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Title: Whispers in the Village

Subtitle: Tales from Turnham Malpas, Book 11

Author: Rebecca Shaw

Narrator: Carole Boyd

Format: Abridged

Length: 6 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 04-19-06

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Limited

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Once again Rebecca Shaw has given us a hugely readable and enjoyable novel. She is a master at mixing pathos with humour and the excitement she instils in this engaging story makes it one of her very best.

Critic Reviews:

"This gentle series has been a surprising success with fans keenly awaiting the next chapter in the lives of the villagers of Turnham Malpas." (Peterborough Evening Telegraph)

Members Reviews:

whispers in the village

All the books from the village written by Rebecca Shaw are good for reading if you want a peaceful moment for your self. I love the English country books with the old villages like Agatha Chritie's ones.

So you can dream a while when you read them. Easy to read and no difficult problems or war stories, so otherwise then real life.

Lovely village story

As always a lovely village story! Rebecca Walsh has a way with words and they are so easy to read. You feel as though you are in the village living the life Loved it as I have all her books and I have read a few now!

Entertaining, pleasant

The much loved rector of Turham Malpas decides to leave England and do some mission work in Africa for one year. His wife, Caroline, and their twins go with him. A new pastor is assigned to the village while Peter is away, Anna, and her presence causes some conflict among the villagers. She is much more modern than the people are used to, and particularly causes division when she opens up the rectory to a down on his luck former (?) thief. Meanwhile, an organization in Turham Malpas hosts a variety of wild fund raising events in order to help fund Peter's mission work. This effort includes sponsored skinny dipping and town-wide gambling. Everything changes, however, when Peter sends news of complete devestation.

Quote: "A woman! They'd narrowly escaped having their own railway station, tolerated the coming of the wireless, then the telephone poles and TV, they'd embraced computers, mobile phones - and a blessed nuisance they were on the Saturday shopping bus - and digital this and DVD that, but a woman rector! This was one step to far."

This eleventh novel in the Turham Malpas series has its ups and its downs. The Anna storyline falls a little flat, partly because of her watery personality and partly because Peter and his family are such an engrained pillar of village life that a whole exists without him. This lack is somewhat alleviated by the charitable efforts of the townspeople, which are entertaining and endearing.

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Title: Brick Lane

Author: Monica Ali

Narrator: Ayesha Dharker

Format: Abridged

Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-16-05

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Into that fragile peace walks Karim. He sets questions before her, of longing and belonging; he sparks in her a turmoil that reflects the community's own; he opens her eyes and directs her gaze, but what she sees, in the end, comes as a suprise to them both.

While Nazneen journeys along her path of self-realization, a way haunted by her mother's ghost, her sister Hasina, back in Bangladesh, rushes headlong at her life, first making a "love marriage", then fleeing her violent husband. Woven through the novel, Hasina's letters from Dhaka recount a world of overwhelming adversity. Shaped, yet ultimately not bound, by their landscapes and memories, both sisters struggle to dream themselves out of the rules prescribed for them.

Beautifully rendered and, by turns, both comic and deeply moving, Brick Lane establishes Monica Ali as one of the most exciting new voices in fiction.

Critic Reviews:

"Written with the wisdom and skill few authors attain in a lifetime." (Sunday Times)

"As ambitious in scale as Smith's White Teeth....A wonderful debut." (Sunday Telegraph)

"What's so remarkable about Brick Lane is its assurance: the writing is laudably unfussy, the tone incredibly tender." (Time Out)

Members Reviews:

It's a great story to give you some insight on another woman's ...

I read this book freshman or sophomore year in college, and I remember that while I didn't always understand what the plot was detailing (blame my lack of historical knowledge), I did always root for the main character to come into her own and find her independence and sense of self. The characters, both male and female, that she comes into contact with are memorable, from her husband to the elderly userer to the young activist. It's a great story to give you some insight on another woman's struggle in a different culture and a different land in our time

Well written book. It was assigned for reading in ...

Well written book. It was assigned for reading in my class. I probably didn't have to read the whole thing, but it was quite interesting.

Young woman grows into maturity

While this novel tells the tale of a young woman from Bangaladesh brought to London through an arranged marriage, at some level it could be a story of any woman. Monica Ali's poignant selection of events in the life of the featured character as compared to the story of her sister who continues to live in Bangladesh, could be seen as a commentary on the potentially suffocating life of an Islamic woman in an arranged marriage. But instead, both the featured character's and her sister's transformation through the years of learning to live with a marriage partner and raising young children, into confident, self-aware, mature women has a universal quality. A side benefit in this novel is the introspective description of life in Brick Lane, a street in London known to London residents and tourists for its Indian restaurants.

