Andre Gross Archives > recordedbookreview.com

“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?

19 Years of Reviews

There is something annoying, something unsettling, something demoralizing about a story in which all the women are either murder victims, embittered but useless mothers, faithful, ineffectual wives, or sexually charged students with dancers' bodies. Annoying, too, is witnessing an entire small town turn against an innocent man and his brainyThe Bone House by Brian Freeman read by Joe Barrett

Another silly and lovable murder mystery written by an out of work real estate agent? Well, let's see: Dixie Hemingway is a 32 year old ex-deputy living Sarasota, Florida, with her brother, the fireman, and his lover, Pablo, an undercover cop. She is a certified and insured andCuriosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaize Clement, performed by Julia Gibson

For those with a curiosity about the kind of woman who is employed by Christie's and the New York auction scene: the girls, the clothes, their mothers, their mothers' wardrobe, the accents, the topknots, the hyper-academic cat-calls, the jealousies, the gallerinas: The gallery girls of New York are like starving attack dogs in really nice clothes. AllThe Price of Inheritance by Karin Tanabe read by Emily Durante

Millie is a happy widow who is a member of the Red Hat Club. She has just dyed her hair cinnamon. She wants to travel and step down from her job as 'domestic goddess', but she has two sons who are slobs. One has moved into her basement apartmentThe Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess by Regina Hale Sutherland read by Cynthia Darlow

Author of 41 books of Christian fiction (and never a best seller) gets used to living with her annoying mother-in-law and her hapless daughter while she complains about her life to God. It is not at all evident that God is interested. A Case of Bad Taste by Lori Copeland read by McMurdo-Wallis, Cristine

Mary and Neil are cousins: sort of, by adoption. They were once, possibly, in love. Neil has returned to Mason, Ohio where he is related to just about everybody, for a summer. He is helping an Aunt turn an oyster of a house into a bed and breakfast. Mary is marriedThings We Once Held Dear by Ann Tatlock

Couples. Kellerman's shrink narrator is full of meticulous, obsessive, data-driven characterizations of L.A. couples and couplings. Milos and Rick, for instance. Rick gets his hair trimmed every two weeks at a high priced West Hollywood salon. Milos drives every two months to La Brea and Washington where he hands hisKellerman's Gone

"Salander was not a normal person." Bandied about from one institution to another, she has a casebook full of entries written by social workers, psychiatrists, administrators: serious Swedish officials. Because she does not speak, she is assumed to be stupid. She is not. Because she looks too young, she isThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson read by Simon Vance

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

Forget the tax on sugar. Tax bad dialogue, dreadful characterizations, idiotic psychological profiles. To wit: When he was a child the twitch had made him the target of merciless teasing and bullying. It had made him burn with hatred. And that hatred had driven him to succeed. Victor Orlov wanted toThe Defector by Daniel Silva read by Phil Gigante

Grass soup is exactly what it sounds like. It's a recipe for food of last resort that my father has apparently squirrelled away somewhere. I have never actually seen this recipe but it was referred to fairly often when I was a child. Should everything else turn to shit, weDavid Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable

More than a little over the top, Clara Hutt is dropping her 2 boys off this morning wearing her pajama bottoms (again) and wondering (again) why all the other mothers can arrive at school with perfectly starched blouses and expertly applied makiage. Not now, Darling, I'm Paaaarking," andIndia Knight's My Life on a Plate read by Jill Tanner

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

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

Quiet, patient, relentless intelligence spills over the pages of this story about a girl geek, a journalist, a news magazine devoted to the critique of corrupt Swedish institutions, and an odd assemblage of Stockholm's thugs, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and cops. None are verbose. Men and women think. Thinking happens withoutThe Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larson read by Simon Vance

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Everything to Lose by Andrew Gross read by Tavia Gilbert