Summer Listens

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Whether you wish to be whisked away with a summer romance, escape with a gripping thriller or cosy crime, engrossed in a fantasy or sci-fi world, we have your perfect summer companion. Discover our Editor’s selection of this summer’s hottest novels and the unmissable audiobooks and podcasts in the Plus Catalogue. Barbara Kingsolver, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2023, also shares her top summer listens.

This summer's hot list

Popular recent releases and top trending listens, these are the best-selling and the most anticipated audiobooks you won't want to miss.
Product list
  • Summer Reading cover art

    • Summer Reading

    • By: Jenn McKinlay
    • Narrated by: Kelsey Navarro Foster
    • Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
    • Release date: 20-07-23
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 3 ratings
    • romantic comedy | contemporary
    • Sam set out to spend the summer resurrecting her career as a chef but instead, has to chaperone her half-brother to a robotics competition at the local library. And naturally, because the universe hates her, the library's interim director, Ben, turns out to be the Hot Reader Guy whose book she accidentally destroyed on the ferry to the island. Sam doesn't do reading. Ben doesn't do romantic relationships. But when Ben inspires Sam to create the cookbook she's always dreamed about, they discover there might be more than just a creative spark between them...

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  • The Nice Guy cover art

    • The Nice Guy

    • By: Sarah A. Denzil
    • Narrated by: Rosie Cavaliero
    • Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
    • Release date: 06-07-23
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 682 ratings
    • domestic thriller | narrated by Rosie Cavaliero
    • Laura thought she’d found the one nice guy in New York City. When Ethan saves her from a crushing crowd on Brooklyn Bridge, their connection is dazzling. Worthy of a heat-filled passionate night. Laura falls pregnant from their one-night stand—a miracle considering her past fertility issues. Ethan is attentive and wonderful at first. She hopes he will be the kind of father she’d always wanted for herself. Until his attentiveness turns to obsession. His questions become demands. Why didn’t she answer her phone or respond to his messages? Why won’t she move in with him and his rich mother? Soon Laura realises the father of her child is a controlling sociopath. And there’s no telling the lengths Ethan will go to in order to keep baby Christopher for himself. Laura will stop at nothing to save her baby boy. But is she too late?

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  • The Saint of Lost Things cover art

    • The Saint of Lost Things

    • By: Tish Delaney
    • Narrated by: Bronagh Waugh
    • Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
    • Release date: 01-04-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 13 ratings
    • rural Ireland | fiction
    • There was a time when Lindy Morris escaped to London and walked along the Thames in the moonlight. When life was full and exciting. Decades later, Lindy lives with her Auntie Bell back on the edge: on the edge of Donegal and on the edge of Granda Morris's land. Granda Morris is a complicated man, a farmer who wanted sons but got two daughters: Auntie Bell and Lindy's mother, who disappeared long ago. Now, Lindy and Bell live the smallest of lives, in a cottage filled with unfulfilled dreams. But when the secrets they have kept for thirty years emerge, everything is rewritten. Will Lindy grasp who she is again?

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  • The Ghost Theatre cover art

    • The Ghost Theatre

    • By: Mat Osman
    • Narrated by: Ellie Kendrick
    • Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
    • Release date: 11-05-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
    • Elizabethan London | love and betrayal
    • 'From the first word to the last, this story delivers a series of glittering images, daubed in stage makeup and plastered in the fine down of feathers. Like Osman’s first novel, The Ruins, the vivid language leaves you with indelibly etched scenes which stay with you long after you set down the book.' - Mrs Clare Moses, Audible listener

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  • Whips cover art

    • Whips

    • By: Cleo Watson
    • Narrated by: Olivia Dowd, Cleo Watson
    • Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
    • Release date: 25-05-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
    • political satire | fiction
    • Riotous and all too believable, Whips is a timely satire on politics and Party people. Watson takes us behind the doors of Number 10 and delivers a gripping tale of modern government, filled with intrigue and scandal and written with insight and verve. Whips delivers on every promise.

