9 Answers2025-08-19
The standard lists of the best free audiobooks are somewhat lacking for fans of genre fiction. Although many classic works of literature are now in the public domain, for fans of mystery, science fiction, and horror, works published in the mid-20th century are not included. Most library apps provide access to free audiobooks, but websites that offer free audiobooks are also available, with some pockets of gems.
The best way to search for specific genre work is to ask within your community of interest. Reddit threads for sites like r/printSF or r/horrorlit can offer more insight into the vast archives of public domain work than any general free audiobook site, like the front page of LibriVox. I might suggest searching for a collection within the Internet Archive rather than a general "best free audiobook" list. Your mileage may vary depending on your interests.
So always search for resources within your specific interest community. These resource lists are often specific to a single genre and therefore include far more relevant material than the ‘best of’ type lists that are aimed at everyone in general.
6 Answers2025-08-20
I have listed below:
Onlinebooks
Baenebooks
10 Answers2025-10-22
That’s interesting, I have always done a search for free Kindle books and then clicked on the first link to a blog that comes up that lists free Kindle books. I have heard that the subreddits for free eBooks are far superior, maybe I will have to check them out.
11 Answers2025-08-21
While searching for ‘Warhammer 40k audio’ on SoundCloud and filtering for long tracks, I stumbled upon an untapped goldmine of totally unexpected material: Fan-made radio plays filled with Sound Effects as well as guys reading long short stories from various Black Library Anthologies.
Many creators who put their Warhammer 40k content up online have Patreon accounts and so put a lot of work into their longer-form work. As a sample, however, many create the first 3 or so episodes of a series and then put them up on SoundCloud for free. There’s one creator in particular of original material who I follow, his long-form story about a specific Imperial Guard regiment was excellent and completely unlike anything I’d read before. Most of his work would likely never be published through the Black Library as it’s too ‘weird’ or ‘avant-garde’ for the institution.
10 Answers2025-08-11
To access information specific to certain genres, I heavily rely on fan communities for certain authors. For example, if you’re a fan of Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón, there are many online forums where fans trade information and resources. Someone in one of these forums may have put together a list of all of a given author’s free short stories and novellas, even all of his interviews where he reads from a new work in progress. That kind of information is deep and accurate and can come from some very passionate people who just want to spread the word about an author and his work. For example, they’d know if a particular short story had appeared as a free excerpt in a newspaper, among other things. I don’t think of this kind of information in terms of a database or warehouse, but rather of very specialized, fan-moderated intelligence. And the best part is, it’s so much fun to browse through the many resources and insights provided by another avid fan of the same genre and author.
4 Answers2025-07-21
For long legal free reads you can look to websites like Project Gutenberg for the classics and then the official websites of many publishers as well as apps and websites like Wattpad or Webnovel which have huge quantities of free content that is usually supported by advertising or that is offered as free to read. It depends on what sort of genre you are looking for. For example on some of the platforms mentioned previously you can read ‘SINFUL PLEASURES: Short Flithy Stories’. It is a free read and is made up of short stories of a provocative nature, each story can be read in just a few chapters, perfect for short bursts of engrossing reading without a long term commitment.
8 Answers2026-07-15
Spotify does have some audiobooks. The app isn't really designed for listening to them. For starters I recall you can't even add bookmarks, which makes the experience pretty clunky. It’s better to stick to music there.
4 Answers2025-06-07
I get to listen to free audiobooks on the site of a wonderful volunteer-run library of public domain books: Librivox. Here you can find free audiobooks of classics like ‘Dracula’ and ‘The Secret Garden’ as well as many others read by volunteers in different voices and styles. There is also Loyal Books – a website that offers free ebooks and audiobooks for children as well as classic novels. Many authors also post free samples of their audiobooks on Audible’s website as well as on their YouTube channels. And if you have a local library, you can also access free audiobooks and ebooks through their apps including Hoopla, which has a large collection of audiobooks as well as ebooks, music, movies and more that you can download or stream for free with just a library card.
12 Answers2025-08-02
I use a lot of rules for what kinds of things look good on Reddit based on their appearance. So, a single link with no surrounding text gets ignored. A link with some surrounding text that explains why this mirror is different from others and perhaps why you should use an adblocker? That's highly promising. A comment consisting of a list of well-known websites (e.g. LibGen, Anna's Archive, Z-Library) with no links? Most often those are the safest bets, as people assume that the reader already knows how to find those sites and are therefore writing for someone with at least a little knowledge.
This means I tend to judge posts on a scale of low to high effort and associate high-effort with helpful and low-effort with risk. Therefore, I find this rule to be applicable across all subreddits, regardless of topic, and it tends to focus more on the quality of the individual’s response rather than the community in which it was posted.
7 Answers2025-07-17
You can also use Bing Search.