DOWN TIME

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict

  • GET IT

Next book

DOWN TIME

A NOVEL

by Andrew Martin ; read by Abigail Reno , Gail Shalan , Major Curda & Patrick Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2026

All four performances are consistently humorous, real, and winning.

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict

  • GET IT

In New York City, during the early days of the pandemic, four adults in their 30s seek purpose. Or, at least, connection. The four narrators effectively convey their characters' flaws and struggles in the midst of an unprecedented global pause. Major Curda is disarming as the curious, complicated Aaron, dealing with addiction since he was 16. Gail Shalan subtly conveys Cass, Aaron’s persevering spouse, who remains with her partner despite his frequent relapses with alcohol. Patrick Harrison’s Malcolm, who is teaching a course on outsider artists and anything else he wants to talk about, is both arrogant and compelling. Abigail Reno embraces Antonia, the climate researcher seeking a tenure-track job, with perfectly dry observations.

All four performances are consistently humorous, real, and winning.

Pub Date: March 10, 2026

Duration: 9 hrs, 12 mins

DD ISBN: 9781250438973

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

    WONDER BOYS
    Amazon
    Next book

    WONDER BOYS

    by Michael Chabon ; read by David Colacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

    Amazon

    American colleges are favorable locales for ghastly event and hair-tearing circumstance. There is, for instance, a good deal of pleasure to be had out of professor and past-prodigy Grady Tripp's awful life, as portrayed by Michael Chabon in WONDER BOYS. There is a certain amount of slapstick here, but it's balanced by Chabon's superb portrait of a gale-force mid-life crisis, a soul-destroying albatross of an unfinished novel and the mind-numbing inconsequence of writers' conferences. David Colacci sounds a little starved for oxygen in his reading, but that's not exactly out of keeping with Grady Tripp's personal gestalt.

    Pub Date: N/A

    Duration: N/A

    Publisher: Brilliance Audio

    Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026

    Categories:

    LITERARY FICTION

      QUEEN LUCIA
      Amazon
      Next book

      QUEEN LUCIA

      by E.F. Benson ; read by Geraldine McEwen ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

      Amazon

      Class lurks in varying degrees behind every great English comedy, its ineffable code being so endlessly conducive to ironic subtlety. QUEEN LUCIA, the first of the great Lucia novels of E.F. Benson, is imbued with it. Nonetheless, social striving rather than class per se gives the novel its real comic force. At its center is Lucia, the regnant, self-appointed social and cultural leader of a genteel, middle-class circle. She’s a schemer and poser of awesome theatricality and self-delusion. Although the narrative is conducted in the third person, the characters’ doings, most especially Lucia’s, are as often as not reported in the light in which the perpetrators hope to be viewed. Still, the true facts and motivations, usually base, shine luminously through. Geraldine McEwen’s reading truly enhances the work, being a model of cultivated discretion and ironic pacing.

      Pub Date: N/A

      Duration: 9 hrs

      Publisher: ISIS Audio Books

      Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026

      Categories:

      LITERARY FICTION

        • Popular in this Genre

        Close Quickview