Audiobooks make for entertaining traveling companions, and the new Stephen King audio short story, “Drunken Fireworks,” is a must hear this summer. Listen to it for a change, and get a lot of laughs thanks to Tim Sample's narration, between those good old summertime Beach Boys and Supremes CDs.

King's story is filled with great characters involved in a fireworks competition on Lake Abenaki, in what came to be known in them there parts as the “Fourth of July Arms Race.”

Sample's voices for the characters are almost as funny as the words King has coming out of their mouths.

Alden McCausland really stocks up for the 2013 Fourth of July, so he can show up those “diegos” the Massimos from Rhode Island over to the east side of the lake. He aims to shut up that obnoxious trumpet playing Massimo, whose instrument projects musical taunts and jabs at Alden and Ma “Hallie” McCausland on the west side.

Yep, Alden buys $500 worth of explosives named Pyro Monkey, Psychodillic, and Declaration of Independence.

Ma and Alden spend a lot of time drinking and hanging out at the lake cabin ever since the day of the phone call — it turned out Mr. McCausland (who Ma describes as “barely skilled and mostly distilled”) passed on and left a $75,000 life insurance policy behind. Then, to top it off, a few years later in 2004 — almost to the very day — Ma won big on a $5 scratch ticket (she bought one every week after grocery shopping) for “Holy Christ on a bike!” (Alden's words, not mine) for $200,000, $120,000 after taxes.

Yes, Alden and Ma kick back and watch the sun go down with pitchers of Orange Drivers, Dirty Hubcaps and many other exotically named adult beverages.

The competition between the east and west side, the Massimo Diegos and the McCausland Yankees (as it also came to be known) escalated within just two years. By 2014, everyone around the lake is calling that year's showdown the “Fireworks Blue Ribbon,” what with the Massimos outshining Alden and Ma despite their attempt to “Show them spaghetti eaters” and silence “Mr. Horn Blower.”

When the 2014 show begins with Chinese Peonies, Pyro Monkeys and such, neither the McCauslands, Massimos or lake shore-dwelling spectators could have been prepared for Alden's totally illegal .... No, I can't say more.

But, unlike Officer Andy Clutterbuck, Alden's former classmate (now interrogating officer in this Fourth of July melee case), you'll enjoy hearing Alden tell the tale — his way.

It's hysterical.

It's imaginative.

It's classic Stephen King and vintage Tim Sample.

And, who doesn't have a King story on their summer reading list?

Check out King via Sample in this two CD “Audiowork” from Simon & Schuster, downloadable on the publisher’s website, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.