Audiobooks for book-skeptics.

Robert Heinlein wrote a bunch of short books, as well as some longer ones. Might I suggest "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" or "Starman Jones"?

Philip K Dick had several anthologies of short stories, most of it fantastically insane, some of it absolutely brilliant, many extremely thought-provoking and many very funny too.

Apart from that, Alfred Bester's 2 books are both great - "The Stars My Destination" and "The Demolished Man". The former is particularly good, but both are exceptionally well written with a dynamic sense of urgency.

An awesome comic fantasy book is "The Princess Bride" - if you're familiar with the film, I'd say the book is actually far better, and if you've never really enjoyed reading before, that is an example which has the advantage of being hilarious.

Many of the fantasy books which I really love are probably a little on the longer side. "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" & "The Name of the Wind" are probably my favourites, but the Mistborn series is close behind and I don't recall the individual novels being particularly long. Another which I really have to recommend is "The Lies of Locke Lamora", a kind of fantasy heist book written in quite a gritty, contemporary style (and it works very well on its own, but is also the beginning of the "Gentleman Bastards" series, if you want to keep going).

So many great tips and links in this nice thread. Thanks for opening it.

Adding my two cents worth:
The Calibre Audio Library
It's a massive library of audiobooks available for download or streaming, for a one-time subscription fee of £35
It's not free per se but if you buy a couple of audiobooks anywhere, you'll pay more than 35 pounds for sure so it's a great deal.
You have access to 11,000 unabridged audiobooks for the price of a couple of books basically. No yearly subscription or added cost.
And unlike Librivox, which is limited to public domain books, there are all kinds of books, from many genres, including recent novels etc. (they add about 30 books each month) and they're all official releases.

Technically, it was created for people who have dyslexia, a sight problem or another disability but they're just asking as a matter of form on the application and they're not asking for any medical paper or anything.

And another link, this one a freebie if you don't mind old time plays and movies (from the 30ies and 40ies), the Internet Archive provides free access to hundreds of episodes of Lux Radio Theatre like The Maltese Falcon and a lot of Noir movies, Hitchcock thrillers and other dramas.
More info on 10 years of radio dramas, with cast at Wikipedia

more BBC, even more 42

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

by BBC Radio 4
(1978 radio version)

with:

1 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
2 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
3 Life, the Universe and Everything
4 So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
5 Mostly Harmless
6 And Another Thing...

https://archive.org/details/hhgttgall6

Has anyone suggested Welcome to Nightvale? The episodes are half-an-hour long, but it's in the style of a news broadcast, so you can probably stop part-way through an episode when it's between news stories and simply pick up from where you left off later (at least, for the earlier episodes; I haven't listened to it in a while).

Free Public Domain stuff i would say "Librivox" is a very good way to go. Everything done by volunteers so quality varies hard. I would advise go by genre and if you find a reader you like just stick to their recordings. Also Librivox is very user friendly: Straight up listen in browser/download the whole book as a zip file options ,no registration needed.

I for example occasionally like some pulpy Scifi stories Mark Nelson is a rather professional reader for stuff like that https://librivox.org/reader/251?primary_key=251&search_category=reader&search_page=1&search_form=get_results
Greg Margarite is quite good as well
https://librivox.org/reader/3490

If you want a bit more free "Indi stuff" i would suggest scribl.com. You would have to register there (just a valid emailadress is enough)
Admittedly the navigation of this site is really not great (its predecessor "podiobooks" was much better) and the site is pretty dead nowadays. It started quite a few years before patreon became a thing and lots of authors just wrote and recorded their works uploadad them there and asked for donations. Anyhow there are still a few hundred completely free good quality books to find there and some authors even moved on to play in the big leagues so to speak. Like Scott Sigler for example ( who still give the podcast versions of his books away for free on his site https://scottsigler.com/ )

https://scribl.com/browse?page=1&bf=podcasts&ac=0&bt=story here the list with the unfiltered (the sites filter sucks) free stuff
Authors to look for here
Scott Sigler (if you want it bloody)
Mike Bennet (Underwood an Flinch good Vampire stuff)
Joe Cottonwood (slice of life stuff /relaxing as fuck)
Blake M. Petit (superheroe stuff)
Murr Lafferty
Michael J Parry
Tee Morris (the case of the singing sword is a pretty unique story and not too long)
Nathan Lowell (slice of live but in scifi scenario)

You can simply use https://librivox.bookdesign.biz (not associated librivox) and let the site guide you to those authors. Its more a tool for navigating when it comes to free audiobooks.

