New audiobooks for July

In 1914, when the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, it is the women who must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of going to Oxford University, but for most of her life she has been told her job is to bind the books, not read them. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has. She is extraordinary but vulnerable. Peggy needs to watch over her.

When refugees arrive from the devastated cities of Belgium, it sends ripples through the community and the sisters' lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can use her intellect and not just her hands, but as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threatens to hold her back.

In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work drew her into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens. Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth.

But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change.

Clover Hendry, 46, is a mum of two with a husband, a nice house and a TV career. But keeping the plates spinning is a struggle. Clover is a people-pleaser – a woman who tips her hairdresser even when the cut is a disaster. She’s endlessly patient with her horrendous mother, says yes every time her boss asks her to work late and goes to a book group she hates. She can’t say no.

Until one day, when something happens that changes Clover. Today, things are going to be very different. Because Clover is taking the day off. She’s taking a break, from... everything. Today, she’s going to do and say whatever she likes – even if that means her whole life unravels. What happened to make Clover change her ways? Why doesn’t she care anymore? There’s more to this than meets the eye...

Tasha has always felt in the shadow of her older sister, Alice. Their lifestyles couldn't be more different; Alice is married to wealthy entrepreneur Kyle and has a high-flying career, Tasha is married to her childhood sweetheart and lives in a Bristol suburb with their four-year-old twins. When Alice realises that Tasha is struggling - with money, the kids, losing her identity - she suggests they do a lifeswap for a week. Alice and Kyle will come to stay at Tasha's terraced house to look after the twins, while Tasha and Harry spend the week in Alice and Kyle's Venice apartment.

But a few days in, it all goes terribly wrong. Tasha receives a phonecall to say Alice is in hospital and Kyle is dead after an intruder broke into their house. They think it must have been a burglary gone wrong. Until a note arrives through the letterbox saying It was supposed to be you. Who was there that night, and why? Is it really Tasha they are targeting? And can these two sisters find the answers they need, or are they about to stumble upon something more sinister?