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Title: Chelbury Abbey

Author: Denis MacKail

Narrator: Steven Crossley

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 04-27-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 1 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

When young John Ellery came to London to study architecture, he straightway fell in love. First of all, he fell in love with the colour and the line and the lovely old masonry of Chelbury Abbey and then quite shyly and confusedly with Penny herself. Penny Wick, Lady Penelope, if one must be so old-fashioned, lived with her father, the seventh earl, in a cottage near the Abbey and pined to get up to London and find a job. She belonged to England's aristocratic new poor and rather took the glories of her pleasant old Abbey for granted. But John had lots of ideas--more or less practical. His pursuit of them and of Penny makes one of the most human and delightful stories that Denis Mackail has written. And this is praise indeed if you remember Greenery Street and Peninsula Place.

Denis Mackail was born in London on 3 June 1892. He went to Balliol College, Oxford, but failed to complete his degree through ill-health after two years. In 1917 he married Diana Granet, only child of the railway manager Sir Guy Granet, who was a director-general for railways in the War Office. The couple had two children and lived in Chelsea, London. It was the necessity of supporting his young family that lead Denis to write a novel when office jobs became insecure after the end of the war. With his novel published, his first short-story accepted by the prestigious Strand Magazine and the services of a literary agent, A. P. Watt, Denis was soon earning enough from his writing to give up office work. He published a novel every year from 1920 to 1938 and among his literary friends were P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne. During the 1930s Mackail lived at Bishopstone House, Bishopstone near Seaford, Sussex. Denis agreed to write the official biography of J. M. Barrie, which appeared in 1941. He went on to produce seven more novels and some books of reminiscences, but after the early death of his wife in 1949, he published no more and lived quietly in London until his death. He died on 4 August 1971.

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Title: Love's Winning Plays

Author: Inman Majors

Narrator: David Aaron Baker

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-24-13

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Ever wondered why college football coaches wear visors at night and always chew gum with their mouths open?

Though the Southeastern Conference football season is still months away, the fans obsession is year-round. So head coach Von Driver will take his motivational magic and his Isosceles Triangle of Success on a Pigskin Cavalcade to the small towns in the state. Raymond Love, a young coach unfamiliar with the banquet circuit of big-shot boosters and chat-room gurus, will go along as his wide-eyed errand boy.

Also on the trip is the athletic directors daughter, whom Love has tried to win by joining her book cluba dubious strategy at best. The football aspects of the Cavalcade will prove childs play compared to the literary hazards he faces.

Will Love master the art of coach-speak? Will he win the affection of the girl? Find out in this fist-bumping, high-fiving, all-out comedic blitz about the sublimely ridiculous world of college football.

Members Reviews:

Entertaning skewering of college football life

What a fun book this is. I'm new to Majors work, but this one made me want to go and read all of his other novels. He offers a very funny satire of college football life. But the games don't take center stage here. What does is an out-of-season "cavalcade" in which the coaches go on tour to raise money and meet with the team's boosters and hard-core fans. The main protagonist is coach Raymond Love, an earnest graduate of a Division III school, who's now working as a post-graduate assistant at a big-time division one school under a flamboyant, self-absorbed coach. Love is hoping to get a full-time coaching job with the team, but his main competition for the job is another smooth-talking graduate assistant who is a master at sucking-up. During the calvalcade, Love is given one important task -- keeping the wild, hard-drinking and hard-living defensive coordinator out of trouble. There are lots of fun escapades as Love fails miserably at that assignment. The obsessed fans and boosters go under the satirists' knife as much as the coaching staff does. The novel offers a series of exceprts from fan chat rooms, and those sections are hysterically funny and a dead-on portrait of the silliness of the debates you see in comment sections on Web sites. Love also has a couple of love interests -- a cute smart-aleck peer in the sports management department, who seems to be out of bounds because she has a long-distance fiance and another, gorgeous woman whom Love eventually learns is the athletic director's daughter. She strings him along by asking him to become a member of her book club - a not very macho thing to do that none of his football peers can understand. In the club, she forces him to read books similar to Eat, Pray, Love, and Majors does another great job at poking fun of the absurdity of these books in which sex, food, travel and spirtuality all get mixed up. As a bonus, the back section of the book offers a reading guide that is a terrific send-up of these guides and the discussions people have at book club meetings. Strong characters and a humorous portrayal of a world that takes itself more seriously than it should make this a very entertaining read.

