The Crystal Skull

Moving from the past to the present, Scott's story recounts the quest for a crystal skull with magical healing powers. In the past, Cedric Owen has to find a place of safekeeping for the skull so that, hundreds of years in the future, Stella Cody can find it and keep it safe from the forces that wish to unleash doomsday. Susan Duerden narrates in a light, crisp English accent that comes to embody Stella's point of view and personality. When narrating Cedric's experiences, Duerden lowers her voice and adds a bit of a nasal tone, adroitly adjusting for the masculine timbre while not overcompensating for it. However, some of her accents sound forced or exaggerated. L.E. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

February 25, 2008
Edgar nominee Scott (No Good Deed
) mixes adventure, supernatural phenomena and cryptography to create a fast-paced supernatural thriller. Mayan apocalyptic astronomical documents chillingly predict that the world will end on December 21, 2012, unless 13 crystal skulls are reunited. Cedric Owen, a 16th-century scholar and physician whose family has safeguarded one of the skulls from time unknown, struggles to unlock the jewel's secrets and arrange for its safety. Nearly five centuries later, newlyweds Stella Cody and Kit O'Connor unlock Owen's cipher and track the skull to its hiding place, only to find themselves caught up in a global struggle between the keepers of the skulls and those who are determined to destroy them and bring about the end of the world. Stella and Kit's race to prevent the apocalypse turns into a life-threatening, heart-pounding battle between good and evil.