The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

War stories are love stories. Boys unsaved, unburied, unremembered. Violent, emotional, harrowing stories, told and retold and told again, afterwards, of boys too young, too dead, too Vietnam.

19 Years of Reviews

A divorced, unemployed home organizer with a drug-addict son is hired to empty out the hoarded contents of an aging artist. Uncluttering the house is accompanied by a series of decisions about why and why not something is or is not valuable. An interesting and entertaining study of people andObjects of My Affection by Jill Smolinski read by Xe Sands

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

Although I didn't see her face, I knew that the woman in the coloring chair was beautiful. It wasn't just because she had long, lush, gorgeous hair, but because she was tearing out a page of WWD, where she had eyed another beautiful woman with long hair. And beautiful womenI Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron read by Nora Ephron

Reacher heard the rack of the slide twenty feet behind him. He heard it very clearly. It was exactly the kind of sound he had trained himself never to miss. To his ears, it was a complete, complex split second symphony and every component registered precisely. The scrape of alloyBad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child read by Dick Hill

It is wrong to suppose that language is about communication. James Hall does not communicate. He sniffs a piece of the invisible, picks it up with his mouth and lays it on our doorstep. What we call language is sometimes a body, sometimes a carcass, sometimes a feather, sometimes aFrank Muller reads James Hall:: Red Sky at Night

Friendly, low-key, perspicacious suggestions on how to think about a marriage, how to prepare for it, and how to judge a potential marriage partner. Humorous anecdotes drive home the way to work your beliefs into your relationships. A mother who believes in original sin knows that every human being isWhom Not To Marry by Father Pat Connor Read by Robin Sachs

Gruff, base, raspy, cutting: a voice with a fist wrapped around it. That sandpaper thing, that tough, tight, testosterone thing. That private dick thing, Slovak style. Ex-cop ex-husband Milan Jacovich spits out violently funny running commentary on the seraglio of rich snobbish dames, old time bosses and stubborn Slovenes that populateThe Cleveland Local by Les Roberts::Les Roberts

Ever since Tracy Ullmann quipped that being in your early 50s was a wonderful time for most actresses, I've been watching for a script. Here it is. The next Meryl Streep movie: what better role for an over 50 actress than that of a politician's wife? That's right, one ofFly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner read by Judith Light

The tired old technique of a text within a text popped in the microwave with a 2K twist: a mothers diary to her one year old son. The kid dies. Instant tear jerker, instant Oprah Book of the Year, instant Right to Life siege technology. Use it to dummify yourSUZANNE'S DIARY FOR NICHOLAS by James Patterson::Becky Ann Baker

Annie moves to sleepy Heron Island on Chesapeake Bay with her 8 year old daughter Taylor, who carries a broom everywhere. This is because she is one of the only pupils who survived a shooting at an elementary school in Washington D.C. Mother and daughter enjoy renovating the old fashioned houseWind Chime Cafe by Sophie Moss narrated by Hollis McCarthy

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

'...This grand vehicle was a color not seen in nature... metallic, shimmering kind of not-chartreuse, not-gold, not-silver, not-mauve with just a hint of not-maroon....' Thinks Kelp, not-thinking, not-talking to himself in a kind of not-Bronx, not-Queens, not-Staten Island, in-your-front-lawn five-borough accent while looking for a car to steal in Long TermThe Road to Ruin by Donald E. Westlake Read by William Dufris

It is not enough to attach 5 generations of women to a tree or a patch of trees to give them character. Yes, one is very old, and one is a felon, and one was a stewardess, and one slept with a dozen different men each time she wanted toThe Roots of the Olive Tree by Courtney Miller read by Karen White

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

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