Disgraced, crazed, outlawed for his goodie goodieness, ex-prosecutor for the Justice Department is given one last project: investigate the disappearance of Martin Green, an aide on the intelligence committee. J is coupled with a Southern belle-neophyte FBI agent, and instructed to find nothing.Law of Gravity by Stephen Horn read by Dylan Baker

A nice little vignette of malicious 1990's life with its Coke, its Sexual Saturation & its top of the mornin' Fuck You Very Much Sadism. P.I. ex-con Harding is hired to track and video rich respected Plastic Surgeon & wife-beater in the course of perverse sexual scenes. Erotic, staccato descriptions of girls tied up,This Far No Further by John Wessel read by Richard Ferrone

When the big brained businessmen of Europe come home, they don't want brainy, brilliant, succulent text. They want fashionable, gossipy, obscenely stupid words popping out of fashionable, gossipy, obscenely stupid secretarial types. On heels. They want to come to America, for a night. And wake up inDrek, in pink: Wolves in Chic Clothing by Karasyov and Kargman, read by Gasteyer

He still thought wistfully of what he might have become... a Carrie Hawes, or a Paul or a Richard, but more than any of those, the name he most cherished -- and he had never revealed this to a soul -- was Lefty, Lefty Hawes. Was there a criminal anywhere in the worldLet's Hear It For the Deaf Man by Ed McBain read by Jonathan Marosz

"Don't make any major changes in the first year" ... they say at AA. Matt Scudder has five or six weeks not to decide what he's going to do about Jan, a girl he sees Saturday night and Sunday morning ... "Some people say not to make any major changes forA Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block read by Tom Stechschulte

She sounds like your high school Home Economics teacher, or the Hall Mother in your college Dormitory, or your new semi-retired accountant: clear, crisp, well organized and about 23 pounds overweight. She sounds pretty and pinkish and lipsticked. She is in her mid fifties and owns a Needlework ShopHanging by a Thread by Monica Ferris read by Susan Boyce

Two women, one  girl. One steals identities, one leaves identities behind her. Zosie de l'Alba is the bad witch with red lollipop shoes, who befriends the good witch, draws the entire neighborhood into her chocolate shop, and seduces an adolescent girl. The Girl With No Shadow by Joanne Harris

Not all old women from the South are funny. Only the ones who know what they don't want, and what they want: All I want in this life is a reasonable man who's self supporting, who's nice to me, funny, you know, likes straight sex, not role playing modelled onThe Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank read by Nanette Savard

After the funeral, there is the family and the village. There is a batty aunt, a hysterical and heirless English lord, his ancient butler, and a smattering of inadequate and weak-willed in-laws, waiting for their share. These are the leftovers of the comfortable class, who married badly and relied onAfter The Funeral by Agatha Christie read by Hugh Fraser

For those of you who have been reading or not reading Koontz lately, it may not be obvious that there are two Koontzes: the early Koontz and the late Koontz. Like the early Heidegger and the late Heidegger. The distinction should open the door to hours and hours and hoursThe Door to December by Dean Koontz read by George Guidall

Arkady, the permanently grim, dejected, despondent Moscow cop wants another autopsy done on the body of a prostitute and finds his old friend Willie at the morgue, having moved in. Immense and unshaven, Willie Pezenko shuffled around the morgue like a wooly mammoth in an operating gown. A cigarette hungThree Stations by Martin Cruz read by Ron McClarty

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, perfectly cut clothes and lawns, professionally designed apartments, luxurious offices, alwaysMary Higgins Clark...

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 about the bureaucracy of French life, the stiff protocols, the delicateLe Mariage by Diane Johnson read by Suzanne Toren

One of the good Patterson & Gross collaborations, with a new villain called "the Israeli" and another called "the electrician". The descriptions of Haifa and Patagonia could have been cut out of Wiki. Joe Mantegna does adorable Italian goombas, and respectable Chechnian, Russian and Middle Eastern hoods. Seven discsJudge and Jury::James Patterson::Joe Mantegna

Firm writing, good characters, heavy social issues, but no story. Meet Ruth. A divorced mother who teaches sex education at a public high school is more or less forced to teach abstinence according to a rosy if delusional Christian fundamentalist agenda. Meet Tim: divorced, saved and reformed byThe Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta read by Campbell Scott