Alison Kent Archives > recordedbookreview.com

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

Imagine a big black woman, Myrna from Montreal, who decides to drive South, but feels peckish after an hour and a half and so stops and bumps into a one-vache town, a fairy-tale town: Three Pines had what she craved. It had croissants and cafe au lait. It had steak fritesA Fatal Grace by Louise Penny read by Ralph Cosham

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

Short cuts to well told endings of British crime novels don't usually work. They leave out the localized, linguistic pulp of English thought. And it is thought not plot that makes a novel so very relentlessly English. Tim Curry's reading resonates with localized, idiomatic, parochial, inherited sense, regionality, territoriality. Listen up. TimMartha Grimes read by Tim Curry: The Old Silent

It is not obvious that what happens to English in L.A. is natural, because what is natural in California is not natural anywhere else. But if nature is not local, what is? What localizes language? Why does Hollywood Nate understand another cop who asks him whether an Indian girl isHollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh

Your average everyday Mohammedan maniac, trained by your friendly neighbourhood terrorist, puts on a baseball cap,whistles 'Freebird' and disintegrates the 14th street bridge, the Dallas-Ft Worth Airport, and suburban D.C. before his Tourist Visa even expires. Welcome to America, stay as long as you want, come back anytime.The Enemy Within by Larry Bond read by Michael Russotto

"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

Well written and appropriately performed by a slightly whiny slightly depressed slightly menstruating Karen white.. But the plot devolves into yet another pro-birth pro baby pro teenage mother supported by divorced and widowed women novelette.Vintage by Sally Gloss read by Karen White

Adorable series that begins, improbably, with a scene from Pearl Buck's The Good Earth -- a seraglio of men sitting looking at a series of photos or paintings of women who are too beautiful to be real. But they are real. And they have a price. In this case, theCora Seton, Issued to the Bride, (books 1-4)

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

Read this series by Jan Karon about a diabetic Episcopalian rector in a small town in North Carolina whose fat happy female parishioners cant stop baking him pies cakes and cookies. Very very funny scenes with neglected husbands eating unthawed church sale cakes the minute their wives aren't looking, aJan Karon: The Mitford Series

Ignore the cover photo. An interesting story about a woman who bartends at an upscale New York club and an old college friend-become-billionaire who meet and reconnect -- after a long time. The woman loves children, dogs, and has lots of student loans to pay back. The man is stillSecond to None by Nancy Herkness read by Megan Tusing

Charlotte, a romance writer who has recently broken her engagement to an unfaithful beau, moves to a small town and makes friends with her neighbors and the local pastor. Very pleasantly narrated by Crystal Sershen. Story well written but a little slow. Crispens Point by JoHannah Reardon narrated by Crystal Sershen

A hotel room. Vegas. A whore, with a gun at her forehead and a cock in her mouth. They told her downstairs that the guy was important, a banker. And that's what she tells her friend when she gets home. Her friend is Colonel Eddie Manso, who has always knownLawrence Block, The Specialists, read by Fred Sullivan

Nick, Miami news reporter, is a decent, semi-sad, semi-serious, guy. One day he is sent out to cover a typical Miami highway accident. Dead on the scene are his wife and one of his twin daughters. One year later Nick is a decent semi sad semi serious guy with one daughterEye of Revengeby Jonathon King

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

Tag: Alison Kent

The Second Chance Cafe by Alison Kent read by Natalie Ross