MR NICHOLAS J EVEN

Isserley spends most of her time driving. But why is she so interested in picking up hitchhikers? And why are they always male, well-built, and alone? An utterly unpredictable and macabre mystery, Michel Faber's debut is an outstanding piece of fiction that will stay with you long after you have finished listening.

It's the 21st century, and global warming is here to stay, so forget the way your country used to look. And get used to the free market, too – the companies possess all the best hardware, and they're calling the shots now. In a world like this, a man open to any offers can make out just fine. A man like Greg Mandel for instance, who's psi-boosted, wired into the latest sensory equipment, carrying state-of-the-art weaponry – and late of the English Army's Mindstar Battalion.

Outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Batman has assaulted Spider-Man. Marilyn Monroe reported the crime and three Elvises witnessed it. It's business as usual for the cops out of Hollywood Station. But while they deal with the costumed crack-heads, prostitutes, purse snatchers, and ordinary lunatics that haunt the boulevards, in the streets behind the lights and crowds, the real Los Angeles simmers, never far from boiling point.

One Summer: America, 1927, is the new book by Britain’s favourite writer of narrative nonfiction, Bill Bryson. Narrated by the man himself, One Summer takes you to the summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world forever. In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day, a semi-crazed sculptor with a plan to carve four giant heads into a mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown, and finished it as the most famous man on Earth.