The mosaic of American experiences is expertly captured by an ensemble reading of Pulitzer Prize winner Lalami's superb new novel. Moroccan-American Nora is summoned to her family home in the California desert after the hit-and-run death of her beloved father. The tragedy resonates among a circle of people: Nora; her mother and sister; Efrain, an illegal Mexican immigrant who witnessed the accident and fears coming forward; Jeremy, a high school friend of Nora's and a former marine suffering from his own losses; and the police detectives investigating the crime. Mozhan Marno as Nora and Ozzie Rodriguez as Efrain stand out among this first-rate group of narrators, each capturing the raw emotion of their character. A highly relevant and entertaining listen.
Pub Date: March 26, 2019
Duration: 10 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9781984846532
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
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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