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

Fri Feb 20, 2004 Interesting how beauty and moral corruption are coupled in Lescroart's typical female. Especially the typical female lawyer. Messaging sexuality, too rich, too smart, too independent, too competitive:: the wet dream bitch of every lawyer wearing panties underneath his three piece suit. The black-oriental female associate working at HardyThe Second Chair by John T. Lescroart

A gentle voice with exacting intelligence mourns England, its living unemployed and its generation of tall, dead men: Where are the monstrous men with chests like barrels and moustaches like the wings of eagles who strode across my childhood's gaze twenty or thirty years ago? Buried, I suppose, in the FlandersThe Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell read by Richard Green

I am reading three books, disrespectfully, carelessly, unthinkingly. After finishing The Girl Who Kicked A Hornet's Nest I decided that there was nothing more to read. Nothing else to read. Nothing to satisfy the specific hunger for more Girl. Nothing to rejoin the amorous journalist and the girl. WhatDoomed.

According to Cheney and the gang, some torturers are more equal than others. This is the story of how one American becomes unequal. How an average guy, born of poor fishing folks of poor Maine stock, becomes a torturer. How a guy who knew boats, and joined the Marines, and learnedThe Prisoner of Guantanamo by Dan Fesperman::David Colacci

He still thought wistfully of what he might have become... a Carrie Hawes, or a Paul or a Richard, but more than any of those, the name he most cherished -- and he had never revealed this to a soul -- was Lefty, Lefty Hawes. Was there a criminal anywhere in the worldLet's Hear It For the Deaf Man by Ed McBain read by Jonathan Marosz

Another alcoholic ex-cop running a bar? Yes! This time in Fort Myers, living every cop's retirement dream: living on a houseboat, dating a Cuban woman and solving murders on the side. It's good. From the very first paragraph Jack feels like a detective, sounds like a detective, and makes it clear thatThe Dollar-A-Year Detective by William Wells

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

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

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

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

Imagine Frank Muller doing CZ Sakall, the jowly, bespectacled, hysterical Hungarian who cannot stop wiping his spectacles, shaking his head and concocting scenarios of doom ... "today... its going to happen today..." etc. The stammering, anxious NYC diamond dealer calls Jimmy McShane, well heeled ex-cop and private dick, who bodyguardsTHE GAME OF THIRTY by WILLIAM KOTZWINKLE ::FRANK MULLER:

Don't buy anything. Don't borrow anything. Don't open any kind of e-trade account, or invest in any kinds of funds, or buy any kinds of currencies, or pay any kind of broker. Read this book, cover to cover. Then write a letter of praise to Peter Schiff for hisCrash Proof 2.0 by Peter Schiff read by Sean Pratt

"Let's start the day with a reminder of our boundaries, Henry." Indeed. But some boundaries are more forgettable than others... Consider, for example, the boundaries between Scarpetta and Marino... Posted By: admin () Date: 10/21/2004 5:11 pm Trace by Patricia Cornwell read by Kate Reading

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

Nine times out of ten, if you've got a paranoid psychotic on the loose, his name is Raymond, he's mumbling something in Russian, and he's been hypnotized by his mother -- who is vicious and who controls the world. Allan Folsom is wonderful. So is Richard Condon. The extra bitThe Exile by Allan Folsom Read by Paul Michael