Summer audiobooks to pack for your next road trip

Listening to a book by yourself is one thing. Sharing it on the road is altogether different. A good vacation listen must pull you in quickly, with vivid characters, quickly mounting tension or both. A few laughs also help. Here are a few worth packing.

“Alternate Side” by Anna Quindlen, narrated by Ellen Archer, Brilliance Audio, 7:40

When Charlie Nolan finally wins a spot in the parking lot of his exclusive dead-end street in Manhattan, he’s so thrilled, he wakes his wife, Nora, and texts the twins in college. Maybe now he’ll feel like he belongs in the city that felt like home to Nora from the moment she arrived after college. Anna Quindlen casts a kind of magic as she weaves an intimate portrait of her characters through the accretion of small moments. When Nora kicks away a plastic bag as she walks the dog, she remembers the rougher city of her first years in New York. She notices how conversations have evolved since her children grew up: “(T)he name of the very best pediatrician had given way to the name of the very best plastic surgeon.” Her best friend, Jenny, tells her married friends that “marriage sounds sort of like the den. It’s a good place to chill out, but it’s not the most important room in the house. Which makes me wonder why you’re all so anxious for me to have one.” The growing gulf in Nora and Charlie’s marriage appears slowly; then they find themselves on opposite sides of a dispute that disrupts the privileged peace of the neighborhood.

Ellen Archer’s flawless narration on “Alternate Side” is a happy match for Quindlen’s ninth novel. Archer is a 2011 Audie Award winner. Among her 150 titles is her performance in the multi-narrator “Room” by Emma Donoghue.

“The Disappeared” by C.J. Box, narrated by David Chandler, Recorded Books, 11:14

David Chandler, the longtime narrator of C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett mysteries, sounds a little like the voice that once accompanied elementary school slideshows. But for a fun story that doesn’t demand laserlike attention, the 18th book about Box’s Wyoming game warden will get you there and back this vacation.

This time, the state’s new governor, Colter Allen, a Yale-educated rancher, lawyer and developer, recruits Pickett to find a British businesswoman who disappeared from a dude ranch. Although Picket tells his wife, Marybeth, that he doesn’t have good feelings about this mandatory assignment, the trip to Silver Creek Ranch gives him a chance to visit his daughter Sheridan, who works at the ranch as a horse wrangler. Pickett is no Jack Reacher, doing battle with a half-dozen bad guys by himself. Nor is he a supersleuth who notices what everyone else misses. Instead, he works with conspiracy-loving Nate Romanowski, a master falconer. Romanowski’s voice is a high point of the narration. But there’s more going on here than horse riding, snowmobile races and a meth lab. Pickett also finds out why there’s been a weird smell coming from the sawmill in Encampment, Wyo., and why someone tried to kill 69-year-old Carol Schmidt.

“Do Not Become Alarmed” by Maile Meloy, narrated by the author, Penguin Audio, 8:58

So maybe it’s not a great idea to suggest, as a vacation listen, a story about a vacation that goes desperately wrong. Perhaps you can take it as a warning about the tiny bad judgments that may take you somewhere terribly, terribly wrong. Or just enjoy the surprising story by Maile Meloy, the author of “Liars and Saints” and ”The Apothecary Series” for children in middle grades.

On its surface, Meloy’s “Do Not Become Alarmed” is so straightforward and so clear, it feels at first like a young-adult novel. But this bit of deception makes the darkness ahead more surprising. Three families on a cruise decide to go ashore when their ship docks in Costa Rica. The men go golfing, and the women and children board a tour van for a zip line adventure. Then a car accident short-circuits the zip line plan. The group waits for the tour company to retrieve them beside a quiet river outlet to the ocean. While the adults are distracted, the children and their inner-tube raft are pushed far downstream by the ocean current, unable to return to where they started. Then they notice a crocodile lazing on a muddy bank. Unfortunately, further inland, monsters of the human variety await.

Meloy is adept at creating the voices of her many characters. Unfortunately, her tone flattens during the exposition between conversation. That matters less as the action picks up, so hang in there. It’s worth it.

Jenni Laidman is a freelancer.