Certain Girls [ABRIDGED] [AUDIOBOOK]

Certain Girls [ABRIDGED] [AUDIOBOOK] Author: Weiner, Jennifer Pawk, Michele (Reader) Kazan, Zoe (Reader) ISBN: 0-7435-6986-5

Category: Genre Fiction

Audio CD Simon & Schuster Audio

Following the story collection The Guy Not Taken, Weiner turns in a hilarious sequel to her 2001 bestselling first novel, Good in Bed, revisiting the memorable and feisty Candace Cannie Shapiro. Flashing forward 13 years, the novel follows Cannie as she navigates the adolescent rebellion of her about-to-be bat mitzvahed daughter, Joy, and juggles her writing career; her relationship with her physician husband, Peter Krushelevansky; her ongoing weight struggles; and the occasional impasse with Joy's biological father, Bruce Guberman. Joy, whose premature birth resulted in her wearing hearing aids, has her own amusing take on her mother's overinvolvement in her life as the novel, with some contrivance, alternates perspectives. As her bat mitzvah approaches, Joy tries to make contact with her long absent maternal grandfather and seeks more time with Bruce. In addition, unbeknownst to Joy, Peter has expressed a desire to have a baby with Cannie, which means looking for a surrogate mother. Throughout, Weiner offers her signature snappy observations: (good looks function as a get-out-of-everything-free card) and spot-on insights into human nature, with a few twists thrown in for good measure. She expends some energy getting readers up to speed on Good, but readers already involved with Cannie will enjoy this, despite Joy's equally strong voice.

Guilty [AUDIOBOOK] [CD] [UNABRIDGED]

Guilty [AUDIOBOOK] [CD] [UNABRIDGED] Author: Robards, Karen Bean, Joyce (Reader) Bean, Joyce ISBN: 1-4233-2833-7

Category: American Light Romantic Fiction

Audio CD Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged

 In this scintillating romantic thriller from bestseller Robards (Obsession), Kate White, a single mother and Philadelphia ADA, is embarrassed in court when her cellphone goes off during a trial. Just then the defendant pulls out a pistol and starts shooting, killing the judge. The terror-stricken Kate fears for her life and the future of her young son, Ben, should she die in the melee. After being taken hostage, Kate escapes, supposedly by killing her captor. Kate soon discovers that her past as a troubled foster child has caught up to her. Someone tries to break into her home, while someone else follows her, threatening her and Ben. Det. Tom Braga, who investigates the courtroom shooting, is firmly convinced that Kate didn't kill her captor. Kate's vulnerability appeals to Tom's protective nature, drawing the pair together in a heated affair. Robards once again shows her flair for coupling first-rate suspense with multidimensional characters.

The Third Circle

The Third Circle Author: Quick, Amanda Flosnik, Anne (Reader) Flosnik, Anne ISBN: 1-4233-4066-3

Category: Romance - Historical

Audio CD Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged

 In Quick's (Jayne Ann Krentz's pseudonym) mediocre latest installment to the Arcane Society series, Leona Hewitt, a crystal reader, and Thaddeus Ware, a hypnotist, meet trying to steal the same relic--the aurora stone--from a private collection, but a murdered prostitute and a trap protecting the stone initially complicate their success. Thaddeus, hired by the Arcane Society to claim the stone, allows the plot's loudly grinding gears to ally him with Leona. Both Leona and Thaddeus are sensible and pragmatic, qualities that make for efficient sleuths but passionless lovers, and Quick has to try unusually hard to make their romance believable. The story fares better when it focuses on the crystal and its connections to secret societies, to the Midnight Monster (a hackneyed serial killer) and to Leona's personal history. When the plot threads finally pull taut and the villains' motives and schemes are completely (if clumsily) exposed, Leona is endangered in a suspenseful climax.

Sepulchre [AUDIOBOOK]

Sepulchre [AUDIOBOOK] Author: Mosse, Kate Peters, Donada Peters, Donada ISBN: 0-14-314317-4

Category: English Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors

Audio CD Penguin Audio

 Contrivance, cliché and expository overkill overwhelm bestseller Mosse's tale concerning a rare tarot deck that helps link the lives of two women living eras apart. In 1891, Parisian teenager Léonie Vernier and her brother visit their young aunt at an estate in southern France. After finding a startling account of her late uncle's pursuit of the occult, Léonie scours the property for the tarot cards and Visigoth tomb he describes, unaware that more tangible peril in the form of a murderous stalker is seeking to destroy her loved ones. Present-day biographer Meredith Martin is in France finishing a book and tracing her ancestry when she sees a reproduction of the same tarot, which bears her likeness. She investigates the connection when she, too, arrives at the estate, now a hotel in which a new battle between good and evil rages. Mosse (Labyrinth) conveys so much unnecessary information through so many static scenes of talk, reading and interior monologue that the book's momentum stalls for good soon after its striking opening. Mosse's fans will hope for a return to form next time.

