Dual narrators Jorjeana Marie and Lauren Fortgang immerse listeners in the escalating tensions between expat wives Cassie and Margaret, who are both married to servicemen serving abroad. Thrown together as strangers, they report a car accident in Jordan, and nothing goes as they expect. Marie and Fortgang convey the stress of being far from home, where everything is unfamiliar. Listeners with similar life experiences will relate to the competitive, backbiting atmosphere created when people are dislocated from their creature comforts. The pair of narrators give us a range of emotional ups and downs as Cassie and Margaret experience cultural frustrations and thwarted ambitions. Marie and Fortgang play well against each other in building suspense as secrets are revealed that threaten the characters' tenuous new lives.
Pub Date: 2017
Duration: 10 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9781524775797
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
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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