A Must Read for Football Fans

If you have not read Inman Majors' three other novels,you have missed some worthwhile reading.

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Title: The White Crow

Author: Storm Jameson

Narrator: Jonathan Davis

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-22-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

June 1890, Portugal. A child was born in somewhat curious circumstances. Until the age of sixteen, his life was a safe and happy one. At that point it changed suddenly, almost brutally. Handicapped by a physically freakish appearance, he not only survived but grew up to become a celebrated restaurateur. He had unusual talents: he had the help, in various crises, of persons as remarkable as himself, and he developed, half deliberately, half unconsciously, a method of defending himself from the peculiar difficulties of his life. The solid elegance and exceptionally admirable food he offered in his restaurant were real enough, the two people living in the basement were real, if in their different ways unusual, and his young Spanish wife in her flat above the restaurant was notably sane and delightful. In his own rooms, two small rooms on the roof of the house, he entertained undeniably real visitors-but of what order of reality? The time covered by the external action of this brilliantly composed audiobook runs from 1890 to 1942, years more full of vivid incident and violent social change than any in our history, and here recorded in a series of sharp-scenes.

Storm Jameson (1891- 1986) born to a North Yorkshire family of shipbuilders. Jameson's fiery mother, who bore three girls, encouraged Storm (christened Margaret Storm) to pursue an academic education. After being taught privately and at Scarborough municipal school she won one of three county scholarships which enabled her to read English Literature at Leeds University. She then went on to complete an MA in European Drama at King's College London. During her career Jameson wrote forty-five novels, numerous pamphlets, essays, and reviews, in an effort to make money. Her personal life suffered, and her first marriage to schoolmaster Charles Douglas Clarke was an unhappy one. After they divorced in 1925, Jameson went on to marry Guy Chapman, a fellow author, and remained with him despite her apparent rejection of normal domestic life. Storm Jameson was always politically active, helping to publish a Marxist journal in the British section of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers in 1934 and attending anti-fascist rallies.

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Title: Life Is Short and Desire Endless

Author: Patrick Lapeyre

Narrator: Roger Wayne

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-16-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 1.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

This delicious novel revolves around a classic love triangle: Two men and one woman. She is English, they are French and American. The Frenchman is married, the American is not. None of this makes any difference. The womanelusive, unreliable, a classic femme fataleflits back and forth between her two lovers, driving them both mad.

Lapeyres subtle, graceful, yet compulsively readable narrative shows us the folly of men who fall helplessly in love with women they dont understand. Its theme is universal and its humor is sly. It is the perfect introduction in English to this brilliant writers work.

Members Reviews:

Beauty out of Air

Patrick Lapeyre creates a laughable situation with these two men who share Nora. She flits between them, satisfying neither, and it's obvious why this might be the case: none of these people know what they're doing, and for the most part, their characters are defined by their outward frustrations rather than by well-drawn internal dynamics. Does this mean that they come over as unimportant and arid? Though that may deter some readers, not to worry. Patrick Lapeyre is an artist, and his prose style provides some of today's less accomplished authors a clinic on how to create beauty out of air.

Beautiful Writing

I bought this book on impulse because I was drawn to the hauntingly beautiful cover and the title--a bit superficial, I'll admit. But the contents lived up to the exterior. Another reviewer said the people and the situation were laughable but I could not disagree more. The people are portrayed with honesty, compassion and, most of all, with lyrical language. Yet, there is a story here too, a mystery, that is intensely compelling.

This is the kind of book you read slowly, savoring each passage because reading it is such pleasure. But then, I am a language junkie. It was my tonic at the end of a long day of teaching!

Lapeyre's writing is beautiful (with kudos to the translater as as well) and I only wish there was more of it translated into English.

bad girls

The New York Times Book Review was complimentary of this translated French story of a bad girl diddling two guys in two different countries. I'm a sucker for femme fatale stories and this is indeed a good one. The narrative is enticing and I couldn't stop reading it. Had to find out how it would end.

What is it about Nora Neville that attracts these men?

