Release Week: 15 March 2022
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Release Week: 15 March 2022
Posted on 2022-03-15 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
PICKS:
The Kaiju Preservation Society By: John Scalzi, read by Wil Wheaton for Audible -- "When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food-delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization”. Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda, and they're in trouble. It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who's found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die."
The Cartographers: A Novel by Peng Shepherd, read by Emily Woo Zeller, Nancy Wu, Karen Chilton, Ron Butler, Neil Hellegers, Jason Culp, and Brittany Pressley for Harper -- "From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret - one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history."
When We Were Birds: A Novel By: Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, read by Sydney Darius and Wendell Manwarren for Random House -- "A mythic love story set in Trinidad, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead."
Ocean State By: Stewart O'Nan, read by Sara Young for Dreamscape -- "In the first line of Ocean State, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there with incredible momentum is thus one of the buildup to and fallout from the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart."
Drowning Practice: A Novel By: Mike Meginnis, read by Stacey Glemboski for Harper -- "One night, everyone on Earth has the same dream - a dream of being guided to a watery death by a loved one on November 1. When they wake up, most people agree: After Halloween, the world will end. In the wake of this haunting dream and saddled with its uncertainty, Lyd and her daughter, Mott, navigate a changed world, wrestling with how to make choices when you really don’t know what comes next."
Secret Identity: A Novel By: Alex Segura, read by Aida Reluzco for Macmillan -- "It’s 1975, and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn’t care. She’s an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn’t have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn’t matter. Carmen is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book. That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx”, Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to piece together what happened to him, to hang on to her piece of the Lynx, which turns out to be a runaway hit. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor from her home in Miami, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living."
A Black and Endless Sky By: Matthew Lyons, read by Hillary Huber, Neil Hellegers, Amara Jasper, Pat Grimes, and Qarie Marshall for Dreamscape -- "Siblings Jonah and Nell Talbot used to be inseparable, but ever since Jonah suddenly blew town 12 years ago, they couldn’t be more distant. Now, in the wake of Jonah’s divorce, they embark on a cross-country road trip back to their hometown of Albuquerque, hoping to mend their broken relationship along the way. But when a strange accident befalls Nell at an abandoned industrial site somewhere in the Nevada desert, she begins experiencing ghastly visions and exhibiting terrifying, otherworldly symptoms. As their journey through the desolate American Southwest reveals the grotesque change happening within his sister, one thing becomes clear to Jonah: It’s not only Nell in there anymore."
Ogres By: Adrian Tchaikovsky, read by Emma Newman for Penguin -- "Ogres are bigger than you. Ogres are stronger than you. Ogres rule the world. It's always idyllic in the village until the landlord comes to call. Because the landlord is an Ogre. And Ogres rule the world, with their size and strength and appetites. It's always been that way. It's the natural order of the world. And they only eat people sometimes. But when the headman's son, Torquell, dares lift his hand against the landlord's son, he sets himself on a path to learn the terrible truth about the Ogres, and about the dark sciences that ensured their rule."
Mage of Fools By: Eugen Bacon, read by Kofi Boakye for Recorded Books -- "Mafinga's malevolent king dislikes books and, together with his sorcerer Atari, has collapsed the environment to become almost uninhabitable. The sun has killed all the able men, including Jasmin’s husband Godi. But Jasmin has Godi’s secret story machine that tells of a better world, far different from the wastelands of Mafinga. Jasmin’s crime for possessing the machine and its forbidden literature filled with subversive text is punishable by death. Fate grants a cruel reprieve in the service of a childless queen who claims Jasmin’s children as her own. Jasmin is powerless - until she discovers secrets behind the king and his sorcerer."
The Carnival of Ash By: Tom Beckerlegge, read by Nathaniel Priestley for Penguin -- "Cadenza is the City of Words, a city run by poets, its skyline dominated by the steepled towers of its libraries, its heart beating to the stamp and thrum of the printing presses in the Printing Quarter. Carlo Mazzoni, a young wordsmith, arrives at the city gates intent on making his name as the bells ring out with the news of the death of the city's poet-leader. Instead, he finds himself embroiled with the intrigues of a city in turmoil, the looming prospect of war with their rival Venice ever-present. A war that threatens not only to destroy Cadenza but remove it from history altogether...."
BACKLIST WATCH:
The Trees: A Novel By: Percival Everett (2021, Graywolf Press), read by Bill Andrew Quinn for Tantor -- "An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone."
The Gospel Singer By: Harry Crews (1968), with a foreword by Kevin Wilson, read by Matt Godfrey for Penguin -- "When a local man returns to Enigma, Georgia, as a successful traveling evangelist, the townspeople, who idolize him, begin to attribute him with healing powers he knows he doesn’t have."
Just an Ordinary Day: Stories By: Shirley Jackson (1997, posthumous), read by Kirsten Potter, Mark Deakins, Kimberly Farr, Linda Jones, Karissa Vacker, and Gary Bennett for Random House -- "Acclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House - classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe - Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers with her explorations of evil, madness, and cruelty. Soon after her untimely death in 1965, Jackson’s children discovered a treasure trove of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, many of which are brought together in this remarkable collection."
Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings By: Shirley Jackson (2015, posthumous), read by Kirsten Potter, Gary Bennett, Mark Deakins, Kimberly Farr, and Linda Jones for Random House -- "Brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing and comic essays about her large, boisterous family. Jackson’s landscape here is most frequently domestic: dinner parties and bridge, household budgets and homeward-bound commutes, children’s games and neighborly gossip. But this familiar setting is also her most subversive: She wields humor, terror, and the uncanny to explore the real challenges of marriage, parenting, and community - the pressure of social norms, the veins of distrust in love, the constant lack of time and space."
SERIES WATCH:
The League of Gentlewomen Witches: Dangerous Damsels, Book 2 By: India Holton, read by Elizabeth Knowelden
The Banneret: Blood of Kings, Book 2 By: Duncan M. Hamilton, read by John Lee
The Observer Effect: The Joseph Bridgeman Series, Book 3 By: Nick Jones, read by Ray Porter
Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection By: James S. A. Corey, read by Jefferson Mays, Daniel Abraham, and Ty Franck -- Includes a new novella, The Sins of Our Fathers, which is also available standalone
Litany of Dreams: Arkham Horror Series By: Ari Marmell, read by Todd Menesses for Tantor -- "Dark incantations expose the minds of Miskatonic University students to supernatural horrors, in this chilling mystery novel of Arkham Horror."
INDIE WATCH:
Autonomy By: Victoria Hetherington, read by Sierra Kline for OrangeSky -- "In a near future ravaged by illness, one woman and her AI companion enter a dangerous bubble of the superrich."
Goodreads Best Short Stories 2021 by Beatrice Williams, Catherine Habbie, Emily Zanker, H. Seeking, Justin Tuijl, M. Ainihi, and Walter Bayrhamer, read by Alex Lee -- "This collection of stories from Goodreads bares the truth of the pandemic in 500 words and more. It exposes the ugly face of the epidemic and the havoc it unleashed on our collective minds. Enjoy the works of eight authors as they depict their version of the epic times we have lived in and survived to tell the tale."
Trojan Nightmare: Apocalypse Cultivation, Book 1 By: Blaise Corvin, read by Luke Daniels for Recorded Books -- "Post-apocalypse America is unrecognizable from the past. Jake survives by working as the leader of a scavenging adventuring team. A former mage, now he follows the strange path of cultivation, taught to him by a mysterious traveler. As far as he knows, he is one of the only people on Earth with this power."