January LaVoy narrates this well-researched saga about the theatrical Booth family, made infamous by the actions of assassin John Wilkes Booth. Her tone captures tumultuous key moments in history--from events in Lincoln's life to John Brown's rebellion to the eventual passing of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. LaVoy shows eldest sister Rosalie to be "Johnny's" staunch supporter, and as vivacious sister Asia, LaVoy imparts the charm and feisty nature that mirrors John's. She captures John's jealousy of brother Edwin's acclaim while fame eludes him. Despite growing up in a family of intelligent freethinkers, John becomes a slavery advocate fanatic enough to commit murder. LaVoy's performance makes each surprising revelation sound fresh and original. This is fascinating listening.
Pub Date: March 8, 2022
Duration: 13 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780593552810
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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