Bestselling Author's Novel Ranked Among ‘Best Audiobooks' of All Time
When it comes to readers' favorite audiobooks, The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a No. 1 pick.
Goodreads has a list of the best audiobooks as voted on by the platform's users. Of the thousands of books featured, The Helpoutranks all the others. Rounding out the top five are Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and Bossypants by Tina Fey.
The Help's audiobook is narrated by Cassandra Campbell, Jenna Lamia, Octavia Spencer and Bahni Turpin. The audiobook won the fiction and distinguished achievement in production categories at the 2010 Audie Awards, which honored the best titles in audio publishing during the previous year. It was also Audible's 2009 pick for Audiobook of the Year.
Published in February 2009, The Help is a historical fiction book that follows Black maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s. Stockett's debut novel spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, selling millions of copies of both the print and audiobook editions.
The Help was later adapted into a 2011 film starring Spencer (Minerva "Minny" Jackson), Emma Stone (Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan), Viola Davis (Aibileen Clark), Bryce Dallas Howard (Hillary "Hilly" Walters Holbrook), Jessica Chastain (Celia Rae Foote), Allison Janney (Charlotte Phelan), Cicely Tyson (Constantine Jefferson) and Sissy Spacek (Mrs. Walters).
For her performance, Spencer, 55, won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 2012. The movie earned three additional Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role for Davis, 60, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Chastain, 49.
In a 2009 interview with Audible, Stockett, 57, revealed how Spencer ended up narrating The Help's audiobook prior to embodying the role of Minny in the film adaptation.
"Before the book was even recorded, I wanted Octavia Spencer to play the part of Minny because she's so incredible, she projects so well, her voice, she's an actress in Los Angeles, and really she was, in her mannerisms and gestures, she was my inspiration for Minny," she explained at the time. "I think publishers and recording studios are very wary when the author recommends a friend … and they said, ‘OK, fine, but she has to audition.' And they were blown away."
Now, 17 years after The Help's debut, Stockett is preparing to release her second novel, The Calamity Club, on May 5. The story centers around a group of women navigating the Great Depression in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933.
"The pressure was definitely on," she told The New York Times in March 2025 of writing her follow-up book. "The fear of failure, it really weighs on a writer."
Stockett started working on The Calamity Club in 2013. After seven years and approximately 800 pages written, she nearly gave up on the book in 2020, but she ultimately persisted. More than a decade after she began the process of crafting her second novel, Stockett is leaving behind any expectations about how her next book might be received.
"I can't believe it happened then," she said of The Help's success, "and I have no idea what's going to happen this time around either."
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This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 5:19 PM.