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

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

Despite all the buzzy, instagram-thick keywords about making a living as a media blogger, cook and home renovator, the main character's Mrs Marple is just a bit too stupid, a bit too simplistic to care about or believe in. The Hidden Corpse by Debra Sennefelder

A few Jewish words referring to a few ritual baked goods eaten by a few Jews does not a Jewish novel make. Nor does a description of a modestly clad woman with her hair tied back by a long scarf. If the Peter Decker novels wielded some specific charm byBlindman's Bluff by Faye Kellerman read by Mitch Greenburg

1948 is a strange time to be a Jew. For Lonzman, the hero of this tale, it is the year the Jews in Israel are driven into the sea, and get a small beachside strip of Alaska as compensation. It is the year Lonzman's father arrives in downtown Sitka whereThe Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon performed by Peter Riegert

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

It is not obvious that there are soldiers missing in action from the war in Iraq. It is said that the Arabs do not take prisoners, do not leave Americans alive. So the horror of a category of men archived by the subjunctive, neither real nor unreal, neither past norThe Confirmation :: Thomas Powers read by George Guidall

There are very few perfect beginnings to a story. Beginnings which move through images at the same rate as they move through text, rolling into a plot detectibly, sensibly, unhurriedly. A boy, for example, making the rounds on his bicycle, delivering the daily papers: ...At Colonel and Mrs Easterbrook's,A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

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

Josee Rose of the Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Amazon.com has agreed to by the largest publisher of audiobooks in the States, Brilliance Audio.Amazon will buy Brilliance Audiobooks!

It is the story of a happy Captain of a sinking ship. It is the story of Chernobyl, afterwards. It is the story of provisional investigators, provisional policemen, provisional scientists who are provisionally accepted as the mad inhabitants of a zone officially uninhabited, in which no crime officially occurs. TheWolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith

It is not unusual to hear unflattering descriptions of Americans in the press, but when did Americans get so ugly in fiction? Consider a white haired couple who seem to be wearing each other's clothes in Donna Leon's Blood from a Stone: The woman wore a flannelBlood from a Stone by Donna Leon::David Colacci

Slow, cloddish, cumbersome and overcooked dialogue stretches across this morality play about an ugly presidential election. Add the 'aching sadness' and 'fatal failures' and 'eyes shining with tears' of flat white characters, but read on. Hear the slimy campaign advise of slimy campaign managers: "Girlfriend is bad. BlackThe Race by Richard North Patterson Narrated by Michael Boatman

A well upholstered, crisply intelligent middle aged police inspector newly widowed from her faithless, politically agile husband, is called back to work after many years. She colors her hair, tries to eat less, and reconnoitres her domestic life across and through the investigation of a murder, the enmity of theA Small Indiscretion by Denise Rudberg translated by Laura Wideberg read by Joyce Bean

Read by Stephen Lang who is good doing liddle giwls and the monotones of the personal(it)y disordered but not wonderful doing Barty who is (we guess) the hero. Unless the real hero is: the theory of quantum mechanics as interpreted by Feynman and the possibility of understanding that things are always all theFrom the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz read by Stephen Lang

One reads, and reads, and reads... and one forgets how good it feels to consider the world through the jolly eyes of a clever and forgiving judge. P.D. James, for example. Consider the small Anglican college of St Alselm's, faithful not only to God and Church but to the immemorialDeath in Holy Orders by P.D. James Narrated by Charles Keating