6 Audiobooks to Listen to This Winter

—Emilee Coblentz, packages editor, Outside

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 

I was born and raised in the South but now live in Colorado, and at least once a year, my husband, our two dogs, and I make the trek back east. It’s at least two days in the car, staring mostly at Kansas, and it’s a great time to get caught up on audiobooks. Where the Crawdads Sing is not new, but if you wrote it off because of its almost overwhelming popularity, I have to insist you listen to the audiobook. Read by Cassandra Campbell, the narration and writing weave together expertly to put you into coastal Carolina—into the marshes, the beaches, the wildlife-laden backroads. I really felt like I was visiting a barrier island, just like I did every summer growing up, and eating all the collards and cornbread that came with it. The dramatic twists and turns the novel takes were honestly a bonus to the intense sense of place I felt during the entire 12-hour runtime.

—Jessica Campbell-Salley, deputy editor, Outside

Small Game by Blair Braverman 

Outside columnist Blair Braverman’s novel Small Game follows Mara, a tough but guarded survivalist who joins a reality TV wilderness challenge mostly to escape her messy life. She’s trained, but nothing prepares her—or the ragtag group of contestants—for what actually happens when the cameras stop rolling and things start to go wrong. As food runs out and tensions spike, the group has to figure out how to rely on each other while also questioning what, exactly, they signed up for. It’s part survival thriller, part psychological study, and part meditation on what happens when the stories we tell ourselves start to run dry. The best part: Who better to write a reality TV survival story than someone who appeared on Naked and Afraid herself?

—Abigail Wise, brand director, Outside

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor 

Look, I realize this isn’t a book about climbing or camping or hunting for crawdads. But Antony Beevor’s narrative history about the turning point of World War II recently became my go-to listen during my early morning bike rides and hikes, so I’m going to include it on the list. Military histories are often dry and boring, reducing massive and chaotic periods of human history to analyses of battle tactics and weapons. Stalingrad, like Beevor’s other works, presents the human drama of these terrible moments in time. He brings to life the decision-makers as characters and presents the giant stakes riding on the choices they made. He writes about the bone-chilling cold, the brutality of hand-to-hand combat, and the suffering of the people involved in the struggle with vivid prose. No, it’s not glamorous or fun. Most of the story is unbelievably bleak. But the book has provided some valuable context for my own personal struggles and setbacks—hey, things could always be worse. I could have been at Stalingrad.

—Frederick Dreier, articles editor, Outside

Their Vicious Games by Joelle Wellington

This dark thriller brings the main character through a series of games that turn out to be deadly. The games are based in the outdoors, and each game requires grit, resilience, and expert-level outdoor survival skills. Each of the participants learn how to form alliances, shoot guns, and abandon their moral compasses in order to survive—and win—the games. It’s The Hunger Games, but all of the participants are rich, and the game creators are even richer and have their own motives behind creating these horrific games. 

—Ayana Underwood, senior health editor, Outside