‘Perilous’ look back at Norway

Kristin Lavransdatter Sigrid Undset Translated by Tiina Nunnally Audible Studios., Unabridged, 45 hours

This all-absorbing masterpiece by Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset has finally entered the audiobook universe in a truly superb, sensitive performance by Erin Bennett.

Published in Norwegian in the early 1920s as a trilogy, the book is set in 14th-century Norway and covers the life of Kristin Lavransdatter and her journey from childhood to death through “the perilous and beautiful world.” She is seduced at 16 by a heedless knight while betrothed to another man and conceives a child out of wedlock in a society that insists on the“honour”of women.

And that’s just for a start. Bad Dreams and Other Stories Tessa Hadley HarperAudio Unabridged, 53/4 hours

Emma Gregory reads Tessa Hadley’s spare, slightly chilly stories, capturing the listener in 10 seconds flat. The first begins: “Jane Allsop was abducted when she was 15 and nobody noticed. This happened a long time ago, in Surrey, in the 1960s, when parents were more careless.”

What follows in this story, An Abduction, is not horror, but unease, misunderstanding and a poignant depiction of a huge event in Jane’s life — and nothing memorable in anyone else’s.

Most of these 10 stories deliver cool shocks, but all are buoyed by an undercurrent of wry humour and pleasingly mellow irony. The Switch Joseph Finder Penguin Audio Unabridged, 10 hours

Joseph Finder is the true master of the thriller in which your ordinary guy, going about his ordinary business, takes one wrong step and suddenly finds himself on the dark side.

In this case, it’s nice Michael Tanner, coffee entrepreneur with a lot on his mind. Rushing to catch a plane, he picks up the wrong laptop after going through airport security. It belongs to a U.S. senator and contains top-secret files on a scheme for government mass surveillance. Rather than handing it back to its owner, Tanner hangs on to it for reasons you will have to discover yourself.