The best places to find audiobooks for your travels

— -- Summer is almost here, and that means it's time to pack your bags and go on vacation. Get ahead on your summer reading and bring a few audiobooks with you. Thanks to MP3 players and smartphones, you can bring your library along without taking up any extra luggage space on your travels.

Audible.com

Audible.com was purchased by Amazon in 2008, so this is where you'll be redirected to if you want a digital audiobook. While Amazon.com still has a sampling of audiobooks on CD, Audible.com has more than 100,000 titles ready to download right to your listening device. You can purchase audiobooks from Audible.com without getting a subscription; however, you'll get the most for your money by being a subscriber.

Depending on your subscription level, your monthly fee gives you either one or two credits per month good toward an audiobook. Only a few audiobooks are worth more than one credit, giving you a book or two a month, and the subscriptions are less expensive than purchasing books one at a time.

Audible.com also has a host of podcasts, radio shows, comedy specials, and speeches, and a selection of their offerings are free, too. Keep an eye out for specials; you can get some great deals for as little as a $1.95 per audiobook. Best of all, if you cancel your subscription, you still own your audiobooks to listen to any time.

Audiobooks.com

Stream as many audiobooks as you like on Audiobooks.com for a flat $24.95 per month. While you're able to listen to as many as you like, these books are not available for download. Any audiobooks that you're reading show up on their website in your "in progress" list.

If you're the type of person who only listens to a book once, then this is the best option for you. You can get as many audiobooks as you can listen to in a month or change books to suit your travel destination.

iTunes

You probably use iTunes to purchase downloadable music, but iTunes has an equally huge collection of audiobooks.

If you just want to purchase the occasional audiobook without a subscription, going through iTunes is fast and easy. Depending on the title, you may also be redirected to Audible.com, as before its pairing with Amazon, it provided all audiobook content for iTunes. Be sure to compare prices; you might find the same book through iTunes for a few dollars less.

Librivox.org

Librivox.org is Tecca's favorite way to get caught up reading the classics. Librivox only has audiobooks that are in the public domain, published before 1923 and with expired copyrights. Each work is read and recorded by a team of volunteers, and some novels are recorded with a full cast, much like a radio play.

Download or stream your favorite books, poems, and plays, and they're yours to listen to at your leisure. Listen to one of Shakespeare's plays or one of Jane Austen's novels as you travel England, or transport yourself from your travels to another planet with Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Princess of Mars.

Your local library

This often-forgotten and underused resource has a host of physical and digital audiobooks. Many libraries are now getting up to speed with the digital movement, so you don't even have to leave your house to get the latest and greatest audiobook titles.

The best part? It's free! If you're borrowing a digital book, you won't have to worry about returning it; when it's due, it won't be available to listen to.

Podiobooks.com