THE VALLEY OF SECRETS

You don’t need to be a young adult to be captivated by Charles Keating’s narration of this wonderful novel by a University of London anthropologist. In it we meet Stephen Lansbury, a teenaged orphan who mysteriously inherits a great estate in the Cornish countryside from a great-uncle he didn’t know he had. When he arrives, Lansbury Hall seems abandoned. But is it? As the mystery unfolds, Stephen learns all about his great-uncle’s long-ago adventures in the Amazon and how that fragile world is fast disappearing. It’s a bioethics lesson wrapped up in a grand adventure story. Keating narrates in a voice both warm and refined, which is a pleasure to hear. He has a fine-tuned sense of pacing, which enables us to experience the scary, joyful, funny, and sad moments of Stephen’s adventure without feeling pushed toward our response by his voice. His Stephen does sound like that of a young adult, and he also manages to give a believable voice to an Amazonian Indian raised in England. This is a book for everyone. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE/JULY 05]