Set in New York City and French Polynesia in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, this mesmerizing audiobook is flawlessly narrated by Rebecca Lowman. Pia is the 15-year-old daughter of Stephen, a cardiologist at a New York City hospital, and Natalie, a marine biologist. Hoping to attend high school in person, Pia relocates from the island where Natalie is conducting research to the posh New York City apartment of her father and his pregnant second wife, Kate. Lowman's flexible, emotive delivery and steady pace settle listeners into this contemplative story exploring medicine, environmental devastation, colonialism, family dynamics, and the impact of privilege during the pandemic. Lowman relays complex scientific and medical concepts with ease, and her impeccable French pronunciation adds authenticity to Natalie's island life.
Pub Date: April 9, 2024
Duration: 11 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780593824764
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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