Woody Allen once said that the heart wants what the heart wants. (We won't go into the circumstances that prompted that musing, because ew!) Patrick Lapeyre takes that notion to heart in this book. Boy, does he ever.

Two men, a frenchman named Blériot and an American named Murphy, want Nora Neville, an English woman with some French ancestry. Blériot is married, but directionless. His "career" consists of working as a freelance translator, but he doesn't really like his job, nor is he motivated to do much with it. His wife, Sabine, brings in the money; Blériot tends to make more from handouts from his parents and friend Léonard than he does from actual work. Blériot does care about his wife, although theirs is a stagnant, complacent marriage.

Murphy is the opposite of Blériot: he has a good, stable job at a London finance agency (he graduated from Harvard, after all) and earns his money.

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Title: What Tears Us Apart

Author: Deborah Cloyed

Narrator: Vanessa Hart

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-01-13

Publisher: Harlequin Books S.A.

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Love lives in the most dangerous places of the heart

The real world. That's what Leda desperately seeks when she flees her life of privilege to travel to Kenya. She finds it at a boys' orphanage in the slums of Nairobi. What she doesn't expect is to fall for Ita, the charismatic and thoughtful man who gave up his dreams to offer children a haven in the midst of turmoil.

Their love should be enough for each other - it embodies the soul-deep connection both have always craved. But it is threatened by Ita's troubled childhood friend, Chege, a gang leader with whom he shares a complex history. As political unrest reaches a boiling point and the slum erupts in violence, Leda is attackedand forced to put her trust in Chege, the one person who otherwise inspires anything but.

In the aftermath of Leda's rescue, disturbing secrets are exposed, and Leda, Ita, and Chege are each left grappling with their own regret and confusion. Their worlds upturned, they must now face the reality that sometimes the most treacherous threat is not the world outside, but the demons within.

Members Reviews:

I truly enjoyed this book in both theme as well is writing ...

This book does not seem to be getting the credit that it is due...I truly enjoyed this book in both theme as well is writing style. This author did a great job of blending together 2 different perspectives and many thought provoking themes in a non-linear styled novel. Give this book a try I don't think you will be disappointed.

Great love story.

It is a well portrayed story based in Kenya. With instense passion, the lives of a few individuals are entertwined.

It was good reading. I couldnt put it down. Very descriptive and well tought of plot. I recommend it to all.

fascinating redemption romance

What Tears Us Apart

Deborah Cloyed

Mira, Mar 26 2013, $14.95

ISBN: 9780778313793

In 2007 in Topanga, California Leda tells Amadeus the dog that she quit being a chef as that failed to satisfy her deep need to do something meaningful though she does not need a pay check as she is wealthy. While searching the net for a purpose, she comes across a boys' orphanage in Kiberia, Kenya with the picture of a handsome worker Ita. She volunteers to help at the orphanage.

Leda flies to Nairobi before finishing her journey to the suburban slum. The abject poverty that greets her seems overwhelming, but Leda quickly finds herself spiritually lifted by the energy and enthusiasm of the children overcoming their troubled pasts and the counter serenity of Ita. As the American and the Kenyan fall in love, his past places her in peril and violent aftermath of the recent election places the orphanage in danger as two groups vie for power.

The brutal 2007 Kenyan backdrop brings freshness to this fascinating redemption romance as two flawed people from polar different worlds fall in love. Character driven by the protagonists, support cast and location, readers will appreciate Deborah Cloyed's profound look into emotional risk-taking second chances after the demons inside a person nuke the first time.

Harriet Klausner

I have mixed feelings about this book.

Leda hates the thought of returning to school. She does a Google search and finds a job titled Triumph Orphanage. The orphanage is located in Africa. Leda accepts the position. She gets an added bonus when she meets the man running the orphanage named Ita. Leda falls for Ita.

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Title: The Ascent of Eli Israel

Subtitle: And Other Stories

Author: Jonathan Papernick

Narrator: Fleet Cooper

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-12-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In these disturbing, haunting, yet strangely beautiful stories, the terrible carnage of the Middle East is rendered in unforgettable form. In "An Unwelcome Guest", a young Jewish settler from New York plays a deadly game of backgammon with a ghostly old Arab while his pregnant wife sleeps unaware. In "The King of the King of Falafel", a restaurant rivalry ends in apocalyptic violence. And in the brilliant, horrifying title story, a lonely shepherd wanders a broken no-man's land, carrying with him the burden of an unspeakable act. A collection of startling authority and vivid imagination, it heralds the arrival of a masterful new storyteller.

