The perfect time for an audiobook

It’s the time of year where everyone jets off on their holidays: strapping wriggling toddlers into car seats and cajoling miserable teenagers out from their rooms. You pack everything once, twice. Check your passport. Remember something you’ve forgotten. Have to repack again. Worry if your bags are too heavy. Leave behind that book you’ve been itching to read because your case just won’t close.

I always tried to maximise how many books I could squeeze into my suitcase - often evicting socks and t-shirts to fit just one more in - but lately I’ve been really enjoying loading up my audiobook library before a trip.

Two great narrators of my audiobooks

On our recent trip across Europe, I was listening to Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly, which was a cracker (as all of his are). It felt like such a luxury to let my eyes close on the train and have the book read to me. As an author, the audiobook is where the story really comes alive and I’ve been so lucky to have so many fantastic actors give their voices to my books.

It’s very surreal to see Nicola Walker or Richard Armitage or Gemma Whelan on TV and realise they once spent three or four days in an audio studio reading my words into a microphone. Which have you listened to? Here’s a quick extract of The Weekend, read by Nicola Walker to get you started . . .