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  • Bad Summer People cover art

    • Bad Summer People

    • By: Emma Rosenblum
    • Narrated by: January LaVoy
    • Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
    • Release date: 08-06-23
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 21 ratings
    • infidelity, backstabbing, and murderous intrigue
    • ' Bad Summer People is a great summer page-turner packed with sun-soaked secrets, outrageous scandals and salacious gossip. Its cast of gloriously terrible one-percenters and the caustic wit dripping from each page make this a perfect rich-people-behaving-badly beach read. Loved it!' - Ellery Lloyd, author of The Club

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  • Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants cover art

    • Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants

    • By: Paul David Gould
    • Narrated by: Alexander Terentyev, Tom Prior
    • Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
    • Release date: 08-06-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
    • historical mystery | secrets and betrayal
    • Moscow, 1993. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have brought unimaginable change to Russia. With this change come new freedoms: freedom to travel abroad and to befriend Westerners, freedom to make money, and even the freedom for an underground gay scene to take root.

      Encouraged by the new climate of openness, twenty-one-year-old Kostya ventures out of the closet and resolves to pursue his dreams: to work in the theatre and to find love as his idol Tchaikovsky never could. Those dreams, however, lead to tragedy – not only for Kostya, but for his mother and for the two young men he loves, as all three face up to the ways they have betrayed him.

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  • Chapter One cover art

    • Chapter One

    • By: Michael Wood
    • Narrated by: Stephen Hogan, Lucy Paterson
    • Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
    • Release date: 29-06-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 259 ratings
    • from the author of The Seventh Victim | copycat killer | psychological thriller
    • For years, Aidan Cullen has dreamed of becoming a successful crime writer. When his hard work finally pays off and his first book is published, what should have been a night of celebration unravels into an evening of horror. Left for dead after a brutal attack, trauma leaves him paranoid and reclusive, and he retreats to the remote countryside with only his dog Nanook for company. With the world kept at arm’s length, he begins to feel safe. That is, until a woman is murdered at the end of his road.

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  • Banyan Moon cover art

    • Banyan Moon

    • By: Thao Thai
    • Narrated by: Catherine Ho, Cindy Kay, Elyse Dinh-McCrillis
    • Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
    • Release date: 27-06-23
    • Language: English
    • 5 out of 5 stars 1 rating
    • family life | historical fiction | inherited burdens and buried secrets
    • Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance.

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  • More Me with You cover art

    • More Me with You

    • By: Alex Bertie
    • Narrated by: Harrison Knights
    • Length: 2 hrs and 55 mins
    • Release date: 15-06-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 85 ratings
    • LGBTQ+ | romance | contemporary
    • 'Alex Bertie is a brilliant writer. His style is so natural and inclusive. The easy familiarity of his characters' dialogue draws you into their world completely. How great to find a novel about transgender relationships, revealing the insecurities and uncertainties they have to face in the search for love. I felt so close to Will and Ben and would love to read further novels about them.' - Bramblekate, Audible listener

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  • Romantic Comedy cover art

    • Romantic Comedy

    • By: Curtis Sittenfeld
    • Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
    • Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
    • Release date: 06-04-23
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 136 ratings
    • romantic comedy | contemporary
    • A TV script writer thinks she's over romance, until an unlikely love interest upends all her assumptions: a humorous, subversive and tender-hearted novel from the New York Times and Sunday Times best-selling author of Rodham, American Wife and Prep.

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  • Murder in Bermuda cover art

    • Murder in Bermuda

    • By: James Patterson, Aaron Tracy, Thaddeus McCants
    • Narrated by: Mary-Louise Parker, Ronald Peet, Kim Aria Peterson, full cast
    • Length: 4 hrs
    • Release date: 24-05-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 38 ratings
    • thriller | a deadly game of cat and mouse
    • Brilliant, silver-tongued Beth Heller (Mary-Louise Parker) is a lawyer with one client: her family's criminal empire...From the mind of author James Patterson, Murder in Bermuda is an edge-of-your seat, hair-raising listen cowritten by Aaron Tracy ( The Coldest Case) and Thaddeus McCants (winner of the 2020 BET Project Crea8 writing competition).

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  • Translation State cover art

    • Translation State

    • By: Ann Leckie
    • Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
    • Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
    • Release date: 06-06-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 56 ratings
    • merging space adventure and mystery | award-winning author
    • The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across the stars in this powerful novel by award-winning author Ann Leckie.

