As the days grow shorter and the air turns crisp, it’s the perfect time to curl up with an audiobook that stirs wanderlust. This selection of audiobooks will keep you company as the seasons change, whisking you from mysteries in England to an Italian dog’s dreamy escape to memoirs that journey across Asia and Africa. There’s no need to pack a suitcase; just let these audio adventures carry you to faraway places for discovery and reflection.

Our audiobook picks this month run the gamut from fiction to memoir to cozy fantasy, natural history to American history, and inspiration from living legend Dick Van Dyke. November’s chilly days and dark nights call for settling in with excellent listening.

If you’re like me, the fall wreath is on the door, pumpkin muffins are on the counter, and it’s time to settle in for some October listening. And have we got a huge trove of supernaturally appealing romances for you! Here are 13 new audiobooks that feature witches, ghosts, and other seasonal spirits.

Whether you’re looking for a light taste of monstrous tropes or a listening experience to raise the hair on the back of your neck, one of these four recent horror audiobooks can meet you at your level.

Fall is here—the cooler air, brilliant foliage, and harvest bounty all add to the thrills and chills of the Halloween season. For mystery fans, it’s also the perfect time to indulge in spine-tingling listens. Whether you prefer witches, ghosts, vampires, or ordinary people doing terrible things, the audiobook choices are rich and rewarding. Here’s a sampling of Earphones Award winners to set the mood.

Autumn is a great time for kids and young adults to cozy up with a good spooky listen. Fall brings us indoors earlier and bridges the bright days of summer and the long dark nights of winter. While some kids’ thoughts turn to pumpkin spice, other kids will be thinking of jack-o'-lanterns, headless horsemen, and Halloween. Scary audiobooks for kids and teens range from humorous to horror, and there's likely something to suit every listener, including choices for more adventurous or more sensitive listeners. So dim the lights, grab your earbuds and a nice cup of tea or warm cider, and enjoy a good fright!

Spooky season is also the season for big new audiobooks—we highlight some of the memoirs (Tim Curry!), thrillers (Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon!), and fantasies (Martha Wells!) that we’re most anticipating this month. Get cozy and get listening.

If you ask listeners what kinds of historical fiction audiobooks feature Jewish characters, many responses will mention World War II settings. Several of these recently published audiobooks are highlighted below, but Jewish historical stories span centuries and continents, from Biblical times to the late 20th century. Historical fiction audiobooks can serve as a wonderful vehicle to educate and inform, and these six powerful audiobooks allow listeners to experience past Jewish lives.

If you spend enough time listening to audiobooks, you will eventually find yourself somewhere in New York City. Regardless of the genre, the city is the ideal environment for stories. Even if you've never visited, you may find yourself comfortable with various locales and the people who inhabit them. Several recent nonfiction audiobooks capture not just the environment of the city, but its impact on the people who call the city home and the culture beyond the city's limits. Listening to these performances, it's enlightening to hear how many of these different recollections and interviews intersect.

Narrator Elizabeth Wiley’s enthusiasm for her craft is effervescent. Whether she’s discussing research, subject matter, language, or the narrative process, Wiley’s energy infuses her work. For her, each audiobook is a path to a new experience, and sharing that path with listeners is a delight. “It’s the connections, where you’re learning more about the world,” she says. “This is why I love doing this job!”

Juggernaut mystery audiobooks from Richard Osman and Ann Cleeves arrive at the end of the month, but we’re also anticipating big new memoirs, fresh sci-fi and fantasy, middle-grade listening, and more to tide us all over.

Follow your bliss with these romance audiobooks that will take you into late summer and beyond. Find favorite authors and narrators, the themes and tropes we can't stop listening to, and a good dose of summer sunshine.

This collection features novels about global journeys and exploration, around the globe and within the human spirit. These audiobooks transport the listener to faraway places, be they in a mythic retelling, or a near-future city on the verge of being submerged. While the locations are far and wide in place and time, at the heart are inward journeys that lead to reckonings with the soul and personal transformation. Get ready to dive into these stories about displacement, discovery, and destiny. What doors will they open for you?

With audiobooks, young adults and kids of all ages can travel abroad without ever leaving home. Children and teens can deepen their understanding of the world by learning what it’s like to live in countries other than their own. From the natural beauty of the territory of Puerto Rico to the repressive regime of North Korea, these audiobooks offer listeners a chance to experience life in other countries and immerse themselves in another culture. If you know kids or teens ready to explore the world we live in, let these audiobooks be their tickets to adventure.

Listening while lying on the beach, relaxing by the pool, hiking a trail, or traveling by car or plane makes summer the perfect time to catch up on great audiobooks. Here’s a sampling of mysteries across sub-genres that will keep listeners entertained all season long.

Our picks this month run the gamut from new stories from Fannie Flagg to dark academia from R.F. Kuang to Chuck Tingle’s latest. We hope you find a cool place to listen by the shore, on the stoop, in the backyard, next to the fan, or wherever summer takes you.

Have you ever wondered what it is like to lose all or a part of your vision? How can you manage your fear of losing your independence, and what adaptations will you need to make? When I was diagnosed with a degenerative retinal disease at age 47, a blind friend told me that I can still do everything that I previously did but that I may need to do it in a different way or with assistance. And audiobooks, of course, are a vital way for people with impaired vision to keep literature in their lives. The following six audiobook memoirs confirm that blind and visually impaired persons can lead full and productive lives.

My watchwords this summer are: Be brave, be kind, be you. Sometimes, I’ll admit, it’s a struggle to be courageous, compassionate, and true all in the same week. I need inspiration and some laughter to nudge me in the right direction. That’s where audiobooks come in.

The audiobook of Ron Chernow’s new biography MARK TWAIN, read by Jason Culp, runs a whopping 44 hours. AudioFile reviewer Alan Minskoff shares his very personal guide to listening to a 44-hour-long audiobook over the course of two intense weeks—and provides inspiration for fitting more audiobook listening into our lives. And in a video below, narrator Jason Culp shares his own experience of spending 44 hours with Mark Twain from the other side of the microphone.

AudioFile spoke with author and documentarian James Robinson and producer Iris McElroy about the audiobook adaptation of James’s memoir for middle-grade readers, WHALE EYES. "So much of the evolution of WHALE EYES from film to book to audiobook has been about finding a dynamic way for the story to resonate within each medium. In the original film, I enabled the audience to experience the world through my jumpy, alternating vision. In the physical book, I frustrate fluent readers as they struggle to make their way through text that has been intentionally made difficult to decipher. I thought about the audiobook quite a bit while I was writing, and my interest was to push this form in new ways."