Overall, a very good novel

It was really interesting to read about a different culture and experiences that are so unfamiliar to me. We see the main character, Nazneen, journey from a Bangladeshi village to London at the age of 18, and watch her adapt to a much different kind of life.

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Title: How to Be Good

Author: Nick Hornby

Narrator: Frances Barber

Format: Abridged

Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-27-05

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

When David becomes good, really good, as in Feed the World and Give the Homeless Our Spare Room good, as opposed to his wife's Feed the Family and Buy a Big Issue good, Katie has some serious thinking to do. Nick Hornby's brilliant new novel offers a painfully funny account of modern marriage and parenthood and asks the question: what does it mean to be good?

Members Reviews:

Not recommended

This is one of those titles that keeps you reading / listening in the hope that eventually something might make sense and an intriguing story may unfold. Sadly it never does and leaves you wishing you had washed your hair instead.

Id definitely recommend this wonderful read!

I like all of Nick Hornbys books for his extraordinary insight into the machinations of the society we leave in as well as into our souls. It looks like he invented this new device thanks to which you can see close and far at the same time, inside and outside, micro and macro scales. He makes me laugh out loud, he makes me giggle, he makes me nod my head in agreement as well as shook it in disbelieve...but most of all, he makes me think, reflect, notice, care. Hornby is a professional indifference killer! I like the thought that he talks about the reality I see around me at this precise moment. How to be good is all what the author stands for and more. Simultaneously light and heavy, fun and serous. Important. Betty from New Malden, UK

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Title: The Blue Book

Author: A. L. Kennedy

Narrator: Juliet Stevenson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-16-11

Publisher: Random House AudioBooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction

Elizabeth Barber is crossing the Atlantic by liner with her perfectly adequate boyfriend, Derek, who might be planning to propose. In fleeing the UK - temporarily - Elizabeth may also be in flight from her past and the charismatic Arthur, once her partner in what she came to see as a series of crimes.

Together they acted as fake mediums, perfecting the arcane skills practised by effective frauds. Elizabeth finally rejected what once seemed an intoxicating game. Arthur continued his search for the right way to do wrong. He now subsidises free closure for the traumatised and dispossessed by preying on the super-rich. The pair still meets occasionally, for weekends of sexual oblivion, but their affection lacerates as much as it consoles. She hadnt, though, expected the other man on the boat.

As her voyage progresses, Elizabeths past is revealed, codes slowly form and break as communication deepens. Its time for her to discover who the true deceivers are and who are the truly deceived.

Whats more is the book itself - a fiction which may not always be lying - deceiving the listener? Offering illusions and false trails, magical numbers and redemptive humour, this is a novel about what happens when we are misled and when we are true: an extraordinarily intricate and intimate journey into our minds and hearts undertaken by a writer of great gifts - a maker of wonders.

Members Reviews:

Gorgeous narration, poetic writting

What did you love best about The Blue Book?

I love the way A.L. Kennedy writes. Her language is poetic and sensual. If I had to compare it to anyone I would say Jeanette Winterson. Kennedy's stories are more down to earth, but they're not less twisted. The Blue Book has kept me glued to my earpiece. The plot gently twisting, surprising and deceiving.

What other book might you compare The Blue Book to and why?

If you like the theme (mentalists), you might want to try Sarah Waters' Affinity. For the style of writing, nothing really compares.

Any additional comments?

Juliet Stevenson's narration really adds to the book. Her voice is lovely and clear, making it easy to follow the storyline. Her range, making the male characters stand out, is amazing.

Tour de force

I am a fan of AL Kennedy's, and have been ever since I read Paradise. The Blue Book is a tour de force, full of passion and poetry, read movingly and in total harmony with the writing. Though I would have loved the book if I'd read it off the page, it is not now possible for me to divorce the writing from the voice of Juliet Stevenson, who gave the book an extra dimension, adding so much more to the tale with her beautiful reading. The book bursts with poetry, it explodes with it, including in it's lyricism the 'f' word, which may spoil it for some, but not me. Unlike any other audible book I will listen to this again, and probably again after that. It knocked me off my feet, and the ending made sense of the whole book, in Anthony Burgess fashion. Stunningly good.

Strangely unsatisfying

Any additional comments?

I am a great fan of Juliet Stevenson's narrations but I did not enjoy the substance and style of this book, making it the least satisfying encounter with JS I have had to date. I did not engage with the characters and I was not greatly entertained.

