A Memoir of My Former Self by Hilary Mantel audiobook review – preoccupations of a vibrant mind

Actor Lydia Leonard and novelist Anne Enright are among the narrators of the Wolf Hall author’s engaging essays on Madonna, Jane Austen and Princess Diana

The Piano Player of Budapest by Roxanne de Bastion audiobook review – music and survival

The musician traces the story of her grandfather, from his life as a pianist and composer in Hungary to surviving the concentration camps in wartime Austria

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey audiobook review – coming of age in a time of fear

Two girls set out to catch the Yorkshire Ripper in this vividly narrated novel of adolescent curiosity and confusion

Track Record by George the Poet audiobook review – a heartfelt blend of the personal and political

The British-Ugandan writer looks back at his creative journey into a social landscape still defined by colonialism and inequality

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench review – a class act

Ripe language and impish humour abound as Barbara Flynn reads the actor’s entertaining recollections of seven decades on stage – and Dench herself recites excerpts from the Bard

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith audiobook review – a compelling classic

Actor David Menkin deftly captures the antihero’s blend of guilelessness and deceit in Patricia Highsmith’s psychological thriller

Prima Facie by Suzie Miller review – Jodie Comer narrates with charisma and firepower

The star of the original award-winning play about sexual assault brings emotional complexity to this novel adaptation

The Fraud by Zadie Smith audiobook review – exuberant and funny

Narrated by the author, this story of a Victorian author and his housekeeper cousin, who is obsessed by the Tichborne claimant, explores the lies people tell themselves

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett audiobook review – Meryl Streep narrates a bittersweet tale of first love

A mother reveals her mysterious past in a tale of choice and the roads not taken

Thunderclap by Laura Cumming audiobook review – the golden age of Dutch art

The Observer’s art critic combines the stories of the painter Carel Fabritius with that of her artist father, in a memoir of art and life cut suddenly short

Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein audiobook review – a gripping tale of endurance

Writer and peer Daniel Finkelstein narrates his family’s extraordinary story with a mixture of horror and wonder

The Guardian view on audiobooks: a growing market that asks existential questions

Editorial: When is a book not a book? When it is performed by a starry cast of hundreds. Except it has always been more complicated than that

‘I made curtains on the train’: the commuters livening up their journeys

From a velomobile to inline skating and audiobooks, six people reveal how travelling to work is no chore

UK audiobook downloads up 17% last year, Publishers Association data shows

Audiobooks are fast becoming ‘a major route to market for consumers of books’, the trade body says

What by John Cooper Clarke review – sharp social commentary from the Bard of Salford

With subjects ranging from Elvis to bubble and squeak, the poet’s unmistakable delivery elevates his satirical verse to the realms of high art