If you’re thinking of taking a road trip this summer, audiobooks offer a more entertaining and enlightening means of entertainment than bickering and spotting yellow cars. To help you survive the traffic (and each other), here are six books of varying lengths.

1. ‘The Hunter’ by Tana French (16.5 hours)

French’s novel is made for long-distance driving. A sequel to “The Searcher,” the book is set in the Irish farming community of Ardnakelty and stars retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper and young Trey Reddy. Once a near-feral child of 13, Trey is now a more approachable 15. Her father, “a twinkly-eyed little twerp,” has returned from London with a dangerous scam in mind. The plot takes a long time to get going, but the dialogue is spectacularly good. Narrator Roger Clark delivers a highly entertaining torrent of Irish gabbiness that is flawless in pacing, manner and accents, Irish and American. Further, he switches between speakers with such remarkable deftness that it’s hard to believe there is only one voice at work. As an entertainment, this audiobook is far superior to the print version. (Penguin Audio)

2. ‘Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball’ by Keith O’Brien (15 hours)

O’Brien’s superb biography is perfect for a trip to Cincinnati to visit the baseball home of Pete Rose, one of the game’s greatest players. The book details the life of an athlete who was gritty and determined on the field and a reckless gambler, womanizer and pill-popping braggart off it. Ellen Adair narrates this deeply researched book at a nice, listenable pace, delivering exhilarating baseball action, suspenseful at-bats, World Series heroics, murky underworld shenanigans and, ultimately, a fine instance of Major League Baseball’s hypocrisy. Despite having sold its soul to the gambling gods, the organization still punishes the man who beat Ty Cobb’s record of 4,189 major league hits, banning him for life from baseball and the Hall of Fame. (Random House Audio)

3. ‘In a Sunburned Country’ by Bill Bryson (12 hours)

No talk of travel is complete without a word from Bill Bryson, a much-traveled writer who never seems happier than when he comes across a fresh example of nature’s hideous perils. “In a Sunburned Country” is his account of his travels in the 1990s through Australia, home to the world’s 10 most lethal snakes. Also covered with celebratory horror are the box jellyfish (“deadliest creature on earth”), the blue-ringed octopus (near-instant death by electrocution), venomous red-back and funnel-web spiders, saltwater crocodiles, human-size razor-clawed cassowaries, and, of course, sharks. This, incidentally, is a country whose 17th prime minister disappeared, carried away by a riptide. Bryson reads the book himself, his voice reflecting his appreciation of mishap and confusion, but also of Australians and their expansive, optimistic ways. (Random House Audio)

4. ‘My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future’ by Alice Randall (11 hours)

Randall is perhaps better known for the best-selling “The Wind Done Gone” — a retelling of “Gone With the Wind” — than for her successful career in Black country music. A hard-to-define genre, Black country is suddenly a much-discussed and disputed topic thanks to Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter.” Randall’s book should enrich the conversation. The author narrates her memoir and tour through Black country music. She covers pivotal Black country musicians — Lil Hardin, Charley Pride and many others who influenced her — noting their contributions, styles and many encounters with racism. She also finds startling connections between Black creators and country music, including echoes of a 19th-century song celebrating Frederick Douglass’s escape from slavery in Bob Wills’s “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” And she has strange tales to tell — among them her struggle, with the help of Roy Orbison, to dress a chicken in a black suit to resemble Johnny Cash. (Simon & Schuster Audio)

5. ‘Great Expectations’ by Vinson Cunningham (7 hours)

Cunningham’s novel dishes up a fictional feast for political junkies, especially those nostalgic for the campaign of 2008. A lucky break gets David Hammond, a young Black college dropout, a job working on the presidential campaign of a charismatic candidate who resembles Barack Obama. David’s job is fundraising — courting the wealthy and setting up meetings where access is measured in dollars. He tracks the candidate’s approach from the “Black-pulpit touch” of the initial announcement to easy geniality on the road before the convention and, eventually, to a commanding, all-business demeanor once he’s the party’s candidate. Along the way, David’s personal life is absorbed by politics and an affair with a high-powered political operative. Aaron Goodson, a talented voice-over actor, narrates the novel in a smooth, pleasant voice, sounding at times like the actual candidate — and former president — himself. (Random House Audio)

6. ‘The Irrepressible Wit of Mark Twain’ (3 hours)

Let’s say there’s no traffic — we can dream — or you are just taking a quick day trip: “The Irrepressible Wit of Mark Twain” should fit the bill. Narrator Cathy Dobson brings a friendly, English-accented voice to these five entertaining pieces, including Twain’s magnanimous scheme for reforming German in “The Awful German Language.” He repeatedly advises economy, including instructing “a speaker to stop when he is done, and not hang a string of those useless ‘haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins’ to the end of his oration.” (Red Door Audiobooks)