Ghostsitter - A Crazy Inheritance (Ghostsitter #1) by Tommy Krappweis, Michael Braun (narrator), Marc Vietor (narrator), Jay Snyder (narrator), Dina Pearlman (narrator), Cynthia Darlow (narrator), Stephen Bel Davies (narrator), James Fouhey (narrator), Jenna Yi (narrator), Jessie Cannizzaro (narrator), Kevin T. Collins (narrator), Mateo D'Amato (narrator)

Audible Originals, June 2020 (original publication October 2015)

Tom is a fourteen-year-old boy living with his adopted grandmother when he receives a letter from a law firm inviting him to the reading of a will. It's the will of his great-uncle, Heinrich, his grandmother's brother. He's just absorbing that information when there's a knock at the door. The man at the door is his Uncle Welf.

It's worth noting that Tom had never heard of Great-Uncle Heinrich or Uncle Welf before.

Uncle Welf drives them to the reading of the will, where Tom learns that he will inherit more than ten million euros if he takes control of Heinrich's ghost train carnival ride, the Terror Train, and keeps it operating until he's eighteen. Uncle Welf, of course, will be his agent because he's underage, but he'll have to travel with the ride.

The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language, by John McWhorter (author, narrator)

Audible Studios, January 2015

In this book, John McWhorter takes on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, with vigor and enthusiasm, and his usual excellent research.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says, basically, that language shapes the way we see and understand the world. One example, a fairly basic one, is that Japanese has one word that identifies both blue and green, while Russian has one word for dark blue and another word for light blue. Does this mean the Japanese can't see different shades of blue and green as clearly as Russians can?

No. The Japanese can see these colors just as well; they just describe them differently.

The Wickeds (Faraway Collection #5), by Gayle Forman (author), Frankie Corzo (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, December 2020

Elsinora, Gwendolyn, and Marguerite--the wicked stepmothers of "Cinderella," "Snow White," and "Rapunzel,"--meet at their cosmetician's office, and start getting together and discussing all the unfair press they've gotten due to the young girls they raised.

Because really, they don't deserve it. They did their best by those ungrateful girls, and weren't appreciated. When the girls rebelled, it's "the wickeds" who paid the price.

Maybe it's time to get revenge, and set the record straight. They hatch a plan. They set out to travel to the fair where "the princesses" will be expecting more triumphs, and will instead be confronted with the truth of how unfair they were.

I'll freely admit I did not at first have any idea where this was really going. It's funny, engaging, has some unexpected twists, and a satisfying ending. Just a lot of fun, in a small package.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

The Cleaners (Faraway Collection #4), by Ken Liu (author), Kate Rudd (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, December 2020

Giu is a cleaner, the owner of A Fresh Start, and he cleans away the unpleasant memories that have adhered to his customers' personal possessions. Giu has an unusual handicap in this world; he's memory-blind. He's not able to feel or read even his own memories on objects, and that created a challenge for his parents in teaching him their trade. Yet it also gives him certain advantages; he doesn't feel the pains of the bad memories he's scraping away.

Beatrice is hyper-sensitive, and makes a very good living doing forensic readings of memories attached to items involved in legal cases.

Clara has a fairly normal level of memory sensitivity, and after a bad breakup with her former boyfriend, wants to rid their shared items that he left behind of the painful memories. For this, she turns to Giu.

Hazel and Gray (Faraway Collection #2), by Nic Stone (author), Kimberly Woods (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, December 2020

This is a retelling of Hansel and Gretel. Instead of brother and sister, they are young lovers, and their immediate problem is Hazel's stepfather, a.k.a. The Monster. He's very strict and controlling, and forces her to break up with Gray. She does, because her approach to her difficult life with her mother, with her highs and lows, and until now her constantly changing boyfriends, has been to adapt and adjust.

This time it isn't working. The Monster is watching her, looking at her in ways that make her feel not just uncomfortable, but unsafe. She contacts Gray once more, and they plan a picnic in the woods.

