Arminta Wallacereviews the latest audiobooks
Does Anything Eat Wasps? Questions from the New Scientist's 'Last Word' column (Hodder & Stoughton audiobooks, 2 CDs, 2 hrs, £14.99 )
Last year's runaway bestseller and founder of a new genre of super-quirky pop science books gets even quirkier by making its audio debut. Actually, as anyone who listens to Guardian Unlimited'slively science podcasts will know, science works well between the ears and - like poetry - often sounds even better when you've heard it more than once. This selection of esoteric explanations answers questions you've never even thought of asking, from "How fat do you have to be to become bulletproof?" through "Does beheading hurt?" to the eponymous vespial inquiry (to which, incidentally, the answer is "almost everything, so there"). The replies are read by a team of actors in a variety of regional and international accents, and are occasionally contradictory - which just adds to the fun.
The Remains of an Altar By Phil Rickman, read by Julie Maisey (Quercus Audiobooks, 4 CDs, 5 hrs, £15.99 )
Sid Spicer and Merrily Watkins are an unlikely crime-fighting duo: he an ex-SAS man turned Anglican cleric, she a vicar and part-time exorcist (sorry, "deliverance consultant") in a neighbouring parish. In this outlandish yarn the pair face an unholy trinity of malign forces - drug dealers, proto-Celtic nutters and the ghost of Sir Edward Elgar. It's Midsomer Murderson hallucinogens; and it can only be a matter of time before it hits the small screen, so get in there first, folks. Julie Maisey reads with a tad too much of the kind of fake cheeriness that bedevils the Argos ring-and-reserve phone lines, but to her credit she produces an entire catalogue of entertaining characters, among them a Scouse cop, a Welsh boyfriend and a laid-back rocker called Lol.
Restless By William Boyd, read by Rosamund Pike (Bloomsbury, 8 CDs, unabridged, £50.00)
Rumours of the demise of the Cold War spy story have - thankfully - been grossly exaggerated, and William Boyd gives a masterclass in suspense in this coolly ironic take on the genre. Ruth Gilmartin is a single parent with a precocious son, a profitable part-time career teaching English to wealthy foreign business types, and an oh-so-English mother called Sally. Suddenly, though, Sally claims to be a Russian émigrée and ex-secret agent - and that someone's trying to kill her. Full marks to all concerned on this one, because it's the full Monty. No abridgement, and both reader Rosamund Pike and the DVD-style packaging - not a cheapo piece of brittle plastic in sight - are a delight.
All of These People: A Memoir By Fergal Keane, read by the author (HarperCollins AudioBooks, 5 CDs, 6 hrs, £15.99)
I've always loathed misery memoirs, and Fergal Keane's biographical raw material is as miserable as it gets; childhood with an alcoholic father followed by the realisation, in his early 30s, that he has fallen into the grip of the same disease. But Keane writes with such verve and grace, such searing emotional honesty and such acerbic wit that his book is as much celebration as confession - and being a professional broadcaster, he reads up a storm too. The overall effect is, dammit, inspirational: listen up, wannabe miserists.
Ghostwritten By David Mitchell, read by a cast of nine (Hodder & Stoughton audiobooks, 5 CDs, 6 hrs, £19.99)
I thought Cloud Atlastedious and Number9Dreamirritating, at least in their audio incarnations, so was in no mood to wrap my ears around David Mitchell's debut novel. But Ghostwrittenturns out to be an engrossing series of interlinked stories which flip across time and space in an engaging - if, at times, implausible - manner. From the Sarin nerve-gas attack in the Tokyo subway to art theft in St Petersburg via a physicist who's hiding from the CIA on her native Clear Island, Mitchell delves into the relationship between reality and the random - in an easygoing sort of way. Having a separate reader for each story is a good move, and Kerry Shale, Sandra Duncan and Gareth Armstrong are more than up to the task.