Release Week: 25 January 2022
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Release Week: 25 January 2022
Posted on 2022-01-25 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
PICKS:
Devil House: A Novel By: John Darnielle, read by the author for Macmillan -- "From John Darnielle, the New York Times best-selling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling. Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success - and a movie adaptation - to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s."
Goliath: A Novel By: Tochi Onyebuchi, read by Adam Lazarre-White, JD Jackson, Juliana Vélez, Kevin R. Free, Nidra Sous La Terre, and Shayna Small for Macmillan -- "In his adult novel debut, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Award finalist and ALA Alex and New England Book Award winner Tochi Onyebuchi delivers a sweeping science-fiction epic in the vein of Samuel R. Delany and Station Eleven. In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have departed the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the collapsing infrastructure. As they eke out an existence, their neighborhoods are being cannibalized. Brick by brick, their houses are sent to the colonies, what was once a home now a quaint reminder for the colonists of the world that they wrecked."
The Good Wife of Bath: A Novel By: Karen Brooks, read by Fran Burgoyne for Harper -- "A provocative, immersive medieval novel starring one of literature’s most unforgettable characters in her own words - Chaucer’s bold and libidinous Wife of Bath."
Light Years from Home By: Mike Chen, read by Emily Woo Zeller for Harlequin -- "Every family has issues. Most can’t blame them on extraterrestrials. Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago, on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused - and convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob. When Evie's UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back."
The Unraveling By: Benjamin Rosenbaum (2021), read by Fred Berman for Podium (Erewhon Books) -- "In the distant future, somewhere in the galaxy, a world has evolved where each person has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success are reliant upon instantaneous evaluations of how well each member conforms to the rigid social system."
Road of Bones: A Novel By: Christopher Golden, read by Robert Fass for Blackstone -- "A stunning supernatural thriller set in Siberia, where a film crew is covering an elusive ghost story about the Kolyma Highway, a road built on top of the bones of prisoners of Stalin's gulag."
The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections By: Eva Jurczyk, read by Hannah Cabell for Recorded Books -- "A stunning debut following a librarian whose quiet life is turned upside down when a priceless manuscript goes missing. Soon she has to ask: What holds more secrets in the library - the ancient books shelved in the stacks, or the people who preserve them?"
Violeta: A Novel By: Isabel Allende, translated by Frances Riddle, read by Yareli Arizmendi for Random House -- "Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth."
The Saints of Swallow Hill By: Donna Everhart, read by Amy Melissa Bentley for Tantor -- "During the Great Depression, labor camps crop up in remote areas throughout the American South. Destitute workers live under terrible conditions. Trapped in these isolated locations, workers are entirely dependent on the often greedy, abusive camp owners who provide food and housing at grossly inflated prices. But for the most desperate among America's vast unemployed, these camps are often the last and only option. This much is true for three individuals whose lives intersect in the deep woods of Georgia at the Swallow Hill turpentine camp in 1932. For Rae Lynn Cobb, a young woman disguised as a man, Swallow Hill offers distance and anonymity from those who would wrongly imprison her for killing her husband."
Perpetual West By: Mesha Maren, read by Tony Chiroldes for Workman Audio -- "When Alex and Elana move from rural Virginia to El Paso, they are just a young married couple, each the other’s best friend, intent on a new beginning. Born in Mexico but adopted to white American Pentecostal parents, Alex is hungry to learn about his heritage and spends every free moment across the border in Juárez - perfecting his Spanish, hanging with a collective of young activists, and studying Mexican wresting, lucha libre, for his graduate work in sociology. Though Elana has enrolled at the local university as well, she feels disillusioned by academia and struggles to find her place in their new home. She also has no idea how close Alex has become with Mateo, a lucha libre fighter. When Alex goes missing and Elana can’t determine whether he left of his own accord or was kidnapped, it’s clear that neither of them has faced who they really are."
