. Cross Channel, by Julian Barnes, read by Julian Barnes (Random House, 2 tapes, 3 hrs, £8.99 in UK)
These deceptively simple stories, brought to life with calm understatement by their author, place a series of more or less eccentric English folk into a series of more or less bizarre French situations. At once surreal and super- realistic, they trigger an indelible set of images in the mind of the listener: the irascible elderly composer who can't hear his work on the radio unless everyone in his northern French village stops using electricity for the duration of the concert; the disingenuous uncle Freddie, who spent an afternoon "talking smut" with Andre Breton and Jacques Prevert; the gentle "heretic"
family destroyed by mercenary foot-soldiers, Irish, as it happens, of "the King's religion". Perhaps only Barnes could straddle such an odd divide so effortlessly; the collection, in any case, is invested with a peculiar Anglo-French charm.
. Billie Whitelaw - Who He? By Billie Whitelaw, read by the author (Hodder Headline, 2 tapes, 3 hrs, £7.99 in UK)
On the face of it, Billie Whitelaw's progress from star of daytime radio to muse of Samuel Beckett is an incredible journey, but as she tells it here, in her unflappable northern tones, it seems entirely logical and reasonable. She presents a softer, gentler side of the playwright which, while it may not tell the whole story, certainly tells a moving one; and her recreation of a frail and failing Beckett singing the waltz theme from The Merry Widow to her, so that she could use it for the closing moments of Happy Days, is unforgettable.
. The X Files: Darkness falls, Humbug and X Marks the Spot, by Les Martin, read by Kerry Shale (HarperColl ins each 2 tapes, 2 hrs, £7.99 in UK)
What a difference a reader makes. Having listened to an X Files audiobook called Ground Zero, read with studied cool by the actress who plays Dana Scully in the cult TV series, Gillian Anderson, this column was not only semi-comatose, but at a loss to explain the appeal of the whole X Files phenomenon. And now here comes Kerry Shale, hurling himself at what is presumably the same sort of prose as if his life depended on it, and transforming it into a weird and wonderful adventure. I see the appeal now. Seeing aliens in the fridge, I suppose, can't be far behind.
. Mr Wright, by Ian Wright, read by Shane Richie (HarperCollins, 2 tapes, 2 hrs, £7.99 in UK)
The autobiography of the temperamental Arsenal striker is billed as explosive", but in truth it's fairly standard footballing stuff, of the "Gary Lineker good, referees bad" variety. Wright's career is perhaps unusual in that he came into football via the semi-professional London scene, and he never made an impact at international level; otherwise the chief interest lies in his brief spell in prison as a teenager - "hell on earth" - and his endearingly succinct religious outlook: "I fear God because he's powerful and jealous and if you don't do the right thing, then he'll smite you, man".
. Wicked Women, by Fay Weldon (HarperCollins, 2 tapes, 3 hrs, £7.99 in UK)
Weldon's biting satire is given a razor-sharp edge by bossy-voiced Patricia Hodge; the stories are brilliant, especially "Leda and the Swan", in which a swimming champion leaves her unsupportive, unfaithful, appalling husband on the eve of the Olympic finals. Just before the race, he phones her to say he can't live without their child and has taken an overdose: "Die then," she replies, and goes on to win the gold.
. Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland, read by Matthew Perry (HarperCollins, 2 tapes, 3 hrs, £7.99 in UK)
American popular culture still hasn't got Wayne's World out of its system, and here's another in the "I was a gawmless teenager before I grew up to be a gawmless-but-caring adult" series. This time the gawmless heroes are a bunch of unhappy computer nerds at Microsoft who set up an independent software company in somebody's garage. The spoof narrative tiptoes gently around the icons of geek culture so that if, for instance, you want to know what "bug-testers" do, or who "cyberlords" are, or how to say "pigging out" in a post-PC society (take it from me - you don't), all will be revealed; and reader Matthew Perry adopts the persona of the kind of irritating young American who makes every sentence into a question, as in, "Hi, I'm Matthew Perry?"
. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, read by Elizabeth McGovern (HarperCollins, 2 tapes, 3 hrs, £7.99 in UK)
Elizabeth Me Govern gives a necessarily downbeat but still powerful reading of this strange, bleak tale set in Puritan Boston in the mid-17th century. It's hard for a modern audience to swallow, but McGovern sugars the pill sufficiently to sustain the mesmeric atmosphere to the end.
. The information, by Martin Amis, read by David Threfall (Harpercollins, 2 tapes, 3 hrs, £7.99 in UK)
The most hyped, most fussed-over, £500,000-in-advance new Amis turns out to be the same as the old Amis - an almost cloyingly clever mixture of tired, seen-it-all-before London literati with upwardly mobile, inarticulate London lowlife. The comic sense is as finely-tuned as ever, but the occasional gratuitous outbreaks of misogyny make this listener, for one, a little wary of it all. David Threfall manages both the plummier and rougher voices with aplomb.
. Vertical Run, by Joseph R. Garber, read by Stephen Lang (Random House, 4 tapes, 6 hrs, £12.99 in UK)
We've all dreamt about it. You arrive for work early and are just hanging up your coat when your boss pulls a gun on you - and he isn't joking. It makes for a bad start to a day, and things don't get better for the hapless hero of this well-worked thriller as he discovers that pretty well everyone in his 45-floor office building is trying to kill him. Stephen Lang's genial, versatile voice keeps the listener on the right side of the story for the full six hours.
