A word in your ear: The Sea-Wolf<br></br>Snail Eggs and Samphire

"The ability to throw a punch and quote Milton – and probably to enjoy both equally – characterised Jack London" writes Nicolas Soames in the notes to The Sea-Wolf (4 hrs, £9.99 on 3 tapes, £13.99 on 3 CDs), which now joins Call of The Wild and White Fang on the Naxos list. Read with spirit by Garrick Hagon, it's a gripping adventure yarn in which Humphrey van Weyden, a wealthy young literary critic, saved from drowning by the sealing ship Ghost when his San Francisco ferry is wrecked in fog, is taken to the Bering Sea as cabin boy under Wolf Larson, a ruthless and restless captain with an unexpected interest in great literature.

Self-made himself, London revels in his unscrupulous villain, who dissects famous thinkers just as energetically as he dominates his crew: he is Lucifer, Milton's brilliant fallen angel, determined not only to make a man of Van Weyden but to convert him to his own cynical philosophy.

In Snail Eggs and Samphire: Despatches from the Food Front (Chivers, c.13 hrs, £17.50 mail order 0800136919) Derek Cooper of the BBC Food Programme maps the way we eat now in a fascinating succession of bite-sized pieces. Indigestible if you tried to listen to the whole thing at once, it works perfectly, read as it is with lulling rhythm by Stephen Thorne, as a personal book at bedtime. Keep a pen at the ready – Cooper tosses out lots of seductive references to specialist shops and growers.