Lisa Jewell's ultra-twisty, ultra-shady thriller was made to be heard. Featuring an impressive full cast and actual podcast episodes within the audiobook, None of This Is True hooks listeners from the outset. The story follows Alix and Josie, who run into each other at a pub where they're both celebrating their 45th birthdays. The "birthday twins" get closer when Josie, an unassuming woman with a chaotic life story, comes to Alix with a podcast idea the latter can't resist. But is Josie really as unassuming as she seems? The plot keeps listeners guessing and, as the title itself warns, wondering just how much of the dark tale is true.

On one unbearably hot summer day in 1935, three children lose their innocence after one event has significant and devastating consequences. 13-year-old Briony Tallis lets her imagination get the better of her when she sees her sister Cecilia with the housekeeper’s son, Robby Turner. Briony proceeds to make a mistake that will change her life and her family forever, and it will consume her with guilt that she carries for the rest of her life. Jill Tanner narrates this unabridged audio version of Atonement, reading Ian McEwan’s beautiful, heartbreaking prose with nuance and passion.

When beautiful Amy Dunne goes missing from her home after what looks to be a violent kidnapping, the natural suspect is her husband, Nick. He furiously maintains his innocence, and given a marriage that seemed so perfect, it’s hard to imagine he could’ve harmed his wife. But as incriminating secrets emerge, it becomes clear that neither Amy nor Nick was as happy as they pretended to be. Told in the alternating intimate perspectives of Amy and Nick, Gillian Flynn's legendary thriller will have you looking at the people in your life and wondering how well you really know them. Narrators Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne capture the suspense and emotions—and the unreliability—of Gone Girl to perfection.

Ever since she was adopted from a Sri Lankan orphanage, Paloma has had the best of everything—schools, money, and parents so perfect that she fears she'll never live up to them. Now, at 30 years old and recently cut off from her parents’ funds, she decides to sublet the second bedroom of her overpriced San Francisco apartment to Arun, who recently moved from India. Paloma has to admit, it feels good helping someone find their way in America—that is, until Arun discovers Paloma's darkest secret, one that could jeopardize her own fragile place in this country.

Bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk’s uproarious debut novel, Fight Club, follows a listless office employee (the narrator) whose life takes on a strange new dimension when he meets Tyler Durden. Together they form Fight Club—a secretive underground group sponsoring bloody bare-knuckle boxing matches. Fight Club lets ordinary men vent their suppressed rage, and it quickly develops a fanatical following. A masterpiece of violence and black humor channeled to perfection by acclaimed narrator Jim Colby, Fight Club challenges listeners to see the world through a new, and quite possibly deranged, set of eyes.

Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi features a character stuck in a dire predicament. Our hero Pi has survived a boat wreck and is floating in a lifeboat alongside a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. What happens next blends the grounded with the fantastical, as Pi navigates a perilous situation and learns deep life lessons along the way, in an acclaimed performance by narrator Vikas Adam.

A standout from Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, this subtly haunting novel is indicative of the author’s mysterious, slow-burning style. Never Let Me Go is told in the first person, and at the start, all listeners know about Kathy is that she’s a “carer” who was once a student at a boarding school named Hailsham. Narrator Rosalyn Landor’s ponderous, careful tone mimics not only Kathy’s own timidity but also the way Ishiguro reveals plot details step by careful step. As we follow Kathy's reminiscences of love, friendship, and innocence lost, we catch glimpses of a melancholy we can’t quite explain—and of things not being quite right.

Tony Award winner Billy Crudup astounds and confounds in this brilliant one-man play, named one of Vulture’s 10 Best Audiobooks of 2018. Crudup stars as a mercurial shapeshifter, once a shy Midwestern boy now posing as swaggering Londoner Harry Clarke. When he inserts himself into the lives of a wealthy family, his deceit turns their worlds upside down. Crudup’s tour-de-force performance of playwright David Cale’s mischievous, sexually charged thriller is one you have to hear to (maybe) believe.

This is the second book (after Beloved) in Morrison's Dantesque trilogy on African American history. It is set mostly in Harlem during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, and follows a structure based on jazz music, with many of the chapters comprising solo compositions. It also features unreliable narrators, letting readers see events from different perspectives. At its heart, Jazz is a tragedy about a door-to-door cosmetics salesman who kills his teenage lover. It is a novel about love, obsession, and betrayal, whose passions swell and dip like the notes in a jazz tune.

