• The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington. Jennet Conant. Read by Simon Prebble. HighBridge. 11 hours. $34.95. Audible.com download, $24.47.

Summer in D.C.: always a difficult time for espionage, what with everyone out of town. But in July 1943 Roald Dahl, British spy, propagandist and future author, was lucky enough to secure an invitation to President Roosevelt's retreat at Hyde Park, N.Y. Dahl's Hyde Park doings are among the many intriguing tales in this gripping account of his nonliterary pursuits.

Along with Ian Fleming and Noel Coward, Dahl was a member of the infamous British Security Coordination. The group's goal was to rally U.S. support for England's war effort, defeat isolationists and shape the postwar relationship between the United States and Britain. Prebble has a fine ''top-secret'' voice, shaded with condescension and understatedly urgent. Coming from him, the expression ''rumor mill'' sounds especially insidious, and the deeds he describes seem wonderfully dastardly.

• The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. T.J. Stiles. Read by Mark Deakins. Books on Tape. 28 hours. $80. Audible.com download, $45.50.

Most of the financial and technological forces that shaped this nation came together in the six-foot, 200-pound frame of Cornelius Vanderbilt, a man, it was said, who ''thought he knew best, and always would know best, even after he was dead.'' Ruthless, cagey and inventive, Vanderbilt began by breaking up an existing monopoly on the New York ferry trade and moved on to railroads. He developed many of the instruments and entities that have helped create the modern corporate world.

For all its complexity, Stiles' appreciative account of Vanderbilt's derring-do is a model of clarity, briskness and brio, and Deakins' unhurried, pleasantly grave delivery serves it well.

Katherine Powers reviewed these books for The Washington Post.

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