Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, read by the author, HarperCollins Canada, 3 hours, $26.95
Coraline is about a nine-year-old girl, the Coraline of the title, whose life with her work-at-home parents and eccentric neighbours is vaguely unsatisfying. On the other side of a supposedly blocked-up door, she discovers an alternative world, where her Other Mother and Other Father preside over a spooky mirror-image of her own home. With the help of a nameless cat, she resists the temptation to move permanently to her Other Home, and also rescues several lost children's souls. The British-born, U.S.-based Gaiman reads beautifully, with every voice -- including that of a gang of poetic rats -- note perfect. A Student of Weather, by Elizabeth Hay, read by Jennifer Overton, BTC Audio Books, 4½ hours, $34.95
This series essentially "reprints" readings of Canadian books first heard on CBC Radio's Between the Covers. Elizabeth Hay's novel begins in 1938, when 23-year-old Maurice Dove arrives at the Hardy family's Saskatchewan farmhouse; he is there to study the weather. His 30-year relationship with the Hardy sisters -- the favoured Lucinda and her nine-year-old little sister, Norma Joyce -- forms the spine of the narrative. Norma Joyce comes to love Maurice obsessively, gets pregnant by him at 16 and follows him to New York. The reading, by Canadian actor Jennifer Overton, is excellent. The Whore's Child: And Other Stories, by Richard Russo, read by the author, Harper Audio, 6 hours, $38.95
Coming one year after his Pulitzer-winning novel Empire Falls, Richard Russo's story collection begins with the title story, in which an elderly nun, Sister Ursula, invades a university fiction class and won't leave until she has written the story of her life (and learned a bit about the nature of truth). Other stories include a Hollywood filmmaker who tracks down his late wife's lover, an artist who painted her in a series of portraits; and a man and his wife who deal "generously" with their abusive son-in-law. Russo's readings, while not "professional," are wryly funny and compassionate.