Cradle to Grave

Book three in librarian Kuhns’s historical series featuring Maine weaver-farmer and part-time sleuth Will Rees and his wife, Lydia, finds the couple braving the winter of 1797 to travel to a Shaker community in upstate New York, where their friend, Sister Hannah Moore, has been accused of kidnapping a widow’s five children. When the widow is found murdered, Will takes it upon himself to find the real killer. Reader Berneis, whose narration finds the sweet spot between soothing and alert, is careful to create voices that compliment Kuhns’s very human, fully dimensional characters. Berneis portrays Will as thoughtful and serious, a man yearning to do the right thing. Lydia is lighter, a gentle voice suggesting someone who looks for and finds the after-storm rainbow. Sister Hannah sounds naive but filled with angry indignation at the decisions of the town elders. The elders are mainly stiff and unyielding. Kuhns saves the who- and the whydunnit for the end, but Berneis keeps listeners captivated all the way through. [em]A Minotaur hardcover. (May) [/em]