Release Week: 1 March 2022
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Release Week: 1 March 2022
Posted on 2022-03-01 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
PICKS:
All My Rage: A Novel By: Sabaa Tahir, read by Deepti Gupta, Kamran R. Khan, and Kausar Mohammed for Listening Library -- "Lahore, Pakistan. Then. Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Juniper, California. Now. Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding."
Underneath the Oversea By: Marc Laidlaw, read by Stefan Rudnicki for Skyboat -- "On a bluff above the sea lived a gargoyle, a tree, two bards, and their various children. Gorlen and Plenth, the wandering bards in question, have quit a life of rambling to raise their daughter, Aiku, in peace at the edge of a curious sea. Aiku's other father is the gargoyle Spar, who is also husband to a songwood tree and father to a young grove. It's no more unusual than most families, and their life no less ordinary…until one extraordinary day, when the messenger birds Aiku loves begin to deliver ominous notes and soon flap away in a frenzy, like a storm fleeing before an even greater storm."
Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021 By: Margaret Atwood, read by the author and a full cast for Random House -- "In this brilliant selection of essays, the award-winning, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments offers her funny, erudite, endlessly curious, and uncannily prescient take on everything from debt and tech to the climate crisis and freedom and the importance of how to define granola."
Tell Me an Ending: A Novel By: Jo Harkin, read by Tania Rodrigues for Simon and Schuster -- "Never Let Me Go meets Black Mirror in this thrilling dystopian debut about a tech company that deletes unwanted memories, the consequences for those forced to contend with what they tried to forget, and the dissenting doctor who seeks to protect her patients from further harm."
The Tobacco Wives: A Novel By: Adele Myers, read by Shannon McManus and Janet Metzger for Harper -- "Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina - the tobacco capital of the South - where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives. But she soon learns that Bright Leaf isn’t quite the carefree paradise that it seems."
The Broken Room By: Peter Clines, read by Timothy Andrés Pabon for Audible -- "You can still owe the dead. Hector was the best of the best. A government operative who could bring armies to a halt and nations to their knees. But when his own country betrayed him, he dropped off the grid and picked up the first of many bottles. Natalie can’t remember much of her life before her family brought her to the US, but she remembers the cages. And getting taken away to the Project with dozens of other young children to become part of their nightmarish experiments. That’s how she ended up with the ghost of a dead secret agent stuck in her head. And Hector owes Natalie’s ghost a big favor."
The Atlas Six By: Olivie Blake, read by James Cronin, Siho Ellsmore, Munirih Grace, Andy Ingalls, Caitlin Kelly, Damian Lynch, David Monteith, and Steve West for Macmillan -- "The Alexandrian Society, caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity, are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who earn a place among the Alexandrians will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation."
Scattered All Over the Earth By: Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani, read by Cindy Kay for Tantor -- "Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as "the land of sushi." Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska. As she searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue, Hiruko soon makes new friends. Her troupe travels to France, encountering an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra-nationalist named Breivik; unrequited love; Kakuzo robots; red herrings; uranium; an Andalusian matador. Episodic and mesmerizing scenes flash vividly along, and soon they're all next off to Stockholm."
Sundial By: Catriona Ward, read by Katherine Fenton for Macmillan -- "All Rob ever wanted was a normal life. Nothing like her childhood, growing up in the lonely wild Mojave Desert on her family's ranch, Sundial. Surrounded by dogs, coyotes, and research assistants. For a while, it seemed like Rob got her wish: a husband, two daughters, the white picket fence, and margaritas with the neighbors. But when a frightening accident in her home reveals a disturbing secret in her oldest daughter’s bedroom, Rob knows her luck has run out."
A Coin for the Ferryman: A Novel By: Megan Edwards, read by Mark Ashby for Imbrifex -- "In 1999, an elite interdisciplinary team headed by Nobel laureate Andrew Danicek gathered in California to carry out a ground-breaking time-travel experiment. While the rest of the world remained unaware, Julius Caesar was successfully transported from the last day of his life to a specially constructed covert facility. Four days of conversation with historians and Latin scholars were planned, followed by Caesar’s return to the moment from which he was extracted. But despite the team’s meticulous efforts to maintain secrecy and plan for all possible exigencies, a kidnap attempt plunges Caesar into peril."
Gallant By: Victoria Schwab, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt for Harper -- "Everything casts a shadow. Even the world we live in. And as with every shadow, there is a place where it must touch. A seam, where the shadow meets its source."
The Quarter Storm: Mambo Reina, Book 1 By: Veronica G. Henry, read by Robin Miles for Brilliance -- "A practitioner of Vodou must test the boundaries of her powers to solve a ritual murder in New Orleans and protect everything she holds sacred."
