In July, you’ll find plenty of romantasy audiobooks to listen to as you lounge at the beach, including Brigitte Knightley’s The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy and Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst. But there are also some more traditional sci-fi offerings as well, like Null Entity from Seth Hadd0n. And if you’re more into horror, the slasher thrills of Mallory Arnold’s Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die and the otherworldly evils of Christopher Golden’s Carry Me to My Grave should do the trick. Check out our July audiobook picks below.
The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley
Narrators: Heath Long and Thomas Judd
Length: 12 hours, 38 minutes
Description: The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy is the second book in author Brigitte Knightley’s Dearly Beloathed duology, following 2025’s The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy. The series is an “enemies-to-lovers romantasy following an assassin and a healer forced to work together to cure a fatal disease, all while resisting the urge to kill each other—or, worse, fall in love,” according to Ace, the book’s publisher. Heath Long and Thomas Judd reprise their roles as Aurienne, the healer, and Osric, the assassin.
Release Date: July 7
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle
Narrator: Mara Wilson
Length: 8 hours, 5 minutes
Description: Actor Mara Wilson has established a booming second career as an audiobook narrator, and she returns for her fourth collaboration with sci-fi erotica author and human-dinosaur relations advocate Chuck Tingle. Fabulous Bodies follows aspiring fashion influencer-slash-graverobber Poppy Stringer as her last job before she can finally get out of the game—stealing the body of rock star Eddie Michaels—goes awry when Eddie wakes up mid-transport. Wilson previously won an Audie Award (along with io9 co-founder Charlie Jane Anders and several others) for the audiobook of Tingle’s 2024 novel Bury Your Gays.
Release Date: July 7
Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die by Mallory Arnold
Narrators: Victoria Connolly, Stacy Gonzalez, Alexandra Hunter, and Gary Tiedemann
Length: 10 hours, 58 minutes
Description: The ensemble cast of Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die brings Mallory Arnold’s tale of blood-soaked revenge to life. The novel centers on “three women who lure their cheating boyfriend to a remote mountain cabin, only to realize that darkness lurks within the very walls, waiting to pick them off one by one,” according to the publisher’s description.
Release Date: July 14
The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell
Narrator: Zura Johnson
Length: 15 hours, 21 minutes
Description: Veteran audiobook narrator Zura Johnson takes listeners on a cozy journey through John Wiswell’s The Dragon Has Some Complaints. When the formerly four-headed, now three-headed dragon Garrodigh deceives his way into a dragon-riding academy by pretending to be tame, he finds something unexpected: Rania, the student who trains him, might just be able to get his bickering heads on the same page. Together, Garrodigh and Rania team up to protect the academy from the same outlaws who cut off Garrodigh’s fourth head. Wiswell previously won the 2024 Nebula Award for Best Novel for his book Someone You Can Build a Nest In.
Release Date: July 14
Not With a Bang by Temi Oh
Narrator: Nneka Okoye
Length: 12 hours, 30 minutes
Description: Not With a Bang is British Nigerian author and neuroscientist Temi Oh’s third novel. It’s also her third collaboration with voice actor Nneka Okoye, who narrated Oh’s first two novels, Do You Dream of Terra-Two? (which won the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Alex Award in 2020) and More Perfect. Publisher Saga Press describes Not With a Bang as a “family drama at the end of the world about a crumbling household’s attempts to find their way back to each other amidst a cataclysmic event.”
Release Date: July 14
Carry Me to My Grave by Christopher Golden
Narrators: Patricia Santomasso, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Robert Fass, and Alex Picard
Length: 10 hours, 25 minutes
Description: Voice actors Patricia Santomasso and Sean Patrick Hopkins return for another collaboration with New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden after narrating Golden’s 2025 novel The Night Birds. They’re joined by Robert Fass and Alex Picard, who round out the ensemble cast. Together, they narrate Carry Me to My Grave, which chronicles the journey of Malcolm and his sister-in-law, Violet, as they fight to get the body of Malcolm’s mother back to her hometown while malevolent forces race to hunt them down.
Release Date: July 21
Mudlark by Mary Helen Specht
Narrator: Alex Picard
Length: 11 hours
Description: In addition to lending her voice to Carry Me to My Grave, Alex Picard also narrates Mary Helen Specht’s Mudlark this month. In Mudlark, rock star Jenny Sweet is separated from her daughter, Neko, at Burning Man as a cataclysmic storm takes shape. Over a decade later, in the ruins of a devastated New York City, Neko searches for her mother, who disappeared after the festival.
Release Date: July 21
Null Entity by Seth Haddon
Narrator: Emily Gibbons Bouchard
Length: 5 hours, 51 minutes
Description: Volatile Memory, the first book in Seth Haddon’s duology of the same name, was a finalist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction. It followed Wylla, an intergalactic salvager who finds a one-of-a-kind piece of technology containing the consciousness of a woman named Sable and finds herself pursued by agents of VisorForge, the company that made the tech. Null Entity completes the series, and Emily Gibbons Bouchard returns to narrate the conclusion to Wylla and Sable’s quest for answers and vengeance upon VisorForge.
Release Date: July 21
The Felicity Complex by August Clarke
Narrator: Taylor Meskimen
Length: 10 hours, 40 minutes
Description: Taylor Meskimen, known for her work on the Kissing Booth series, narrates August Clarke’s The Felicity Complex. Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7, the novel on which Mickey 17 was based, calls The Felicity Complex “a very strange book,” so that should give you some idea of what you’re in for. Per Erewhon Books, “Annie Bot meets Fallout in this dystopian satire: six women created in a lab, designed to serve the billionaires of the future in a luxury fallout shelter, rebel against their programming after the end times arrive.”
Release Date: July 28
Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst
Narrator: Caitlin Davies
Length: 13 hours, 12 minutes
Description: Cailtin Davies returns to narrate Sea of Charms, the third of four novels in Sarah Beth Durst’s Spellshop series. This time, the ultra-popular romantasy series charts a course on the high seas as Marin, a ship captain and supply runner, finds herself falling for Dax, a stubborn composer whom Marin rescues from a burning city.
Release Date: July 28
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Read the full article here
