Once upon a time, when the Bronx was a happy Italian village full of children in Catholic school uniforms, public schools measured reading levels in Grades: first grade, second grade, third grade. Easy peasy. Consider your contemporary girly fiction, focused2nd Grade Reading Level Mysteries

A dirge so distant from the whiny unpleasantness of the latest slag of female fiction, it might as well be written by a different sex... a mother sex, a sister sex, a mourning sex, an Irish sex.The Gathering by Anna Enright read by Fiona Shaw

It is not inconceivable that the prime minister should don a cheap blonde wig, heels and a little a after his first name , in order to ride on broken trains, wait on soda-machine queues, lie untreated in a publicNumber 10 by Sue Townsend read by Barbara Rosenblat

Read by Stephen Lang who is good doing liddle giwls and the monotones of the personal(it)y disordered but not wonderful doing Barty who is (we guess) the hero. Unless the real hero is: the theory of quantum mechanics as interpreted by FeynmanFrom the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz read by Stephen Lang

  Published by Random House. Pub Date p2003. Cutesy 70's Lois Lane tells odd, offbeat, seriously funny story of buddy-comedians (Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis? Bob Hope and Bing Crosby?) bound by repressed hostility (Freud) and girlicide. ". WHERE THE TRUTH LIES by Rupert Holmes. Read by Anna Gosteyer and Michael McEan.

Gwenda gets off the boat at Plymouth, hires a car, looks for village to live in. And finds one: a perfectly charming cottage with aga, a kitchen garden and flowered wallpaper. Gwenda moves in with her rosewood, herSleeping Murder by Agatha Christie read by Rosemary Leach

"Dear Chatter: To answer your question, when a Southerner looks at you with a blank smile and doesn't answer you right away, it's because he doesn't trust you and he's lookin' you over and seein' how much damage you canSouthern Living by Ad Hudler read by Cynthia Darlow

There is a kind of being found among artists, a being-with peculiar to art school graduates, children of artists, girlfriends of artists, gallery owners and oglers and agents and wives, proximate to art, attached to it but uncertainThe Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber read by Eric Conger

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

Another New York City nanny? No, no. This one wakes up screaming every morning, unable to stop the dream of a body bag around a not yet dead body. This one is having an affair with the fatherYou’ve Been Warned by James Patterson & Howard Roughan Read by Ilyana Kadushin

Wed Sep 08, 2004 After P. Cornwell it is impossible or almost impossible to fob off a respectable forensic report, fake a fictional autopsy, or counterfeit the routine day to day life of an imaginary female coroner. If you want toBlindsided by Karen Slaughter

Short cuts to well told endings of British crime novels don't usually work. They leave out the localized, linguistic pulp of English thought. And it is thought not plot that makes a novel so very relentlessly English. Tim Curry's reading resonatesMartha Grimes read by Tim Curry: The Old Silent

Yes, this is about a French woman who is preparing to be married, about the dozens of chores, duties, invitations, financial arrangements, foods, realtors, contracts and miscommunications fringing the prolonged event called a 'wedding'. But it is more aboutLe Mariage by Diane Johnson read by Suzanne Toren

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

It is not obvious that there are soldiers missing in action from the war in Iraq. It is said that the Arabs do not take prisoners, do not leave Americans alive. So the horror of a category of men archivedThe Confirmation :: Thomas Powers read by George Guidall