Compulsion: An Alex Delaware Novel

Compulsion: An Alex Delaware Novel Author: Kellerman, Jonathan Rubinstein, John (Reader) Rubinstein, John ISBN: 0-7393-0723-1

Category: Fiction

Audio CD Random House Audio

 Bestseller Kellerman serves up all the elements his fans have come to love in the 22nd entry in his Alex Delaware series (Obsession, etc.), including an intriguing plot, likable regular characters supported by an interesting secondary cast, diabolical villains, witty dialogue and a sense of humanity and justice. Alex and his LAPD detective partner, Milo Sturgis, are investigating several murders that, at first, appear to have only one thing in common: the perpetrator's use of expensive black automobiles while committing his crimes. Kellerman sticks to his usual modus, the patient and sometimes painfully slow accumulation of detail, as Alex and Milo build their case. A subplot involves a missing child last seen selling magazine subscriptions in a tony neighborhood 16 years earlier. On the domestic front, Alex is again living with his girlfriend, Robin, with whom he has broken up several times over the course of the series. In the end, a nice twist reminds Robin and Alex to be more careful in the future about drawing assumptions in their private life before all the facts have come to light.

Quicksand: An Eve Duncan Forensics Thriller

Quicksand: An Eve Duncan Forensics Thriller Author: Johansen, Iris Dyck, Jennifer Van (Reader) Dyck, Jennifer Van ISBN: 1-4233-2906-6

Category: Mystery And Suspense Fiction

Audio CD Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged

 The action-packed 12th installment in bestseller Johansen's saga featuring forensic sculptor Eve Duncan (after Stalemate) is also a sequel of sorts to Pandora's Daughter, which chronicled the life of Megan Blair, an Atlanta physician with burgeoning psychic abilities. Intertwining the two disparate story lines intensifies both, as Johansen pits her two courageous female protagonists against a vicious serial killer who claims to have murdered Eve's seven-year-old daughter, Bonnie, years earlier. When Eve's love interest, Atlanta police lieutenant Joe Quinn, tracks down elusive child predator Henry Kistle to a small town in Illinois, Quinn alerts the local authorities and sets off a series of bloody events that lead Eve and Megan Blair to a remote area in the Okefenokee swamp where they'll either discover the whereabouts of Bonnie's body--or come face-to-face with a psychopath bent on killing and burying them all in unmarked graves.

Hold Tight [AUDIOBOOK] [CD] [UNABRIDGED]

Hold Tight [AUDIOBOOK] [CD] [UNABRIDGED] Author: Coben, Harlan Brick, Scott (Reader) Brick, Scott ISBN: 1-4233-2748-9

Category: Mystery And Suspense Fiction

Audio CD Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged

Parents will find this compulsive page-turner from Edgar-winner Coben (The Woods) particularly unnerving. A sadistic killer is at play in suburban Glen Rock, N.J., outside New York City, but somehow he's less frightening than the more mundane problems that send ordinary lives into chaos. How do you weigh a child's privacy against a parent's right to know? How do you differentiate normal teenage rebelliousness from out-of-control behavior? When and how do you intervene if suicidal signs appear? Other issues include single parenting; career versus family; marital honesty; and how much information you should share with a child at what age. Coben plucks each of these strings like a virtuoso as Mike and Tia Baye try to deal with the increasing withdrawal of their 16-year-old son, Adam, after a friend's suicide. A pair of brutal, seemingly senseless killings, punctuate the unfolding domestic troubles that ratchet up the tension and engulf the Baye family, their friends and neighbors in a web of increasing tragedy. The this could be me factor lends poignancy to the thrills and chills.

Where Are You Now?: A Novel [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED]

Where Are You Now?: A Novel [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED] Author: Clark, Mary Higgins Maxwell, Jan (Reader) Maxwell, Jan ISBN: 0-7435-7132-0

Category: Clark, Mary Higgins - Prose & Criticism

Audio CD Simon & Schuster Audio

Product Description It has been ten years since 21-year-old Kevin MacKenzie, Jr. ("Mac"), has been missing. A Columbia University senior, about to graduate and already enrolled in Duke University Law School, he walked out of his room in Manhattan's Upper West Side without a word to his college roommate and has never been seen again. However, he does make three ritual phone calls to his mother every year: on her birthday, on his birthday, and on Mother's Day. Each time, he assures her he is fine, refuses to answer her frantic questions, then hangs up. Even the death of his father, a corporate lawyer, on 9/11 does not bring him home, or break the pattern of his calls. Mac's sister Carolyn is now 26, a law school graduate, and has just been hired as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. She has endured two family tragedies -- her brother's inexplicable disappearance, and the loss of her father. Realizing that neither she nor her mother will ever be able to have closure and get on with their lives until they find her brother, she sets out to discover what happened to Mac, and why he has found it necessary to hide from them. Her journey into the world of people who willingly disappear from their own lives leads her to learn about others who may or may not still be alive, and ultimately to a deadly confrontation with someone close to her who suddenly becomes an enemy -- and cannot allow her to disclose his secret.