The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (author), Steven Crossley (narrator)

Recorded Books, 1997 (original publication June 1890)

Dorian Gray is a young man with everything--looks, wealth, charm, position in Victorian society. He charms the artist Basil Hallward, who paints his portrait and accidentally introduce him to another friend, Lord Henry Wotten.

Hallward is a very good artist.

Wotton is a very bad influence.

Basil recognizes that Lord Henry says shocking, outrageous things, but doesn't take them seriously and assumes Lord Henry can't possibly believe them himself. But Dorian Gray is barely twenty, He's quite easily led to the point of saying he would give his soul if the portrait instead of him could bear the signs of his sins and his aging, and he remain eternally youthful.

Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8), by Lisa Gardner (author), Kirsten Potter (narrator)

Audible Audio, February 2016

This is the eighth of the D.D. Warren mysteries, and it's a good one.

Flora Dane was kidnapped and held for over a year before she was rescued and her kidnapper killed. She's a survivor--but she's never really moved past it. Things happened during that year that she's never told anyone, and as a result she has a mission she's never shared with anyonxe, either. And one night in Boston, she goes out to a bar, and winds up killing the hunky bartender who tried to kidnap her.

And Still I Rise:A Selection of Poems Read by the Author, by Maya Angelou (author, narrator)

Random House Audio, ISBN 9780375419492, August 2001 (original publication 1978)

Maya Angelou is one of America's great poets, and this is one of her most treasured collections. These poems are about the very personal, about being black in America, and about being a woman. The individual poems are mostly short, but taken together they build up a layered and complex whole. Angelou express the strength and the struggles of the working poor,of women, of black Americans, and the intersection of those three identities.

And in this audio edition we hear her words in her own voice, strong, a little rough, and rich with feeling and expression.

Highly recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Torn Canvas, by Donna K. Weaver

Emerald Arch Publishing, May 2014

This is a fascinating look at a man with a painful past--both recent past and further past.

Jori Virtanen, twenty-four-year-old model, has had a life-changing experience: While on a cruise with new friends, he and those friends are captured by pirates. Jori, used to being the handsome, superficial model making no commitments, is a leader in overcoming the pirates.

In the process, his perfect face is slashed open, and he faces months of reconstructive surgery with no expectation that he can ever return to modeling. He needs to set a new course in life. What he decides to do is pursue the art that has been relegated to hobby status in the interest of making money from his own looks.

Jori has set out on a journey of self-discovery and reinvention. In the process, he has to confront both the painful experiences that led him to live his home in Finland at eighteen, and his own shallow, manipulative behavior since then.

The Accidental Alchemist (An Accidental Alchemist Mystery #1), by Gigi Pandian (author), Julia Motyka (narrator)

Audible Audio, January 2015

When Zoe Faust arrives in Portland, Oregon, and finds what she thinks can be her new home for a while, she's been traveling for a long time.

A very long time..

Zoe was born in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1670s, and her name wasn't Zoe Faust at the time. She was a young herbalist, and so all too vulnerable at the time of the Salem witch trials. She sailed to England, and wound up in France, training as an alchemist. When the plague moved through the village where she lived, she tried to save her loved ones--and accidentally created an elixer of life that did not save others, but did exempt her from aging. She's been traveling since then to avoid suspicion, and starts rethinking her decision to settle in Portland when she finds a dead body on the porch of her new home, both poisoned and stabbed.

Mother's Day: A Professor Molly Mystery #6), by Frankie Bow

Hawaiian Heritage Press, May 2017

Professor Molly Barda's money-motivated dean has another fundraising project for her: being the "tutierge" (tutor-concierge) for an academically struggling student whose wealthy mother is believed to be dying. She'll be tutoring him in statistics, a course she's never taught.

And Molly, still concealing her pregnancy at work, will be tutoring him at his home, filled with smells that are a challenge to her stomach, still queasy with morning sickness. Donnie suggests to her that they don't really need the income she'll be giving up if she refuses this assignment, but Molly is determined not to create problems, either for herself or for the next pregnant professor, at a school that sill hasn't totally reconciled itself to Title IX.

These little problems turn out to the least of her worries, once her tutoring starts. The young man she's tutoring is Bernardine Brigham's stepson, not her son, and she doesn't want him inheriting her carefully accumulated wealth.

Winnie-the-Pooh: A.A. Milne's Pooh Classics Volume 1, by A.A. Milne (author), Peter Dennis (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, October 2004 (original publication October 1926)

Christopher Robin, Winnie-the-Pooh, and all their friends have adventures in the woods and meadows around Christopher Robin's home. Eeyore is always depressed but included in the friends' adventures. Pooh has, as he himself says, very little brain, and he loves his honey, but he tries to be kind and generous, even if he doesn't always get it right. Owl lives in the Hundred Acre Wood, and everyone knows he's the wisest of them, even if perhaps he doesn't know quite as much as he might. All the friends are distressed and alarmed, and perhaps a little jealous, because of the arrival in their forest of Kanga, and her tiny child, Roo, whom she carries in her pocket.

These are delightful stories that most adults will remember from childhood, and Peter Dennis reads them beautifully.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire #1), by Yoon Ha Lee (author), Emily Woo Zeller (narrator)

Recorded Books, June 2016

Captain Kel Cheris is disgraced, having won a battle against heretics using unconventional tactics. Her only chance at redemption is to retake the star fortress called the Fortress of Scattered Needles, recently captured by heretics.

She has a plan. It's a desparate plan, involving reviving an undead tactician who has never lost a battle, General Shuos Jedao. Of course, in his original life, Jedao went mad and wiped out two armies, one of them his own, and he's a famous traitor, but if Cheris didn't believe in taking risks, she wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.

Loose Lips (Lady Marmalade #2),, by Jason Blacker

Lemon Tree Publishing, October 2012

This is a sadly disappointing story.

There's a perfectly decent little story in here, but unfortunately, it's buried in clunky, obvious prose and dialog that is so obvious that the only comparison is to the "As you know, Bob" clunkers much mocked in science fiction. The characters in a science fiction story don't need to explain to each other how the everyday tools of their world work. Lady Marmalade doesn't need her friends to explain to her things she's known for years.

Harry and Genevieve Appleback are old friends of Lady Marmalade. They've lived in the current abode in Hightown since 1941. It's now 1947, and Frances Marmalade last saw them six months ago. So why does she need to hear the story of how and why they bought the place as if it's new information? So that the reader will know! And the author can't think of any more subtle or plausible way to convey the same information.

The Thousand Names (the Shadow Campaigns #1), by Django Wexler (author), Richard Poe (narrator)

Recorded Books, July 2013

Captain Marcus D'Ivoire is captain of the 1st Battalion of the Colonials, the Vordanai empire's colonial garrison in a land where rebellion has suddenly exploded. His job has just become much tougher, and it's not made easier of the new colonel. Marcus, as senior captain, has been running the regiment since the death of Colonel Juarez. He's happy to be relieved of the paperwork and extra responsibility that goes along with that, but Count Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran turns out to be a very odd character indeed. He's here to put down the rebellion, but he has another mission, too, that he isn't telling anyone about.