All of Maggie's novels have been produced as audio books by Soundings, a division on Isis Publishing. All the audio books are unabridged and have been read by actress Lesley Mackie.

Lesley won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1986 for her portrayal of Judy Garland in the musical play, Judy, at the Strand Theatre, and which subsequently toured Scotland in 1991. Other London appearances include Ella Peterson in Bells Are Ringing at Greenwich and Meg Brockie in Brigadoon at the Victoria Palace Theatre. She also won considerable acclaim up and down the country in the title role of Piaf. Since returning to live in Scotland in 1993, Lesley has played, amongst other things, Shirley Valentine, and was nominated for a TMA/Barclays Award for her performance in Shaw’s Candida, both at Perth. At Dundee, she played Sister Mae in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and in 1998 enjoyed a spell in STV’s long-running series, High Road. She played a variety of parts in the 1999 Pitlochry Festival Theatre season and, the following year, repeated her success as Shirley Valentine at the Byre Theatre, St. Andrews. Lesley then went on to play Miss Hannigan in the Perth Theatre production of Annie and, more recently, appeared as Mrs. Sowerberry in Oliver, also at Perth. Her many performances in pantomime include Principal Boy in Jack and the Beanstalk and Aladdin at the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness. As a singer, she recently toured Scotland in Born To Sing, her own show about the legendary singers Edith Piaf and Judy Garland. Alongside her theatre and television appearances, Lesley appeared as Daisy in The Wicker Man, for which she also sang the title song. She has also recorded more than sixty unabridged audio books over the last eight years.

Lesley had the following to say on the recording of an audio book:

"Recording audio books is one of the most difficult and yet most satisfying areas of the entertainment business – no other actors to upstage you, not even a director to put his oar in. Just you and a producer who sits on the opposite side of the glass partition to handle the machinery and to stop you if you misread, mispronounce or even miss a word. Usually, you spot your own mistakes, but it is invaluable to have a second pair of eyes – and ears!

"As a reader you can go for pages without making a mistake and then, once the spell is broken, make ten in one page. And it's not always a reading error. A page rustle, a loud noise from somewhere in the building or, if it's approaching lunchtime, the tummy rumble. All extraneous sounds mean a stop, and a pick up, or 'drop', at the beginning of the previous sentence – that's if the producer can get in at that point which is not always possible, as you may not have left a clean gap, so it's back to the beginning of the previous papragraph. My claim to fame in the studio is that on three separate occasions I have managed to read a whole side of a cassette in one go – no stops, drops, nothing. I still recall the excitement when I knew I was approaching the pre-arranged stopping point, and willing myself to make it. As microphones have become more and more sensitive, I think the days of completing a side in one take have probably gone. No one can sit that still for that long.

"To explain how it's done... The company chooses a suitable reader, and sends a copy of the book. Each reader will then approach the job in a different way. It would be a foolish reader who would arrive at the studio without having, at least, read the book at least once. You could be sure that, having decided the character of Douglas was a Scot, you would reach the last page and find the phrase 'said Douglas in his Donegal brogue!' I start marking the book from my first read. I put an initial alongside every bit of spoken dialogue, so that I am not taken by surprise when I reach the end of a speech to see 'said the old woman' when you've just read it in the six year old's voice who was speaking previously. I also make a cast list, and every time something is mentioned, i.e. 'he said in his deep mellow Yorkshire accent,' I jot it down opposite the relevant name on the list of characters. I look up any words I have never come across before and check pronunciations. It's amazing how it's often the same words that you have to keep checking! There might be a snippet of a song which has to be found if you are required to sing it, or some unfamiliar foreign words.

"For my part I have been very lucky, the straighforward enjoyable yarns by far outnumbering the trickier and more complex works. I tend to get a lot of family sagas – set in one or other or both the wars – and I enjoy these books immensely. I am delighted to have recorded six of Maggie Craig's books, as she really involves you in her characters, and I have to admit that, on more than one occasion in the studio, I have had to stop in order to choke back the tears. Her books tell the story and stir the emotions. She tells it like it was with laughter too, of course. If you happen to have been there, you'll wallow in the nostalgia, and if you weren't, you'll think you were by the end of the book. It wasn't until I had read my fifth Maggie Craig book that I discovered she wasn't an old lady and hadn't lived through either of the two wars she writes about so vividly.

"Having read a book through, I go through it for a second time, concentrating mainly on the dialogue, so that I can decide on the various voices and accents. I recall someone saying to me very early on that 'just a hint of the mint' was required. This was a reference to not overdoing the accents. We have to remember that these books are listened to all over the country and sometimes overseas, and if accents are too broad, some listeners will just switch off. The men tend to get more difficult books – war novels, maritime adventures, visiting lots of different countries – with snippets of many languages! My husband, Terry Wale, who has recorded over 100 books, often has to do Churchill or Chamberlain in his wartime sagas, and has read so many novels about naval warfare that I think he believes he could probably take a destroyer or a frigate into battle singlehanded now!

"Having prepared the book, I head for Whitley Bay where I record most of my books for a company called Soundings, and stay for the duration in a flat opposite the recording studios. We share the flat with one other reader, as there are always two studios in use at any given time. We work from 9am-5pm with two half hour tea breaks, and an hour for lunch, essential pauses to allow air into the oxygen deprived studios, not to mention our lungs! We are expected to do between 6 and 7 tape sides a day. Until recently, recording was actually done onto tape but has now been replaced by the digital system, although audio books continue to be released on tape and CD, and while some companies edit the recording after the reading is finished, at Soundings we still work to a more or less pre-arranged length, so each book is already broken down into the number of cassette sides required. Once the length of the book has been calculated, based on a test read of random pages, someone is then responsible for breaking up the book and deciding at which point each side will finish. Now, this is a moveable feast, as it is not expected that each tape will have two identical sides, but it is quite astounding how many times the two sides come to within a few seconds of each other. By this process we are presented with a book which we know will be on 18 sides (nine cassettes), and will last approx 12 hours.The books are all unabridged, and for the past few years have included all the author's text, including sex, violence and four letter words, previously bowldlerized (in Whitley Bay, at any rate!) in deference to the easily offended.

"Once the book has been recorded, edited, and checked through for remaining errors, it is then put onto cassette in the studio, and in most cases onto CD as well, sent down to the packing room where it is put into boxes with specially designed covers, and stored until the orders start rolling in.

"Many orders come from public libraries which are probably the main market for audio books. They are not cheap to buy, although I believe that groups of people, in clubs, retirement homes and hospitals, for instance, arrange to share them, splitting the initial outlay and passing them round. It is certainly gratifying to be involved in a business that is expanding and, whereas audio books were at one time recorded almost exclusively for the benefit of the blind or partially sighted, they are now listened to by an increasing number of people, and particularly on long car journeys.

"There is no doubt that it is a very difficult and tiring job. It demands immense concentration, good sight-reading, a fair knowledge of English, and a degree of versatility which sadly is rarely required in the theatre these days! But it's something that I enjoy enormously; on top of which it also makes me read books, which can't be a bad thing!"