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A Soft Place to Fall by Barbara Bretton read by Wendy Tremont King

Jealous, child-bearing women live and love.

Better Homes & Corpses by Kathleen Bridge read by Vanessa Daniels

A decorator who wants to sell antiques on Long Island finds a dead body will doing an inventory for a wealthy woman. Not really about decorating and not really a mystery.

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.

Everything to Lose by Andrew Gross read by Tavia Gilbert

“It was no longer about the money, it was that innocent people had died.” This insincere, formulaic, unremarkable thought is thought yet again by Hilary the victim in the 68th Chapter of this disappointing ‘thriller’. Another poor and pretty mother, another psychopath, another Asperbergers child. Who cares?

Tidewater Inn by Colleen Coble read by Devon O’Day

Libby, an archeological historian who works on historic preservation is informed that she has inherited a run down inn in a beach town where her father lived. “Why isn’t this place in the historical register?” she asks the Sheriff, who is helping her find her kidnapped friend. The kidnapping makes a semi romantic semi coming-into-money story into a (bad) mystery. Asking “What would Jesus do?” turns a (bad) romantic mystery into (bad) Christian fiction. Good narrator, though.

Lisa Gardner, Touch & Go

Lisa Gardner is a genius at thesis statements. My favorite is: “a family is a system” (Hide). Or maybe: “A computer is a portal, you know, an entry point into your home.” (The Neighbor)

This book’s thesis statement is: “Pain has a flavor.” And like all good thesis statements, it tells you what the book is about.

And like all of Gardner’s books, Touch & Go bubbles and boils and troubles in all the right ways. Yeppers, this is a thriller. But does it have to give such an ugly picture of the family, of fatherhood, of wealth? Must you listen to another 5 hours of human beings torturing, humiliating, or degrading other human beings. This isn’t the evening news.

If you find yourself skipping one track, then another, and another, just turn off the audio. Isn’t that better?

19 Years of Reviews

Jesus Mary and Joseph in Rocksburg, Pa. Heartflipping. Smile wrenching. Honestagawd. Self-conscious, thoughtful, slightly misaligned human being, good son, and Detective Sergeant Acting Chief, Rocksburg Police, Rugs [”because some people think they can walk all over me”] Carlucci, falls in love while investigating death of sociopath baseball legend. Utter-fuckingly wonderful.BRUSHBACK by K.C. Constantine :: Lloyd James

Campbell Smith wants only to lie behind the S of Mrs Douglas Alexander, soon to be Senator from the great state of Delaware, a place where Washingtonians go to hide. But a woman who is hiding does not make a good political wife, and Campbell soon takes to gardeningOut of Order by Bonnie MacDougal read by Barbara Rosenblat

There's nothing like a kitchen-fuck, standing up against an old refrigerator, the ketchup bottle and the jar of mayo rolling around inside, the bag of peaches falling off the top.... There's nothing like two cops, fucking. But its a signature love scene, painterly, pointilistic, confessional. Mushrooming metaphors. And very veryDarkness Peering by Alice Blanchard read by Alyssa Bresnahan

Good mystery full of thoroughly unlovable characters. Homeless hearthless ones: kitchenless characters. Unemployed clerk comes back to poor Florida town to find half-dead aunt. She putts about in the Florida panhandle asking questions and discovering bad neighbors and bad morals. Riptide by Michaela Thompson

We get information in clumps, tangles, bunches. There are facts, mixed up with opinions, references, foreign words, sounds and descriptions referring to where we are talking, what is going on where we are talking, the distraction-ridden machinery of a technologically frenzied environment, analogies dragged in from confused personal archives,Fiddlers by Ed McBain read by Charles Stransky

It is not unusual for women's books to lay out women in groups, like a plate of madeleines, a silver tray of cream cakes. But this circle of quilters is not a dainty or delicate array. Chiaverini quilts stories about a dozen or so women who quilt, whose separate livesJennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilting Series narrated by Christina Moore

Listen to the sample of Dearly Departed by David Housewright, narrated by Michael Kramer. Hunter Truman was a man who preferred what Winston Churchill called "short Anglo-Saxon words"...words usually reserved for those moments when you hit your thumb with a hammer, or stub your toe in the dark. Short Anglo-Saxon Words....How to choose an audiobook?

Rest, it seems, is a peculiarly English thing. Restfulness in all its timorous, melancholic glory cushions the indoor lives of Oscar and Dorrie Livingstone, in a peculiarly English way. Not as the accidental sidebar of an otherwise busied existence but as an aspiration, a calling, a rigorous end in itself.A Friend From England by Anita Brookner read by Cherie Lunghi

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

The real lover is, as always, God.... Unerring, abundant, furiously hopeful story about the possibility of loving a woman to whom one is wed. No religiosity, just a well told well detailed tale of Irish Catholic erotic marital life. Greeley is as always superb.A Christmas Wedding by Andrew Greeley read by Jonathan Marosz

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

Although less terrible than usual, Brick can't do funny. And this book can be funny. The ram rod straight CIA trainer; the queer, ruthless, demented Director of Operations; the stubborn, nerdish, accidentally lucky pseudo-operative determined to avenge his murdered girlfriend..... Then of course he bumps into a woman who canThe Amateur: A Novel of Revenge by Robert Littell read by Scott Brick

A decorator who wants to sell antiques on Long Island finds a dead body will doing an inventory for a wealthy woman. Not really about decorating and not really a mystery. Better Homes & Corpses by Kathleen Bridge read by Vanessa Daniels

Like Grace in Warren Adler's Mourning Glory, Fleur seduces very wealthy widowers at funerals. Fashionable, flamboyant and sexually gifted, she moves in to Richard Favour's estate, charms his family, and plays out her usual scam. First, she borrows an American Express Platinum Card which draws on the widower's bank account,The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham read by Katherine Kellgren

The tired old technique of a text within a text popped in the microwave with a 2K twist: a mothers diary to her one year old son. The kid dies. Instant tear jerker, instant Oprah Book of the Year, instant Right to Life siege technology. Use it to dummify yourSUZANNE'S DIARY FOR NICHOLAS by James Patterson::Becky Ann Baker