The Wedding Gift by Lisa Kevin > recordedbookreview.com

Remarkably lean and unfussy novelette about a female chef who rediscovers that experimentation is the best part of cooking…

19 Years of Reviews

Sit down at the kitchen table, have a cup of tea, and listen to the gossip, the rumours, the superstitions, the confabulations and conjurations of the people living in the village near Saint Anne's well, in the magic woods of Whitethorn, where everybody tells stories. For example,Maeve Binchy Whitethorn Woods read by Jenny Sterlin

A divorced, unemployed home organizer with a drug-addict son is hired to empty out the hoarded contents of an aging artist. Uncluttering the house is accompanied by a series of decisions about why and why not something is or is not valuable. An interesting and entertaining study of people andObjects of My Affection by Jill Smolinski read by Xe Sands

There is a yummy baked goods kitchen feeling, because the woman baking the cookies has an organized sense of her world, she has friends, one dead and one living ex-husband, girl-children, and flour in her pantry. But -- and there are 50 years worth of buts-- she also has aThe Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman read by Gabra Zackman

Sharpen your pencils, open your looseleaf, sit up, take notes. This is an impressive, intelligent, well researched white-paper-thriller about silly, soppy, environmental theories and the well-funded, well publicized, well-established bureaucracies which profit by circulating them. 'State of Fear' is the coinage of a 'Mental Ecologist' whose hysterical critique of a toxicState of Fear by Michael Crichton read by George Wilson

Delicious, delightful, entertaining romance about an ambitious lawyer in Chicago and an FBI agent who meet when she agrees to help them capture a corrupt senator. Fast paced, witty dialogue, enchanting story line. Brava!Love Irresistably by Julie James narrated by Karen White

Slightly tighter, sharper, more ascerbic Carolyn Brown "women helping women" novel. 5 military wives cling together to comfort yet another soon to be divorced wife of a retiring military husband who, incidentally, is unfaithful. It is not altogether a celebratory narrative. The wives take a camping trip to theThe Empty Nesters by Carolyn Brown

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 himself loved by women, plays laid back surfer dude copCalibre by Ken Bruen read by Gerard Doyle

A cross between a painter, an MFA student, and a woman finds herself attached to charming, untrustworthy male artists and thence to the forgery of a stolen Degas. In between whining about herself and her lacks, she tells us about several famous forgers and shows us how they workedThe Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro read by Xe Sands

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

Quiet, patient, relentless intelligence spills over the pages of this story about a girl geek, a journalist, a news magazine devoted to the critique of corrupt Swedish institutions, and an odd assemblage of Stockholm's thugs, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and cops. None are verbose. Men and women think. Thinking happens withoutThe Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larson read by Simon Vance

Let's just say that murders happened in the middle of other things: a cop, a lawyer, a fire investigator get up, they fight with their wives, they eat. Sometimes they think. The law is something they think about. How it came to be what it is, where it came from,ORIGIN & CAUSE by Shelly Reuben

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

Robin Cook Marker read by George Guidall Most bestselling writers, like Hollywood waiters, are really something else. Shrinks, lawyers, opthamologists. Divorced ex-cops. Sometimes a reporter. A confused priest or two. We excuse such slippery behavior when it gives us access to technical knowledge: why kill? how do cops catch criminals? whatRobin Cook Marker read by George Guidall

An unusual and captivating account of a Manhattan social scene rapt by cocaine, bondage, dying gays and too much money. Vince Cardozo as the NYPD detective lieutenant who is pretty enough and straight enough to correct wrongs and fall in love at the same time... Privileged Lives by Edward Stewart narrated by Christian Rummel

The technique of the teacher that will not die: there is a law professor in y our head that is still teaching you contracts, except that instead he is asking you about why you are driving to Philadelphia after you have discovered a dead ex in your house killed withThe Church Builder by AL Shields