6. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving an electronic communication; processing the electronic communication to determine that the electronic communication comprises a request for audio output of at least a portion of a textual work; determining a start position within the textual work at which the audio output is to begin, the start position corresponding to the request; determining that the start position is within a first contextual portion of the textual work, wherein first text data that corresponds to an entirety of the first contextual portion includes at least a first portion that precedes the start position and a second portion that follows the start position; with a text-to-speech (TTS) engine configured to synthesize speech based on input text, performing TTS processing on the first text data to determine first audio data corresponding to the second portion, the TTS processing including: accessing stored data that indicates how respective phonetic units in processed text are to be pronounced based at least in part on positions of the respective phonetic units relative to other elements in the processed text, determining, using the stored data and the first portion of the first text data, at least one prosodic characteristic corresponding to at least one phonetic unit associated with the second portion of the first text data, and determining the first audio data based at least in part on the at least one prosodic characteristic; determining an audio output component corresponding to the request; and causing audio, corresponding to the first audio data and beginning with audio corresponding to the second portion, to be output using the audio output component.
12. The computer-implemented method of claim 6 , further comprising: determining second text corresponding to an entire second contextual portion of text following the first contextual portion in the textual work; and beginning TTS processing on the second text prior to the first audio data completing output via the audio output component.