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.

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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.

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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

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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?

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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.

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The Secret of Lost Things

The Secret of Lost Things ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Vanessa Benjamin
9 discs

a captivating young Australian woman takes a job at a vast, chaotic emporium of used and rare books in New York City and finds herself caught up in the search for a lost Melville manuscript. Eighteen years old and completely alone, Rosemary arrives in New York from Tasmania with little more than her love of books and an eagerness to explore the city she’s read so much about. She begins her memorable search for independence with appealing enthusiasm, and the moment she steps into the Arcade bookstore, she knows she has found a home. The gruff owner, Mr. Pike, gives her a job sorting through huge piles of books and helping the rest of the staff—a group as odd and idiosyncratic as the characters in a Dickens novel. There’s Pearl, the loving, motherly transsexual who runs the cash register; Oscar, who organizes the nonfiction section and shares his extensive, eclectic knowledge with Rosemary, but furiously rejects her attempts at a more personal relationship; and Arthur Pick, who supervises the art section and demonstrates a particular interest in photography books featuring naked men. The store manager, Walter Geist, is an albino, a lonely figure even within the world of the Arcade. When Walter’s eyesight begins to fail, Rosemary becomes his assistant. And so it is Rosemary who first reads the letter from someone seeking to “place” a lost manuscript by Herman Melville. Mentioned in Melville’s personal correspondence but never published, the work is of inestimable value, and proof of its existence brings the simmering ambitions and rivalries of the Arcade staff to a boiling point.

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Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith

Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Rosalyn Landor
6 Discs

Charles Darwin published The Origin of Specie, his revolutionary tract on evolution and the fundamental ideas involved, in 1859 and nearly 150 years later, the theory of evolution continues to create tension between the scientific and religious communities.  That same debate raged within Darwin himself, and played an important part in his marriage: his wife, Emma, was quite religious, and her faith gave Charles a great deal to consider as he worked on a theory that continues to spark intense debates.  Charles and Emma is a thought-provoking account of the marriage behind evolutionary theory: how their personal lives affected his work and vice versa. 

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A Murderous Procession

A Murderous Procession  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Jill Tanner
10 discs

Medieval forensic pathologist Adelia Aguilar has been an enjoying a quiet life in the countryside with her daughter and friends. Then Henry II demands that she accompany his daughter, Joan, and her formal procession to Italy and offers to keep her daughter with Queen Eleanor until her safe return. But death stalks the procession, and Adelia and her loyal friends soon realize that the killer is someone from her past bent on revenge.  -Booklist

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Pictures at an Exhibition

Pictures at an Exhibition ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Mark Bramhall
7 discs

Born to an art dealer and his pianist wife, Max Berenzon is forbidden from entering the family’s business for reasons he cannot understand. He reluctantly attends medical school, reserving his true passion for his father’s beautiful gallery assistant, Rose. When Paris falls to the Nazis, the Berenzons survive in hiding, returning in 1944 to find that their priceless art collection has vanished. In Max’s obsessive hunt to recover his father’s paintings, he navigates a torn city of corrupt art dealers, black marketers, Râesistants, and collaborators, uncovering not only paintings but the stories of Rose’s heroism, and the truth behind a devastating family secret.

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God of the Hive

God of the Hive ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Jenny Sterlin
10 Discs

Maintaining tenuous contact only by means of coded messages and cryptic notes with her husband, Sherlock Holmes, and with Holmes’ young granddaughter in her safekeeping, Russell will have to call on instincts she didn’t know she had as the famous husband and wife sleuths are pursued by a killer immune from the sting of justice.

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