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

Another alcoholic ex-cop running a bar? Yes! This time in Fort Myers, living every cop's retirement dream: living on a houseboat, dating a Cuban woman and solving murders on the side. It's good. From the very first paragraph Jack feels like a detective, sounds like a detective, and makes it clear thatThe Dollar-A-Year Detective by William Wells

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

Charlotte, a romance writer who has recently broken her engagement to an unfaithful beau, moves to a small town and makes friends with her neighbors and the local pastor. Very pleasantly narrated by Crystal Sershen. Story well written but a little slow. Crispens Point by JoHannah Reardon narrated by Crystal Sershen

Stitched into textiles by young girls in the early 19th century, some terribly bored, are poems. These needlepointed poems are featured as epigraphs in another "cozy" mystery about a woman who returns to Maine. Life in a small town in Maine is mostly monotonous and cold. It is also cumulative.Lea Wait, Thread and Gone read by Christina Delaine

Wonderful, well developed characters modeled on silly, overchewed, Oprah-certified victim-types. The victim of an alcoholic, depressive, schadenfreude-mother, the victim of a childhood kidnapping by a pedophile, the victim of an unforgiving corrections system, the victim of overwhelming emotions, overwhelming fears, overwhelming doubts, of poor parents, poor teachers, poor morals, poorThe Neighbor by Lisa Gardner

"The thing you have to understand and understanding this explains so much about Murdoch's success is that happy newspaper families are alike and unhappy newspaper families are, well, quite alike too: in the end they all lose their papers. As cautionary tales go you could hardly find a more hothouseThe Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff read by Paul Boehmer

It is rare to hear the barely conscious memories of a powerful woman reconnoitring the dimensions of a frustrated girlhood. The wooden, joyless father, the servile, fearful, nervous mother, the rules, the order, the manners, the placements, the positions, the positionings of the dinner table, extended to the smallest sensationsA Certain Justice by P.D. James read by Simon Prebble

A house too old, with too many rooms and too many academics -- all the elements of a ghost story, without a ghost. Summer dissolves into eating, gardening, coupling, and conjecture: who is in the house?Someone in the House by Barbara Michaels read by Barbara Rosenblat

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

What starts off as a sweetly original, Jobs-like desire-mined story about a woman's relationship with the net: before and after marriage, turns into a stupid, GOOFY-Lucy-type plot about a wife and mother who tries to hide her need to be free from her straight laced and slightly idiotic husband. TooHacker Mom by Austin Rachlis

Kingdom of Lies (Unabridged) Length: 16 hours and 13 min. Release Date: 05-03-2006 First: ignore the Audible summary. There is an office bureaucrat sitting in Bangalore who listens to audiobooks in between doing customer service calls for Verizon and emergency care calls for Viagra wives. Which explains summaries that sound as ifKingdom of Lies by N. Lee Wood read by Ralph Cosham

A conspicuously intelligent society wife with perfect manners and an unfaithful husband is driving home from the country club and her BMW is hit by a huge truck. Stuck inside the car, she promises the Gods to do good, if only she does not go up in flames. She doesThe Social Climber of Davenport Heights by Pamela Morsi read by Isabelle Gordon

Remember once upon at time when you watched BATMAN because the last episode had Batman hanging by his toes over a vat of melted rubber hoses? And you had to tune in to the same Bat time, same Bat station to find out what happened? And even though you knewRobert K. Tanenbaum: Gotham

Well crafted character flaws in this 21st century noir detective story with a cheating wife and an ex-circus dick. Reading: Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan read by Paul Hecht

A nympho wine reviewer with a boyfriend who doesn't like to fuck on boats looks for a killer in San Francisco. But there are no localized mappings, detailing the city or its' neighborhoods, except for traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. Likewise, don't expect any happy wine tasting menuDeath in a Wine-Dark Sea by Lisa King