More Summer Listening

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Having grown up on the New York's exclusive Upper East Side, Carrie Karasyov and Jill Kargman, authors of The Right Address, know the territory and know how to slice into that insular upper crust, delightfully dissecting the designer-dressed doyennes who shop, lunch and gossip in a super-wealthy world of philanthropy and philandering. I'm not sure that I'd want to befriend any of the characters, including an exquisitely elegant kleptomaniac (only at the best stores, my dear) whose husband is dallying on the other side of the tracks and a desperate-to-belong new-girl-on-the-block (a Park Avenue block, of course), though it's lots of fun to watch them jump through their solid gold hoops (not Tiffany, darling, it's so common). Barbara Rosenblat, among the very best in the business, reads.


The stages of grief

Good Grief, the title of Lolly Winston's funny, bittersweet debut novel, may sound like an oxymoron. But Sophie, the 36-year-old widow whose life we share and whose pain we feel, ultimately finds that it's not. Desperate after her husband dies of cancer and desperately trying to be brave, Sophie tries ice cream, Oreos, smashing dishes and a marathon weekend of TV cop shows. No comfort there: the ice cream only melts on her pajama top, and when she arrives at work in bathrobe and bunny slippers, she has a total meltdown of her own. Moving away from keyed-up Silicon Valley to low-key Ashland, Oregon, Sophie still wonders if she can ever move on. She's someone you'll want to hug, cheer up and cheerlead for; someone who ultimately shows us and herself how intimately love and loss are intertwined and how life—and maybe love, too—after loss is possible. Read by Amanda Foreman.


Life and love in the Lowcountry

Islands is quintessential Anne Rivers Siddons. Performed with the requisite Southern savoir-faire by Dana Ivey, Islands traces the intricate relationships of a group of Charleston friends, inseparable even in middle age, who have become each other's family, or as they say, "better than family." But the surface tranquility slowly erodes and their mutual love and respect shatters in a finale that will surprise and entertain in a darkly Gothic vein. Perfect beach listening.


Pizza parlor skeletons

If a bone-chilling, spine-tingling mystery is what you crave on a hot July day, tune into Monday Mourning, Kathy Reichs' latest. One Monday morning finds forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan excavating the bones of three girls found in the grungy basement of a Montreal pizza joint. The next, she's tweezing feathers from the mouth of a woman who was smothered before she could tell Tempe what she knows about that basement, and this Monday she's about to explore a house of horrors where more girls—alive or dead—may be found. But Tempe can't predict where it will end or what kind of evil may come her way. Michele Pawk gives Tempe the right voice and the story the right tempo.


Turning the Wheel of Time

Robert Jordan, storyteller par excellence and master of high fantasy sagas, conjures up dark imagery, vivid landscapes and uncommon characters as no one else can. To the delight of his many fans, we now have The Eye of the World, Book One of The Wheel of Time, in CD format, read by the acclaimed duo of Kate Reading and Michael Kramer. This epic adventure offers a chance to drift into a world of myth and legend, wonders and terrors. And this is only Book One; the tale will be continued and "the prophecies will be fulfilled."


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