This quintessential mystery novel stars Detective Hercule Poirot in his third case. Poirot has come out of retirement to investigate the—you guessed it—murder of Roger Ackroyd. To say more about the plot would risk spoiling it, but we can say that nothing like it had ever been published when it was released, and it blew people’s minds. This edition is narrated by the smooth-as-silk Richard Armitage, who performs the goings-on with all the crisp polish and sense of suspense you expect from Dame Agatha.

Unreliable narrators dont get more literary than Vladimir Nabokov’s exquisitely chilling Humbert Humbert. Lolita, at bottom the ugly story of a murderer-pedophile and the girl whose childhood he wants to steal, seduces listeners through Humbert’s lyrical, playful, and unreliable account. “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style,” Humbert famously intones. Nabokov’s meticulous attention to the sound of this story makes the audiobook, read by Jeremy Irons (who played Humbert in the 1997 film), the perfect way to look upon “this tangle of thorns” that is Humbert’s desire and undoing.

Patrick Bateman is a villain for the ages. He is a narcissist, a monstrously egotistical investment banker who cares for little save his appearance, finances, and musings on pop music. But beneath the veneer of 1980s superficiality, Bateman is also a madman capable of unspeakable violence. Bret Easton Ellis’s sharply satirical, viciously dark novel doesn’t skimp on disturbing, graphic details. In his superb narration, actor Pablo Schreiber brings the perfect mix of droll disinterest and hair-raising lunacy to Bateman’s horrific inner monologue.

Addressing the listener, Joe catalogues in detail every second since he has met “you,” Guinevere, in the bookshop where he works. He is smitten. Obsessed. Dangerous? Caroline Kepnes’s urgent present-tense, high-wire, second-person story is a perfect fit for narrator Santino Fontana, who gives Joe’s internal voice—frustrated, focused, and fast—the fretful twinge of the misunderstood, the guy who lives inside his head, where all wrongs are someone else’s fault. (Viewers are equally spellbound by Joe, as played by Gossip Girl’s Penn Badgley in the Netflix series.)

The first in Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård’s autobiographical My Struggle series made massive literary waves with its brutally candid depictions of events based on the author’s life. Or is it so candid? While it’s most often classified as an autobiographical novel, this dazzlingly original work might also be called a thinly veiled memoir. Our memories are selective and it’s our nature to curate them, so anyone who’s ever wondered about the line between fact and fiction will appreciate this rich, intimate exploration of their intersection.

Catriona Ward’s instant horror classic, The Last House on Needless Street, is a shocking and immersive listen that subverts all expectation. In a boarded-up house on a dead-end street at the edge of the wild Washington woods lives a family of three: A teenage girl who isn’t allowed outside, not after last time. A man who drinks alone in front of his TV, trying to ignore the gaps in his memory. And a house cat who loves napping and reading the Bible. An unspeakable secret binds them together, but when a new neighbor moves in next door, what is buried out among the birch trees may come back to haunt them all.

Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient turns the thriller genre on its head. From the beginning, we know who the killer is—Alicia Berenson. A renowned painter, Alicia captures the public’s fascination when she abruptly murders her husband in their beautiful London home and then falls silent, refusing to speak. One of the obsessed is Theo Farber, a criminal psychologist who can’t rest until he’s broken through Alicia’s silence and uncovered her secrets. Narrators Jack Hawkins and Louise Brealey portray each character’s personality, nuances, and degree of innocence (or guilt) in exquisite emotional detail. Even avid thriller fans are bound to be surprised by who solves the case and how.

Listening to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterwork further highlights the novel’s excess-laden world, brilliant character study, and clever use of an unreliable narrator. Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal brings to life the voice of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, who tells us early on that, “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” The pronouncement sets off alarm bells: Perhaps Nick doth protest too much because he’s trying to convince us he’s something he’s not? The sense builds as the story continues from Carraway’s POV and we’re given a selective yet enthralling window into the mysterious Jay Gatsby. Gyllenhaal’s subtle yet captivating performance oozes refinement and style—a perfect complement to Gatsby’s grandeur.

With unforgettable narration by Helen Laser, R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface delivers bold social commentary on the publishing world and its intersection with social media. Our unreliable narrator is June Hayward, a struggling white author who had an underwhelming experience with her debut novel that might appeal to our sympathy—at first. But upon witnessing her Asian American friend’s death, June makes a choice to steal, edit, and submit the late author’s latest unpublished manuscript as her own. What ensues is a meta, anxiety-ridden thriller that had us rooting for the morally gray June—while fervently hoping that her mountain of crimes, lies, racism, and betrayals would be discovered.