The Prince and the Troll (Faraway Collection #1), by Rainbow Rowell (author), Rebecca Lowman (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, December 2020

A charming and attractive young man, whose name we eventually learn in Adam, is walking to work when he accidentally drops his phone off the bridge. It's retrieved for him by a friendly troll--a friendly female troll. From that point on, they meet every day for coffee, which he picks up at the nearest Starbucks.

Over the course of their conversations, we learn, gradually, that the river is drying up, that there is no rain, and that somehow the Road, the magnificent Road, may be responsible for this. And Adam, it seems, works on the Road. He's one of the people responsible for keeping it safe, and smooth, with good signage.

The river dying up is obviously not good for the troll, or other trolls, or the plants that grow along it.

The Road, it seems, is not good for any living things.

As I was listening to this, the story didn't quite work for me. Yet now, as I'm writing about it, the complexities of the story, which I did notice as I listened, are seeming more compelling. What that means exactly, I have no idea.

Overall, though, an interesting story, even if not perfect.

I bought this audiobook.

Sweet Virginia (Out of Line Collection), by Caroline Kepnes (author), Kristen Bell (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, September 2020

Shelby works at the magazine Modern Love, is married, and has a new baby.

But none of her story ideas are getting accepted at the magazine. One day, she comes home from grocery shopping, and forgets to close the door  door while getting things to the kitchen, and their dog gets out. He's hit by a truck and killed.

Shelby's misguided pitch of a story about Hallmark movies is the last straw that gets her fired, and the death of the dog convinces her husband and her mother that she can't be trust unsupervised with the baby. Her mother--"Mommy," to both her and her husband, which I found extremely off-putting (seriously, we get no hint that "Mommy" has any other name) moves in, and she and her son-in-law occasionally let Shelby hold the baby for a few minutes.

Graceful Burdens (Out of Line Collection), by Roxane Gay (author), Samira Wiley (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, September 2020

At an unstated point in the future, young adults are genetically screened to determine their suitability for reproduction. Those who are deemed genetically suitable, are licensed to reproduce. Those who don't, will never be allowed to have children. It's a judgment that determines the entire course of lives--especially women's lives.

Hadley is an unlicensed woman, working a poorly paid job and living in a meager apartment. She would say that she is glad to be unlicensed, with the greaater freedom that gives in some ways. Yet, she goes to the local public library, to an upper floor--and checks out a baby, a little girl named Gemma.

Once More Upon a Time, by Roshani Chokshi (author), Rebecca Gibel (narrator), Shiromi Arserio (narrator), Vikas Adam (narrator)

Audible Originals, June 2020

Imelda was one of the famous Twelve Dancing Princess, until her sisters began to get married off. She falls in love with a princce--but not the heir--of a neighboring kingdom. The prince's name is Ambrose, and they marry and are granted by her father the little land of Love's Keep. The King and Queen of Love's Keep must be in love, and remain in love, and will be exiled after a year and a day if they are not in love.

Then Ambrose sacrifices their love to save Imelda's life after she is poisoned.

For a year and a day, no longer remembering why they got married, they live in Love's Keep, and avoid each other. Then their time is up, and Imelda must return to her father's kingdom, while Ambrose will be a wandering exile. And they both want something different. Then the witch who took their love from them in exchange for saving Imelda's life, returns to promise them she can grant them their true wishes, in exchange for going on a quest together to recover a potion for her, a potion that turns people to stone.

Exit Interview With My Grandmother, by Lily Meyersohn (author, narrator)

Audible Originals, April 2020

Lily Meyersohn is a young, Jewish, gay woman working through her grandparents' relationships, her own queer relationships, her family's Jewish history, and life in a world of endless uncertainty.

For her, one way of doing that is an "exit interview" with her grandmother. It's an intimate, personal conversation, about their family history, the slow loss of Lily's grandfather to the ravages of Alzheimers, and the depth and complexity their marriage had developed before that. Lily also talks about her own relationships, one with a woman who is never identified except as "the woman from Maine," but who was clearly important to her.  Another relationship is with Sophie, which is, as this memoir begins, current, but in various ways clearly moving toward its natural end.

What Meyersohn has to tell us includes not just these relationships, not just her grandparents' relationship, but the stories of how both sides of the family came from Germany to the US not long ahead of the Holocaust, and her own visit to Germany, to places important to her family history.