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Title: The Stonehenge Legacy

Author: Sam Christer

Narrator: David Thorpe

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-11

Publisher: Hachette Audio UK

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Eight days before the summer solstice, a man is butchered in a blood-freezing sacrifice on the ancient site of Stonehenge before a congregation of robed worshippers. Within hours, one of the world's foremost treasure hunters has shot himself in his country mansion. And to his estranged son, young archaeologist Gideon Chase, he leaves a cryptic letter . . . Teaming up with an intrepid Wiltshire policewoman; Gideon soon exposes a secret society - an ancient international legion devoted for thousands of years to Stonehenge. With a charismatic and ruthless new leader at the helm, the cult is now performing ritual human sacrifices in a terrifying bid to unlock the secret of the stones. Packed with codes, symbology, relentless suspense, and fascinating detail about the history of one of the worlds most mysterious places, The Stonehenge Legacy is a blockbuster thriller to rival the very best of Dan Brown.

Members Reviews:

Misled by the publisher's description

The publisher's description of this book led me to buy it, but I'm sorry to say I have been disappointed with this story. For about half the book I wondered if it had been written specifically for teenagers, because the language is very simple and the narrator's voice is very young. However, in the end I think perhaps I was wrong, it's simply that the writer is not very good. The writing lacks any creative expressions, there is no witty dialogue, there are no morsels of information which would point to detailed research, and the publisher's claim that this book is a blockbuster thriller to rival the very best of Dan Brown is just wrong.

I was also disappointed with the narration, because all the police characters seemed to have Wiltshire accents.

Too many voices!

I have to agree with Ian, this is a disappointment. The story is rather simplistic and, for me, David Thorpe tries too hard to make it interesting by using so many different 'voices' for his narration. The slow, talking rather than anything else, DS particularly became a real annoyance. Posh brits, gruff yanks and country yokels all make an appearance. I would probably have enjoyed it more if it had just been read 'straight'.

Brilliant accident

I downloaded this book having muddled my authors, I'm so glad I did! Well written gripping, with plausible characters and plot. The main characters of this book can run and run. I am now searching for more titles by this author. A mention has to be made of the narrator as so often you get a good book only for the readers inflection to put you off so David Thorpe has also been added to my search list.

another violence filled, unenjoyable book.

What would have made The Stonehenge Legacy better?

Those who were in the cult not being killed but being caught and banged to rights by the police.

What could Sam Christer have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Much less violence and the police finding and arresting everyone in the cult. Less deception and coroberation with the cult would've made it more enjoyable too for me.

Which character as performed by David Thorpe was your favourite?

Megan or Gideon.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Anger, sadness, nerves, nausea, depression and general negativity.

Any additional comments?

I struggle to understand how people can write and read these kind of books.

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Title: First Water

Author: Michal Miron

Narrator: Michal Miron

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-08-11

Publisher: SonicBooks Ltd.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

For a short period of young innocence, Shauli and Tamar were raised in the same household as brother and sister. Their meeting later in life leaves Tamar confused and heart-broken. She escapes to New York, where she becomes a top fashion model and meets two men who try to win her heart: Marlon, a handsome photographer, and Jonathan, a sad, quiet psychologist. However, even while starting a whole new life, the fragile Tamar still cannot find peace. Struggling with anorexia and an unplanned pregnancy, she is unable forget Shauli.

First Waters is Mirons second novel, and was published by Maariv. Her first novel Hitkarvut (Sacred Intimacies) won critics praises. The author was born in 1969. She lives and creates in New York. The First Water audiobook was produced by SonicBooks.

Please note: This audiobook is in Hebrew.

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Title: Girl in the Mirror: Two Stories

Author: Cecelia Ahern

Narrator: Remie Purtill-Clarke

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-04-11

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Two powerful and unforgettable stories from the number-one best-selling author.

Girl in the Mirror

Lila knows how lucky she is to have found the man of her dreams. But when a secret from her family's past comes to light on her wedding day, her destiny changes in the most unexpected of ways.

The Memory Maker

They say you never forget your first love. But what happens when those cherished memories start to fade? Some people would do anything to hold on to the past and, for one heartbroken man, that means finding a way to relive those precious moments.

Critic Reviews:

A sweet, life-affirming tale. (Marie Claire)

Members Reviews:

Different from the other Cecelia Ahern books

I picked up this book thinking it contained short stories written in Cecelia Ahern's usual style. These stories were very different.

Girl in the mirror:

The beginning was eerie, bonechilling, and it had me hooked. However, the middle section was much less interesting, and the ending was just boring. This would have been a much better book if she had ended the book sooner, and managed to keep the extremely eerie feeling throughout the whole story. However, I did feel for the characters and wanted to find out how the story ended.

