Hear the best off-screen stories

Does Valentine’s Day make you pine for Halloween? You’re not alone. While classic romances have kept film directors (and costume makers) busy for generations, twenty-first-century writers have taken revenge on A-level English Lit papers with a wealth of smart reworkings. One of the wittiest and best selling of these adaptations, ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’, has now been turned into a comedy horror movie in its own right.

TIME OUT RECOMMENDS Invite zombies and robots into your lounge with this pick of great titles, available on Audible.

The Coen brothers are reunited with George Clooney in this comedy-mystery-musical romp through the on-screen glamour and off-screen scandal of Hollywood’s golden age, set during the filming of a Roman epic. Josh Brolin and Scarlett Johansson lead a stellar supporting cast.

TIME OUT RECOMMENDS Here are four titles inspired by this week’s Coen brothers release. They include Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’, so you can judge for yourself just how high Clooney dials up the melodrama for comic effect. Each one perfectly narrated – hear all these great stories on audiobook with Audible.

Contrast George Clooney hamming it up in ‘Hail, Caesar!’ with Shakespeare’s gripping account of the plot to assassinate Rome’s greatest leader. As the story, narrated by Andrew Buchan, Sean Barrett and cast, reaches its climax, the exploration of the conflict within Brutus – torn between his closest friendship and his loyalty to justice – makes this audiobook edition unforgettable listening.

The Coen brothers’ acclaimed ‘No Country for Old Men’ was adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s powerful 2005 novel. Narrated in all its unabridged dramatic intensity by Tom Stechschulte, this taut modern Western unfolds at a blistering pace. Another classic story from one of America’s most exciting and uncompromising writers.

If you loved lean, mean Josh Brolin in the Coens’ 2010 adaptation of ‘True Grit’, dig deeper with the audiobook of the 1968 Charles Portis novel. On audiobook, ‘True Grit’ is narrated by author Donna Tartt, who cites this revenge Western as her personal favourite, bringing it to life with perfect insight and suspense.

Scarlett Johansson narrates this Lewis Carroll classic. The young and imaginative Alice grows weary of her story book, one ‘without pictures or conversations’, and follows a rushing rabbit down a hole in the ground, to come face to face with a host of strange and fantastic characters.