Doctor Who: The Mind Robber
by Peter Ling (Target, 1986); audiobook read by Derek Jacobi (BBC, 2010)
Peter Ling’s only Doctor Who novelisation is more competently written than many in the Target range. As a Wonderland homage, however, and as a pioneering work of metatextualism, the story trots out and bottoms out on visual flourishes better suited to television.
George’s Marvellous Medicine
by Roald Dahl (Jonathan Cape, 1981); audiobook read by Derek Jacobi (Penguin, 2013)
Despite this being one of Dahl’s less substantial (yet somehow belaboured) stories, the freewheeling absurdity of George’s concoction and the subsequent karmic comeuppance to his grandma will appeal to middle grade readers. Derek Jacobi narrates with the glee of a mischievous grandparent.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle (John Murray, 1927); audiobook read by Derek Jacobi (Bolinda, 2015)
Derek Jacobi proves a narrator par excellence in bringing to life cases from late in the career of Sherlock Holmes; but then, that most enduringly beloved detective has always excelled as much from good delivery as from ingenuity or complexity of mystery.