Listeners expecting another macabre tale from Stephen King may be surprised by this audiobook--but pleasantly so. Though it takes place in his infamously troubled town of Castle Rock, King's latest work is actually a parable of basic human decency, albeit with tinges of melancholy and supernatural weirdness. As the narrator, King enhances the story's good-hearted appeal with this twangy, aw-shucks delivery. He gives a strong portrayal of everyman Scott Carey, whose strange affliction sends him on a quest of self-discovery and neighborly kindness. And King's isn't just a pleasant voice. He crafts a polished aural experience with a keen sense of pacing and fun accents for his motley Maine characters. He also narrates "Laurie," a tender short story about a man and his dog.
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
Duration: 3 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9781508260486
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 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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