Leonie Elliott, an accomplished actor, is the perfect narrator for this remarkable debut novel. She is Black and British like the book's heroine, Yamaye, and has similar Jamaican roots. This dark story covers disturbing topics such as sexual abuse, police brutality, and drugs. The opening moves from a council estate near London to the Bristol underworld to a Jamaica filled with magic, mystery, self-discovery, and danger. Yamaye's voice is angry, proud, and lyrical. Music and dance (Dub reggae) play an important role in this story, and Elliott has a sweet, evocative voice. She captures the island vibe and excels at speaking the Jamaican patois. The author is fortunate to have such a gifted narrator for her powerful Black feminist novel.
Pub Date: April 18, 2023
Duration: 11 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780593670842
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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