Every year, the American Library Association’s Listen List Council releases a juried list of outstanding audiobooks that highlights extraordinary narrators and listening experiences. The past year was an incredible year for audiobooks, and the seven librarian experts who make up the council had many favorites, some of which didn’t make the final list. Here are some additional picks, sure to enthrall, delight, and inspire.

Conor Dougherty’s Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America (Books on Tape. 2020. ISBN 9780593165324) is a fascinating examination of the roots of the housing crisis, from supply and demand, to policies that result more in unintended consequences than intended effects. Dougherty provides insight into segregation, income inequality, wealth gaps, and homelessness, and uses the California housing market to illustrate universal issues in education, employment, and climate change. The intriguing cast of characters provides lessons to the careful listener, and Dougherty’s narration is engaging. His pacing and steady, modulated tone allow the events to speak for themselves and compell the audience to continue listening. LISTEN-ALIKE: Listeners who appreciate this mix of social science with some personal trajectories should try Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project, narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris. Like Dougherty’s, Lewis’s book has subtle narration that helps the information shine and holds listeners’ focus.

Stephen King’s latest collection of novellas, If It Bleeds (S. & S. Audio. 2020. ISBN 9781797104805), offers plenty of spooky twists and turns. Fans will be delighted by the return of frequent King audiobook narrators Will Patton and Steven Weber. Patton brings a genuine vulnerability to the coming-of-age story “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” and adds new depth to Holly Gibney’s character in “If It Bleeds.” This is Patton’s fifth time voicing Holly. He uses the measured, quavery voice that regular listeners will recognize as distinctly Holly’s, but with a little more assuredness this time around, which mirrors her character’s growth and maturity. Weber truly shines when he performs “Rat,” using his full arsenal of voices and sound effects to bring out the tension in a story about a writer losing his grip on reality. LISTEN-ALIKE: If you don’t mind sleeping with the lights on, listen to Joe Hill’s Full Throttle, read by Zachary Quinto and an all-star cast.

Memorial Drive (HarperAudio. 2020. ISBN 9780063005860), written and narrated by Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey, sheds chilling, vivid light on the murder of her mother at the hands of her stepfather when the author was only 19. Using police records, legal transcripts, and her mother’s writing, the author weaves a history of their lives, sparing nothing in this searing and unflinching account. Trethewey begins her story in the segregated American South; she shares details from her Mississippi childhood and reveals the abuse her mother suffered in the years leading up to her death. Police and court transcripts are narrated with a guarded, reserved cadence that puts Trethewey at some distance from the events, but still allows the listener to identify the pain just below the surface. LISTEN-ALIKE: This brilliant saga of horrific circumstances and overcoming incredible odds will remind listeners of Tara Westover’s Educated, expertly narrated by Julia Whelan. 

Grown-up fairy tales expert Seanan McGuire (writing under the pseudonym “A. Deborah Baker,” the name of a character in her previous book Middlegame) perfectly captures a novella’s precision in Over the Woodward Wall (Macmillan Audio. 2020. ISBN 9781250772701). When two children are trapped on their street with nowhere to go but over a wall, they find themselves in the Up and Under, then frantically try to find their way home. Narrator Heath Miller adeptly voices everything from a girl made of crows to a talking owl, using a vast range of inflections and accents. LISTEN-ALIKE: Encounter more magical creatures in TJ Klune’s Alex Award–winning The House in the Cerulean Sea, narrated by Daniel Henning. These crossover fantasies entertain with their multitudes of characters and wild adventures, plus social commentary in otherworldly settings.

Listeners will be captivated by Marc-Uwe Kling’s Qualityland, translated by Jamie Lee Searle (Grand Central Audio. 2020. ISBN 9781549122521), which describes a dystopian world where every aspect of life is determined by eerily prescient algorithms. When hapless machine scrapper Peter Jobless tries to return an unwanted item to TheShop, an uber powerful and uncomfortably knowledgeable shopping conglomerate, he accidentally unleashes events that shake Qualityland to its core. Narrator Patricia Rodriguez delivers a pitch-perfect performance that captures the delightful cacophony of Peter’s band of misfit robot friends, as well as the bombastic politicians and reporters who populate this troubled society. The book is full of fun snippets of fictionalized mass media—ads, movie trailers, book reviews—all keenly rendered by the chameleon-like Rodriguez. LISTEN-ALIKE: Listeners looking for another fast-paced sci-fi adventure with a satirical bent should check out Charles Soule’s The Oracle Year, narrated by Charlie Thurston.

This column was contributed by Christa Van Herreweghe, Kirkwood Public Library, MO; Janice M Derr, Eastern Illinois University, IL; Ron Block, Cuyahoga County Public Library, OH; Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, IL; and Sarah Hashimoto, Jackson District Library, MI. Selections and annotations are in the order given.