The Indie Next List

My Friends

A Novel

By: Fredrik Backman
Narrated by: Marin Ireland
Length: 13 hours 7 minutes

#1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one... Read more

The Names

A Novel

By: Florence Knapp
Narrated by: Dervla Kirwan
Length: TBA

“A mother goes to register her baby son’s name on the birth certificate. Three choices: Bear, the name that his nine-year-old sister has chosen; Julian, which means “sky father,” his mother’s choice; and Gordon, the family name that his father wants. Florence Knapp, in her novel The Names, has taken each of the three names and given us three... Read more

The Lilac People

By: Milo Todd
Narrated by: Max Meyers
Length: 10 hours 58 minutes

For readers of All the Light We Cannot See and In Memoriam, a moving and deeply humane story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis then the Allies while protecting the ones he loves In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the... Read more

The Road to Tender Hearts

A Novel

By: Annie Hartnett
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
Length: 11 hours 47 minutes

“A wacky and wonderful road trip book with unforgettable characters and delightfully narrated by Mark Bramhall. Themes of family relationships, grief and healing are handled with beauty and humor. Read more

The Correspondent

A Novel

By: Virginia Evans
Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, Jeff Ebner, David Pittu, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Mark Bramhall, Petrea Burchard, Robert Petkoff, Kimberly Farr, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Peter Ganim, Jade Wheeler & Various
Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

“I devoured this well executed epistolary novel. Poignant and emotionally resonant. The author creates a wonderful character in Sybil Van Antwerp and I was sad when the book was over. Read more

The Emperor of Gladness

A Novel

By: Ocean Vuong
Narrated by: James Aaron Oh
Length: TBA

“The Emperor of Gladness is a poetic, dramatic and vivid story. Epic in its sweep, the novel also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality. Hai and Grazina are taken from the margins of American life by Ocean Vuong and, by dint of great sympathy and imaginative genius, placed at the very center of our world.” —Colm Tóibín,... Read more

My Best Friend's Honeymoon

By: Meryl Wilsner
Narrated by: Blair Baker & Emily Shaw
Length: 7 hours 42 minutes

“Meryl Wilsner is easily a favorite author of mine. Though hard to beat Cleat Cute, this one is definitely duking it out to be my favorite of theirs. The only downside to me is that the narrators voices sound a little too similar and having both MC names ending in an "ee" sound muddles them up in my brain sometimes. Don't let that deter... Read more

The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman

By: Niko Stratis
Narrated by: Niko Stratis
Length: TBA

A memoir-in-essays on transness, dad rock, and the music that saves us.



When Wilco's 2007 album Sky Blue Sky was infamously criticized as "dad rock," Niko Stratis was a twenty-five-year-old closeted trans woman working in her dad's glass shop in the Yukon Territory. As she sought escape from her hypermasculine environment, Stratis found an... Read more

The Original Daughter

A Novel

By: Jemimah Wei
Narrated by: Eunice Wong
Length: TBA

In this dazzling debut, Stegner Fellow Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an... Read more

Ordinary Time

Lessons Learned While Staying Put

By: Annie B. Jones
Narrated by: Annie B. Jones & Emily P. Freeman
Length: 6 hours 7 minutes

In her first book, the popular From the Front Porch podcast host and independent bookstore owner challenges the idea that loud lives are the ones that matter most, reminding us that we don't have to leave the lives we have in order to have the lives of which we've always dreamed. Can life be an adventure, even when it’s just . . . ordinary?Annie... Read more

The Man Made of Smoke

A Novel

By: Alex North
Narrated by: Shane Zaza
Length: TBA

"Fans of Thomas Harris will be creeped out by North’s hair-raising antagonist... This is a winner."
—Publishers Weekly

The latest gripping serial killer thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Alex North.

Dan Garvie’s life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child—narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial... Read more

The Manor of Dreams

By: Christina Li
Narrated by: Catherine Ho
Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

“The Manor of Dreams is a book with layers. It is told from multiple points of view and multiple timelines that weave together an intriguing tale of a family that might seem ideal to the outside viewer. In reality, the deeper you get into the story, the darker their secrets become. This book will suck you in and consume your attention until the... Read more

The Missing Half

A Novel

By: Ashley Flowers
Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld & Ashley Flowers
Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Two women haunted by their sisters’ unsolved disappearances band together in this captivating mystery from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of All Good People Here and host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie.

“Sharp, slick, and chilling, with a whiplash ending you’ll never see coming.”—Jeneva Rose, author of Home Is Where the... Read more

Old School Indian

By: Aaron John Curtis
Narrated by: Jason Grasl
Length: 9 hours 56 minutes

A Kirkus Editor’s Pick • A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Cowboys & Indians | Brit + Co | Debutiful Most Anticipated Book of 2025 “With amazing dexterity, Aaron John Curtis’s moving debut novel, Old School Indian, combines raucous humor with respect for ancestral traditions.” —Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, New York Times bestselling author of The... Read more

Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame

By: Neon Yang
Narrated by: Nancy Wu
Length: 4 hours 54 minutes

With an armored, oath-bound hero reminiscent of The Mandalorian and the Asian-inspired epic fantasy of She Who Became the Sun, Neon Yang’s Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame is a stunning queer novella about a dragon hunter finding home with a dragon queen. Few know the true identity of the masked guildknight of Mithrandon. She barely... Read more

No One Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding

A Novel

The Vacation Mysteries: Book #2

By: Catherine Mack
Narrated by: Elizabeth Evans
Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

“This brilliantly written mystery has tons of action, lots of suspense, humor, and surprising reveals. Mystery writer Eleanor Dash basically turns her best friend Emma‘s wedding into a murder investigation. I just adored Eleanor‘s inner dialogue, the very funny footnotes, the chapter titles, and all the characters, especially the family dynamics;... Read more

The Amalfi Curse

By: Sarah Penner
Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Carlotta Brentan, Chris Andrew Ciulla & Eric Yang
Length: 10 hours 1 minute

“Sarah Penner transported me to the sea-swept cliffs of Positano and introduced me to characters I’ll never forget. A magical read!”
—Emilia Hart, New York Times bestselling author of Weyward

Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse…

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical... Read more

The Staircase in the Woods

By: Chuck Wendig
Narrated by: Jay Myers, Amber Benson & Xe Sands
Length: 13 hours 24 minutes

“Home is where the hurt is. And Chuck Wendig makes sure you feel every splinter of it. This one is eerie, sprawling, and absolutely devastating in that specific Wendig way—where grief, trauma, and the monstrous coil together so tightly you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. A spiral staircase into memory, loss, and the terrifying... Read more

Open, Heaven

A Novel

By: Seán Hewitt
Narrated by: Sebastian Croft
Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

A stunning debut novel from the acclaimed young Irish poet Seán Hewitt, reminiscent of Garth Greenwell and Justin Torres in the intensity of its evocation of sexual awakening

Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives.

James—a... Read more

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

By: Kylie Lee Baker
Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
Length: 8 hours 46 minutes

"A compelling, gory, ghostly romp."
—Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie

"This is what it felt like to live in New York City during lockdown: haunted, absurd, terrifying, ridiculous, and full of hungry ghosts."
—Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

In this explosive horror... Read more