Charlie has been a guest and a prisoner of the dictator of Batanga for 12 years when he has an affair with the dictator's favorite wife. After the wife is tortured, Charlie extradites himself to America, and stands trial forPhillip Margolin, Fugitive, read by Jonathan Davis

This short sharp tale of a dominant woman D.A. who loves political office far too well adds new personae to the genealogy of Cornwell's anger. Monique Lamonte, a moneyed, manipulative, Harvardy alpha female; Winn, her cop investigator pretty boy withAt Risk by Patricia Cornwell read by Kate Reading

Bennie's office of girls has moved uptown, and become a good hair office. The Good Italian Catholic girl and the Giant California Blonde combine glib girly gall with smart search skills to reconstruct, redress and prosecute a 60 yearLisa Scottoline read by Kate Burton:: Mary goes to Missoula

"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

An intimate look at the arrangements, organization and order of small town French village life, through the eyes of the jovial, wise and well fed chief of police, for "...not  a single pig made it to market without some partBruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker read by Robert Ian MacKenzie

"John has left me his town. Although now that his town didn't have the children in it.." The demented but funny* ex-wife of a husband who should have come with instructions on how to load the dishwasher invites our sympathy because:Cleaning Nabokov's House by Leslie Daniels read by Bernadette Dunne

Mod cop saves child in a killer fire, and slowly, doggedly, sniffs out the arsonist ..... Posted By: admin ()  Date: 11/10/2004 4:02 pm 3rd Degree by James Patterson and Andrew Gross read by Carolyn McCormick

Grass soup is exactly what it sounds like. It's a recipe for food of last resort that my father has apparently squirrelled away somewhere. I have never actually seen this recipe but it was referred to fairly often when IDavid Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable

Although less terrible than usual, Brick can't do funny. And this book can be funny. The ram rod straight CIA trainer; the queer, ruthless, demented Director of Operations; the stubborn, nerdish, accidentally lucky pseudo-operative determined to avenge his murdered The Amateur: A Novel of Revenge by Robert Littell read by Scott Brick

A gentle voice with exacting intelligence  mourns England, its living unemployed and its generation of  tall, dead men:   Where are the monstrous men with chests like barrels and moustaches like the wings of eagles who strode across my childhood's gaze twentyThe Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell read by Richard Green

There is something annoying, something unsettling, something demoralizing about a story in which  all the women are either murder victims,  embittered but useless mothers, faithful, ineffectual wives, or sexually charged students with dancers' bodies. Annoying, too, is witnessing an entireThe Bone House by Brian Freeman read by Joe Barrett

Do you believe the people who write the back page summaries of bestselling audio CDs actually listen to the CDs? I don't. The girl left alive after the cult murder of her family has very little to do withThe Sleeping Doll by Jeffrey Deaver read by Anne Twomey

Good idea, poorly executed.Stone Cold by David Baldacci. Read by Ron McLarty

This was supposed to be about four retired couples, cops and wives, living in Florida and solving crimes (not cases). But Spillane turned it into a study of memory. Imagine a blinded amnesiacal lover secreted away inside a community ofDead Street by Mickey Spillane read by Richard Ferrone

A pleasant lyrical description of the minute details of English country life presents the full world of a small town's folk, in all their deep old  habits, their social quirks and irritabilities, and their precious sense of the finite orderA Storm at Fairacre, Village Diary, Changes at Fairacre by Miss Read read by Gwen Watford