Following the announcement that sales have doubled in the past five years, Carole Mansur picks the 20 best audiobooks of all time:

1 A Delicate Truth written and read by John le Carré

(10 hrs 30 mins, Penguin/Audible download £13.10)

Le Carré’s 23rd novel, a post-Iraq inquest into the privatisation of war, seals his reputation as a consummate reader of his own work, even into his 80s.

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2 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

read by Ben Tibber

(6 hrs 3 mins, Random House/Audible download £15.20)

Peripheral sounds – thuds on the stairs, the roar of a Tube train – suggest the sensitivity to noise of the 15-year-old narrator with Asperger’s. Precursor of the acclaimed play.

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3 Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling

read by Martin Jarvis

(4 hrs 59 mins, CSA/Audible download £9.60)

The doyen of audiobook readers reveals the arch imperialist to be a sly and subtle observer of the British caste system in India. You can almost hear the tinkle of teacups.

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4 A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

read by William Roberts

(18 hrs, Audible download £18.35)

In his journey around the universe, or the story of “how nothing became something”, Bryson is a lucid guide and creator of mostly good jokes.

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5 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J K Rowling

read by Stephen Fry

(20 hrs 55 mins, Pottermore download £32.99)

Fry deserves a long-service award for narrating the seven-volume series of wizardry. In this, the fourth, he skewers Rita Skeeter, the journalist with a Quick Quotes quill.

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6 The Last Cigarette: the Smoking Diaries Volume 3 written and read by Simon Gray

(4 hrs 45 mins abridged, Faber/Audible download £9.60)

Nicotine-stained reflections on mortality by the 70-year-old playwright (who died in 2008) are mingled with rasping observations on modern life.

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7 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

read by Samuel West

(9 hrs 10 mins, Audiogo/Audible download £15.85)

The splinter of ice that Greene declared at the heart of a writer has lodged in West’s voice to sinister effect. An unmerciful portrayal of an underworld that in the film was merely seedy.

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8 Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

read by Peter Marinker

(8 hrs 27 mins, Hachette/Audible download £14.85)

Man and dog drive across America in a pickup truck, taking soundings of the country’s mood at the dawn of the Sixties. Dialogue so sharp that Steinbeck was accused of making it up.

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9 Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada, tr by Michael Hofmann

read by John Telfer

(20 hrs 13 mins, Hachette/Audible download £14.85)

This is a nerve-jangling historical thriller, based on a true story of resistance in Nazi Germany, with a lowly hero, not given to the grand gesture.

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10 The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

read by Richard Morant

(4 hrs 40 mins, Audiogo/Audible download £10.75).

Barnes teases to the last track in a novel that sifts memories for clues to the past. A compelling example of unreliable narration.

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11 This Boy: a Memoir of a Childhood written and read by Alan Johnson

(7 hrs 52 mins, Random House/Audible download £15.75)

Chastening account of growing up in a slum in the not-so-distant Fifties; spoken as written, without sentiment.

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12 The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz

read by Peter Marinker

(5 hrs 20 mins, Audible download £11.80)

Eavesdropping at its best: 22 case studies from the cloistered consulting rooms of the north London psychoanalyst. Jargon-free, rich in detail, absorbing.

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13 The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

read by Meryl Streep

(3 hrs 6 mins, Penguin/Audible download £9.62)

From the margins of the Gospel to centre stage in an intense reimagining of the mother-son bond. Streep weighs each sentence as she unburdens her own version of singular events.

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14 The Embassy of Cambodia written and read by Zadie Smith

(55 mins, Penguin/Audible download £4.37)

Short, beautifully paced piece of fiction, set in north-west London, that homes in on the overlapping lives and loyalties of the people who daily walk past Willesden’s most unlikely building.

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15 Us by David Nicholls

read by Justin Salinger

(12 hrs 40 mins, Wholestory/Audible download £22.83)

Scenes from the unmaking of a marriage in a bittersweet comedy told by an emotionally challenged husband and father. The irresistible successor to One Day.

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16 Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin

read by James Macpherson

(10 hrs 42 mins, Orion/Audible download £21.87)

The detective Rebus is out of retirement and the partnership of Rankin and Macpherson, lasting for nigh on 20 books, is restored.

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17 Tamar by Mal Peet

read by Anton Lesser and Anna Maxwell Martin

(12 hrs 8 mins, Bolinda/Audible download £18.37)

Atmospheric and enthralling war story by the author for young adults (and older) who died in March.

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18 The Spire by William Golding

read by Benedict Cumberbatch

(6 hrs 49 mins, Canongate/Audible download £10.23)

Tickets for his Hamlet are sold out, but you can catch the star limbering up in a soaring performance of Golding’s visionary fable set in medieval Salisbury.

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19 Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane

read by Roy McMillan

(8 hrs 50 mins, Penguin/Audible download £13.12)

Treasury of the lore and language of the countryside, with lists of fast-disappearing words. Fans of the shipping forecast will hear an incantatory magic.

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20 The American Lover by Rose Tremain

read by Juliet Stevenson, Ric Jerrom, Kate Rawson, Liza Ross, Philip Franks and Jilly Bond

(6 hrs 12 mins, Penguin/Audible download £13.12)

The plums in this wide-ranging collection of short stories are read by Stevenson, who lends a delicious allure to both top-drawer women and their menials.

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