Mystery, Drugs, Unstoppable Sex & Rachel Maddow: Nine Audio Books You Should Listen To

As we head into holiday season, many readers are gearing up for road trips. Best way to get through one? Audio books — they can be downloaded on your iPod or MP3 player or bought as CDs from several companies including the powerhouse Audible.com (which works with Amazon and offers a variety of price plans including one book a month for $14.95) and the fiesty newcomer AudioBooks.com (which lets you stream as many books as you like for a flat monthly fee of $29.95). Here are just nine of our fave audio books with LGBT content.

BY Diane Anderson-Minshall

October 25 2012 7:07 PM ET

Island of Vice by Richard Zacks ($45, Random House Audio)

Even if you're not a history buff, you might enjoy journalist and best-selling author Richard Zack's look at the lewd underbelly of New York in the late 1800s — and Teddy Roosevelt's crusade to clean it up (almost 120 years before Rudy Giuliani supposedly "cleaned up" Times Square). Narrated by Joe Ochman (who you'd recognize from turns on CSI and Criminal Minds). We learn about Roosevelt's strong moral convictions (he believed infidelity was a crime and his brother's alcoholism a form of insanity) and how that helped shape him as cocksure crusading cop. As police commissioner, Roosevelt went up against Tammany Hall, tried to crack down on brothels (including ones with gay hustlers and transgender sex workers), and banned drinking in bars on Sundays. It led to a bit of a revolt and Rosevelt discovered that New Yorkers even then loved sin more than salvation. (RandomHouseAudio.com)

Listen to an excerpt from Vice below