As Frank Sinatra used to sing, it was a very good year for audio books, and I heard twice as many good ones as the 10 I can cram onto this best-of list.

If the books on this list have anything in common, it's a complexity and texture that sees the world in far more than black and white. And that's a fine thought to bring with us into a new year that promises to be as complicated as any we've seen in a while.

Here, in order, is my 2006 Top Ten.

1. Between, Georgia, by Joshilyn Jackson, read by Jackson. Hachette Audio, unabridged, 9 hours. A novel to savor, to treasure, to admire, and most of all to listen to. It's the story of Nonny Jane Frett, an interpreter for the deaf, born in a tiny Georgia town and moved to a new life in the college town of Athens, but drawn back home by the family that adopted her, the one that gave her up, and a man who - like her - is stuck between two worlds. Throw in a no-good, too-sexy musician husband, some vicious dogs and a fire that threatens everything Nonny cares about, and you have a story that's nuanced, informed by a fabulous sense of place and character, and ringingly alive.

2. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, read by William Hope and Laurel Lefkow. HighBridge Audio, unabridged, 17¾ hours. What would it be like to be able to travel through time - but not be able to control your journeys? And how would it feel to love that time traveler, and be constantly left behind as he vanished from your life unpredictably and returned (you hoped) at some equally unknowable moment? It might feel something like the lives of Henry and Clare, the couple at the center of this excellent first novel that explores the triumphs and tensions of a thoroughly unconventional, but totally believable, relationship.

3. The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan, read by Tolan. HighBridge Audio, unabridged, 11 hours. Bashir Khairi was 6 years old when his family was forced out of their beautiful home in an Arab town in 1948, becoming refugees in Jordan during the war that led to Israeli independence. Dalia Eshkenazi was not quite a year old a few months later when her Jewish family, seeking a life better than the rapidly deteriorating conditions in postwar Bulgaria, bought the empty house with the lemon tree in the backyard from the new Israeli government.

When Bashir knocked on now-19-year-old Dalia's door in 1967, after another war had left them on the same side of a newly redrawn border, Dalia invited him in - an act that led to a decades-long friendship and some understanding, if not agreement, about what should be done with the property that Arabs have lost and Jews have gained since 1948.

4. Love in the Present Tense, by Catherine Ryan Hyde, read by David Coburn, Jeremy Redleaf and Duana Speights. Random House Audio, abridged, 5 hours. This terrific novel traces the lives of two people who, at first blush, would not seem likely to have ever crossed paths. That the improbable friendship between a 25-year-old marketing whiz and the impoverished 5-year-old boy who lives next door blossoms into the credible, selfless love of a father and son is a tribute both to the fine writing of Hyde, who also wrote Pay It Forward, and to excellent performances by the book's three readers. There are secrets, principles and betrayals along the way, a mother who disappears and a boy who struggles mightily to get over his loss - creating a plot that's emotionally laden without being overwrought.

5. The Defining Moment, by Jonathan Alter, read by Grover Gardner. Audio Editions, unabridged, 12½ hours. The first 100 days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency constituted one of the key points in American history, writes journalist Alter: a time when the economy was so bad that people hungered for a dictator, and the fate of democracy was held in the hands of one man. Alter shows how Roosevelt's background, especially his battle with polio, uniquely equipped him for this turbulent, decisive time.

6. Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood, by Benjamin Alire Saenz, read by Robert Ramirez. Listening Library, unabridged, 9 hours. The Hollywood of the title isn't the film world's glamour capital, but a poor neighborhood in Las Cruces, N.M., whose ironic name is a joke on its Hispanic residents. This excellent, moving teen novel - one that works for adults as well - follows the life of one teenage boy in the 1960s as he discovers many shades and flavors of love and loss.

7. Babylon by Bus, by Ray Lemoine and Jeff Neumann with Donovan Webster, read by Jeremy Davidson. Penguin Audio, unabridged, 8 hours. Lemoine and Neumann had a thriving business selling bootleg " "Yankees suck" T-shirts outside Fenway Park, but they also had an itch for adventure. When the 2003 baseball season ended, they didn't just want to travel to some Asian beach and lie there, or backpack around Europe one more time. Instead, they went to Baghdad - and found themselves coordinating American aid to Iraqi non-governmental organizations (what we'd call nonprofits). Their front-line view as Baghdad spun out of control makes for compelling listening, and their anger over the lost opportunity to change Iraqi life for the better is palpable.

8. The Brooklyn Follies, by Paul Auster, read by Auster. Harper Audio, unabridged, 8 hours. This wise, warm novel is narrated by one Nathan Glass, a retired insurance salesman ready to die and obsessed with the mistakes he - and everyone he knows - has made over a lifetime of blown chances. Then, by happenstance, Nathan reconnects with his nephew, a failed academic, and their lives become intertwined, not only with one another but with an increasingly large set of supporting players, each of whom adds to the rich brew that Nathan's existence becomes as he reenters the world of the emotionally living.

9. Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, by David Maraniss, read by Maraniss. Simon & Schuster Audio, abridged, 6 hours. An excellent look by Pulitzer winner Maraniss at the life of the contradictory baseball star Roberto Clemente - a man, not a saint, but a man with extraordinary talents who lived the life of a racial pioneer with unusual grace and skill.

10. Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes, by T Cooper, read by Kirby Heyborne. Penguin Audio, unabridged, 13½ hours. This oddly gripping novel is divided into two parts. The first part offers a look at the conviction of one Esther Lipshitz, a Russian Jew whose blond 5-year-old son vanishes as she comes ashore at Ellis Island in 1907, that the heroic aviator Charles Lindbergh really is her missing Reuven. It sounds like a bizarre comedy, but it's not played for laughs, unfolding against a fine tapestry of Jewish life in New York and Texas in the early 20th century. The second half abruptly switches to post-9/11 New York, where Esther's great-grandchild Cooper, a rapper-bar mitzvah emcee who may or may not be the author, suddenly becomes the main character. The two parts ultimately offer a strange mediation on the power of genetics to shape a life.