A ruthlessly intelligent localization of the seven deadly sins, California style. Savages by Don Winslow read by Michael Kramer

Lots of interesting characters on Blossom Street: a widow with an adopted daughter, a tough ex-punk happily married and unhappily smoking,  a good son and chocolate factory owner with a growing heart problem,   a charmed and charming owner of a knitting store,  a gorgeous single girl getting over an ex-fianceeSummer on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber read by Miss Delilah

And it occurred to him that the most important thing about Rode was that he had no friends. Smiley was reminded of Buchner's fairy tale about the child left alone on the Earth, who  finding no one to talk to  went to the moon because it smiled atA Murder of Quality by John Le Carre read by Keith Lloyd

As good as reading a short history of the rise and rise of the garden variety jihadist. A retired SAS agent is mending the roof of his medieval barn when he is summoned to a final counter-terrorist mission. The medieval political system also needs mending. So begins a storyThe Afghan::Frederick Forsyth read by Robert Powell

The skinny long legged girl with patch pockets shimmies down the fire escape to meet him, and hovers just a little bit above the ground, hanging, swinging above Castle street, in his dream, and forty years ago. After the dream, the old man wakes up, and hears the neighborhood kidsButchers Hill by Laura Lippman ready by Deborah Hazlett

The House of UnAmerican Activities Committee (on which sits Dick Nixon) is looking for Communists, and finds a few poor schmucks in Hollywood. Some Jews are inquisitioned, black-listed, and disappeared from the credits. Their words are found in screenplays by unknowns from Wyoming and Maine. Other JewsBeverly Hills Dead by Stuart Woods read by Tony Roberts

Couples. Kellerman's shrink narrator is full of meticulous, obsessive, data-driven characterizations of L.A. couples and couplings. Milos and Rick, for instance. Rick gets his hair trimmed every two weeks at a high priced West Hollywood salon. Milos drives every two months to La Brea and Washington where he hands hisKellerman's Gone

At the end of this very long book,  a famous publisher asks an ex-novelist to write about Wall Street during the subprime fiasco. But the novelist can only write about the novelist. No characters, no plot, no events ever get beyond the "me" of this word dealer. Annoying, pizzicato readingDear Money by M. McPhee read by Kate Reading.

Solid, sensible text hulled out of an old, heavy earth: The farmer was a tense willowy man with a German name and a head as bald as a rock. and The farmer's wife was fine cook and a generous woman. Meals, too, are solid and heavy and bald: boiled ham,Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger read by Buck Schirner

Increasingly, the essay, the critique, the report and the annunciation are being reconfigured in the form of fiction. Michael Crichton has mastered this form. His Next is more than a story about the re-distribution of genomes; it is Critique, Satire, Farce and Science Report, with: just the right amount of ironyNext by Michael Crichton read by Dylan Baker

Why isn't this a Doris Day movie? Perhaps because Rock Hudson would never have accumulated old washing machines and bowling balls in the garage; and Doris Day's anger never lasted longer than a bubble bath. Otherwise, Doris Day could have played this pretty, perky, 53 year old wife who breaksSearching for Paradise in Parker, PA by Kris Radish read by Barbara McCullough

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 future American civil war... When I joined the project, to createEmpire by Orson Scott Card read by Rudnicki

Archives: October 2004 Thu Oct 21, 2004 Trace by Patricia Cornwell read by Kate Reading "Let's start the day with a reminder of our boundaries, Henry." Indeed. But some boundaries are more forgettable than others... Consider, for example, the boundaries between Scarpetta and Marino... Posted by: admin on Oct 21, 04 | 5:11Archives October 2004

Rina Lazarus is a religious woman who cleans the ritual bath, cooks huge Sabbath meals, and teaches Math at a Yeshiva for boys in "Jewtown", near L.A. She dresses modestly, covers her hair with a kerchief online casino reviewonline casino black jackbest video pokerfree online blackjack gamefree internet blackjack,internetThe Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman performed by Mitchell Greenberg

Has anyone else noticed a spectacular and embarrassing  silliness among the old guard of East Coast scribblers? As though they were trying to write comic books, and couldn't figure out how to convert text into images? Gone are the wry, dry, street talk, the inside cracks of persons, cities, institutions.Capture by Robert Tanenbaum read by Charles Leggett