A Word in Your Ear: Quentins, by Maeve Binchy <br></br>The Last Legion, by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

Maeve Binchy is marvellous comfort listening: her books can bolster you in frail moments as effectively as a good agony aunt or a cup of late-night Ovaltine. Quentins (BBC Word for Word, 12 hrs, £29.99) is in a way a series of stories, all linked to an imaginary Dublin restaurant, which develop into an intricate picture of a community. At its heart is Ella Brady, perfect only daughter of devoted parents, who makes the mistake of getting involved with a con man who diddles her parents and many friends out of their savings. How they start all over – and how Ella risks her life to get revenge – is played out as methodically, and as satisfyingly, as a successful game of patience. The story is much-enhanced by being read in Maeve's cousin Kate Binchy's softly Irish accent.

Valerio Massimo Manfredi has written half a dozen epics of Greek and Roman times. They sell well as paperbacks, but there is something about the rapidity and brevity of their audio appearances that has held me back from reviewing any so far. The Last Legion (Macmillan, c. 4 hrs, £10.99) could at least boast three cassettes. I was right to be suspicious. Set in the waning Roman Empire, it is an over-simplified Magnificent Seven story larded with coincidence, and with a dialogue that reaches new depths of bathos. But Martin Shaw reads with such unashamed panache that I listened, in fascinated horror, to every word of it.