A Bruegellian world of busy little people working very hard and magical children repeating absolutely useless gestures: marvellous Maeve Binchy. Eddie's dressmaker mother is surrounded by patterns and perpetually draped in some nearly finished garment as she sews and listensThe Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy read by Barbara Caruso

The slightly hysterical, staccato reading misses the funny lines. And Dick just doesn't sound sexy. Too bad, because this book is both funny and sexy. Indeed, the sex scenes could pass for light porn.... The CIA guy is as wholesomeKiss Me While I Sleep by Linda Howard read by Dick Hill & ...

Yes, we know that it is very important for there to be a gun on the table and a timer, clicking down, on the first page of the story. Someone is murdered, and by the end of the story someoneFirewatch by Nelson DeMille read by Scott Brick

Let us begin at the end, with Orson Scott Card telling us how the book did not begin: "Donald Mustard and his partners at Chair entertainment had the idea for an entertainment franchise called Empire about a near futureEmpire by Orson Scott Card read by Rudnicki

Imagine overhearing the comments of secretaries, girlfriends, GS-11s, GS-18s, CIA heads of station, assistants to CIA heads of station, busty, born-again Texan society matrons, outrageously charming right-wing politicians with more friends than God, superstitious immigrants and sonsCharlie Wilson's War by George Crile read by Christopher Lane

Amusing this particular intersection of history where the living instruments of the law (cops, detectives, Special Forces, Army MPs) meet the live ones (text messaging, Live search, cell phones, Google...). What results is something Lacan called the 'missed encounter'Old Cops Meet New Technologies: Harry Bosch & Jack Reacher, 2007

An insider's view of the pentagon: Three of the four military services have their headquarters within these walls... The underlying idea is that proximity will force the services to work together in neighborly harmony.Man in the Middle by Brian Haig read by L.J. Ganser

Some divorced women move to New Hampshire and open bookstores. Tricia is a picky, possessive, mulish melancholic who stumbles into murder and mayhem in the most pastoral and unexciting of New England towns, re-invented as "Booktown" for its a sweetSentenced to Death by Lorna Barrett read by Cassandra Campbell

The tired old technique of a text within a text popped in the microwave with a 2K twist: a mothers diary to her one year old son. The kid dies. Instant tear jerker, instant Oprah Book of the Year, instantSUZANNE'S DIARY FOR NICHOLAS by James Patterson::Becky Ann Baker

This is a charming very digestable story about one sister told by another. The sister in the spotlight is a freckled lovable morning news show host, with a perpetual trousseau of people who dress her, praise her, and advertiseRise and Shine by Anna Quindlen read by Carol Monda

Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me hard boils the story from the start: London as the small bad city with its own 87th precinct: Brant, who cuts a bit off the top of every drug bust, makes himselfCalibre by Ken Bruen read by Gerard Doyle

The lines are drawn quickly - boom boom boom. Here is Israel, here is Russia, here is history. Here is crime, here is terror. Here stands Gabriel Allon: here, on the side of art. And Ivan stands here on the Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva

Here's the recipe: a youngish, pretty-ish, orphaned wife in or near Manhattan; a deceptive, felonious, or sleepwalking husband; a repressed or forgotten family scene, and wealth. Large, plush estates in tony suburbs, classic co-ops on exclusive avenues, perfectlyMary Higgins Clark...

Dick Francis died in his home on the Cayman Islands. He was 89. A successful steeplechase jockey, Francis turned to writing after he retired from racing in 1957. He penned 42 novels, many of which featured racing as a theme. HisDick Francis 1921-2010

A hotel room. Vegas. A whore, with a gun at her forehead and a cock in her mouth. They told her downstairs that the guy was important, a banker. And that's what she tells her friend when she gets home.Lawrence Block, The Specialists, read by Fred Sullivan