Dear Daughter

After spending 10 years in prison for murdering her socialite mother, 27-seven-year old Janie Jenkins, the infamous Hollywood "celebutante," is released on a technicality. Narrators Tony Daniels, as the voices of TV newscasters and newspaper articles, and Bonnie Dennison, as the feisty Janie, offer a vivid look at our celebrity-obsessed culture. Dennison makes Janie's snarky humor and spirited personality completely engaging as she disappears from the public glare and tries to discover what really happened the night her mother was killed. As Janie delves into her mother's past and begins to understand their toxic relationship, Dennison delivers satisfying portraits of several highly original characters. She ramps up the excitement with every credible plot twist, making this entertaining comedy-cum-mystery fun listening. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

June 2, 2014
Jane Jenkins, the heroine of Little’s assured fiction debut, single-mindedly pursues one goal when she’s released from a California women’s prison. After serving 10 years of her sentence for the 2003 murder of her mother, socialite and philanthropist Marion Elsinger, she wants desperately to find out if she was indeed the culprit. Public opinion, led by the media and including crime blogger Trace Kessler, strongly leans toward belief in her guilt. Armed with a false persona, Jane disappears from the public eye and even her lawyer’s protection to follow the slimmest of leads into her secretive, tempestuous mother’s mysterious past in tiny, decaying Adeline, S.Dak., and its mirror community of Ardelle. Little (Trip of the Tongue: Cross-Country Travels in Search of America’s Languages) effectively intersperses outside perspective in the form of emails, text messages, and other communications in Jane’s entertainingly caustic first-person narrative (e.g., “Multi-tools are like insults, girls—you should always have one on hand”). Agent: Kate Garrick, DeFiore and Company.