Author: Madeleine L’Engle
Reader: Maggi-Meg Reed
Extras: Introduction and interview with author’s granddaughter, Lena Roy
Short Review: This sweet story of romance and self-discovery is lovely. We join twenty-year-old Elizabeth’s for week of working in a summer theater in 1946. Beautifully read – a nice story for a dreamy afternoon.
Hope in a Jar
Author: Beth Harbison
Reader: Orlagh Cassidy
Available on Audible.com
Short Review: Shallow beach-read sort of book. Estranged best friends reunited by twenty-year high school reunion. You probably already know if you would hate it based on this description.
The Chosen One from Audible.com The Chosen One from Amazon.com Author: Carol Lynch Williams Reader: Jenna Lamia Short Review: A good book about a controversial subject, improved by an excellent reading by Jenna Lamia. Long Review: Jenna Lamia is a true standout as a narrator, and I plan to seek out her other work. She [...]
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories Author: Susanna Clarke Readers: Davina Porter and Simon Prebble Short Review: Clarke’s entrancing, charming short stories about the magical world introduced in Jonathan Strange & Mr.Norrell particularly focusing on the women who practice magic in this alternate England and run-ins between Englishpeople and faeries. Prebble and Porter [...]
Four Souls Author: Louise Erdrich Reader: Anna Fields Short Review: Four Souls is a belated sequel to Tracks, and thus the continuation of the story of Fleur Pillager—one of the recurrent characters in Erdrich’s series of novels that follow an Ojibwe tribe. Read starkly and beautifully by Anna Fields, the plot is intricate and engrossing, [...]
My Dream Of You Author: Nuala O’Faolain Reader: Dearbhla Molloy Short Review: A beautiful first novel from one of Ireland’s best memoir and non-fiction writers, gorgeously read by Dublin’s excellent Dearbhla Molloy with just the right accent and diction. The novel interlaces a story of a woman approaching menopause while re-awakening her sense of romance, [...]
Paula Spencer Author: Roddy Doyle Reader: Ger Ryan Short Review: A novel featuring the engaging lead character from Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked Into Doors gloriously read in the perfect Dublin accent by Ger Ryan. Long Review: Paula Spencer is a recovering alcoholic, recovering longtime victim of domestic violence, widow, house-cleaner, and mother weighed down [...]
Short Review: Margaret Atwood’s retelling of a portion of The Odyssey in Penelope’s voice, her contribution to the Canongate Myth Series, read by Laurel Merlington.
Author: Marilynne Robinson
Read by: Becket Royce
Short Review: Robinson’s prize-winning, gorgeous, intricate novel about women and the fragility of family, and of sanity, and the need to create and maintain a sense of home, no matter what happens. It is read well, if not perfectly, by Beckett Royce.
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Cat’s Eye Author: Margaret Atwood Reader: Barbara Caruso Short Review: Atwood’s Governor General’s Award-winning bildungsroman about girls’ cruelty to other girls, art, childhood, and memory; read crisply by Barbara Caruso. The book follows Elaine Risley, an artist, as she remembers her youth in Canada while preparing for a retrospective of her artwork. It is heartbreaking [...]