DWD's Reviews

Published by Tantor Audio in 2017. Read by David Colacci and Susan Ericksen Duration: 14 hours, 48 minutes Unabridged Matt and Karen Smith decided to visit every National Park in the U.S. National Park System. They decided to only visit the 58 sites that are actually named "National Park". This is important because there are over 400 sites in the park system that have titles like National Monument, National Lakeshore and National Recreational Area - so many that it is doubtful that any one person has been to them all. As if to prove this point, just after the Smiths published the first edition to this book, a new National Park was added to they system and they had to go visit it and update their own book just to keep their own record intact.  The book is written as a series of e-mails back to their sometimes traveling partners Bob and Sue. Bob and Sue never actually accompany them on one of these trips. They alternate back and forth narrating their adventures in the or...

Published in 2018 by Blackstone Audio Read by Fiona Hardingham and Ralph Lister Duration: 10 hours, 3 minutes Unabridged Jennifer Dorey is a reporter on the small island of Guernsey in the English Channel. It is very close to France and, in a lot of ways, it is a unique mixture of cultures. Dorey is not like a lot of people in this little insular island society - she has left the island and been a successful reporter in London, but she has returned to the island to start over due to some horrible, mysterious event. Everything is going well on Guernsey until a young woman is found drowned. At first it seems like a suicide, but Dorey starts to ask questions and everyone except one police officer who is about to retire thinks that she should just leave well enough alone... This is a moody work, much influenced by both the fairly recent and the ancient history of the island. It works in a lot of local landmarks like the "fairy ring" which has the aura of an ancient ...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2017. Read by Joy Osmanski Duration: 10 hours, 1 minute Unabridged In Janesville: An American Story , Amy Goldstein tells the story of Janesville, Wisconsin after its large General Motors SUV plant closed and thousands of employees lost their jobs. On its surface, this book has the potential of being one of the most boring books that you have ever read. But, Goldstein has a real talent when it comes to storytelling and makes this story very compelling. With the beginnings of the Great Recession, General Motors found itself in serious trouble. They had invested in manufacturing large, expensive, gas-guzzling SUV's when the price of gas was more then $4/gallon and the credit market was getting so tight that it was hard for people to qualify for loans for a $40,000 SUV. When GM closed this plant it caused an economic shockwave to tear through the community, closing most of the other factories in town that supplied the GM facility. Housin...

Published in 2017 by G.P. Putnam's Sons. In 2015's Endangered , C.J. Box introduced his readers to the Cates family. The Cates family was a dangerous group by anyone's standards - likely to poach wildlife, cheat business partners or maybe just get in a fight for the sheer fun of it. The most dangerous members of the family are the mom and the golden child Dallas. Dallas is also a champion professional rodeo star and should have been a real celebrity in his hometown of Saddlestring, except for the fact that no one can stand him or his family. Joe Pickett helped break up the Cates family crime ring and in the process most of the family was killed. Dallas Cates and his mother went to jail. His mother is serving a life sentence. In the process of her family being taken down she broke her neck and is now paralyzed. Joe Pickett has a problem. Dallas Cates has just been released from jail and it's clear that he wants revenge. He hasn't made a move yet, but it is obvi...

Published by GraphicAudio in 2015 Read by a multicast Duration: about 6 hours Captain America is called to Berlin to uncover a Hydra plot. Iron Man is called to Washington, D.C. to confront Ultron. Thor is in Siberia confronting a magical threat of immense proportions. Dr. Banner is investigating a mystery of his own with SHIELD. And, Black Widow and Hawkeye have their own problems confronting A.I.M. The Avengers are each pulled into their separate top-level emergencies - each of which could result in a worldwide disaster. Soon enough, the Avengers discover that each of these threats has arisen in response to a much larger threat - if only they can figure out what it is in time... Usually, I really enjoy GraphicAudio's adaptations of comic book novels. Their use of sound effects and multiple actors remind me of an old-time radio show. But, this one was so crowded with 5 separate plot lines that none of them were properly developed and the whole thing seemed half-baked thr...

P ublished in 2017 by Brilliance Audio. Read by Timothy Andres Pabon. Duration: 9 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged The action surrounding embattled water engineer Nathan Fisher and his family in the year 2035 continues in Rogue State , the second book in this series . In the first book, Nathan witnessed an act of terrorism designed to egg on a tense situation between the government of California and the federal government. Now, he and his family are being hunted by a mysterious group funded by a group of oligarchs that are determined to manipulate this situation to their advantage. In the second book of this series the action factor gets ratcheted way up. In many ways, the main story line of the book is one giant chase scene across a series of rural and urban desert landscapes - but it is a heck of a chase scene. We also learn a lot more about the bad guys and the messed up version of America that Konkoly has created for this book (which I found at least as interesting as the chase s...

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2016 Read by Timothy Andres Pabon Duration: 10 hours, 9 minutes Unabridged In the year 2035 America is almost unrecognizable. Environmental collapse due the abuse of aquifers and mountain run-off in the West has caused the governments of many Western states to practically collapse. The highway systems have become "No Man's Land" and the Arizona border has practically been overrun by drug cartels who often act as a brutal de facto government in some areas. California has escaped this fate due to a strict resource protection regimen that limits travel, and strictly watches how much water and electricity each household consumes. The relationship between the strict (yet successful) government of California and the often ineffectual federal government is strained to the point that there is an open and active movement that is pushing for California to secede. Political assassinations and the sabotaging of a critical power plant make the pol...