Maeve Binchy Whitethorn Woods read by Jenny Sterlin

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, the story of Neddy who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But you see I never wanted to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Years ago we had one sharp knife in the kitchen and everyone was always talking about in with fear. ‘Will you put the sharp knife up in a shelf before one of the children cuts the hands off themselves?‘ my mom would say. ‘‘Make sure the sharp knife has the blade towards the wall and the handle out. We don’t want someone ripping themselves apart’. They lived in fear of some terrible accident and the kitchen running red with blood… I was sorry for the sharp knife, to tell you the truth….

And so we step into the minds and hearts of these irish folks who live very populated lives, crowded with family obligations, loyalties, suspicions, immoralities and miracles….And everyone with an opinion of everyone else. And always the age old heaviness of poverty and the imperative to hide half of everything true.

Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler read by George Guidall

Only Anne Tyler can make an off-license church appear as American as apple pie, and it’s off-beat flock, a fumbling but cuddlesome assemblage. The Church of the Second Chance is both a hovel and haven of forgiveness, a familial supplement to a family no longer familiar, a family askew.
In 1965 Mrs Bedloe was one of those mothers who believed that life, her life, was perfect, and that everything that happened in life, her life, was perfect. “Her marriage was a great joy to her, her house made her happy every time she walked into it, and her children were attractive and kind and universally liked.” Indeed, in 1965 the Bedloe family had been perfect, or close to it as you got on Waverly Street, in Baltimore. Mr Bedloe was a high school math teacher and the coach of the baseball team, Danni worked in the post office, Ian dated the prettiest girl in his junior class and dressed in high top sneakers held together with electrical tape.
Afterwords, after the Bedloe family had lost Danny and Lucy, whom he had met in the post office, and married, and who had worn red lipstick and stockings with too straight seams, what remains are Lucy’s three children — Agatha, Thomas, and Daphne, and Ian, and his parents, and the house, with its attic converted into bedrooms for the extra children.

Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman read by Rubenstein

The first murder victim is a horror list of character flaws with L.A. citizenship:

1. She could not be bothered to make the car payments on the first of each month, even though her parents took care of the down payment.
2. She lives in a dump in Sherman Oaks but she tells everyone she lives in Van Nuys.
3. She teeters out of a bar at 3 in the morning and can’t find her car in the parking lot — but it is not her fault — why don’t they put lights in the parking lot?
4. She runs out of gas on a freeway because she can’t be bothered to check the gas, or plan anything in advance.

Trick of the Eye by Jane Stanton Hitchcock read by Anna Fields

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, after a heavy dose of gossip by her gay friend, Harry. As Faith paints the ballroom, the old woman becomes curiouser and curiouser. Her personality is  baroque, gargoyle-like, impenetrable, suspect. Faith suspects. She looks for the truth behind the old woman’s past and finds that the woman is herself a work of art, an illusion.

Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker read by Robert Ian MacKenzie

An intimate look at the arrangements, organization and order of small town French village life, through the eyes of the jovial, wise and well fed chief of police, for “…not  a single pig made it to market without some part of it being offered as part tribute part toll to Bruno…”.

He put the grill close to the coals, arranged the steaks, and then under his breath sang the Marsellaise, which he knew from long practice took him exactly 45 seconds. He turned the steaks, dribbled some of the marinade on top of the charred side, and sang it again. Then he turned the steaks for 10 seconds, pouring on more of the marinade, and then another ten seconds. Now he took them off the coals and put them on the plates he’d left to warm on the bricks he’d left to warm on the side of the grill.

The strolling investigator offers up an amiable mix of local types, of those who “evidently conformed to the English stereotype of bizarre affection for animals dressed in gleaming black boots, cream jodhpurs,” of the prissy European officers of hygiene who threatened the taste of the local cheese, of old men who had not spoken to each other since the war.

The reader sometimes sounds as if he’s sucking on bubbles, a kind of terrible English mumbling.

The Accident Man by Tom Cain read by John Lee

It is said that this book does not reconstruct the Diana accident. It doesn’t. It reconstructs what might not have been an accident if a sensitive, guilt ridden orphan named Samuel Carver (“Call me Carver”) who threatens to break pinkies had arranged for a car to blow up in a tunnel in Paris. Carver, like other orphans before him, is an idiota, an innocent. He does not know who it is he has killed. What does Carver know? He knows he was adopted by a middle-aged couple who didn’t love him and sent him off to boarding school when he was eight. He knows how to run and he knows how to shoot and he knows how to fall asleep in the arms of his executioner, demonstrating a disarmed and disarming new-man vulnerability. And finally, in front of the T.V. news, he knows how to cry…. Maybe, not.