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Little Disasters  By  cover art

Little Disasters

By: Randall Klein
Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Mark Deakins
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Publisher's summary

A gripping novel about two young married couples - expectant parents and new friends - whose lives collide in a pile-up of deceits and indiscretions

It was the exhilaration of new parenthood that first united Michael and Paul, outside the Brooklyn hospital where their wives, Rebecca and Jenny, had exiled them from the delivery room. For Paul, though, tragedy swiftly followed that euphoria. Hoping to speed his and Jenny's recovery, he turns to Michael for a favor, unwittingly kindling the spark of connection between these couples into the affair that will blow them apart.

One year later, on the same morning that the catastrophes of their personal lives come to an explosive head, a mysterious crisis in Midtown Manhattan all but shuts down the city, leaving both men stranded - Michael at the northernmost tip of the island and Paul in a dark subway tunnel under the East River. Each must make the arduous trek home through record-breaking heat, nervously eyeing the thin plume of smoke above the skyline, though it's their private turmoils that loom largest. Told in the alternating voices of these charismatic but deeply flawed men, Little Disasters deftly cuts between the suspense of the citywide disaster and the history of secrets, lies, and losses that has brought these four intertwined lives to the brink. Smart, unsparing, and bitingly funny, Randall Klein's debut is an engrossing story of the bonds of love and family - and our unending urges to test them, even when we need them most.

©2018 Randall Klein (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Klein has deftly crafted a domestic drama twisted around an intriguing mystery and the resulting novel is fun to read while emotionally impactful.” (Chicago Review of Books)

“With refreshingly authentic humor and jagged characters, this debut depicts marriage at its greediest, and by the end, readers may find themselves torn over which relationships to root for.” (Associated Press)

"Randall Klein's smart, ferocious, propulsive debut is the kind of book I've been waiting for - it's a thoughtful literary love story, both emotionally resonant and highly entertaining." (J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest)

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Couldn’t finish and had to return this one!

The characters in this book started off well enough, but became increasingly and extremely unlikable to me as the story went on. The story was very slow moving and boring and confusing as to the constant flashbacks and then present day for both men. The narrators were good though.

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