Publishers Weekly - January 9, 2017

In 2016, our team of audiobook reviewers listened to more than 250 titles. Below we list our favorites across several categories, as well as our narrator of the year. BY ANNIE CORENO

FICTION

BEFORE THE FALL

Noah Hawley, read by Robert Petkoff (Hachette Audio)

Reader Petkoff dramatizes Hawley’s riveting novel about a plane crash to full effect.

HERE I AM

Jonathan Safran Foer, read by Ari Fliakos (Macmillan Audio)

Foer’s novel requires a very talented narrator— and it got one. The prose is fast, forceful, funny, and friendly, and actor Fliakos handles it all superbly.

YOU WILL KNOW ME

Megan Abbott, read by Lauren Fortgang (Hachette Audio)

Reader Fortgang catches the subtle mood shifts of the characters in Abbott’s piercing thriller about the hypercom-petitive world of women’s gymnastics and what one family will sacrifice in the name of making their daughter a champion.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Colson Whitehead, read by Bahni Turpin (Random House Audio)

Turpin shifts between the ages, races, and accents of the large cast of characters in Whitehead’s powerful historical set in Georgia in the 1850s. Her turn as protagonist Cora, a teenage slave girl who lives on a cotton plantation, mesmerizes with its display of conflicting emotions and attachments.

THE TRESPASSER

Tana French, read by Hilda Fay (Penguin Audio)

The warts-and-all portrait of protagonist Antoinette is the heart of French’s sixth entry in the Dublin Murder Squad series, and reader Fay’s ability to mix the natural lyric quality of her Irish brogue with Antoinette’s working-class, chip-on-shoulder hostility makes for a fully sustained, award-worthy performance.

MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON

Elizabeth Strout, read by Kimberly Farr (Random House Audio)

Author Strout and reader Farr have produced a masterly fusion of material that could easily have become maudlin but never does. It is a simple yet deep depiction of the fierce love and intense pain of a mother-daughter relationship.