Tired of toting cumbersome hardbacks in holiday luggage? Opt for the audio version, on CD, tape, and available online to download straight on to your iPod or MP3 player. With an audio book for company, long journeys fly by. Heaven-sent for airport delays, they are also a boon for insomniacs and the perfect solution for anyone whose failing eyesight turns the pleasure of reading into a chore. In the case of audio, the ‘singer’ is as important as the ‘song’. Log on to the iTunes Store and you can listen to a preview for free. Here are five cracking titles that will keep you enthralled.

• A superb treat is William Boyd’s Restless, a passionate tale of love, betrayal and international intrigue on two continents. The story begins in Oxford in the searingly hot summer of 1976. Ruth is devastated when Sally, her respectable widowed mother, reveals that she is actually Eva Delectoskaya, a Russian émigré recruited during World War 2 by the charismatic British spy master Lucas Romer. One piece of the jigsaw puzzle remains missing and Sally asks her daughter to help put it in place. Alternating between Ruth’s travails as a single mother and Eva’s wartime escapades, it is brilliantly read by Rosamund Pike and Boyd at his best. British recommended retail price (RRP) is £30
  
• Set on the Californian coast, Roadside Crosses by Jeffrey Deaver begins when a highway patrol officer finds a home-made cross left by the roadside as a memorial. But it is dated for the following day, the same day police find a teenager tied up and left to die in the boot of a car on the shoreline. The motive is revenge by a criminal who inhabits the cyberworld. As further crosses appear, Special Agent Kathryn Dance finds herself navigating the world of social networking sites in a race to find the attacker; it’s a rollercoaster ride by the master of the ticking clock thriller, sensitively read by Lorelei King. Hodder & Stoughton. stg£14.67
  
• On the non-fiction front, best buy is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Sheer genius is the only way to describe Bryson as he rivets the listener, tackling eye-glazing subjects, from the Big Bang to quantum physics and everything in between. Three versions, abridged and unabridged, are available, two read by accomplished actors, but neither comes close to capturing Bryson’s own affable charm. Opt for the version read by the author. There are various versions – mine was published by Transworld, via Amazon stg£53.32
  
• Bryson made his name with a series of hilarious travel books and Bill Bryson Collector’s Edition comprises three titles which he reads himself. Notes from a Small Island is an acutely observed, rib-tickling social commentary on life in the UK as, with no planned itinerary, he wanders the length and breadth of the land. In Neither Here Nor There he retraces a journey round Europe made as a backpacker in his student days, going from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the edge of Asia. The third is I’m a Stranger Here Myself, a chronicle of his experiences returning to a small town in New Hampshire with his wife and four children after 20 years’ exile in England. No one can match Bryson’s ability to root out those quirky idiosyncracies that define every nation – wonderfully entertaining, and a heart-warming portrait of Bryson himself as traveller, husband and father. Random House Audio €23.95
  
• Wit doesn’t come more acerbic than that of Clive James, the inimitable author, critic and talk show host from Down Under. Cultural Amnesia is a brilliant collection of essays on 20th century influences, key figures in politics, the arts, history and science. James’s enthusiasms are eclectic, ranging from Camus to cool jazz, Fellini’s ‘penetrating social vision’ to the impeccable comic timing of Tony Curtis. His betes noires include Trotsky, Borges and Coco Chanel: he spares no punches when throwing the spotlight on the French designer’s flaws. A great audio book to dip in and out of; you’ll be dazzled by his erudition, and moved to tears by his humanity. Pan Macmillan stg£16.63