January 2026 Earphones Award Winners

Cia Court captures all the profound and devastating flaws in an engaging yet reprehensible protagonist. Margo and Ian have been stymied in their efforts to find a forever home outside Washington, D.C. Intense and simmering with rage issues, Margo takes matters into her own morally questionable hands when her dream home is listed for sale. Court shines in her delivery of Margo's... Read More

Carpenters and landlords stand alongside playwrights and actors in this lively audiobook history of London's first commercial theaters. The very first, The Theater, opened in 1576, and its history chronicles the birth of British theater. Renaissance scholar Swift works from scraps--leases, lawsuits, lumber prices, apprenticeship figures, plague deaths, and the names of actor... Read More

Cookbook author and Vogue contributor Adler narrates with controlled emotion in a lovely voice, with just the right tone and tempo. These meditations on life and food, spanning a calendar year, began as a project to write her way out of depression. Adler's style is intimate yet informed. She includes quotes from poets (Louise Glück, May Swenson, and Mary Oliver among them) and... Read More

Samuel Barnett delivers a fresh interpretation of the St. George and the Dragon legend. George, whom Barnett portrays in a snide, harried tone that makes him bitingly funny, becomes increasingly hysterical as his contemporary London life falls apart. After he inexplicably time travels to the medieval era, his neuroses are subsumed into the immediacy of survival and the... Read More

Peter Noble coolly performs this twisty crime novel. Using a narrative tone that is distant and objective, he still manages to inhabit each character, providing credible male and female voices while instilling each with appropriate emotion. In this story filled with betrayals, secrets, and stunning surprises, he handles the Scandinavian pronunciations with ease. The... Read More

Aysha Kala crafts a delicate performance surrounding a surprisingly complex story about a carousel. The carousel, originally built in 1900s Paris, is shrouded in a mystery and linked to a history of missing children. Kala narrates as Maisie, an immigrant just arriving in Chicago in 1920, uncovers the dark secret of said carousel alongside Det. Laurent. Kala's elegant narration... Read More

Tim Campbell's sonorous voice is a splendid match for Wellerstein's account of the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. Wellerstein, a scholar of the history of nuclear weapons and the creator of the website NUKEMAP, delves deep into American nuclear policy. His conclusion is that President Harry S. Truman was almost entirely out of the decision loop. After the... Read More

Stacy Gonzalez, Jasmin Walker, and Kim Ramirez breathe life into Straight's poignant account of the lives of Larette, Cherrise, and Marisol, ICU nurses who are working during the Covid-19 pandemic. Shaun Taylor-Corbett offers a glimpse of a man on the outside. Early in 2020, isolated in small trailers in San Bernardino, Calif., the three exhausted women deal with their fears of... Read More

Edoardo Ballerini convincingly portrays thugs, a torch singer, all manner of gumshoes; he does Hungarians, Germans, English elites. His vocals are spot-on. The wildly imagined plot begins in Milwaukee and then shifts to Eastern Europe. Hicks McTaggart, a former strike breaker, now a private eye, likes to dance and to romance--until he runs afoul of the Milwaukee mob. Much of... Read More

A dynamic ensemble of all-star narrators brings to life these stories assembled--and in one case, published--for the first time. Representing Sanderson's writing experimentation and growth over the course of 25 years, they feature worlds in which reality is unstable and characters move freely through simulations, universes, and bodies. The narrators are impressively well... Read More

Rebecca Calder's narration drives this surreal tale about "antimemes" that can attack memory and identity. With precision and controlled energy, Calder shapes an audio experience that highlights the text's clever constructions and unsettling logic. Calder's clear articulation and confident pacing make rapid conceptual shifts feel purposeful, helping listeners absorb the... Read More

Drout, professor of English and director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College, narrates this deeply researched and remarkably comprehensive examination of Tolkien's genius. Drout's strong, sonorous voice is the perfect vehicle for sharing his own findings, imbuing the audio with deep meaning and a full understanding of both his own work and that of... Read More

"Bridgerton" heartthrob Luke Thompson performs this novel with restraint, ensuring that the self-deluded first-person narrator is fully believable. The setting, Venice in 1899, has a gloss of wrongdoing. The protagonist, an unsuccessful English writer named Evelyn Dohlman, is a morally ambiguous soul. He speaks no Italian, and his recent bride, an American heiress, has cooled... Read More

Christian Coulson's narration is beautifully enhanced by inspiring flute music and immersive sound effects. Norbury's story introduces listeners of all ages to the fundamental principles of a peaceful life rooted in Zen Buddhism. Coulson's portrayals of Big Panda and Tiny Dragon offer teachable moments filled with gentle warmth and practical insights as they address complex... Read More