Shirley Jackson’s gothic classic has been unsettling readers since its initial publication in 1962. This haunting novel about the Blackwood family and their mysterious estate is full of sharp wit and keen societal observations that still ring true today. Our guide is 18-year-old Mary Katherine, or Merricat, who gradually reveals how arsenic poisoning killed four family members, leaving her to live with agoraphobic elder sister Constance and wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian in claustrophobic isolation. Narrator Bernadette Dunne captures every eerie moment and all of Jackson’s macabre humor in her performance.

In Daphne du Maurier's classic tale of romantic suspense, an unnamed young narrator impulsively marries a wealthy widower after a whirlwind romance. She finds herself at Manderley, her husband’s enormous estate, where she quickly learns that the spirit of his late wife, Rebecca, haunts both him and the house. She also finds an enemy in Mrs. Danvers, the sinister housekeeper, who makes it known that the narrator will never live up to the house’s late mistress. The late, great English actress Anna Massey delivers a vivid performance, capturing the narrator’s gradual unraveling as she is driven to the edge of madness.

Just before Christmas in 1996, a French woman named Sophie Toscan du Plantier was brutally bludgeoned to death while on holiday in Ireland. The crime sent shockwaves through the tight-knit town of Schull, a peaceful coastal village in County Cork. Listen in as hosts Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde take a deep dive into the du Plantier murder and the ceaseless hunt for answers. What makes this atmospheric listen so special is the haunting sound design as well as the intimate participation of the case’s main suspect, an English journalist who maintains he was framed—but who many in West Cork are convinced got away with murder.

A filmmaker as inventive as Werner Herzog needn’t be boxed in by the confines of traditional memoir. As The Washington Post notes, “A very thin thread of autobiography runs through an otherwise vibrant tapestry of anecdotes and adventures.” The Fitzcarraldo filmmaker’s work spans more than 70 features and documentaries, and his memoir is equally filled with action and ecstatic detail; God makes more than one appearance. But it’s Herzog’s delivery that keeps you enthralled. The poetic digressions and resplendent imagery are all the more mesmerizing in that iconic, German-accented voice.

Before Anna Delvey, before the Tinder Swindler, there was the Hipster Grifter. Adopted by a Mormon family in Utah, Kari Ferrell struggled with questions of self-worth and identity as one of few Asian Americans in her insulated community, leading her to run with the “bad crowd.” Soon, stealing from superstores turned into picking up men (and picking their pockets), and before she knew it, Kari had graduated to Utah’s most wanted list. Though Kari was able to escape the Southwest, she couldn’t outrun the Hipster Grifter moniker. New York City’s indie sleaze scene had found its newest celebrity—just as Kari found herself in a heap of trouble. A heartfelt narrative of redemption and reconciliation that sets the record straight, this nostalgic, uplifting, and at times unbelievable book grapples with truth, why we lie, and what it means when our pasts don’t paint the whole picture.

"None of this is real and all of it is true." So says Jim Carrey at the outset of his genre-bending memoir. Memoirs and Misinformation is a fearless semi-autobiographical novel, a deconstruction of persona. In it, Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon have fashioned a story about acting, Hollywood, agents, celebrity, privilege, friendship, romance, addiction to relevance, fear of personal erasure, our "one big soul", Canada, and a cataclysmic ending of the world—with a little help from auteur screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, naturally.

Pop quiz: Is a memoir by a self-described sociopath more or less reliable than anyone else’s? On the one hand, sociopaths are less anxious for approval than the average Joe. On the other, they’re known for their dexterity with lying and manipulation. In any case, Patric Gagne’s reflection on what she calls her “emotional learning disability” comes as a welcome perspective, especially considering the vast subgenre of wellness lit that offers protection from sociopaths. What’s striking about this unique memoir is that the author, grappling with an absence of empathy, experiences quite a bit of recognizable discomfort: from self-soothing compulsions to the early childhood revelation of being different. For anyone who’s ever embarked upon their own mental health journey, you might locate a piece of yourself within this narrative.

Widely considered the best true crime narrative of all time, Truman Capote’s riveting account of the murder of four members of a family in Holcomb, Kansas, is a shining exemplar of what is possible in the realm of nonfiction. In fact, it may have been Capote’s incredible pacing, attention to detail, and eye for character that inspired the term "nonfiction novel" in the first place, though don’t expect the 100 percent unbiased accuracy Capote claimed. The story is too artful, and Capote’s relationship with one of the killers too hidden, for this to be considered the whole, 360-degree-perspective truth. However, for a complex, empathetic, and gripping story—with wholly compelling narration by Scott Brick—this is a must-listen.