1. Erotic Vagrancy by Roger Lewis
A gloriously gossipy portrait of Hollywood power couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Roger Lewis’s twin biography is read with just the right amount of archness by actor Justin Avoth. The “erotic vagrancy” of the title refers to a statement issued by the pope during the pair’s brazen antics in Rome while filming Cleopatra when they frolicked on a yacht in full view of the paparazzi. Both were married, but not to each other.
Available via Riverrun, 22hr 58min
2. James by Percival Everett
This Pulitzer prize-winning retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is seen through the eyes of “Jim”, an enslaved Black man and friend of teen runaway Huck and his pal Tom Sawyer. It is read by Dominic Hoffman, whose performance is wry and charismatic, highlighting the code-switching of the protagonist and giving the character an agency denied him by Twain.
Available via Mantle, 7hr 49min
3. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Patchett brought in the big guns for the audio version of her novel about a family who are reunited for the cherry harvest on their Michigan farm. Meryl Streep gives terrific voice to matriarch Lara and her three adult daughters Maisie, Emily and Nell. As they set to work, the girls quiz their mother about an idyllic summer in her youth when she joined a production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, during which she had an affair with the leading man.
Available via Bloomsbury, 11hr 22min
4. You Are Here by David Nicholls
Nicholls’s sixth romcom is ideally set up for a dual narration, which comes courtesy of actors Lydia Leonard and Lee Ingleby. Leonard is Marnie, a divorced copy editor from London who has come to the Lake District for a group hike along Alfred Wainwright’s coast-to-coast route. Leading the walkers is Ingleby’s Michael, an earnest geography teacher with a passion for rock formations. The pair are frosty at first but, as others in the group flake out, they find they have more in common than they thought.
Available via WF Howes, 8hr 27min
5. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Move over David Suchet, there’s a new Hercule Poirot in town. This adaptation of Christie’s first novel stars Peter Dinklage as the moustached sleuth called to investigate an incident at an Essex country house. Emily is a widow who has recently remarried a man 20 years her junior. When she cries out in the night, her adult children find her bedroom is locked from the inside. But when they break down the door, she is already dead.
Available via Audible Originals, 3hr 53min
6. A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown
You don’t have to be a royalist to enjoy this portrait of Elizabeth II, expertly narrated by Harriet Walter, which also examines the psyche of her subjects. Instead of a biographical account, it is a patchwork of news reports, documentary excerpts, letters, diary entries, overheard anecdotes and even dreams. From these we learn that Kingsley Amis loaded up on Imodium before meeting Her Majesty lest he fart in her orbit and that Paul Theroux dreamed about leaning his head in her bosom.
Available via 4th Estate, 19hr 46min
7. The Lost Loves of Boysie Singh by Ingrid Persaud
A fictionalised account of a real-life gangster from Trinidad, Persaud’s evocative novel tells of a pirate who terrorised the inhabitants of Port of Spain and the Gulf of Paria in the 1940s and 50s. Told in Trinidadian dialect by four women with whom he was involved, it is alternately narrated by Persaud (who reads Mana Lala), Melanie La Barrie (Popo), Martina Laird (Doris) and Chanel Quesnel (Rosie). Each give lively and nuanced readings as they provide troubling glimpses into the life of a charismatic yet dangerous man.
Available via Faber, 14hr 11min
8. The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
The world is not short of versions of Highsmith’s novel – the first of five – about a scammer who inveigles his way into the lives of the rich and well heeled, but this audio edition is excellent. Actor David Menkin shines as Tom Ripley, who blends guilelessness and duplicity as he wins the trust of Dickie Greenleaf, son of a shipping magnate, who is living the high life on Italy’s Amalfi coast.
Available via Little Brown Audio, 9hr
9. Rosarita by Anita Desai
A captivating tale of identity and discovery, Desai’s novella opens with Bonita being accosted by an elderly stranger who recognises her as the daughter of an old friend from art school. This triggers memories of a painting that hung in Bonita’s childhood home that, in turn, leads her to explore her family’s past. Narrator Meera Simhan leans into the dreamlike quality of Desai’s prose in which reality and imagination collide.
Available via Picador, 2hr 33min
10. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
“Do you know what it feels like when you dive?” asks six-year-old Sophie. “Of course I do,” replies her grandmother. “You let go of everything … And you glide.” Set on a tiny Finnish island, this 1972 novella by the Moomins creator Tove Jansson finds the pair beach combing, making up stories, bickering and laughing. All the while, Sophie’s grandmother teaches her young charge about respect for nature. Julie Walters’s narration is a delight: her Sophie is insistent and curious while her grandmother is variously playful, cranky and wise.
Available via Saga Egmont, 4hr 1min
