Books by New Englanders or set in New England are on tap this month — including two featuring a Rhode Island narrator and author/storyteller.
“The Worst”
By Mark Binder, read by Binder. Light Publications, 5¾ hours, $6.99. Or order directly through the publisher at here by Oct. 31 for a $2 discount. Use the coupon code ALANAUDIO.
Most of this book consists of more tall tales of Providence storyteller Mark Binder’s fictionalized childhood. To his 8th-grade friend group, the phrase “the worst” could mean the best or the worst. And both ends are represented here.
For instance, there’s an 11-foot snowfall that led to an epic snowball battle in the high school gym; a moment when one of his pals recounts a younger brother swallowing a cockroach; a friend who gets around in a wheelchair, then discovers how liberating it is to ride a horse; and a truly disgusting story in which Binder and his buddies combine their spit and mucus during a flu epidemic, then try to get his older sister to drink the concoction.
Best or worst, it’s mostly harmless fun, like Binder’s earlier books of similar stories. But it turns deadly serious in the last and longest story, in which he and his cousin Adam need to stop a school shooter. Binder gives the troubled background that led up to the shooter’s actions, but he’s not especially interested in that “meatball.” Instead, he focuses on the improbable plan that he and his friends cook up to defeat the shooter. He even manages to find a touch of humor in the whole thing, without the mistake of making it laughable.
As always, Binder is a worthy performer of his own material, honed in countless performances over the years.
“The Magic We Made: A Novel”
By Meg Cabot, read by Piper Goodeve, Tim Paige, and Courtney Fabrizio. Avon, 10¼ hours, $28.99.
“Princess Diaries” author Cabot is back with the second in a series set in fictional West Harbor, Connecticut, where “witch tourism” is flooding the streets and magic seems to be in the air.
That doesn’t impress Francesca “Frankie” Giovanni, though. A psychologist, Frankie doesn’t believe in magic, and has a scientific explanation for everything, including attraction and love. Even when the uber-handsome Ash Meritt — whom she has grown to hate from a distance as a next-door neighbor whose summer tenants are always playing their music too loudly — turns out to be, actually, kind of nice.
Ash is in town now, living in the house and searching for Emma Bridle, one of a dozen teenage girls who have vanished nearby in the last several months. It’s this search that will bring both of him and Frankie into danger — and (spoiler alert!) bring them together, too. And, just maybe, convince her that magic is real.
Cabot draws endearing characters, particularly with Frankie’s family, which gathers each Sunday in accordance with Italian American tradition for her mother’s “Sunday gravy” feasts. No need to have listened to the first book; this one stands on its own.
The narrators, too, are excellent. Goodeve, both an Audie and Earphones Award winner, has a way with both male and female voices that’s warm and genuine — and a fine accent when discussing Italian foods — as she reads chapters told from Frankie’s point of view. Paige, the voice of NBC’s “The More You Know,” does just as well with the men in chapters told by Ash, though his women are a little less realistic-feeling. And Fabrizio, a Pawtucket resident who has narrated many children’s and young-adult books, is good in a smaller role reading the few chapters told by Emma.
“The Amateur”
By Chris Bohjalian, read by Melora Hardin. Random House Audio, 10 hours, $23. Available through all Rhode Island public libraries.
Mira Winston is 18 years old, a terrific golfer and kind of a brat, when she goes to her family’s country club in a tony New York suburb one summer day in 1978 and hits a ball at a net, the same way she has uncountable times before.
But this time is different. This time, the ball slices through the net and hits a teenage caddy sitting behind it, killing him instantly.
And thus begins Mira’s descent into a hell of lawyers and self-loathing. She’d expected to be starting at Yale in a few weeks. Now she offers herself no quarter as the blame game begins. Was it the club’s fault? The netting manufacturer’s? The club pro’s? Whoever the legal system ends up pinning the blame on, she’s sure of one thing: She’s the one who killed Kenny Foster.
In this novel by Vermonter Bohjalian, author of such works as “The Red Lotus” and “The Flight Attendant,” Mira is a sad creature, and she’s well aware of it. She’s telling the story from the safe distance of decades in which she’s become a successful novelist. But even as her case moves forward, she’s unsparing as she recounts the many ways in which she was not fit to be around, so long ago.
It makes for listening that’s both a little grim and quite compelling. The latter is due in no small part to the bravura performance by Hardin, best known for her small-screen roles as Jan Levinson on “The Office,” Trudy Monk on “Monk,” and Tammy Cashman on “Transparent.” There’s a big cast of characters here, both male and female, and Hardin makes them distinct from one another without ever descending into caricature.
“Felicia’s Favorites: A Novel”
By Danielle Steel, read by Jim Frangione. Random House Audio, 7⅓ hours, $22. Available through all Rhode Island public libraries.
It’s an intriguing premise. When Felicia is murdered by a sniper, her five adult daughters are stunned to learn that their mother wasn’t a low-level editor in a New York publishing house, but the major author she had pretended to edit. And that she’s left them each millions of dollars, as well as a share in a Connecticut farm worth millions more.
As the sisters gather at the farm, the adjustments that all this brings could make for a satisfying tale. In the hands of onetime romance queen Steel, though, it drowns under the weight of flabby, numbingly repetitious prose. Occasionally, good writing peeks through: Steel writes that one sister “was a prisoner and had lost the key to her life.” But far too often, it’s hackneyed: A male character wants to “make love happen and sweep her away to a magical place where only they existed.”
Ah, yes. The men. They’re either total jerks or absolute princes. The women, though, are uniformly well-intentioned, though they sometimes make poor choices.
And though there are things that differentiate the sisters — one is a ballet dancer whose career and love affair were cut off by an accident; a second is a lawyer who put the law aside to become a senator’s kept woman; a third is a homemaker whose husband is cheating on her — they’re all so sweet and virtuous that it’s hard to tell them apart. It’s not for nothing that Steel keeps reminding us of basic things about her characters; otherwise, we’d have a hard time remembering which is which.
That’s the case, too, with Frangione’s narration. He’s got a deep voice that seems to come from the early days of audiobooks, when a mellifluous timbre meant far more than building individual characters. There’s nothing wrong with it, but as with Steel’s writing, it will leave you wondering at the end who, exactly, these sisters are, and why we were supposed to care.
Alan Rosenberg is a retired executive editor of The Providence Journal and has been reviewing audiobooks for more than two decades. Reach him at .
