tynan, Hellboy and the BPRD must face the Goddess of Manhattan, and the monsters who serve her.

 

 

 

Judges Category: Horror

A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers

Edited by Joyce Carol Oates
Performed by Nancy Wu, Eva Kaminsky, Bianca Amato, and Lynette R. Freeman
Published by Recorded Books

“A bold collection of horror stories that flies in the face of both gender and genre conventions.” ― Kirkus Reviews

Joyce Carol Oates assembles an outstanding cast of authors—including Margaret Atwood, Tananarive Due, and Megan Abbott—to explore, subvert, and reinvent one of the most vital subgenres of horror. 

 

 

 

 

Business/ Personal Development

Women Money Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality

Written by Josie Cox
Performed by Josie Cox
Published by Recorded Books

“A necessary and riveting read.”― Francesca Donner, former gender director at the New York Times

In Women Money Power, business journalist Josie Cox tells the story of women’s fight for freedom and economic equality. This is an inspirational account of brave pioneers who took on social mores and the law, including the “Rosies,” who filled industrial jobs and helped win World War II, the heiress whose fortune helped create the birth control pill, the brassy banker who broke into the boys’ club of the New York Stock Exchange, and the namesake of landmark equal-pay legislation who refused to accept discrimination.

 

 

 

Multi-Voiced Performance

Five Broken Blades

Written by Mai Corland 
Performed by Donald Chang, Greg Chun, Zion Jang, Sophie Oda, Jaine Ye, and Roger Yeh
Published by Recorded Books

Instant New York Times bestseller
An Amazon Best Book of 2024
A Goodreads Choice Award nominee, Readers’ Favorite Fantasy
An Indigo Best Book of 2024
An Apple Best Book of 2024

It’s the season for treason …The king of Yusan must die. The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the god king Joon. He has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined … or sold. And now each of the five blades will come for him. 

 

Español – Spanish Language

La canción de Aquiles

Written by Madeline Miller
Performed by Pedro M. Sánchez
Published by Bookavivo

A New York Times Bestseller

A thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War from the bestselling author of Circe.

 

 

 

 

Erotica

The Heartbreaker

Written by Marni Mann
Performed by Savannah Peachwood and Connor Crais
Published by Dreamscape Media

A sizzling and swoony single dad, forbidden, billionaire romance from USA Today best-selling author Marni Mann. 

 

 

 

 

 

History/Biography

Codename Nemo

Written by Charles Lachman
Performed by Qarie Marshall
Published by Dreamscape Media

“It’s an exciting account of a daring military maneuver.” — Publishers Weekly

On June 4, 1944, the course of World War II was forever changed. That day, a US Navy task force achieved the impossible—capturing a German U-Boat. Called Operation Nemo, it was the first seizure of an enemy ship in battle since the War of 1812, one of the greatest achievements of the US Navy and a victory that shortened the duration of the war. Charles Lachman’s white-knuckled war saga and thrilling cat-and-mouse game is told through the eyes of the men on both sides of Operation Nemo.

 

 

 

Middle Grade

One Big Open Sky

Written by Lesa Cline-Ransome
Performed by Crystal Clarke, Janina Edwards, and Emana Rachelle
Published by Dreamscape Media

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
One of Evanston Public Library’s 101 Great Books for Kids
A CSMCL Best Multicultural Children’s Book of the Year

Three women narrate a perilous wagon journey westward that could set them free—or cost them everything they have—in this intergenerational verse novel that explores the history of the Black homesteader movement.

 

 

Thriller/Suspense

The Little Drummer Girl

Written by John le Carré
Performed by Adjoa Andoh
Published by Dreamscape Media

“An irresistible book…Charlie is the ultimate double agent.” — The New York Times

From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the creator of the iconic spy George Smiley, John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl is hailed as one of the author’s best, and the favorite of the likes of Steven King and John Grisham.