Katherine Littrell hits every comedic and dramatic note in her narration of this family saga. Penny Rush's marriage is crumbling, and she's close to being penniless when she's summoned to her grandmother Pincer's home by Pincer's accountant, Burt Lampey. Pincer has dementia and a hoarding streak. A plan to clean the home leads to a wild adventure involving road trips from California to Australia, mysteries from the past, and just maybe a new direction in life. Littrell voices Penny in a world-weary "What now?" tone; Pincer with an unapologetic, commanding voice; and Burt with a charm and grace that are both heartwarming and heartbreaking. Littrell paints clear and beautiful pictures as her American, Southern, and Australian accents add to the appeal of the story.
Pub Date: March 14, 2023
Duration: 9 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780593671283
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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
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
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