Bells, Tails & Murder

A Cozy English Animal Mystery

By: Kathy Manos Penn

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

She crossed an ocean to start her life over. Can she nab a killer before her quaint village becomes a graveyard?

Recently widowed Leta Parker desperately needs a change of scenery. Pursuing her lifelong dream of retiring to the Cotswolds, she leaves her soulless corporate hustle in Atlanta and moves to England with her talking dog and cat companions—Dickens and Christie. But she’s barely begun making new friends when she stumbles across her housekeeper’s body …

With several villagers pegged for the crime, Leta teams up with a retired English teacher and her sharp-as-a-tack octogenarian mother to track the killer before the trail goes cold. As the not-so-friendly local policewoman elbows them out and scandalous rumors plague the tight-knit community, it’s left to the ladies and their pets to sleuth for the truth.

Can Leta, Dickens, and Christie sniff out the culprit before the cute little town loses more than its charm?

Bells, Tails & Murder is the delightful first book in the Dickens & Christie cozy mystery series. If you like spunky literary women, amusing animal sidekicks, and inviting cultural backdrops, then you’ll love Kathy Manos Penn’s engaging page-turner.

Buy Bells, Tails & Murder to see the fur fly today!

God story

Do not like AI generated reading. sterile. I like different voices & accents & emotions.

A Great Classic Cozy read by a new AI Tech

When you read this review you'll notice that the quality of the book and the reading voice (narrator) are separate in my mind. As for cozy mysteries, this delivers in every sense of the word. Wonderful and lovable characters, tickles of romance, delightful co-detectives of the fury type, enchanting scenes, and of course--a murder.

As for the virtual voice, it was pretty good considering we're at the beginning edge of this technology. It's not perfect. It doesn't replace a highly paid actor reader that costs $4-12k, but it doesn't need to. It does exceed any other text-to-speech app, providing apt voice inflections, pauses, and dynamic tones.

Does it subtract from your experience, not in my opinion. Like when you read a book from pages, your brain starts to fill in and get used to the virtual voice and I had an outstanding experience. If you were to listen to the book with the expectation of a Hollywood-quality actor/reader, you would be disappointed.

I guess the true test would be to ask... would I run and buy book two to listen to, if it were available right now? The answer would be an enthusiastic YES. I loved the characters the author created, and the book flowed with ease. I look forward to all the future adventures of Dickens & Christie and hope they are released in quick succession.

(By the way, I listen to a ton of audiobooks, so I am experienced with the media form.)

AWFUL AI NARRATION

Ugh. AI narration. I didn’t enjoy this because of the narration. Just no. The sad thing is that this was the 5th AI free audiobook available through Audible as part of the Platinum Plan program. I was excited to see these books available to listen to but this was the only one not completely painful to listen to. The other 4 were deleted after a few sentences in.
This one didn’t even have British accent when it takes place in England. The future of audiobooks still belongs to actual live narrators. If using AI is the author’s choice, don’t do it. It’s better just to not have it available on an audiobook unless you pay for proper narration.