In this rich audiobook of literary suspense, Samuel Hawley's life story is told through the 12 bullet scars on his body. Narrator Elizabeth Wiley demonstrates her dynamic range in her performance. In the present, Hawley is making a life for himself and his teenage daughter, Loo. The nomadic pair return to Loo's late mother's hometown. She has trouble fitting in but not finding trouble or clues to her parents' past. Wiley portrays con man Hawley and his partner as convincingly as she does a mob of teenage bullies and a young outcast who's coming of age without her mother. Wiley's pacing is a perfect match for the plot's suspense, pulling listeners closer and closer to the edge of their seats so they don't miss a single one of Samuel Hawley's lives.
Pub Date: 2017
Duration: 13 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781423385400
Publisher: Brilliance 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:
Duration: N/A
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
As a group of men bring their own emotional baggage to their football-obsessed reunion, R.C. Bray delivers his usual solid narration. He shifts his tones slightly but enough to put the listener in the motel with the men, revealing their foibles as the story progresses. The narrator's role in this book is a descriptive one, and Bray is a good guide. His narration becomes extra important because this is a rare instance when there almost isn't a protagonist. The author's well-written story--which alternates between serious and laugh-out-loud funny--uses quarterback Joe Theismann's 1985 injury, a broken leg, as a McGuffin.
Pub Date:
Duration: 5 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781681680057
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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