Quicksilver By: Dean Koontz, read by Todd Haberkorn for Brilliance -- "Quinn Quicksilver was born a mystery - abandoned at three days old on a desert highway in Arizona. Raised in an orphanage, never knowing his parents, Quinn had a happy if unexceptional life. Until the day of “strange magnetism.” It compelled him to drive out to the middle of nowhere. It helped him find a coin worth a lot of money. And it practically saved his life when two government agents showed up in the diner in pursuit of him. Now Quinn is on the run from those agents and who knows what else, fleeing for his life."
The Supervillain's Guide to Being a Fat Kid By: Matt Wallace, read by Mark Sanderlin for Harper -- "A personal, humorous, and body-positive middle grade standalone about a fat kid who wants to stop his bullies...and enlists the help of the world’s most infamous supervillain."
Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become an American By: Wajahat Ali, read by the author for Recorded Books
A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species by Rob Dunn, read by Donald Chang for Basic Books (Hachette)
SERIES WATCH:
The Broken Tower: The Barrier Lands, Book 2 By: Kelly Braffet, read by Tia Rider for Harlequin -- "Deeply immersive, this penetrating tale of magic, faith, and self-determination is the brilliant sequel to The Unwilling."
Agents of Light and Darkness: Nightside Series, Book 2 By: Simon R. Green, read by Dan Calley for Tantor -- "John Taylor works in the Nightside - the gaudy, neon noir, secret heart of London, where it's always three in the morning, where gods and monsters make deals and seek pleasures they won't find anywhere else. He has a gift for finding things. And sometimes what he's hired to locate can be very, very dangerous indeed."
Mermaid Confidential: Serge Storms, Book 25 By: Tim Dorsey, read by Oliver Wyman for Harper -- "Serge A. Storms gives condo living a try in this latest acid-splashed Florida crime caper."
INDIE WATCH:
Titan: Mammon Series, Book 1 By: Robert Kroese, read by Jonathan Beville for Tantor -- "An entrepreneur named Kade Kapur has an idea for rescuing the debt-ridden United States: The government will issue stock in a company with exclusive mining rights to an asteroid whose orbit will soon bring it near Earth. The asteroid, which contains $10 trillion in valuable minerals, is officially called 2015 RK 16 Maimonides, but it soon comes to be known by another name: Mammon."
Court of Assassins: The Ranger Archives, Book 1 By: Philip C. Quaintrell, read by Steven Brand for Podium -- "Legend. Myth. Nightfall has long been rumored to be nothing more than whispers on the breeze. If only it were so. In those halls of darkness, where children are taken from the world and given to shadow and dust, Asher is destined for that same fate. He will become the myth. He will become the legend. He will become the whisper of Death itself."
Unbonded: First of the Blade, Book 1 By: D.K. Holmberg, read by Savannah Gilmore for ASH -- "Taught to fear magic. Trained from a young age to destroy those who wield it. The First of the Blade series begins."
Death and Glory: Immortal's Ascent, Book 1 By: Luke Chmilenko and Chris Harris, read by Luke Daniels for Podium -- "In the Domains, those born with magic have only one place where they can prove themselves worthy of it: the brutal pits of the arena, where they will either grow in power and build a following with every victory, or risk dishonor and death in defeat."
Otherworlder: Epic Blade, Book 1 By: David J. VanBergen Jr., read by Pavi Proczko for Fairfield -- "It's the most advanced virtual-reality gaming system ever created. So real, you might wind up in another world."
MOST MISSING:
- Obsidian by Sarah J. Daley (Angry Robot) -- "Shade Nox is a fiend, a rogue, and a wanted murderer, though her only true crime is that she chooses to dress like a man. Proud and defiant, she wears her tattoos openly as any bloodwizard would, and carries obsidian blades at her hips. Those who laughingly call her a witch to her face soon learn an unfortunate lesson: Shade Nox might be an abomination, but she wields her blades with devastating precision, gleefully shedding blood for elemental magic that matches any man’s."