READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN is a literary and audio masterpiece. The book is Azar Nafisi’s brilliant, evocative, chilling, and highly literary memoir of life as a woman in Iran under the current repressive government. Although Nafisi focuses on the secret meetings at her home with several female former students, during which they read and discuss banned works of Western literature, the book is also a portrait of a life of fear and optimism at a time when hope is elusive. Lisette Lecat’s reading is magnificent. She reads with an elegance and authenticity that permit listeners to feel as though they are also in Nafisi’s home. In addition, Lecat handles with ease and authority the passages in which Nafisi explains the intricacies of many works of literature. Nafisi’s memoir is destined to become a classic.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2004
Duration: 18 hrs, 30 mins
Publisher: Recorded Books Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Listeners will find much worth discovering in the lives of these vanguards of American intellectual life.
Kevin R. Free’s voice is the perfect vehicle for this fascinating portrait of a remarkable group of artists, philosophers, abolitionists, and social reformers who all happened to live in Concord, Massachusetts in the 19th century. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and her father, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and many others called themselves transcendentalists and became the first truly American philosophical movement. With his genial delivery, Free is up to the task of narrating this complicated account of many intersecting lives; his inflections add character to the correspondence and inject life into the often formal writings the Circle left behind.
Listeners will find much worth discovering in the lives of these vanguards of American intellectual life.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
Duration: 9 hrs, 53 mins
DD ISBN: 9781668132777
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
An interesting Ozark history that doesn’t quite cohere.
Author Hale presents the case of his young cousin Haley's disappearance on Cave Mountain in 2001 and the ensuing search and rescue operation, the largest in Arkansas history. Hale connects this with the murder of 3-year-old Bethany by a small and isolated religious sect decades earlier on the same mountain. Narrating these two stories in a low, slightly gruff tone, Hale weaves together family anecdotes, Ozark lore, local and broader history, and Christian theology. While the two cases are intriguing, the work lacks focus and contains extraneous details.
An interesting Ozark history that doesn’t quite cohere.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
Duration: 11 hrs, 9 mins
DD ISBN: 9780063398153
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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