This is not your grandfather’s audio spy thriller. Marie Mitchell, a young African-American officer, is routinely bypassed and underestimated by the old boys in the intelligence networks she works for, and it has made her a much harder-headed customer than is suggested by the warm, feminine voice with which Bahni Turpin skillfully misleads you. When Marie is finally offered a plum assignment, shadowing the charismatic new socialist president of Burkina Faso, her handlers seem to think she won’t figure out that she is the bait in a honey trap. Nor do they consider that she remembers and understands what happened to Patrice Lumumba. This is indeed an American spy story, thrilling because it shifts the ground beneath your feet. Brava, both Turpin and Wilkinson. B.G. 2019 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Pub Date: 2019
Duration: 10 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780525631415
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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