The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna Van Praag

What begins as a semi-magical stay at a semi-magical cottage ends as another story about pregnant women at an English Women’s Shelter.

19 Years of Reviews

Even little old Canadian villages have murders, and artists. Jane Neal lived and painted in a big house and kept both her canvases and her home private. Except for the kitchen. To it she invited her circle of friends and fellow-artists, poor and English speaking. TheyStill Life by Louise Penny read by Ralph Cosham

Disgraced, crazed, outlawed for his goodie goodieness, ex-prosecutor for the Justice Department is given one last project: investigate the disappearance of Martin Green, an aide on the intelligence committee. J is coupled with a Southern belle-neophyte FBI agent, and instructed to find nothing.Law of Gravity by Stephen Horn read by Dylan Baker

Robin Cook gives us another SMART & NUTS type physician, a dysfunctional, adulterous, snivelling subjectivity with a license to practice concierge medicine in Boston. Some seven chapters into the book we realize that it is still George Guidall reading. Good narrators, like good waiters, disappear, imperceptibly.CRISIS by Robin Cook::George Guidall

Who in God's name could murder a woman who puts doilies on the bottom of guest-room wastepaper baskets? In this decade of the Mother, of Mommihood, of stretchy, skin tight maternity dresses, of preternaturally calm Nannies, Long Time No See is perhaps the precursor of a series of mysteriesLong Time No See:: Re-hearing Susan Isaacs read by Cristine Mcmurdo-Wallis

There is something beautiful and more than beautiful about these women who enjoy their kitchens, who love all the rooms of domesticity. Jane gives us wives, book club ladies and hostesses, in Manhattan or Westchester, well groomed and well mannered and well off, obedient to husbands or mothers in lawPromises To Keep by Jane Green read by Cassandra Campbell

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

Well crafted words read by a dulled, depressed and depressing voice. Read it instead.Paint it Black by Janet Fitch read by Jennifer Jason Leigh

An all but dead movie director, inspired by a creative CIA operative, flies to Uzbekistan to shoot a reality show about a mafioso war lord in the post soviet territories with problems. "Wife is bitch on wheel. Son wants to join fuckink Taliban. Daughter like pussy." A perfect formula forThe Manhattan Beach Project by Peter Lefcourt read by Tom Weiner

Charming English tale about a newly divorced English mother with ungrateful children and a lying, wretched, smarmy ex-husband. She talks to her neighbor about renting her lovely old house, and finds a job selling pretty cottages for a land developer... Sweet tale about moving on.Moving On by Anna Jacobs read by Penelope Freeman

Jealous, child-bearing women live and love. A Soft Place to Fall by Barbara Bretton read by Wendy Tremont King

Another New York City nanny? No, no. This one wakes up screaming every morning, unable to stop the dream of a body bag around a not yet dead body. This one is having an affair with the father of the children she is nannying. This one sees cockroachesYou’ve Been Warned by James Patterson & Howard Roughan Read by Ilyana Kadushin

A serious Swede, heir of a prestigious Accounting firm, talks to his tour bus driver who must, like him, return to an unwanted fate, a little farm waiting for him to take it over: "I'm no good at going out looking for sheep that have got stuck on their backA Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy read by Rosalyn Landor

Outstanding crime novel read by Gildart Jackson, who knows how to make the dry under-humor of the British crisp and delicious to the American ear. Gildart Jackson is the narrator of the Peter Grainger novels, and his voice will forever resonate with the organizational misanthrope DC Smith.Bodily Harm by Charlie Gallagher

Timothy Van Bender's beautiful, disappointed wife signed a pre-nuptial agreement which protected Timothy's inherited wealth from the contingency of her (slightly embarrassing) lower class. When she commits suicide, Timothy is left with a failing hedge fund, a not-yet redecorated house in Silicon Valley, his membership at the Menlo Circus Club,Switchback by Mathew Klein read by Chris Patton

The girl reading this is California cool, with a strawberry blonde voice, that emerges just slightly bored from a long lean body, a finely boned neck, a tight mouth. John Lennon's death begins not only a book but a mood: a being-in-a-fucked-world mood, a being-towards-the-next-cigarette mood, theDraft: Paint it Black by Janet Finch