Trace by Patricia Cornwell read by Kate Reading

“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

19 Years of Reviews

Has anyone else noticed a spectacular and embarrassing silliness among the old guard of East Coast scribblers? As though they were trying to write comic books, and couldn't figure out how to convert text into images? Gone are the wry, dry, street talk, the inside cracks of persons, cities, institutions.Capture by Robert Tanenbaum read by Charles Leggett

Jesus Mary and Joseph in Rocksburg, Pa. Heartflipping. Smile wrenching. Honestagawd. Self-conscious, thoughtful, slightly misaligned human being, good son, and Detective Sergeant Acting Chief, Rocksburg Police, Rugs [”because some people think they can walk all over me”] Carlucci, falls in love while investigating death of sociopath baseball legend. Utter-fuckingly wonderful.BRUSHBACK by K.C. Constantine :: Lloyd James

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!

It is not unusual for women's books to lay out women in groups, like a plate of madeleines, a silver tray of cream cakes. But this circle of quilters is not a dainty or delicate array. Chiaverini quilts stories about a dozen or so women who quilt, whose separate livesJennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilting Series narrated by Christina Moore

The Ninilta Native Association is run by Aunties - fierce old women who knit and protect native women and define the small life of the large territory called The Park. One of the Aunties belongs to Kate Shugak and functions, among other things, as a creditor. We give you time, Katya.A Deeper Sleep by Dana Stabenow read by Bernadette Dunne

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

Autumn in the Vineyard by Marina Adair There's always a girl. She's either poor, or she's lost all her money; she's either alone, or she's been disowned; she's either socially incompetent, or she's incited by her own humiliation. This time, it's Frankie Baudouin and she wants to grow grapesAutumn in the Vineyard by Marina Adair narrated by Renee Raudman

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

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

Solid, sensible text hulled out of an old, heavy earth: The farmer was a tense willowy man with a German name and a head as bald as a rock. and The farmer's wife was fine cook and a generous woman. Meals, too, are solid and heavy and bald: boiled ham,Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger read by Buck Schirner

A big man, a private eye, ex-military, school of Afghanistan, minus one leg and one girlfriend, hires a relentlessly normal secretary for a week. She stays on. He gets a case. She helps. Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

The last of the Rabbi Small series narrated with an annoying over-aggressive punkishness by Guidall -- to intimate, perhaps, the intellectual aggression of Rabbi Small, the clever not-to-be socialized puzzle solver and prayer leader of the Conservative Jews of Barnard's Crossing Massachusetts. The characters are at least as aliveThe Day the Rabbi Resigned by Harry Kemelman read by George Guidall

Private eye with basic grammar skills looks for two kidnapped girls in small town, and gets cozy with the Sheriff's son.A Stranger In Town by Cheryl Bradshaw read by Crystal Sershin

Sisters who all somehow 'lose' their husbands on the same day -- all in different circumstances and for different reasons -- and yet are able re-find their lives and themselves, but better. California Girls by Susan Mallery

The skinny long legged girl with patch pockets shimmies down the fire escape to meet him, and hovers just a little bit above the ground, hanging, swinging above Castle street, in his dream, and forty years ago. After the dream, the old man wakes up, and hears the neighborhood kidsButchers Hill by Laura Lippman ready by Deborah Hazlett