Audiobooks are so easy you can read them with your eyes closed. They don't help your spelling and vocabulary, but a good storyteller can transform the written word into an aural image as colourful as any film. Bill Hearld suggests three to try for starters...

True History Of The Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (Penguin Audiobooks, £12.99)

AUSTRALIAN history and fable are far richer for the story of Ned Kelly, the antipodean version of the man in the iron mask.

But Ned's incarceration in cast-iron headgear was of his own choosing, a form of armour against police bullets.

The legend of the Kelly gang is as romantic as that of another outlaw "hero" half a world away in America, Billy the Kid. The truth of both legends is equally sad and sordid.

In Peter Carey's multi-award winning story, we meet Kelly the snot-nosed boy, the horse thief, farmer, bush ranger, reformer, bank robber, police killer and Aussie Robin Hood.

It is a story of oppression of the transportee Irish by brutish and brutal police; a story of betrayal of the nave Kelly almost from birth to the gallows by almost everyone he encounters.

And it explains how he and his gang were prompted to forge their own body and head armour in a foolish and desperate last stand against the hated lawmen.

The armour was untested until Kelly took on a trainload of heavily armed police. It turned out to be as effective as King Canute's flood-prevention schemes.

In this six-hour talking book, television and film actor Rupert Degas performs a dazzling act of ventriloquism breathing technicolor life into the whole range of characters from Aussie bushranger, abd Irish wife to British magistrate.

The Riddle Of The Sands by Erskine Childers (Penguin Audiobooks, £8.99)

THIS 1903 classic tale was one of the first spy novels. It is a gentlemanly affair in which the protagonists invite each other to supper, veil their threats behind glasses of port and the only shot fired is at hapless ducks during a hunting party.

The plot centres around two old university chums who sail the Baltic and stumble across Hun invasion preparations in the run up to the First World War.

As a spy thriller it lacks action and is very much outdated. As a study in nostalgia it is a gem, right down to the steam trains, sailing boats and 11s.6d. oilskins.

The author's real-life adventures were far more action packed. Erskine Childers was an early IRA leader and was executed by firing squad for possessing a pistol. His son became president of Ireland in the 1970s.

The Red Room by Nicci French (Penguin Audiobooks, £8.99)

DON'T turn out the lights, it's Nikki French again.

A woman psychologist asked to help police catch a murderer becomes personally involved as the bodies start to pile up. Attacked, scarred and then haunted by an unbalanced loner, the good doctor sets out on her solo trail of the killer, alienating herself from both the doubting police and her colleagues.

When young homeless people start turning up dead, the finger is pointed at a local hostel and its strangely-morose manager. But our sleuth psychologist Kit Quinn has learned not to accept appearances and she has to delve into her own terrors to unravel the mystery.

This three-and-a-quarter hour mystery bowls along but has a flat ending.

You can be sure of lots of blood, gore and suspense from Nicci French and this particular story is a cleverly-written, very English mystery from the husband and wife writing team who are gathering a huge reputation.

It is read by Haydn Gwynne, best known for her television roles in Peak Practice and Nice Work.

Updated: 08:55 Wednesday, July 03, 2002