AudioFile's
Best Audiobooks of 2007

THE ECHO MAKER Richard Powers
Read by Bernadatte Dunne (BBC Audiobooks America)
Read Review

UN

FRAGILE THINGS Neil Gaiman
Read by Neil Gaiman (Harper Audio/BBC Audiobooks America)
Read Review

THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS Kiran Desai
Read by Meera Simhan (Penguin Audio/Books on Tape)
Read Review

THE LAY OF THE LAND Richard Ford
Read by Joe Barrett (Random House Audio/Books on Tape)
Read Review

MONTREAL STORIES Mavis Gallant
Read by Margot Dionne (Rattling Books)
Read Review

PONTOON Garrison Keillor
Read by Garrison Keillor (HighBridge Audio)
Read Review

THE ROAD Cormac McCarthy
Read by Tom Stechschulte (Recorded Books)
Read Review

SELECTED SHORTS Various Authors
Read by Various Readers (Symphony Space)
Read Review

SHANTARAM Gregory David Roberts
Read by Humphrey Bower (Blackstone Audiobooks)
Read Review

TALLGRASS Sandra Dallas
Read by Lorelei King (Macmillan Audio/BBC Audiobooks America)
Read Review

Symphony Space has released several best-of collections of its popularSELECTED SHORTS series, also heard weekly on public radio, this year--short stories about food, about travel, about pets, about ordinary and extraordinary lives, written by the likes of T.C. Boyle, John Cheever, and Joan Didion and performed onstage at New York City's Symphony Space in front of a live audience by stage and screen luminaries such as Isaiah Sheffer, Dylan Baker, and David Strathairn. Recent anthologies include Pets!, Tales of Betrayal, Travel Tales, Family Matters, Food Fictions, and Wartime Lives.
Read Review

In his marathon 60-hour narration of WAR AND PEACE, Neville Jason "gives a fresh and consistently insightful interpretation of the action, atmospheres, numberless characters, and author's apostrophes. An accompanying booklet, intended to help the listener keep characters and events straight, is unnecessary, thanks to Jason's skill." Add Naxos' elegant packaging of the two volumes, and you have a keepsake audio edition of Tolstoy's classic.
Read Review

THE ASSAULT ON REASON Al Gore
Read by Will Patton (Penguin Audio/Books on Tape)
Read Review

UN

50+ William D. Novelli, Boe Workman
Read by Eric Conger (Macmillan Audio)
Read Review

AB

INSPIRED BY . . . THE BIBLE EXPERIENCE: THE NEW TESTAMENT
Read by Angela Bassett et al. (Zondervan)
Read Review

UN

THE LOOMING TOWER Lawrence Wright
Read by Alan Sklar (Tantor Media)
Read Review

UN

THE SECRET Rhonda Byrne
Read by Rhonda Byrne et al. (Simon & Schuster Audio/Recorded Books)
Read Review

UN

STATE OF DENIAL Bob Woodward
Read by Boyd Gaines (Simon & Schuster Audio)
Read Review

AB

The hugely successful INSPIRED BY . . . THE BIBLE EXPERIENCE: THE NEW TESTAMENT was a breakout audiobook: It garnered national press coverage, was named Audiobook of the Year by the Audio Publishers Association, and was so successful that the producers followed up with a 90-hour COMPLETE BIBLE. It's a fully dramatized aural kaleidoscope of music, sound effects, and a star-studded cast of more than 200 African-American actors, including Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Samuel L. Jackson.
Read Review

ABOUT ALICE Calvin Trillin
Read by Calvin Trillin (Random House Audio/Books on Tape)
Read Review

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE Barbara Kingsolver et al.
Read by Barbara Kingsolver et al. (Harper Audio/Blackstone Audiobooks)
Read Review

I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK Nora Ephron
Read by Nora Ephron (Random House Audio/Books on Tape)
Read Review

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE is a perfect example of how author-read audiobooks can be winners--Barbara Kingsolver, her husband, Steven Hopp, and their daughter, Camille, narrate their own sections of this memoir about their family's yearlong local food experiment. Add in the occasional background sounds of clucking chickens, and listeners are right there on the farm.
Read Review

CHINA ROAD Rob Gifford
Read by Simon Vance (Blackstone Audiobooks)
Read Review

EINSTEIN Walter Isaacson
Read by Edward Herrmann (Simon & Schuster Audio/Recorded Books)
Read Review

MUHAMMAD Karen Armstrong
Read by Karen Armstrong (Recorded Books)
Read Review

ROOTS Alex Haley
Read by Avery Brooks (BBC Audiobooks America)
Read Review

THE WAR Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
Read by Ken Burns et al. (Random House Audio/Books on Tape)
Read Review

To correspond with the 30th anniversary of Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize-winningROOTS, BBC Audiobooks America recorded an all-new unabridged audio version, narrated by Avery Brooks. As we noted in our review, "Being the consummate actor, Brooks has immersed himself into the role of narrator. In fact, it is difficult to describe what Avery Brooks does in this audiobook. He neither narrates nor performs, rather, he conjures. He brings the plethora of characters to life as memory, as history, as the pawns of diaspora." We hope this audio edition makes Haley's literary masterwork accessible to a whole new generation.
Read Review

BEHOLD THE BOLD UMBRELLAPHANT Jack Prelutsky
Read by Jack Prelutsky (Harper Audio)
Read Review

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS J.K. Rowling
Read by Jim Dale (Listening Library)
Read Review

THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET Brian Selznick
Read by Jeff Woodman (Scholastic Audiobooks)
Read Review

JAZZ Walter Dean Myers
Read by James "D-Train" Williams, Vaneese Thomas (Live Oak Media)
Read Review

Scholastic Audiobooks' innovative audiobook adaptation of THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET includes a DVD of bonus material: a fully produced, filmed conversation with author Brian Selznick as well as his 284 illustrations from the print book. The result is a wholly original integration of audio narration, soundscapes, illustration, and author discussion.
Read Review

BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE Lee Child
Read by Dick Hill (Random House Audio/Books on Tape)
Read Review

THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT Jeffery Deaver et al.
Read by Alfred Molina (Audible.com)
Read Review

THE DOGS OF RIGA Henning Mankell
Read by Dick Hill (Blackstone Audiobooks)
Read Review

HIDE Lisa Gardner
Read by Maggi-Meg Reed (Random House Audio/Books on Tape)
Read Review

THE OVERLOOK Michael Connelly
Read by Len Cariou (Hachette Audio)
Read Review

PLAY DEAD David Rosenfelt
Read by Grover Gardner (Listen & Live Audio)
Read Review

THE SUSPECT John Lescroart
Read by David Colacci (Brilliance Audio)
Read Review

THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN James Lee Burke
Read by Will Patton (Simon & Schuster Audio/Recorded Books)
Read Review

"If this isn't the best iteration of the long-running Will Patton/James Lee Burke audio collaboration, it has set the bar very high." Our review calls THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN "a stunning elegy to New Orleans and the physical and cultural losses suffered by all of south Louisiana from the devastations of Hurricane Katrina. Burke's novels read by Will Patton, as nearly a dozen have been, are perfect partnerships. Patton exquisitely captures the visceral and vivid prose style. He makes the crooks and psychopaths menacing and utterly frightening, and the descriptions of the bayou and the pecan trees lyrical and dazzling." Choose from the unabridged version or the well-crafted abridgment--even listeners who haven't followed the whole Robicheaux series will find this entry, with its New Orleans setting and compelling language and imagery, a superb starting point.
Read Review