Editorial Reviews:

Heartrending and tense, this collection of stories by Jonathan Papernick move effortlessly through time and space. These tales are filled with problems both terrestrial and spiritual. Some characters are haunted by their real pasts while others must contend with more paranormal problems. Fleet Cooper's expert performance lays bare the truth at the core of Papernick's haunting words. With grace and grim ease, Cooper is able to effortlessly convey the complex culture and chilling violence of Papernick's Middle East.

Members Reviews:

interesting assortment

I found these stories extremely interesting from a cultural perspective. The stories highlight ancient and modern tensions within the cultures of the middle east. Thought provoking.

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Title: Aria

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Nassim Assefi

Narrator: Andre Mathieu, Ziba Shirazi, Susan Soriano, Alexandra Matthew

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-05-13

Publisher: Nassim Assefi

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Jasmine is a cancer specialist and single mother in Seattle, long estranged from her Iranian parents and heritage. When faced with the sudden accidental death of Aria, her five-year-old daughter, she finds little solace in the healing advice she's prescribed to her patients and their families. Lacking spiritual scaffolding or comforting rituals to cope, Jasmine buys a one-way ticket around the world. Along the way she writes letters: to her three greatest loves, all now dead, and to her devoted friends who encourage her to return home.

This deeply spiritual novel is the record of Jasmine's journey inward and a moving celebration of the fundamental elements of life: of planting maize in Guatemala, of silent meditation in the mountains of Tibet, and of the rituals of grieving in Iran. It is only when Jasmine, this modern American woman, connects with her ancient heritage that she can finally heal.

Members Reviews:

Hauntingly Beautiful

From the ashes of tragedy a woman is able to transcend a horrible tragedy via the support of friends and estranged family.

A very moving story

Aria is beautifully written. The raw emotions it contains are described accurately and delicately. I was very moved by it.

(3.5) "You can never love your parents more than they love you."

Iranian-born Jasmine Talahi has made a good life for herself and her daughter, Aria, in Seattle, Clinical Associate Professor of Oncology at the University of Washington, the single mother finally coming to terms with the death of her lover before their marriage and Aria's birth; but when Aria is killed in a senseless accident, Jasmine is unable to sustain this last, terrible blow, leaving Seattle in search of peace, or at least acceptance. First to the Sonora desert, Jasmine begins a series of letters, somewhat comforted by the vast quietude that surrounds her, a landscape that looks as barren as her empty heart.

The letters are compulsive, an unburdening of an impossibly burdened soul: to her Iranian parents, whom she has not seen or spoken with since she shamed the family by choosing a non-Iranian partner and living with him outside wedlock; to her deceased grandmother and confidant, Mamani Joonan; to Justin, her soul mate and Aria's father; to Dot, Jasmine's best friend in Seattle, a "little person" and an Egyptologist; to Alexander, the man who was helping rebuild her life after Justin; and, most poignantly, Aria, only five-years-old when taken from her mother.

Once the journey has begun, Jasmine follows where her heart beckons. After the desert, she travels to Guatemala, where Justin served in the Peace Corps; next is Tibet, China and the tiny meditative nuns, where she witnesses a sky burial. But all along Jasmine is being called by the land of her birth, where identity began, where she might embrace "an ignored heritage". Ultimately, desperate without Aria, Jasmine will unite past with present, her new life with her beginning: "A fierce wind sends my message of remorse across the Himalayas to the foothills of the Elburz Mountains. I follow." There, at last, Jasmine's transformational journey comes full circle as the grieving woman makes peace with the parents who never met their grandchild.

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Title: When the Time Is Right

Author: Buddhadeva Bose, Arunava Sinha (translator)

Narrator: Meetu Chilana

Format: Unabridged

Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-28-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Buddhadeva Boses greatest novel

When the Time Is Right is a grand family saga set in Calcutta during the last two decades of British rule.

Of Rajen Mitras five lovely daughters, it is the youngest - the beautiful, intelligent Swati - who is the apple of her fathers eye. As she grows from an impetuous, spirited child to a lonely young woman, Swati is witness to the upheavals and joys of the Mitra family even as the country slides toward the promise of independence and the inevitability of war.

