The best non-fiction audiobooks that will have you hooked

Discover the shocking true story behind the Theranos scandal in the words of the journalist who first broke the story, John Carreyrou. Bad Blood charts the rise and fall of blood-testing startup Theranos, from co-founder Elizabeth Holmes’ promising beginnings at Stanford University to the company’s $9 billion valuation and its headline-grabbing claims of a revolutionary new medical technology. As the story unfolds, Carreyrou reveals how Holmes’ promises unravelled, exposing Theranos' flawed technology as too good to be true. 

With Holmes and former executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani now serving federal prison sentences for fraud, this stranger-than-fiction tale of ambition, corruption, and lies will keep you gripped.

Read our guide to the Theranos scandal.

In November 1914, Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men set out to achieve something that had never been done – to cross Antarctica from coast to coast via the South Pole. Eleven months later, their ship, Endurance, sank beneath the surface, believed to be lost forever. What followed was an extraordinary tale of survival – a story that has become one of the most legendary accounts of human resilience ever told.

In The Ship Beneath the Ice, maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound recounts how he and his team located the wreck of Endurance after more than a century on the seabed of the Weddell Sea. With a new National Geographic documentary about the expedition now streaming on Disney+, now is the perfect time to listen to this non-fiction audiobook.

After losing her mother to pancreatic cancer when she was twenty-five, Michelle Zauner – lead vocalist of Grammy-nominated Japanese Breakfast – was forced to look inwards. As she confronts her past, her experiences growing up mixed-race in Oregon, her complicated relationship with her late mother, and her connection with her Korean heritage, particularly through food, Zauner tells a deeply personal story of the complexity and heartbreak of grief, and the impact it can have on who we are. Read by the author herself and with fans including Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo and Barack Obama, the audiobook edition of Crying in H Mart is a must listen.

In her Polari First Book Prize nominated Queer Intentions, journalist Amelia Abraham embarks on a very personal journey to learn more about the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community in the twenty-first century. Examining the impact that greater freedom and visibility have had on LGBTQ+ rights in some countries, including the UK, Abraham also travels to countries including Turkey and Serbia, to discover the challenges some queer people still face today. Through stories of those celebrating their love with same-sex marriage, families living outside of traditional gender constructs and LGBTQ+ communities forced to live their truth behind closed doors, Queer Intentions offers a powerful exploration of what it means to be queer in Europe today. 

Thanks to his trademark humour and charming approach to investigative journalism, Jon Ronson has long been one of Britain's best-loved non-fiction storytellers. Most recently, in Things Fell Apart, he investigated the deeply personal stories behind some of the most polarising culture wars of recent decades. In The Psychopath Test, which he narrates himself, Ronson meets psychopaths and those who treat them. What follows is a journey down the rabbit hole of what society defines as normality and madness, and an examination of the blurred lines between sanity and insanity. 

The best investigative journalism is as unputdownable as a thriller, and Empire of Pain – the true story of the family behind America's opioid crisis – certainly fits the bill. Award-winning journalist Patrick Radden Keefe follows the fate of the Sacklers, one of the wealthiest and most elusive families in the world, revealing how they made and marketed the painkiller OxyContin across America – with devastating effect. Through stories of towns ravaged by addiction, families who have lost children, and kids growing up without their parents, Keefe uncovers the shocking truth about how one drug and one family's relentless pursuit of profit has contributed to the deaths of over half a million people.

AI has already changed how we shop, search, and learn – and as time goes on, it is set to alter almost every aspect of how humans live and interact in the world. But just how has AI taken over at such pace, and who are the people behind the machines? In Code Dependent, Madhumita Murgia, AI Editor at the Financial Times, tells the story of AI, from the people making decisions in the C-suites of Silicon Valley to the ordinary lives being upended by its impact. Compulsive listening, Code Dependent offers a meticulously researched but very accessible guide to the potential future of artificial intelligence. 

From the outside, Patric Gagne has a life anyone would envy: a successful career, a loving partner, a beautiful home. But beneath this idyllic picture, Patric is in a lifelong battle with her own mind. In this audiobook, she tells her own story, from a childhood where she knew she was different, to her crime-filled teenage years, and her realisation as an adult that she is what psychologists define as a ‘sociopath.’ As Patric continues to learn how to stop her darker impulses from undoing her relationships, her career, and her settled home life, she searches for a way for people like her to coexist in the world.

Swiss banks are known for being exclusive, secretive, and extremely rich. Serving the needs of the world’s wealthiest people and promising extreme discretion, Credit Suisse was once the country’s gold standard in banking. Until it wasn’t. In Meltdown, Bloomberg investigative journalist Duncan Mavin opens the vault to one of the world’s most secretive societies, chronicling how corruption, extreme arrogance, and incompetence at every level led to the downfall of a 166-year-old Swiss institution. A thrilling story of greed, power, and panic, you’ll find yourself as gripped by this financial thriller as you were by The Big Short and Billion Dollar Whale.

First date. Love. Proposal. Marriage. Kids. No matter how successful every other area of their life is, society still paints the picture that, for women, marriage and children are the ultimate goals. In Love Me!, Marianne Power sets out to find out, once and for all, if you can be happy and fulfilled without a monogamous relationship. In this audiobook, read by Power herself, she shares what she learns from putting herself into awkward, romantic, strange, and sometimes scary predicaments – from solo sex to Skype sex, and polyamory to sologamy – in her quest for a happily-ever-after of a different kind.

If you've found yourself thinking over the past few years that public services in Britain aren't working, you're not alone. Schools are falling down and teachers are leaving the profession in droves, house prices are rising and wages stagnant, and the NHS appears to be on the precipice of crisis every winter. But why is this happening and what can we do to fix it? In Failed State, policy expert Sam Freedman dives deep into the heart of what is going wrong in Britain’s public institutions and shares why we can’t just point the finger of blame at our politicians. A witty, optimistic audiobook about how Britain could and should be made fairer and more functional, this timely audiobook is essential listening in 2025. 

A must-listen for music fans, From Here to the Great Unknown is the memoir of Lisa Marie Presley, read by her daughter Riley Keough and award-winning actress Julia Roberts. Finished after her untimely death in 2022, it’s the story of a woman who grew up in the shadow of an American legend, forged her own path, and found her own voice. Using the tapes that Lisa recorded before her death, which were pieced together by her daughter, From Here to the Great Unknown tells the story of an extraordinary life filled with fame, tragedy, heartbreak, addiction, and a mother’s love.

If you're a fan of history podcasts like History Hit or The Rest is History, Black and British is a must-listen. Historian and broadcaster David Olusoga brings the often-overlooked stories of black history in Britain to the forefront, from Roman Britain and the global slave-trading British empire to the Windrush generation and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. This audiobook highlights how the histories of black and white Britons have been intertwined for centuries, offering fresh perspectives on the past that will change the way you view British history.