Like Me: A Novel By: Hayley Phelan, read by Lauren Ezzo for Brilliance -- "Though beautiful, cunning, and privileged, nineteen-year-old Mickey finds herself with a stalled modeling career, an escalating drinking problem, few friends, and next to nothing in the bank. To numb her growing despair, she spends her days frantically refreshing her Instagram feed, obsessively tracking the movements of Insta-famous model Gemma Anton. Mickey sees Gemma as a perfected version of herself. Gemma is living a seemingly perfect life: a skyrocketing career, a famous boyfriend, and adoring followers. It’s the life Mickey wants more than anything. Mickey studies every detail Gemma offers through the window of her phone, trying to absorb, mimic, become the object of her growing fascination."
The Night Shift: A Novel By: Alex Finlay, read by Brittany Pressley, Cady McClain, Devon Hales, and Gary Tiedemann for Macmillan -- "It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in New Jersey, four teenagers working late at the store are attacked. Only one inexplicably survives. Police quickly identify a suspect, the boyfriend of one of the victims, who flees and is never seen again. Fifteen years later, more teenage employees are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive."
A Train to Moscow: A Novel By: Elena Gorokhova, read by Elizabeth Knowelden for Brilliance -- "In post-World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition."
The Unsinkable Greta James: A Novel By: Jennifer E. Smith, read by Mae Whitman for Random House -- "An indie musician reeling from tragedy and a public breakdown reconnects with her father on a weeklong cruise in “a pitch-perfect story about the ways we recover love in the strangest places”."
Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir By: Bob Odenkirk, read by the author, Steve Rudnick, and Leo Benvenuti for Random House -- "The star of Mr. Show, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul opens up about the highs and lows of showbiz, his cult status as a comedy writer, and what it’s like to reinvent himself as an action film ass-kicker at 50."
The same!
BACKLIST WATCH:
- Outer Diverse: The Splintered Universe Trilogy, Book 1 By: Nina Munteanu (2011), read by Dawn Harvey for Spoken Realms -- "When Galactic Guardian Rhea Hawke investigates the genocide of an entire spiritual sect, she collides not only with dark intrigue but with her own tarnished past. Her quest for justice catapults Rhea into the heart of a universal struggle across alien landscapes of cruel beauty and toward an unbearable truth she’s hidden from herself since she murdered an innocent man."
MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:
The Night Before Morning By: Alistair Moffat, read by Grant Cartwright for Tantor -- "June 1945. Hitler has triumphed, Britain is under German occupation, and America cowers under the threat of nuclear attack. In the dead of night, a figure flits through the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, searching for a hidden document he knows could change the course of history. The journal he discovers, by a young soldier, David Erskine, records an extraordinary story."
The Ghost Mine: Tech Ghost, Book 1 By: Ben Wolf, read by Joe Hempel for Aethon -- "People are dying, and no one knows why. But the company is covering it up anyway. Justin is excited to start his new job at an energy mine on a distant planet - until things begin to go wrong. Small things. Annoying glitches in the mining complex's tech. Enough to aggravate him. Enough to notice a connection. When the first miner dies from a tech-related accident, Justin can no longer turn a blind eye. But the mine's brass don't want him digging for answers - even though something from the mine's past is lurking beneath the surface.... And it wants blood."
Paragon of Blood: Paragon, Book 1 By: Luke Chmilenko and Alex Knight, read by Travis Baldree for Audible -- "All Auric Cain ever wanted was a chance. A chance to prove himself. A chance to take control of his life. A chance to be more than a lowly D-Tier, the lowest of the low, in a world broken by the arrival of an alien, enigmatic being known as The System. And the seemingly endless hordes of Gateborn that accompanied it."
SERIES WATCH:
Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld: InCryptid, Book 11 By: Seanan McGuire, read by Emily Bauer
Defekt: Finna Series, Book 2 By: Nino Cipri, read by Ramon De Ocampo
The River of Silver: Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy By: S. A. Chakraborty, read by Soneela Nankani
Escape From Yokai Land: A Laundry Files Novella By: Charles Stross, read by Gideon Emery
Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey edited by Jonathan Maberry and Bryan Thomas Schmidt, read by Bradford Hastings, Nicol Zanzarella, Stephanie Weeks, Feodor Chin, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Soneela Nankani, Chelsea Stephens, Hillary Huber, Erica Sullivan, Sura Siu, and Shiromi Arserio
MOST MISSING:
All the Horses of Iceland by Sarah Tolmie (Tordotcom) -- "Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of fire, stone, and ice. His search for riches will take him from Helmgard, through Khazaria, to the steppes of Mongolia, where he will barter for horses and return with much, much more."
Valhellions by Tim Akers (Baen) -- "When John Rast signed up for Knight Watch, he expected it to be all fighting dragons and rescuing maidens. You know, hero stuff. But instead he’s stuck patrolling game conventions and cosplayer competitions, looking for dangerous anachronisms and the villains who may be trying to exploit them. Fortunately, all that changes when an honest-to-goodness necromancer shows up wielding a weapon created by Nazi occultists and accompanied by some badass evil valkyries, hell-bent on kicking off the end of the world. John and the team will go to great lengths—even Minnesota—to prove find out who’s responsible for all this and foil their plans. Also, there’s a giant dog who thinks the moon is a ball. It’s epic."