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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

Nevil Shute's America: Beyond the Black Stump How do we know what we look like to others? They tell us, that's how. When Stan, sober geologist, good son and citizen of Hazel, Oregon, tells Molly that he or maybe his friend got a girl pregnant, and that the twelve year oldNevil Shutes America: Beyond the Black Stump

Wonderful, well developed characters modeled on silly, overchewed, Oprah-certified victim-types. The victim of an alcoholic, depressive, schadenfreude-mother, the victim of a childhood kidnapping by a pedophile, the victim of an unforgiving corrections system, the victim of overwhelming emotions, overwhelming fears, overwhelming doubts, of poor parents, poor teachers, poor morals, poorThe Neighbor by Lisa Gardner

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 ShermanCompulsion by Jonathan Kellerman read by Rubenstein

The skinny long legged girl with patch pockets shimmies down the fire escape to meet him, and hovers just a little bit above the ground, hanging, swinging above Castle street, in his dream, and forty years ago. After the dream, the old man wakes up, and hears the neighborhood kidsButchers Hill by Laura Lippman ready by Deborah Hazlett

Wry, infinitely bored, softhearted ex-cop holes up in the Upper Peninsula, runs his snow plow up and down the block, and hangs out in a Scottish pub, drinking Canadian beer. Then trouble comes knocking at his door.... "You spend your whole life up here sitting in The Hunting Wind by Steve Hamilton read by Nick Sullivan

The crisp precise language of the story irons out an implicit California-Palo Alto class structure, in addition to a real plot! A hairy doctor found dead in a $400 hotel room... a husband.Circle of Wives by Alice Laplant

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

In some possible Doris Day movie about a perky blonde secretary and a rich executive bachelor there is a perpetual secretarial pool typing out Nora Roberts novels in time to Sinatra or Liszt. There is no Nora Roberts. There is a pool of Nora Roberts, a herd of Nora Roberts,The Nora Roberts Pool

Women are divisive. Among themselves and between their generations. Go to any academic women's conference and see for yourself. Or listen to Blair Brown's crisp, young, feminine voice reading The Senator's Wife. And listen for this divisiveness. In the pasteurized neighborly conversations of Miller's two women: the 37 year oldThe Senator's Wife by Sue Miller read by Blair Brown

"Let's start the day with a reminder of our boundaries, Henry." Indeed. But some boundaries are more forgettable than others... Consider, for example, the boundaries between Scarpetta and Marino... Posted By: admin () Date: 10/21/2004 5:11 pm Trace by Patricia Cornwell read by Kate Reading

Do you really want to spend a half an hour of your time listening to a blow by blow account of how Diane, an Elm Creek Quilter, who never remembers to charge her cell phone, gets stuck in a snow storm with only 8% of her battery left to make...A Quilter's Holiday by Jennifer Chiaverini read by Christina Moore

Fri Feb 20, 2004 Interesting how beauty and moral corruption are coupled in Lescroart's typical female. Especially the typical female lawyer. Messaging sexuality, too rich, too smart, too independent, too competitive:: the wet dream bitch of every lawyer wearing panties underneath his three piece suit. The black-oriental female associate working at HardyThe Second Chair by John T. Lescroart

If ever there was a language of L.A., a language in which each noun, common or proper, is localized, dated, and cast in a Hollywood movie, it is the language of James M. Cain. And if Cain's L.A. had a voice, she would sound like ChristineJames M. Cain and 'Sexological Advertiser'

A short sharp meditation on how we know what we know and how we decide what we decide by the director of the Center of Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. When I became director of the Max Planck institute of Human Development,Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer read by Dick Hill

The conservative Rabbi of a small Massachusetts town inserts himself into the secular and criminal affairs of his congregation, illustrating that the same hypocracies, connivances and plots have been at work in American Jewry since at least 1960....Thursday the rabbi Walked Out by Harry Kemelman read by George Guidall