Narrator Kristin Atherton brings us to the tiny South Atlantic island of Tuga de Oro, known for being the most remote British colony in the world. London vet Charlotte Walker accepts a fellowship to study the endangered gold coin tortoises there, and perhaps find out more about herself. The caliber of acting Atherton displays is truly laudable. She goes beyond assigning memorable voices to characters by growling grumpy Pastor Garrick's greeting, filling Levi's voice with raw longing as Charlotte avoids kissing him, sounding breathy and tired as Joan's health deteriorates, and adding sobbed pauses as Charlotte spills her heart. These hundreds of little choices show mastery of craft and thoughtful understanding of each individual character, making listeners care deeply for all of them.
Pub Date: 2024
Duration: 11 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9780063360488
Publisher: Harper 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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