The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Simon Vance
18:38

The Girl Who Played with Fire, shifts focus from journalist, Mikhail Blomkvist, onto the socially awkward computer hacker Lisbeth Salander.  Lisbeth becomes entangled in an investigation into sex trafficking, murder, and establishment corruption.  An expert hacker and mathematics-obsessive she is difficult, psychologically traumatised, and capable of extreme violence as she confronts her former attacker and guardian, the police and her father.

Tiger in the Well

Tiger in the Well ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Anton Lesser
13:7

Sally Lockhart, trying to put her troubled past behind her after her fiance’s death, has settled into a comfortable life with her daughter, Harriet, her career, and her London friends. But her world comes crashing down around her when a complete stranger claims to be both her husband and Harriet’s father, casting doubt on her spotless reputation.  Seeking the answers to this terrible dilemma, Sally realizes with growing horror that there is a guiding hand behind all this deceit; someone who hates her so passionately that he has devoted years to bringing about her ruin. She has no choice but to escape with her child into the crime-ridden slums of London’s East End. Suddenly it isn’t only Sally’s reputation that is in danger.

Pirate King

Pirate King  ♥ ♥
Read by Jenny Sterlin
11:12

In England’s young silent-film industry, the megalomaniacal Randolph Fflytte is king. Nevertheless, at the request of Scotland Yard, Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate rumors of criminal activities that swirl around Fflytte’s popular movie studio. So Russell is traveling undercover to Portugal, along with the film crew that is gearing up to shoot a cinematic extravaganza, Pirate King. Based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, the project will either set the standard for moviemaking for a generation – or sink a boatload of careers.  Nothing seems amiss until the enormous company starts rehearsals in Lisbon, where the 13 blond-haired, blue-eyed actresses whom Mary is bemusedly chaperoning meet the swarm of real buccaneers Fflytte has recruited to provide authenticity. But when the crew embarks for Morocco and the actual filming, Russell feels a building storm of trouble: a derelict boat, a film crew with secrets, ominous currents between the pirates, decks awash with budding romance—and now the pirates are ignoring Fflytte and answering only to their dangerous outlaw leader. Plus, there’s a spy on board.

Priceless

Priceless ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Mark Deakins
9:31

In his compelling memoir, Robert K. Wittman shares stories behind his recoveries of priceless art and antiquities: The golden armor of an ancient Peruvian warrior king, the Rodin sculpture that inspired the Impressionist movement,  the headdress Geronimo wore at his final pow-wow and a rare Civil War battle flag carried into battle by one of the nation’s first African-American regiments.  Rising from humble roots as the son of an antique dealer, Wittman built a 20-year career that was nothing short of extraordinary. He went undercover, usually unarmed, to catch art thieves, scammers, and black market traders in Paris and Philadelphia, Rio and Santa Fe, Miami and Madrid.

The Secret History

The Secret History ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Donna Tartt
22:8

Bunny is dead. Richard along with his Greek Studies classmates are responsible for the murder Bunny only to cover up another shameful secret .  Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.

Juliet

Juliet ♥ ♥ ♥
Cassandra Campbell
16 discs

Twenty-five-year-old Julie Jacobs is heartbroken over the death of her beloved Aunt Rose. But the shock goes even deeper when she learns that the woman who has been like a mother to her has left her entire estate to Julie’s twin sister. The only thing Julie receives is a key—one carried by her mother on the day she herself died—to a safety-deposit box in Siena, Italy.  This key sends Julie on a journey that will change her life forever—a journey into the troubled past of her ancestor Giulietta Tolomei.  In 1340, still reeling from the slaughter of her parents, Giulietta was smuggled into Siena, where she met a young man named Romeo. Their ill-fated love turned medieval Siena upside-down and went on to inspire generations of poets and artists, the story reaching its pinnacle in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.

But six centuries have a way of catching up to the present, and Julie gradually begins to discover that here, in this ancient city, the past and present are hard to tell apart. The deeper she delves into the history of Romeo and Giulietta, and the closer she gets to the treasure they allegedly left behind, the greater the danger surrounding her—superstitions, ancient hostilities, and personal vendettas. As Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families involved in the unforgettable blood feud, she begins to fear that the notorious curse—“A plague on both your houses!”

Across the Nightingale Floor

Across the Nightingale Floor ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Kevin Gray and Aiko Nakasone
8:30

Sixteen-year-old Takeo’s village has been massacred by an evil warlord, and he is about to be slain by the men who murdered his parents and neighbors. At the last moment, his life is saved by a nobleman, who claims the boy as his kin and begins his education.  But nothing is as it seems. Takeo discovers that he has rare powers that are useful to those around him. As he grows into manhood, he must decide where his loyalties lie: with his noble master and adoptive father; with the Hidden, a secret, spiritual sect whose beliefs are forbidden; or with the Tribe, the assassins and spies who consider him one of their own.  A story of treachery, political intrigue, and the intensity of first love, set in a world ruled by formal ritual and codes of honor.

The Red Garden

The Red Garden ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Nancy Travis
6 discs

The story opens with the arrival of the first settlers, among them a pragmatic English woman, Hallie, and her profligate, braggart husband, William. Hallie makes an immediate and intense connection to the wilderness, and the tragic severing of that connection results in the creation of the red garden, a small, sorrowful plot of land that takes on an air of the sacred. The novel moves forward in linked stories, each building on (but not following from) the previous and focusing on a wide range of characters, including placid bears, a band of nomadic horse traders, a woman who finds a new beginning in Blackwell, and the ghost of a young girl drowned in the river who stays in the town’s consciousness long after her name has been forgotten. The result is a certain ethereal detachment as Hoffman’s deft magical realism ties one woman’s story to the next even when they themselves are not aware of the connection.  - Publishers Weekley

Prophecy

Prophecy ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by John Lee
12:48

It is the year of the Great Conjunction, when the two most powerful planets, Jupiter and Saturn, align – an astrological phenomenon that occurs once every thousand years and heralds the death of one age and the dawn of another. The streets of London are abuzz with predictions of horrific events to come, possibly even the death of Queen Elizabeth.

When several of the queen’s maids of honor are found dead, rumors of black magic abound. Elizabeth calls upon her personal astrologer, John Dee, and Giordano Bruno to solve the crimes. While Dee turns to a mysterious medium claiming knowledge of the murders, Bruno fears that something far more sinister is at work. But even as the climate of fear at the palace intensifies, the queen refuses to believe that the killer could be someone within her own court.

Bruno must play a dangerous game: can he allow the plot to progress far enough to give the queen the proof she needs without putting her, England, or his own life in danger?

Heresy

Heresy ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by John Lee
13:9

Set in the 16th-century England, Giordano Bruno, monk, poet, scientist, and magician is on the run from the Roman Inquisition on charges of heresy for his belief that the Earth orbits the sun and that the universe is infinite. Bruno’s pursuit of rare knowledge brings him to London, where he is unexpectedly recruited by Queen Elizabeth I and is sent undercover to Oxford University on the pretext of a royal visitation. Officially Bruno is to take part in a debate on the Copernican theory of the universe; unofficially, he is to find out whatever he can about a Catholic plot to overthrow the queen.   His mission is dramatically thrown off course by a series of grisly murders and a spirited and beautiful young woman. As Bruno begins to discover a pattern in these killings, he realizes that no one at Oxford is who he seems to be. Bruno must attempt to outwit a killer who appears obsessed with the boundary between truth and heresy.