Anxious to ensure that his daughters find suitable husbands, Rajen-babu realizes it is only a matter of time before his favourite child, too, must leave home. While the boorish entrepreneur Prabir Majumdar decides that she will make him a fitting wife, Swati finds herself increasingly drawn to Satyen, the young professor who introduces her to a world of books and the heady poetry of Tagore and Coleridge.

First published in Bengali, as Tithidore, in 1949, When the Time Is Right is a moving tale of a family and a nation.

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Title: Wonderful Girl

Author: Aimee LaBrie

Narrator: Tracy Hundley

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-19-13

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

This extraordinary first collection of short stories covers the landscape of dysfunctional childhood, urban angst, and human disconnection with a wit and insight that keep you riveted. The characters here have rich and imaginative interior lives, but grave difficulty relating to the outside world. The beginning story, "Ducklings", introduces the overweight and over-enthusiastic Marjorie, the last 12-year-old you would want babysitting your toddler. In "Wanted" we meet Eleanor, a single girl living in Chicago who may or may not be dating a serial killer. "Another Cancer Story" is an unsentimental account of two sisters whose beloved mother just won't seem to die, and "The Last Dead Boyfriend" gives us a recovering addict who keeps encountering her recently deceased boyfriend, an unpleasant man she wished she'd broken up with before he died.

Always funny, often dark, and wholly satisfying, these stories explore the longing for connection among characters who are frequently stricken with anxiety. Each story is rendered in a way that is surreal, vivid, and entirely convincing.

Winner of Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.

Critic Reviews:

"Wonderful Girl is a smart, funny collection, by turns poignant, mysterious, terrifying, sexy, often just plain nuts (in a good way!). Reading Wonderful Girl is like meeting a dozen new friends, people you instantly fret over, want to know better, want to call and give advice, bring home to meet your folks, people you ultimately love." (Bill Roorbach, judge and author of The Smallest Color)

Members Reviews:

Four Stars

A refreshing collection of short stories.

so funny and sincere

LaBrie's prose is like a combination of Tina Fey and Laurie Moore and Louis CK. You will laugh at things that usually make you want to cry. You will want to hug this book.

smart and funny

An excellent collection of stories, unblinking and funny. "Ducklings", "Girls" and "Wonderful Girl" stand out. Characters do the wrong thing and it all makes perfect sense. There is much wit here but it doesn't settle for being cleverer-than-thou. This is art with heart. Very good.

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Title: The Grail of Hearts

Author: Susan Shwartz

Narrator: Elizabeth Jasicki

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-02-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A magical retelling of the legend of the Wandering Jew follows Kundry - the harlot who is condemned to wander the Earth for all eternity for laughing at the crucifixion of Christ - the evil sorcerer Klingsor, and Parsival the fool.

Members Reviews:

A Powerful Reworking of an Ancient Tale

Even though this book is out of print, I cannot let the Kirkus review given here at Amazon.com stand unchallenged. I can only assume that reviewer never read the actual book but only the cover copy. Rather than some vapid retelling of an old story, Shwartz's version of the Grail King is a deeply felt and powerful feminist revision of this set of legends. What's more, by emphazing Kundry's Jewishness, she brings an outsider's perspective to the story that wipes away some centuries of vapid Christian sentimentality to revitalize the material.

Her prose is supple, and her knowledge of the medieval period in general and Holy Land in particular are faultless. In general, this is a highly literate and intelligent book that deserved much better treatment than it's received at the hands of reviewers who are neither.

Grail of Hearts makes sense out of old legend.

I know that his book has not received rave reviews, even amongst Arthurian readers, however, I found it to provide a very good understanding of the Parsifal legend. After reading Richard Monaco's books and trying to understand the older texts, I had pretty much written off ever getting into Parsifal, Kundry and Klingsor, but Ms. Shwartz's book was a fresh re-telling and in my opinion it is one of the must reads of Arthurian literature

twice tried, twice failed

to finish reading this book! I was totally psyched to read it, because I thought it was such an interesting perspective on the Arthurian legends, but it turned out to be vague and boring. the only current I could even remotely follow was the romance-novelish style of writing, which didn't appeal to me in the least.