John Lee and Cassandra Campbell are delightful in this witty historical novel, chock full of well-researched and amusing tidbits of life in eighteenth-century Boston. In alternating chapters, we meet Scottish rogue Stewart Jameson, a portrait painter who's run away from his creditors in Edinburgh, and Fanny Easton, a young girl with a sordid past who disguises herself as a boy and becomes Jamie's apprentice. Lee has Jamie's raffish attitude and moral dilemma down pat, and Campbell nicely captures Fanny's predicament as she struggles to remember that she's a boy. Authors Kamensky and Lepore, both historians, offer clever conversations and situations involving politics, growing unrest in the Colonies, slavery, women's rights, romance, and even murder. Lee and Campbell keep things light and entertaining.
Pub Date: 2008
Duration: 18 hrs, 30 mins
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Ayla, one of the "others," is adopted by a clan of Neanderthal cave people. She struggles to conform to their ways, but her advanced human traits overwhelm and threaten their primitive culture in this initial installment of an immensely popular series. Although the story might benefit from abridgment, Rowena Cooper easily carries out the formidable task of enlivening the mostly silent and stereotypical characters with consistent, diverse personalities and human dimension. Through skillful phrasing and inflection, she maintains the reader's interest and suspense, especially with Ayla and her plight, throughout this rambling and imaginative story.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 22 hrs
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America/ Chivers
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
This lyrical, sensual novel of woman's lot in Manchu, China, is as well researched as it is well written. Authentic in tone, it's nonetheless written for Westerners by a Western expert on China. Moreover, Susan Clark performs the demanding text superbly, with only occasional signs of fatigue. For the most part she not only sustains the quaint diction and Asian atmosphere, but also, creates whole worlds with her voice. She acts the book, rather than reads it, and, in so doing, turns a pretty trifle into a stupendous beauty.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 4 hrs, 30 mins
Publisher: Audio Literature
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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