Joanne Harris Archives > recordedbookreview.com

Two women, one girl. One steals identities, one leaves identities behind her. Zosie de l’Alba is the bad witch with red lollipop shoes, who befriends the good witch, draws the entire neighborhood into her chocolate shop, and seduces an adolescent girl.

19 Years of Reviews

Gwenda gets off the boat at Plymouth, hires a car, looks for village to live in. And finds one: a perfectly charming cottage with aga, a kitchen garden and flowered wallpaper. Gwenda moves in with her rosewood, her mahogany, her papermache, her chintz and all the fabrics ofSleeping Murder by Agatha Christie read by Rosemary Leach

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

After much too much silly shitty giggly girly fiction, this clever, sharp, unpredictable novel about a small town female Sheriff who meets a man at a Quantico training course is a delight. The dialogue between the coupling law enforcement agents is witty, original, delicious; the supporting characters are curiousMaking It Right by Catherine Bybee read by Cristina Panfilio

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

Therefore, go forth, companion: when you find No highway more, no track, all being blind The way to go shall glimmer in the mind. Though you have conquered Earth and charted Sea And planned the courses of all Stars that be, Adventure on, more wonders are in Thee. Adventure on, for from the littlest clue HasNevil Shute No Highway read by Robin Bailey

How is it that Anna Jacobs always swaddles you into a world that feels cozy and safe and hopeful? Here is another story about a working woman who wants to retire but puts it off until she is at the edge of the world and has to fight her way backChanging Lara by Anna Jacobs

Even if you buy all your clothes at Walmart's, even if you never finished high-school and you still collect Happy Meal toys, even if your little girl never saw her father, who thinned out after a while, like smoke, you can still write a recipe book. Then someone with Aids,Going to Bend by Diane Hammond read by Hilary Huber

When the big brained businessmen of Europe come home, they don't want brainy, brilliant, succulent text. They want fashionable, gossipy, obscenely stupid words popping out of fashionable, gossipy, obscenely stupid secretarial types. On heels. They want to come to America, for a night. And wake up inDrek, in pink: Wolves in Chic Clothing by Karasyov and Kargman, read by Gasteyer

How fun to be a stubborn, sensible English widow who takes up decorating or hotelkeeping or moves to Brighton. The kind of fun that takes time: not like those television garden shows that demonstrate "how to transform an entire garden in a matter of five hours while the lady ofElvi Rhodes A House By the Sea read by Anne Dover

A house too old, with too many rooms and too many academics -- all the elements of a ghost story, without a ghost. Summer dissolves into eating, gardening, coupling, and conjecture: who is in the house?Someone in the House by Barbara Michaels read by Barbara Rosenblat

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

Some Hard-Boiled Characters of 20th C (by the Members of Rara-Avis, compliled by Joe Dante and Mark Blumenthal, 2002) (numerical order does not denote value) Philip Marlowe (from the series by Raymond Chandler) Sam Spade (from the novel, The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett) 3. The Continental Op (from theHard Boiled

Let us begin at the end, with Orson Scott Card telling us how the book did not begin: "Donald Mustard and his partners at Chair entertainment had the idea for an entertainment franchise called Empire about a near future American civil war... When I joined the project, to createEmpire by Orson Scott Card read by Rudnicki

The salad dressing was the only one Partain ever used: "9 parts olive oil, one part red wine vinegar, vinegar soaked salt, ground black pepper and more garlic than most people liked." Write this down. Ross Thomas' recipes are rare, legendary and authoritative. As are his stories, his characters, andAh, Treachery! by Ross Thomas read by Frank Muller

If you walk into a bar and hear a bunch of guys wondering about why angels have to sit on clouds "as if they don't got chairs in heaven," you're probably in a Dortmunder novel. If the guys are hunched over their drinks with that 1000-yard stare that suggests thatMetaphors as Politics: Donald Westlake: Watch Your Back!

Tag: Joanne Harris

The Girl With No Shadow by Joanne Harris