Use an external device as source for Books App

I have a very large audiobooks collection which would swallow up most of the space on my Mac Air. I am trying to find a way of pointing the Books App to an external device as the source of my audiobooks collection. This was possible with iTunes where you could go to Advanced and indicate the file location of your collection. This is still possible with the Music App, but I can find no way of doing the same for books and audiobooks. The apps advanced section on the app does not have that facility. I could use the Music App and simply change the Genre to Audiobooks, but I would like to completely separate the books and music collections (as Apple themselves have done) and use the Books App.

I am using MaxOSX Monterey on a Mac Air 2015

Any thoughts? Thanks