The memory maker:

This was more of a confusing story in that it switched between past and present and it sometimes took some time to realize the author had switched viewpoints again. This story was kind of boring and unstructured.

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Title: Ghostly Gay Trilogy

Author: Michel Russell

Narrator: Peregrine Muir

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-19-07

Publisher: M-y Books

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 22 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Ghostly Gay Trilogy is the story of the triumph of one man's spirit as he casts out his demons, real and imagined, and lays to rest the ghost of his lost love, learning to live again.

Life and fate have dealt Ashley Wynter a series of cruel blows. He is bereft of the job that fulfilled him and the lover who sustained him.

Summoned by a sinister anonymous message, he's lured into a twilight world of deceit, depravity, and degradation as he struggles to find out how his lover died - and why.

Members Reviews:

Very bad reader

This might just be the worst audio book of the year. The "reader" repeats lines, stumbles on words, shuffles pages and pauses in the middle of a sentence to turn the page. A total amateur production. Was the book any good? Can't say because it was impossible to finish this.

A bridged too far (and unintentionally)

The reader sounded like he was drunk or about to fall asleep. Maybe he was. Maybe he did. That would explain why there are big pieces of the story missing. Purhaps he just woke up, opened the book, and started reading where the empty Jack Daniels bottle had propped the pages open. It doesn't really matter. Frail Ashley, the main character, was so maddeningly passive and ineffective at every turn of the plot that I came to loathe him. He did everything but have the vapors. There were times when the book came quite close to seeming like an expression of internalized homophobia and gay stereotypes. It is unfortunate that while there are a lot of good gay mystery and suspense books written, somehow Here and Audible offered this to us. By the way, what does the word trilogy in the title refer to?

rotten and dull

don't get this. the story is dull and the reader is worse. I just gave up on it.

Just plain sucks!

This is horrible. I don't know what more to say about it. The narration is difficult to follow, the stories are boring. I couldn't even make it all the way through the book. Buy at your own risk.

Ghastly Flop

Would you try another book from Michel Russell and/or Peregrine Muir?

I purchased "Cry Destiny" by the same author and narrator at the same time as this story. This is the worst of the two, but not by much.

What was most disappointing about Michel Russell???s story?

There was a story? This was bad all the way around. I don't think I even made it half way through the story. It gives dumb a bad name.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Peregrine Muir?

I would cast someone with a voice for audiobooks. The readers voice quivered with age. He fumbled over words. He had length pauses while you wait for him to find the right page.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Ghostly Gay Trilogy?

If I were an editor, I would have thrown Michel Russel out of my office.

Any additional comments?

To the author, narrator, and publishing staff I am embarrassed for you. But I am sure by now you are all in other lines of work. If I didn't have to pay for this, it might have been funny to listen to segments just to hear how bad it was. It's a waste of time and money

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Title: The Prodigal Wife

Author: Marcia Willett

Narrator: June Barrie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-01-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 2.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

The Keep that beautiful, ancient family home where the Chadwick family had lived for generations is still a haven from the heartbreaks and storms of life.

Jolyon Chadwick, a famous television presenter, takes his new girlfriend Henrietta home to meet his extended family and also to meet Marie, the mother who deserted him and his father many years ago, now reappeared and seeming to want forgiveness. Jolyon, however, is not in the mood for forgiveness.

Members Reviews:

Easy to relate to!

Quite an emotionally deep book. This is simply a story about families and how complex they can be! Told through the grownup children of two broken homes and their families, it seems as if they are all going through a healing process together. Emotions are skillfully described, leaving the story to shine with a real feeling of truth. June Barrie excels as the narrator and sets the perfect tone, sometimes emotionally deep, sometimes light hearted. This is Marcia Willett at her best and I like the way she includes dogs as part of the family circle. It is particularly nice as it ends with feelings of hope for the future and I think it's so easy to relate to!

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Title: Winter in Thrush Green

Author: Miss Read

Narrator: Clare Higgins

Format: Abridged

Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-14-07

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Limited

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

As the story plays out, Miss Read succeeds in portraying village life with all its often unexpected incidents, and her unwavering eye for detail beautifully captures the character of a gradually disappearing aspect of rural English life.

Members Reviews:

Perfect nostalgia

A story of love and warmth in village life. Lovely descriptions of the countryside. Clare Higgins reads with a voice like a soft blanket. Perfect bedtime listening.

very good indeed

a little different style for miss read books but i loved it all the same.