Empire by Orson Scott Card read by Rudnicki

19 Years of Reviews

Like listening to a brand new Stones album (if you're old enough to know what an album is...) If a video of you coveting your neighbor's wife captured the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 would you rally to the Flag and turn it in? Night Fall is full ofNIGHT FALL by Nelson Demille Narrated by Scott Brick

An old, sick and unhappy man tells Jessica to write down his last wishes: sell the house, give the proceeds to my grandson. She formalizes it, he dies, the real estate agent gets to work. Jessica arranges for the hundreds of old books in the house to be sold atThe Ghost & Mrs. Fletcher

5. Be careful with puns, innuendo and double meanings. Search engines, spiders and robots have no sense of humor. Keep this in mind when trying to attract their attention. So states SEO "tip" number 5 of Berkshire Hathaway's BusinessWire.com, a neat new on-line press release engine, as clean as Google'sFor whom?

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

Frank Muller reading William Caunitz Just a paragraph. Listen to Frank Muller saying: "All in a day. It's almost like there's a puppet master pulling all our chains." Somehow, he lets the sense roll in and then rides it with his voice so that the words are gathered up in a hugeFrank Muller reading Chains of Command by William Caunitz

Miss Sophie Long is a Catholic School teacher who can't parallel park, until she meets Lois, Vietnam Vet, trained sniper, mechanic, and lesbian. They live in the same neighborhood as Morgan, a size 16-18 police detective with a demented mother. At some point, to make ends meet, Sophie and LoisRetirement Plan by Martha Miller read by Bernadette Dunne

1948 is a strange time to be a Jew. For Lonzman, the hero of this tale, it is the year the Jews in Israel are driven into the sea, and get a small beachside strip of Alaska as compensation. It is the year Lonzman's father arrives in downtown Sitka whereThe Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon performed by Peter Riegert

fake cheese on fake crackers... shoplifted and served with warmed over leftovers. Shame on the publishers. Jennifer Crusie and Mary Kay Andrews and Cheez Whiz

Jake is the kind of guy that tells his girlfriend to stop using some pheromonal perfume by Clinique because it "messes with his head". But apart from perfume, he is singularly unfussed. He is streetwise, he is attentive, and he belongs inside his own body. But he belongs nowherePower Play by Joseph Finder read by Dennis Boutsikaris

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

Hitachi's beautifully directed High Definition video series called True Stories features a segment on "Coal's Comeback". A bunch of old em·phy·se·mic grandpas are fishing, muttering into the wind, when the voice of Bruce No of Hitachi America announces that Supercritical Technology is the new generation of Coal, the cleanSister Mine by Tawni O'Dell read by Renee Raudman

Another Wall Street soap opera about bourgeois boomie pretty boys in big trouble. Yes, we've got a situation here, as the Denver cops would say. Time to grab a big blonde with an MBA, rent a car, empty your bank account, and run. Fall in love with her on the road. Get shotThe Takeover by Stephen Frey read by Paul Hecht

It could be any neighborhood in the 1970s or 1980s or any conventional middle class development with young childless couples on the verge of divorce or adultery. The neighborhood librarian becomes a felonious sleepwalker before becoming the librarian at a Women's Correctional Institute, teaching other felons to read, doing sitNeighborhood Watch by Cammie McGovern read by Coleen Marlo

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

Very rye, very laid-back, low-brow, funny in a way only a Goombah from NJ reading words with more than one syllable can do funny. Ferrone does dumb Goombah so well you laugh twice at each joke: once at the reading, once at the punchline. Burglar Bernie Roudhenbarr is trying to quit burgling. Now heThe Burglar Who Liked To Quote Kipling by Lawrence Block read by Richard Ferrone