It's intimate and moving, and revealing and enlightening. A very good listen. Recommended.

I got this audiobook as part of the Audible Originals program, and am revieiwng it voluntarily.

Phreaks, by Matthew Derby (author), Ben McKenzie (narrator), Carrie Coon (narrator), Christian Slater (narrator), Justice Smith (narrator), Bree Klauser (narrator), full cast

Audible Originals, August 2020

Emma Gable is a teenager, blind, and living in a small town in upstate New York. Her mother works in the laundry of a nuclear power plant, and her father is a handyman.

Emma is lonely and isolated, and dials random phone numbers, to see what happens, to make prank calls, to just hear the sounds of the phone system. And then one day, one of those random calls, to a phone number based on the date of the Treaty of Versailles, connects her to a group of phone phreaks.

Phone phreaks were people, anywhere from teenagers to experienced engineers, who learned how to hack the phone system to make free phone calls. Except that both understates what they were doing, and misrepresents the motivation of most of them. It wasn't about free phone calls, mostly. It was about the excitement of gaining control of the phone system, and beating Ma Bell at her own game.

Letters From Camp, by Jamie Lee Curtis (author), and a host of narrators I can't find a list of except listening to the audio

Audible Originals, August 2020

Mooky Hooper is eleven years old, and off to summer camp for the first time. Unfortunately, she soon discovers that her mother, Caroline Goodman, now a CNN television journalist, was in her day the very best at any camp activity Mooky might participate in. In the history of Camp Cartwright. With her name and the relevant details of her accomplishments posted. And the camp director, Director Sue, in her enthusiasm at having Caroline Goodman's daughter at the camp, makes sure everyone knows it.

Mooky doesn't necessarily help herself by deciding that she's going to instead concentrate on emulating accomplishments of her mother that she's more familiar and comfortable with--her journalistic accomplishments. It's not long before she's learned of a camper who disappeared from the camp thirty years earlier, and connects this to the camp legend of the Lady of the Lake. She starts investigating. In theory she knows she should be calm and discreet in doing this; in practice, she's eleven, and doesn't always manage to do that.

Stuck, by Chris Grabenstein (author), Mark Sanderlin (narrator), Elizabeth Hess (narrator), Oliver Wyman (narrator), Farah Bala (narrator), Rita Wolf (narrator), Caroline Grogan (narrator), Cynthia Darlow(narrator, Mateo D'Amato (narrator), J.J. Myers (narrator), Neil Hellegers (narrator), Genesis Oliver(narrator), Chris Grabenstein (narrator)

Audible Originals, May 2020

Jackson Raczkowski, eleven years old, is not quite looking forward to turning twelve. Turning twelve means going to sixth grade, and middle school, where his personal bully, Brandon, will be there to torment him. On his grandfather's birthday, August 8, the day before his own, he wishes to never turn twelve, to remain eleven forever and never move on to middle school.

On the next day, his own birthday, he finds that he has, for the second time, just turned eleven.

The Flying Flamingo Sisters, by Carrie Seim (author), Gabriel Vaughan (narrator), Bill Andrew Quinn (narrator), Jessica Almasy (narrator), Carrie Seim (narrator), Kevin Pariseau (narrator), Dina Pearlman (narrator), Khristine Hvam (narrator)

Audible Originals, December 2019

A Depression-era kids' wild romp in the sky.

When their aviator parents take off on a record-setting expedition, and then disappear over the Pacific, the Flamingo sisters--Flo, Faye, and Franny, ranging from 16 down to 9--have very little time to be worried before their Evil Uncle Freidrich swoops in to inform them he's now in charge. And girls can't fly airplanes, or aeroplanes, so he's taking possession of the girls' biplane. Oh, and they need to hand over the map to the Flamingo family treasure, immediately.

The Roommate (Cormac Reilly #0.7), by Dervla McTiernan (author), Aoife McMahon (narrator)

Audible Originals, July 2020

Niamh Turley is a twenty-two-year-old teacher at a Catholic school, when she is wakes up one morning to the garda knocking on her door. A body has been found inside the building, and it turns out to be her roommate.