Haven't tried audiobooks because I tend to ignore them if I'm doing something else.

The shortest thing that I know of is Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott. (Just a heads up, it's an old book, 1880-ish)
If you're fine with a collection of stories, try The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem (1960-ish)
If you can find an audiobook for it, try Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. I'm not sure with the length of this one but I think it can be finished in a day. It's a fantasy book for young adults so there's that YA atmosphere/feel in it.
Oh, and I gotta agree with those HHGG recommendations. Don't forget that towel.

I mostly read books, not audiobooks - so I'm not really sure which ones were turned into audio. So I will just mention two authors.

Terry Pratchett - especially stories about Ankh-Morpork City Watch (Discworld) - Guards! Guards! (1989), Men at Arms (1993), Feet of Clay (1996), Jingo (1997), The Fifth Elephant (1999), Night Watch (2002), Thud! (2005) and Snuff (2011).

Aside being my favorite, they're basically written like fantasy detective novels.

Discworld is marked as humor fantasy series, but it isn't just "silly thing", actually, despite tons of puns and references, Pratchett often touches some very serious topics - he's just presenting them in... specific manner.

His books aren't "super" short, but still shorter than most fantasy/s-f novels I had in my hands.
Now, you might be scared of amount of books in the series, but keep in mid that almost each book is independent, finished story. Books share same universe and often some characters, they have continuity, but you don't have to read them all or read them in order

They're basically written like this: if you're old fan of the series you will notice more "inside jokes" and know bit more about characters, but as new reader you probably won't even notice you're missing something (first half of tittles in the series i was reading in random order and never had problems).

As to price - I'm not really sure welp I pirated them :|, but in my defense I brought several books from "Discworld" series and was using audiobooks mostly as "help tool" when I decided to re-read some books in original language (english isn't my first), but at this point it's older and rather popular series so you shouldn't have problems with finding nice deal.

Other than that t that books of Neil Gaiman - good, usually bit darker (more "climatic darker" than "gore"), very specific fantasy, most novels aren't too long (I think Neverwhare is my favorite), plus he have written a lot of short stories (for example check out collection Smoke and Mirrors).

I love audiobooks! My biggest tip going into it is find some narrators you enjoy, there's going to be some you don't get on with so "preview" them or DNF if you hate the voice as it'll make you dislike the book regardless. There's definitely some mediocre ones out there, but a lot of fantastic ones that can make the book even better imo. The app I love to use is Overdrive, if your library has it (not sure the extent of countries it is available to) is such a great source for audiobooks. I also managed to get an "online library card" for a massive city VIA
e-mail since they have a much larger selection. Could be worth seeing if a library in your state/country offers that.

I've not seen the recent film with all the (over?)hype but I loved Bird Box. I feel it's paced well and easy to get into, the audiobook made the whole scenario feel that much more real and nerve-wracking, binged it a few years ago. (9 hrs)
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is a non-fiction book that's basically Mythbusters meets Bill Nye. A nerdy science-y fun podcast of sorts. (6 hrs)
And one of my favourites is The Girl With All the Gifts, though possibly not the best for a first audiobook (lil slower at parts)? Love the narrator and really unique take on the story. (13 hrs)
I'd also recommend any Neil Gaiman audiobook if it fancies your interest. He writes (mostly) shorter fantasy-esque books. My personal favourites are The Graveyard Book, Norse Mythology and The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

I dislike reading but recently got into audiobooks, about three months ago, and I am able to listen while at work. I'm really into fantasy book.

I second Brandon Sanderson's books, pretty much all of them. So far, I have gone through Steelheart, Infinity Blade Awakening, and Skyward. These books are about medium length, and I enjoyed all of them.

I also finished the Lightbringer series and the Kingkiller Chronicles. These books are massive and amazing. I listened to these first when I started audiobooks back in Nov.

I am currently on the 2nd book of the Night Angel series, but this book isn't as good as the ones above.

I've gotten all of these audiobooks for free from youtube or my local library, their app is overdrive.