As always, Tavia Gilbert is a shining light as an audiobook performer. Her voice is as varied as the diverse cast of characters in this unusually structured novel. The Mazie of the title is a scrappy, independent woman; one follows her progress on gritty Depression-era streets through diary entries and other characters’ accounts. At times,…
Oates’s novel gives listeners a well-timed and insightful look at the mental state of a zealous evangelical who kills a doctor who performs abortions. In this moving attempt to tell the story in an all-encompassing and objective way, narrators Neil Hellegers, Tavia Gilbert, and Kirsten Potter portray intertwined families as they cope with the assassination.…
New York Times best-selling author Wally Lamb weaves an evocative, deeply affecting tapestry of one baby boomer’s life – Felix Funicello, introduced in Wishin’ and Hopin’ – and the trio of unforgettable women who have changed it in this radiant homage to the resiliency, strength, and power of women. I’ll Take You There centers…
Narrators Tavia Gilbert’s and Michael Crouch’s performances make up for any clunkiness or sentimentality in the expository passages of Kohler’s ambitious debut novel. After their mother’s death, Jeannie marries and appears to be the epitome of the happy American housewife, while Kip joins the Marines and is sent to Vietnam. Gilbert is just right, sounding…
Two remarkable performances grace this romance inspired by true events. Tavia Gilbert and Kate Reading shine as Solange and her grandmother, Marthe. Alternating between Belle-poch Paris and pre-WWII, Marthe slowly reveals the story of her life, from her unfortunate childhood to her years as a courtesan among Paris’s demimonde. Gilbert delivers a youthful Solange, filled…
All Waiting Is Long tells the stories of the Morgan sisters, a study in contrasts. In 1930, 25-year-old Violet travels with her 16-year-old sister Lily from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to the Good Shepherd Infant Asylum in Philadelphia, so Lily can deliver her illegitimate child in secret. In doing so, Violet jeopardizes her engagement to her…
Marie NDiaye offers a generational story of a family of women who seem to be living under a cloud of ill fortune. Narrator Tavia Gilbert illuminates the thoughts and emotions of Ladivine Sylla, an immigrant to France from a third-world country, as well as those of her female descendants. In this elegant translation by Jordan…
An ensemble cast narrates this haunting story about a German-American family at the end of WWI. When the two youngest daughters disappear from the locked bedroom of the family’s Iowa farmhouse in the dead of winter, the family’s desperate search is thwarted by hostile townspeople and their own dysfunctional family dynamics. This account of desperation…
At 27, Lucy knows everything about coffee, comic books, and Gus (the polar bear at the Central Park Zoo), and she possesses a rare gift for drawing. But since she suffered a traumatic brain injury at the age of three, she has had trouble relating to most people. She’s also uncommonly messy, woefully disorganized, and…
Narrators Tavia Gilbert and May Wuthrich offer rich performances of journalist Jesse Kornbluth’s debut novel–which is smart, sexy, and funny. David, a Manhattan divorce lawyer, has been happily married to Blair, a dean at Barnard College, for 20 years. David feels superior, self-satisfied with his life with Blair, in spite of–or because of–the horror stories…