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Cornelia Read

Valley of Ashes Audio CD – Unabridged, 16 October 2012

by Cornelia Read (Author)

30 ratings

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Madeline Dare trades New Yorks gritty streets for the tree-lined avenues of Boulder, Colorado, when her husband Dean lands a promising job. Madeline, now a full-time homemaker and mother to beautiful toddler twin girls, has achieved everything she thought she always wanted, but with her husband constantly on the road, shes fighting a losing battle against the Betty Friedan riptide of suburban/maternal exhaustion, angst, and sheer loneliness. A new freelance newspaper gig helps her get her mojo back, but Boulder isnt nearly as tranquil as it seems: theres a serial arsonist at large in the city. As Madeline closes in on the culprit, the fires turn deadlyand the stakes tragically personal. Shell need every ounce of strength and courage she has to keep the flames from reaching her own doorstep, threatening all she holds most dear.

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Product details

Publisher : AudioGO; Unabridged edition (16 October 2012)
Language : English
Audio CD : 1 pages
ISBN-10 : 1619691647
ISBN-13 : 978-1619691643
Dimensions : 12.95 x 3.05 x 14.73 cm

Customer Reviews:
30 ratings

Product description

About the Author

Cornelia Read is the author of Valley of Ashes, Invisible Boy, and The Crazy School. Read's first novel, A Field of Darkness, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Hillary Huber is one of the most successful voice talents in Los Angeles. Recent books read for Blackstone Audio include Him, Her, Him Again, the End of Him by Patricia Marx, A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read, and A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart.

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5 star		51%
4 star		24%
3 star		15%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		9%

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LYD

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 November 2017

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Great service and fantastic author.

Carol Siegel

Intense, beautifully written, and depressing!

Reviewed in the United States on 22 June 2013

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Many spoilers, so don't continue if you want suspense. For me there was almost none as I knew from the moment the killer was introduced that she would be revealed as a psychopath -- there were simply too many clues to that. This isn't really a mystery as the arsonist isn't even a character and the solution to the murder is semaphored to the readers before it even takes place. On top of those disappointments is the deep cynicism about men and marriage that are nearly corrosive and hard for me, as a 1970s era feminist activist, to understand. Not that I can't understand anger at and distrust of men generally, but what woman decides to play the role of a sty-at-home 50s housewife and then expects it all to be a beautiful dream? How could any intelligent and sophisticated woman in the 1990s, when the book is set, not realize that a traditional wife and mother role would not be a great choice for her, especially since she is creative and restless and likes to be at the center of exciting events? The Madeline Dare I'd come to love and respect in this series was replaced with a whiny version of the famous "mad housewife." But even in the most grim 1970s feminist novels there were some decent men who were honest with women. Here there are none, all males are scum and all women apparently marry only for the financial advantages marriage provides and expect to be treated like domestic servants but dumb lugs who don't get it. And what a downer the plot is! I don't want to read an entertainment novel about how a woman lost all her happiness and capacity for hope or joy and could never regain it. This would have been an interesting read as a regular novel, but I read murder mysteries for escapism. I want plucky heroines to solve crimes and triumph, not be ground into the dust by circumstances they can't control. If I want tragedy there's plenty out there in the "serious" novels I teach in my literature classes. This was supposed to be fun! But it was about as much fun as Jude the Obscure or Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I felt that the author had turned against her character and was purposely destroying her for unknown reasons. Cornelia Read is very talented as a writer, but should stop writing genre fiction, I think. The book certainly is well named.

6 people found this helpful

Lil Gluckstern

Marriage and Murder in Colorado

Reviewed in the United States on 17 August 2012

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Reading "Valley of Ashes" is a commitment to going for a wondrous ride through the mind of a remarkable, vulnerable, honest, bright woman as she struggles with her marriage, raising twins, writing reviews of restaurants-hilarious meals involved, and keeping her house clean. She is funny, sad, hurting and smart, a loving mother, and a wonderful narrator of the ambivalences about a husband who is absolutely oblivious to her needs-and those of his kids. The mysteries in this book matter with a very sober look at arson, but Madeleine's frame of mind is the star of this book. Ms. Read has portrayed with brutal honesty, the self doubt of a woman who welcomes help as much as she feels guilty for needing it. I laughed as she described the antics of her girls as they paint with cheese nips and various other food stuffs. I was carried along by Maddy's pain as she see how vulnerable she is as a mother whose life is simply not perfect. I read this book in one sitting because I simply could not put it down. It resonates with me still, and will continue to do so. Ms. Read has taken a huge risk in presenting this very personal look at a flawed and very appealing heroine.

20 people found this helpful

Anne R.

Disappointed.

Reviewed in the United States on 6 January 2020

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Having read and enjoyed Cornelia Read's first three Madeline Dare novels I was happy to see a fourth. This was nothing like the others. "A Madeline Dare
Novel" should be removed from the front cover. This was Cornelia Read's personal non-fiction story about an event SPOILER ALERTwith a very sad sad ending.
I read novels for enjoyment, so I select those with happy or satisfactory endings. If I wanted to read about the devastation of diagnosis of autism in my baby I'd have read something else.

M. S. Butch

great writing, weak story

Reviewed in the United States on 12 January 2013

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I found "Valley of Ashes" to be enthralling. Ms. Read's style, and a heroine of (approximately) my generation, grabbed my attention on page one and did not let go. That said, having finished the book and stood back from it a bit, I can see its weaknesses.

"Ashes," like Read's prior 3 novels, features Madeline Dare and her husband Dean. Madeline and Dean are struggling through a young adulthood where jobs are very scarce. In "Ashes," they have moved from upstate New York to Colorado, where Dean has found a good job and Madeline is living the life of a stay-at-home mom with 1 year old twins.

If I were thinking of having children, this book would cure me of the idea within 20 pages. Read conveys a sense of imprisonment so immediate and intense that I WAS Madeline, and I wanted to run screaming fromher house and hop the first plane to anywhere else. Along with the claustrophobia of young motherhood, Madeline experiences a radical change in Dean, who, now that he has a job he can be proud of, has become arrogant and overbearing, telling Madeline she should clean up the house and be content to be a "homemaker." Madeline's life is the modern woman's nightmare (at least it's mine, and hers).

Looking at Ms. Read's web page, I see that a lot of what she writes is semi-autobiographical. That may explain why her books tend to be underwhelming in terms of plot. Though purportedly a mystery, "Ashes" has a mystery so irrelevant that the solution is an afterthought. The mystery is a mere McGuffin-- Madeline is the reason to read this book.

Accordingly, read it if you read, and liked, Read's other novels; if you are looking for a conventional mystery, you will be disappointed.

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Valley of Ashes Audio CD – Unabridged, 16 October 2012

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