The Second Chance Cafe by Alison Kent read by Natalie Ross

Hope Springs: A foster child lovingly raised in an old Victorian house comes back, buys the old house, and opens up a Bakery Cafe where she can sell her special brownies.

19 Years of Reviews

A widowed librarian makes friends with an old man who leaves her his land in Australia, near Perth, on the condition that she will live there for a year, alone. She leaves her brother with his communication problems and moves to the charming Western Australian estate, where the passionate, difficultKirsty's Vineyard by Anna Jacobs read by Nicolette McKenzie

Arkady, the permanently grim, dejected, despondent Moscow cop wants another autopsy done on the body of a prostitute and finds his old friend Willie at the morgue, having moved in. Immense and unshaven, Willie Pezenko shuffled around the morgue like a wooly mammoth in an operating gown. A cigarette hungThree Stations by Martin Cruz read by Ron McClarty

Imagine a Cobbled Court Quilt Shop. A Blue Bean Bakery. A For the Love of Lavender Herbal Boutique. Farms, handiwork, handicraft, prudent, helpful, hardware-toting neighbors, dainty small town gossip, happy volunteers, lavender soap: the fantasmatic drift of post-Madoff sub-urban female regret. What does a pretty pacified community look like whenThreading the Needle by Marie Bostwick read by Hilary Huber, Bernadette Dunne

The slightly hysterical, staccato reading misses the funny lines. And Dick just doesn't sound sexy. Too bad, because this book is both funny and sexy. Indeed, the sex scenes could pass for light porn.... The CIA guy is as wholesome and loveable and American as Special K. He rents fastKiss Me While I Sleep by Linda Howard read by Dick Hill & ...

Jealous, child-bearing women live and love. A Soft Place to Fall by Barbara Bretton read by Wendy Tremont King

Bennie's office of girls has moved uptown, and become a good hair office. The Good Italian Catholic girl and the Giant California Blonde combine glib girly gall with smart search skills to reconstruct, redress and prosecute a 60 year old wrong. Mary (GIC-girl) is obsessed with an old case aboutLisa Scottoline read by Kate Burton:: Mary goes to Missoula

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

An English schoolboy's happy meal: a murder, a bit of Herodotus, a little masochism, a little colonialism, a shovelful of archaeology, a box of cheroots, a little petit bourgeois pettiness, a pretty but not too pretty girl who works with animals, a plain, uxurious police inspector, and a healthy dollopThe Lost Army of Cambysus by Paul Sussman read by Gordon Griffin

"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

The voice is soft, delicate, unfinished. It tells a story about Noelle, a "human resources" admin with an infamous British great aunt whose estate she has just inherited. Long ago, her past had mixed with her aunt's and her aunt's paintings -- but for years they had not communicated.Painting the Moon by Traci Borum

Within a minute or two we know that the female narrator is New York City tough; hard headed, unlike the pedestrian who was used to staring at his phone as usual while trying to cross the same street as usual. She calls it: "death by routine." In that clever,Colleen Hoover, Verity, read by Amy Landon and Vanessa Johannson

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

It is not unusual to hear unflattering descriptions of Americans in the press, but when did Americans get so ugly in fiction? Consider a white haired couple who seem to be wearing each other's clothes in Donna Leon's Blood from a Stone: The woman wore a flannelBlood from a Stone by Donna Leon::David Colacci

Alone. Another Abridged Morality Play by Lisa Gardner Sometimes one wonders whether books get written by stringing together the top keywords in Google. Sex-cops-beautiful wife-abused child-murder-guns-rich family-domestic violence-sharpshooter-alcoholic father-politics-doctors-baseball. (Never forget baseball.) Calculate the page rank, and you get: Good cop gets bad girl. Bad girl has good excuse. Good copAlone. Another Abridged Morality Play by Lisa Gardner

Matt Payne is back, attracting bullets and bad guys and the failed sons and daughters of old Philadelphian society, and WEB Griffin is in fine form in the digital age, as romantic and jolly as always. But instead of showing us into the salons and bedrooms and backbenches ofThe Traffickers by W.E.B. Griffin read by Scott Brick