When nights are long and days are cold, you can count on recent audios to brighten the winter season!
Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, read by Emily Janice Card (Penguin, $39.95, unabridged, 17 CDs, 22 hours)
The thrill of words catapults you into the coming of age novel of Blue Van Meer, a senior at St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, daughter of womanizing traveling professor Gareth. Settle in and wait for the secondary shock...there's a murder mystery embedded in this literary tour de force. Card reads through strings of glorious descriptions with never a slip, leading us down the path of great allusions and wit.
Ann Hood, The Knitting Circle, read by Hillary Huber (Blackstone Audio, $29.95, unabridged, 8 CDs, 10 hours)
Mary has lost her daughter Stella with no warning. Lost in grief she joins a knitting club where one of the six members tells her "you have to concentrate so hard that you have no room for anything else...and one stitch is like a prayer." Gradually we see that all of the members have been struck by tragedy. Huber captures feelings of grief and starting over, but her compassionate and tender voices avoid sentimentality!
Ann Patchett, Run, read by Peter James (www.recordedbooks.com, 8 CDs, 9.25 hours)
A poor black woman with an eleven-year-old daughter throws herself in front of an SUV to save the life of young adopted African-American twenty-one year old, Tip. Quickly listeners learn that woman is his birth mother, but before they can stand back and critique, they are plunged into a dramatic, uncanny twenty-four hours, learning intimacies, interiors and intricacies of two unique families and how the six characters become family to each other. Peter James hops in and out of his narrative role, adding voice portrayals that define everyone from the vital, insightful and innocent eleven-year-old to two mothers with love strong enough to last beyond the grave.
Lauren Kessler, Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's, read by Ruth Ann Phimister (Recorded Books, unabridged, 9CDs, 10 hours)
The journalist-writer didn't understand caretaking when she watched her mother fade into Alzheimer's. Wanting to find "posthumous peace", she immerses herself in research and becomes a resident assistant at a state-of-the-arts Alzheimer's facility. Phimister's voice carries a sense of maturity and experience as she leads us through facts, memories and anecdotes that describe and explain a journey to discover the people locked inside this disease.
Elyn Saks, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Though Madness, read by Alma Cuervo (www.recordedbooks.com, unabridged, 10 CDs, 12.5 hours)
At eight, Saks experienced night terrors, possibly her first sign of schizophrenia. By adolescence she battled phantom voices, delusions, hallucinations and a medical industry that tries to overmedicate, strap her down and isolate her. Compassionate psychiatrists, friends and her husband balance this picture, but above all stands the courageous and intelligent heroine who, despite all, gets a degree from Yale Law School, teaches at USC, and publishes papers. Alma Cuervo imbues the memoir with nuanced tones color a straight-forward telling with fear, hope, denial, and loneliness.
Patricia Cornwell, Book of the Dead, read by Kate Reading (Penguin Audio, $39.95, unabridged, 11 CDs, 13 hours)
Kay Scarpetta starts off cheerful in her new private practice in Charleston, SC, despite the gory murder of a young American tennis star. Then everything starts to go very wrong. This latest adventure is gripping until the frustrating abrupt ending. Kate Reading providing the voices made familiar in her reading of others in the series.
Susan Wittig Albert , The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood, performed by Virginia Leishman (www.recordedbooks.com, unabridged, 9Cds, 9.75 hours)
There's something for everyone in this multi-layered mystery. There's an animal fantasy wherein small animals fret over ever-present rats. A childhood strand finds the young seeking fairies on May Day. Then there are the villagers who wonder about the curious new bride of Major Kitteridge. In this 1907 Lake Country world, beloved visitor Beatrix Potter has the answers to all their dilemmas. Virginia Leishman has voice for everyone-- gossipy villagers, the erudite Potter, caricatures of animals, and her narration has a once-upon-a-time timbre that makes readers suspend their last shreds of disbelief.
Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent Terrific Ninety Days, read by Laural Merlington (Tantor, $19.99, unabridged, 3 CDs, 3.5 hours)
Viorst once wrote a classic picture book about Alexander's bad day. Now he's grown, raising three young children, and has temporarily moved in with his mom while his own home is under rennovation. Viorst takes advantage of the situation to write about "her beloved Alexander 5". Though she's tender about her grandchildren and has judgments about today's "hyper parenting", her writing escapes being preachy, or saccharine as she pokes continual fun at her own "inner fascist". Laural Merlington keeps up with the fast-paced writing of this fast-paced living. Her expression of irony is exquisite as she relates stories of Viorst's long-term marriage and the exuberance and agony of grandparenting.