From the opening lines, Matthew Brenher's pleasantly husky voice and crisp British accent capture both the atmosphere and characters of this richly detailed chronicle of 1939 Berlin and London at the tipping point of war. Brehner provides the perfect measured tone for British Colonel Noel Macrae, a seasoned officer tasked with spying on the Nazis. Brenher's mastery of tempo and intensity shines as the action alternates between Berlin and London, with Macrae growing increasingly anxious about Hitler's secret plans and British PM Chamberlain's refusal to abandon his policy of appeasement. This gripping story has action, intrigue, danger, and even some romance, as well as actual British and German historical figures and events woven in. The result is a satisfying audiobook with broad audience appeal.
Pub Date: April 19, 2016
Duration: 13 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781504691062
Publisher: Blackstone 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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