At the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, a child was given away as a raffle prize. In this thoroughly researched audiobook, Ford imagines a life for that boy as a servant in Seattle's red light district and explores his relationships with two young women--the madam's daughter, Maisie, and a Japanese kitchen maid, Fahn. Narrator Emily Woo Zeller brings Yung Kim, later renamed Ernest Young, and a cast of diverse and colorful characters to life with her expressive performance. Parallel storylines explore Ernest's youth and his life in 1962, the year of the Seattle World's Fair. Zeller subtly alters her voice so that the characters seem to age but remain unique and identifiable. A passionate performance of a romantic story.
Pub Date: 2017
Duration: 11 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9780525492573
Publisher: Random House 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
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: N/A
Duration: 5 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781681680057
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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