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  • The Housekeepers cover art

    • The Housekeepers

    • By: Alex Hay
    • Narrated by: Jasmine Blackborow
    • Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
    • Release date: 06-07-23
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
    • historical | heist
    • 'Imagine Ocean's 8 had an illegitimate baby with Fingersmith - a big fat diamond of a book.' - Erin Kelly

      Dazzling, stylish and wildly entertaining, The Housekeepers lets loose an outlandish alliance of women you'll never forget...

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  • No Comment cover art

    • No Comment

    • By: Jess McDonald
    • Narrated by: Jess McDonald
    • Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
    • Release date: 22-06-23
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 54 ratings
    • candid memoir | life as a Met detective
    • No Comment is Jess' candid, eye-opening and often shocking account, exploring the reality of being a detective in the Met and being responsible for 'keeping London safe for everyone'. In her incisive book she explores the challenges of life on the front line, dealing almost exclusively with serious crimes against women, and what that reveals about the Met Police now.

      'Probably the most important book on the state of British policing...' - Graham Bartlett

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  • Everything's Fine cover art

    • Everything's Fine

    • By: Cecilia Rabess
    • Narrated by: Denée Benton
    • Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
    • Release date: 08-06-23
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 16 ratings
    • fiction | 'A stunning debut.' - Meg Mason, bestselling author of Sorrow & Bliss
    • Cecilia Rabess' Everything's Fine is an utterly original and deeply moving take on an age-old question from a dazzling new voice: what have you got to lose when you fall in love?

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  • Queen Charlotte cover art

    • Queen Charlotte

    • By: Julia Quinn, Shonda Rhimes
    • Narrated by: Natalie Simpson
    • Series: Bridgerton
    • Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
    • Release date: 09-05-23
    • Language: English
    • 5 out of 5 stars 45 ratings
    • tv tie -in | regency
    • From No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn and television pioneer Shonda Rhimes comes a powerful and romantic novel of Bridgerton's Queen Charlotte and King George III's great love story and how it sparked a societal shift, inspired by the original series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, created by Shondaland for Netflix.

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  • Death at the Chateau cover art

    • Death at the Chateau

    • A Follet Valley Mystery, Book 3
    • By: Ian Moore
    • Narrated by: Ian Moore
    • Series: Follet Valley Mystery, Book 3
    • Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
    • Release date: 30-05-23
    • Language: English
    • 5 out of 5 stars 45 ratings
    • murder mystery | amateur sleuth
    • Richard Ainsworth's French B&B has been taken over by a production company shooting a historical film at the Château de Valençay. But everything grinds to a halt with the sudden passing of an actor under suspicious circumstances.

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  • Tom Lake cover art

    • Tom Lake

    • By: Ann Patchett
    • Narrated by: Meryl Streep
    • Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
    • Release date: 01-08-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 218 ratings
    • from the author of The Dutch House | narrated by Meryl Streep
    • In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew...

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  • Told You So cover art

    • Told You So

    • By: Leeanne Slade
    • Narrated by: Bel Powley
    • Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
    • Release date: 17-08-23
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 164 ratings
    • romantic comedy | from the author of 2023's top rated The Rebound
    • Lucie Redway knows one thing for certain: her best friend will have the most perfect destination wedding. She may not know if she’ll still have her agony aunt column next month, or if her love life will ever be more exciting than a midnight swipe right, but Lucie would rather exhaust herself than let Stacey down on her Big Day. Not even Charlie, the insufferably attractive and hateful best man, can get in her way.

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Barbara Kingsolver's top summer listens



Barbara Kingsolver won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2023 for her novel Demon Copperhead.

Discover the classic novels that she recommends to listen to this summer, the stories she can't stop going back to.

Discover Barbara's top picks

Last summer's hits - the stories everyone's still talking about

Lessons in Chemistry cover art
Lessons in Chemistry

By: Bonnie Garmus

How to Kill Your Family cover art
How to Kill Your Family

By: Bella Mackie

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo cover art
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

By: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Still Life cover art
Still Life

By: Sarah Winman

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow cover art
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

By: Gabrielle Zevin

The Paper Palace cover art
The Paper Palace