What summer scenario could not be improved by an absorbing audio book? Sweltering traffic jams, airport delays, arguments about who gets the best billet in the Tuscan villa or Dorset campsite — a discreet pair of earphones is all it takes to transport you into another, better world. One in which, perhaps, life’s every wrinkle is smoothed by your very own gentleman’s gentleman.

It’s not the first time that PG Wodehouse’s pairing of amiable buffoon Bertie Wooster with Jeeves, his cerebrally superior manservant, has been committed to audio book, but now Martin Jarvis has stepped into the recording studio to lend his distinctive comic talents to The Inimitable Jeeves: Volume 1 (CSA Word £15.65, 3 hrs 30 mins, unabridged). In a series of linked short stories that see the idle young toff wreak havoc with the love life of his compulsively amorous friend Bingo Little, arouse the undying hatred of the terrifying society shrink Sir Roderick Glossop and provoke the even more terrifying wrath of ­formidable Aunt Agatha, Jeeves comes to the rescue with little more than an expressively raised eyebrow and a murmured “Very good, sir.”

More classics abound this summer for fans of the old-fashioned murder. Harper Audio has reissued 20 Agatha Christie titles, many featuring Hercule Poirot. In Three Act Tragedy (£14.99, 6 hrs, unabridged), it looks as though the thoughtful Belgian detective is going to let Sir Charles Cartwright, an actor whose private persona seems to be composed of a sequence of performances, and his observant friend Mr Satterthwaite make the running in the investigation of mysterious poisonings at weekend house parties as they tear about in fast cars and reach a series of wild surmises. Fans of David Suchet’s television Poirot will be delighted that this story is read by Hugh Fraser, who plays his sidekick Captain Hastings. After the art deco-drenched gloss of the TV version they might also be agreeably surprised by the astuteness of Christie’s character studies and her pointed social commentary as inter-war modern manners usurp the last vestiges of Victorian behaviour among the English upper classes. Clues as to the murderer’s identity and motive rain down with all the subtlety of a parlourmaid dropping a tray of family silver onto the polished parquet, but it takes the mannered little sleuth with the prissy accent to make sense of it all.

Radio 4 has embarked on an ambitious project: to dramatise all eight of John le Carré’s George Smiley novels, with Simon Russell Beale playing the British spymaster. The first of the full-on spy thrillers (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) will begin broadcasting next month, but two earlier, slighter works have already revealed ins­ights into the complex backstory of the tubby and deceptively ordinary spook who possesses “the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin”. In these performances, Russell Beale starts claiming and inhabiting the role of the quintessential Englishman with the steel-trap mind and the personal sorrow of a faithless wife.

The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads

Choose from a rich haul of novels and thrillers (including two prizewinners) or fill your mind with the sharpest new nonfiction

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• Summer reading: fiction roundup

• Summer reading: children's books

• Summer reading: audio books

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Summer reading

The Sunday Times top 12 choices in fiction and nonfiction

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Summer reading: fiction

A perfect day would start in the winding streets of Barcelona and end with a classic Agatha Christie mystery

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• Erica Wagner chooses her favourite summer books

• David Aaronovitch reviews the best history books for your holiday reading

• Tim Teeman reviews the best books to take on holiday

• Val McDermid reviews the latest thrillers

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• Summer reading for children

• Summer reading: biography/memoir

• Lisa Tuttle reviews the latest science fiction and fantasy novels

• Summer reading: fiction that you loved on vacation

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• Summer reading: music

• Summer reading: outdoors

• Summer reading: travel

• Summer listening: audiobooks

Now available on CD, A Murder of Quality (BBC £12.72, 90 mins), which also stars Geoffrey Palmer and Marcia Warren, is set in the early 1960s. Smiley finds himself at a grand public school looking into the brutal murder of a master’s wife. Never mind the bludgeoned lady, snobbery with violence seems to be the motto of the establishment, beneath whose traditions and exclusivity seethe all manner of hatred and perverted passion. And not a Russian agent in sight.

The perusal of an improving book being one of Jeeves’s customary leisure pursuits, the dignified ­manservant would probably have enjoyed Clive Unger-Hamilton’s Discover Music of the Baroque Era (Naxos £16.99, 4 hrs 32 mins), which combines 40 glorious music tracks with a lively and informative explanation of why the period (roughly 1600 to 1750, the year

JS Bach died) can stake an unbeatable claim to be music’s golden age. The first operas were written and performed, and the concerto, sonata and cantata were developed with vitality and brilliance. It is a cultural geography lesson, too, as the Italian peninsula’s musical dominance (with Monteverdi at the pinnacle) is overtaken by superstars from the German states, with the prolific genius of Bach dominating. Enjoy the words, which mix musicology with insights into the musicians’ private lives, then sit back and revel in the music.

For younger listeners, My First Classical Music Book by Genevieve Helsby (Naxos £7.99) combines a picture book and a 69-minute CD in a venture that gives the project of introducing children to proper music its biggest boost since Peter and the Wolf. Dotted among Jason Chapman’s lively illustrations are some facts even grown-ups won’t know (classical music is often played in outer space to wake astronauts from their sleep on the space shuttle; Rachmaninov had unusually large hands) and there is even a game attempt to evoke the special quality of minimalist music: “Listening to it is like staring at a fire, or at the sea; you find yourself stuck there, just watching, listening…”.

Helsby does an excellent job of making classical music accessible and entertaining, with well-chosen CD tracks that kick off with the theme music from the Harry Potter films (by Carl Davis) and follow up with a rousing greatest-hits selection from Offenbach’s Can-Can to Saint-Saëns’s animals, and just a small sample of the dread minimalism thrown in. A sticker on the cover recommends it for ages five to seven, though it would entertain anyone with a few gaps in their musical knowledge to plug and a few hours of summer leisure time to while away.

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