The Measure > recordedbookreview.com

There should be and will be a measure of a good writer, which is the number of words it takes for the reader to be INSIDE the story. Up, up and away. Peter Robinson: 10. Kristin Hannah/Hannah Kristin: 25. Ernest Hemingway: 4.

19 Years of Reviews

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

Reacher heard the rack of the slide twenty feet behind him. He heard it very clearly. It was exactly the kind of sound he had trained himself never to miss. To his ears, it was a complete, complex split second symphony and every component registered precisely. The scrape of alloyBad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child read by Dick Hill

The open-faced innocence of Anna Field's voice offers up a ripe acoustical image of a woman artist in New York: Faith Crowl. Faith is commissioned by an old and wealthy New York City socialite to paint the ballroom of her storied mansion in trompe l'oeil. Faith accepts, reluctantly, afterTrick of the Eye by Jane Stanton Hitchcock read by Anna Fields

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

Yes, we know that it is very important for there to be a gun on the table and a timer, clicking down, on the first page of the story. Someone is murdered, and by the end of the story someone else is found culpable. Someone is training, and by theFirewatch by Nelson DeMille read by Scott Brick

Charming English tale about a newly divorced English mother with ungrateful children and a lying, wretched, smarmy ex-husband. She talks to her neighbor about renting her lovely old house, and finds a job selling pretty cottages for a land developer... Sweet tale about moving on.Moving On by Anna Jacobs read by Penelope Freeman

Gwenda gets off the boat at Plymouth, hires a car, looks for village to live in. And finds one: a perfectly charming cottage with aga, a kitchen garden and flowered wallpaper. Gwenda moves in with her rosewood, her mahogany, her papermache, her chintz and all the fabrics ofSleeping Murder by Agatha Christie read by Rosemary Leach

"Don't you know I'm going to live happily ever after anyway?" After painting, waxing, polishing, wallpapering, and flowering up her old Nantucket house, Nan tells Sara about a man she met and loved. Sarah replies: but wouldn't it be nice if you met him again and fell in love and livedThe Beach House by Jane Green read by Cassandra Campbell

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

Not since James Bond have we witnessed such a "spectacular mesomorph, built of nothing except large quantities of bone, sinew and muscle." Indeed, his body introduces him: ...with his shirt off most people saw only his scars. He had a dozen minor nicks and cuts plus a dimpled 38 bullet holeLee Child's Jack Reacher in Nothing to Lose read by Dick Hill

Utterly charming tale of British advertising executive fed up with the petty hysteria of bosses, clients and ex-wives. He quits. He drives to the south of France, meets a beautiful real estate agent, and opens a hotel. But things are not so simple...Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle read by John Franklyn-Robbins

Is it the caterer or the husband or the ex-husband? Or the best-friend? When the hated mother of the bride is poisoned at the wedding, the wedding planner and her favored caterer are at the top of the suspect list... For those who want to read about weddings and murder atBetter Off Wed by Laura Durham read by Stephanie Spicer

Natalie is an arrogant medical student with a Portuguese speaking mother. She gets into trouble in one of her clinical classes and is suspended for four months. When she travels to Brazil, she is hijacked and surgically assaulted. A down and out private detective is hired by a watch-dog organizationThe Fifth Vial by Michael Palmer read by J. Charles

Utterly charming, surprising, and fascinating story about ... not only the NOT Pink but Raspberry Suit worn by Jackie Kennedy but about dressmaking in Paris and New York in 1960, the fabrics, the materials, the chalk, the little Irish seamstresses. the acid smelling old women who ran the sewing shop that knocked off the Chanels,The Pink Suit by Nicole Mary Kelby read by Gabrielle de Cuir

At what point can one say that a man is a cheat? When he buys a house from you, when he tells you how to avoid paying income tax, when you help him misrepresent himself, when he helps you find a woman you can marry, when he callsGood Faith by Jane Smiley read by Richard Poe