Narrator Soneela Nankani lends her warm voice to the ruminations of a girl who is learning about life through personal and national tragedies. Pakistan under martial law in the 1970s is a tumultuous backdrop for the story of Aliya Shah. The teenager has a Dutch mother and a Pakistani father, and goes to the American School of Islamabad, but the multicultural nature of her life is thrown into sharp focus after a military coup. Nankani uses a questioning tone to recount the ups and downs of the national shift in religious sentiment, thereby increasing our sympathy for a cosmopolitan family caught in the crosshairs of history. Nankani's narration increases in intensity as the ruling general-turned-prime-minister threatens the nation's stability and Aliya's peace.
Pub Date: 2017
Duration: 9 hrs, 15 mins
Publisher: Brilliance 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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