The garda in question is Detective Cormac Reilly. He wants to ask her some questions, for which she has fewer answers than he'd hoped. Niamh and her roommate (no, I'm not guessing at the spelling of Irish names I haven't seen in print) had only been roommates for three months, and had been agreeable roommates but not really friends. However, they also want her to formally identify the body, so that the immediate family doesn't have to do it.

The Real Sherlock, by Lucinda Hawksley (author, narrator)

Audible Studios, May 2019

This is a short, lively account of the life of Arthur Conan Doyle. It's fun and, to a point, informative. However, when I realized two of the people contributing to it were Catherine Ruml Doyle and Richard John Francis Doyle, great-niece and great-nephew of Arthur Conan Doyle, two of the family members who control the estate, I knew it would include nothing critical or suggesting any faults or weaknesses at all.

Which put me in a snarkier mood while listening than I would have been otherwise.

But of course Conan Doyle gave us Sherlock Holmes, and all the entertainment that has come from that. We get an introduction to what went into creating the characters of Holmes and Watson, what led him to writing fiction at all, and bits of the novels that Conan Doyle thought were much better, and which were initially more profitable for him.

The Tea Shoppe, by Josie Adams (author), Nicola Barber (narrator)

Audible Originals, June 2020

Eleanor is the manager of a very cosy English tea shop, and we follow her through the ritual of her day, with her beloved cat, Darjeeling, her fahvorite teas, and her familiar and welcome customers. There's no plot here other than that, and isn't meant to be. This is just a pleasant, soothing account, just enough going on to distract your mind from busy, active thoughts, and let you relax. There's nothing here to keep you awake waiting to see what happens next, and that's the point. You can listen to this and relax, while relaxing and dropping off into sleep.

Recommended.

I received this as part of the Audible Originals program, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

Medieval Myths & Mysteries (The Great Courses), by Dorsey Armstrong (author, narrator)

Audible Originals, September 2019

This is a great set of lectures about medieval Europe and what many of us think we know that just wasn't so. We get lively accounts of King Arthur (almost certainly real, though not called either "King" or "Arthur"), and Robin Hood. We learn about the Knights Templar and the origins of a very popular modern conspiracy theory, and what the medieval Europeans did and didn't know about the physical world.

Medieval bestiaries and real or fanciful travelogues, and a really interesting suggestion for the possible origin of the Questing Beast add a lot of fun to the listening. And Armstrong finishes up with a look how George R.R. Martin drew on medieval history to make A Song of Ice and Fire/The Game of Thrones a rich and fascinating story.

It's entertaining, informative, and fun.

Recommended.

I got this from Audible's expanded May selection of free Audible Originals, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

The Messengers by Lindsay Joelle (author), Kaliswa Brewster (narrator), Ana Reeder (narrator), Zoe Winters (narrator), Alex Weisman (narrator)

Audible Originals, March 2020

This is a short, well-told tale of a galaxy caught in a decades-long war, and two pairs of protagonists, a generation apart. A pilot and a soldier are assigned to deliver a package, and discover they may not be the allies they think they are. A messenger and a refugee ought to be enemies, but try to work together, despite everything that's against them.

It's about how we decide who is human and who isn't, how we communicate, and even what messages we carry in our bones. It's hard to say much about this story without massive spoilers, but the characters are very well-drawn, and the world they live in emerges from their words and their interactions. It'a beautiful and, though dark, hopeful story.

Recommended.

I received this as part of the Audible Originals program, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

Break Shot: My First 21 Years, by James Taylor (author, narrator, performer)

Audible Originals, January 2020

James Taylor tells the story of his youth, including the complexities and pain of his family, and how that affected him. He intertwines his words, memories, and his songs.

His father was a doctor from a wealthy family in the south, and his mother was from Massachusetts, where they met while Isaac Taylor was a resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and Gertrude was attending the New England Conservatory of Music. For years, their marriage was a bit of a tug of war between north and south, with Isaac's career and their residence in North Carolina, while Gertrude ensured that the kids, at least, spent the summer on Martha's Vineyard with her.