Release Week: 27 September 2022
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Release Week: 27 September 2022
Posted on 2022-09-27 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
PICKS:
Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, read by Stefan Rudnicki -- "A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media." (Note: due to Doctorow's anti-DRM stance, this is not available via Audible.)
Shrines of Gaiety: A Novel By: Kate Atkinson, read by Jason Watkins for Random House -- "1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. The notorious queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven, whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie’s empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho’s gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost."
Spells for Forgetting: A Novel By: Adrienne Young, read by Emily Rankin, Dan Bittner, Mark Deakins, Kimberly Farr, Ari Fliakos, Dawn Harvey, Carrington MacDuffie, Kirsten Potter, and Oliver Wyman for Random House -- "A deeply atmospheric story about ancestral magic, an unsolved murder, and a second chance at true love."
Leech By: Hiron Ennes, read by Abigail Thorn for Macmillan -- "In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies."
Lark Ascending By: Silas House, read by Charlie Thurston for Algonquin -- "A riveting story of survival and hope, set in the not-too-distant future, about a young man forced to flee the United States and seek refuge across the Atlantic."
The Door of No Return By: Kwame Alexander, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith for Little, Brown Young Readers -- "Eleven-year-old Kofi Offin dreams of water. Its mysterious, immersive quality. The rich, earthy scent of the current. The clearness, its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets…. Kofi has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, in the village where he lives. He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father’s father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. Some say he moves like a minnow, not just an ordinary boy so he’s hoping to finally prove himself in front of Ama and his friends in a swimming contest against his older, stronger cousin. But before this can take place, a festival comes to the villages of Upper and Lower Kwanta and Kofi’s brother is chosen to represent Upper Kwanta in the wrestling contest. Encircled by cheering spectators and sounding drums, the two wrestlers from different villages kneel, ready to fight."
Glorious Fiends By: Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, read by Amy Scanlon for Recorded Books -- "When infamous hot mess vampire Roxanne resurrects her deceased best friends, she's confronted by a dream-dwelling Guardian of the Underworld, who demands that she replace them in his afterlife with three equally nefarious creatures—or he'll drag her there instead. Reunited with Medusa and Mx. Hyde, Roxanne and her macabre girl gang must become monster hunters themselves and fight for the future of their friendship.Gory, sexy, silly, touching—Glorious Fiends asks who the real monsters are, and if the bonds that we think are solely human are really ours alone. This Homer-inspired odyssey is a nostalgic trip through '80s horror tropes—with modern sensibilities."
We Spread By: Iain Reid, read by Robin Miles for Simon and Schuster -- "Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many “incidents”. Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny—with a growing sense of unrest and distrust—starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling?"
One Dark Window By: Rachel Gillig, read by Lisa Cordileone for Orbit -- "For fans of Uprooted and For the Wolf comes a dark, lushly gothic fantasy about a maiden who must unleash the monster within to save her kingdom. But the monster in her head isn't the only threat lurking."
Beyond the Burn Line By: Paul McAuley, read by Neville Watchurst for Gollancz -- "In the deep future beyond the burn line of the Anthropocene and the extinction of humanity, the city states of an intelligent species of bear have fallen to a mind-wrecking plague. The bears' former slaves, a peaceable, industrious and endlessly curious people, believe that they have inherited the bounty and beauty of their beloved Mother Earth. But are they alone?"
The Genesis of Misery By: Neon Yang, read by Livvie Linn for Macmillan -- "An immersive, electrifying space-fantasy, Neon Yang's debut novel The Genesis of Misery is full of high-tech space battles and political machinations, starring a queer and diverse array of pilots, princesses, and prophetic heirs."
The Demons Beneath: D.I. Graves, Book 1 By: WD Jackson-Smart, read by Ralph Lister for Dreamscape -- "When a bloody corpse is discovered in a North London park, Detective Inspector Daniel Graves is the man tasked with finding the killer. However, with no clues and no suspects, the case seems like a dead end. Then another body turns up—and this time, it looks like it could be Graves’s fault. Has his investigation caused the murderer to strike again? Is he dealing with a serial killer? As the case gets ever more complicated, a report comes in of another suspicious death—but this is nothing like any other Graves has dealt with. All involved are convinced that something supernatural is to blame: a demon. Graves is no believer, but could he be wrong? With two cases on his shoulders and the truth behind each beyond his grasp, Graves must race against time before both killers—human or otherwise—strike again."
The Wehrwolf: A Short Story By: Alma Katsu, read by Jim Boeven for Amazon Original Stories -- "Germany, 1945. In the waning days of World War II, the Nazis have been all but defeated. Uwe Fuchs, never a fighter, feels fortunate to have avoided the front lines as he cared for his widowed mother. But Uwe’s fortune changes when Hans Sauer, the village bully, recruits him to join a guerilla resistance unit preparing for the arrival of Allied soldiers. At first, Uwe is wary. The war is lost, and rumor has it that Hans is a deserter. But Hans entices him with talk of power, brutality, and their village’s ancestral lore: werewolves."
BACKLIST WATCH:
Growing Up Weightless By: John M. Ford (1993), read by John Skelley for Recorded Books -- "Out of print for over two decades, an award-winning classic of a “lost generation” of young people born on the human-colonized Moon. With a new introduction by Spufford, author of Red Plenty and Golden Hill.
Blue Shift: Second Species, Book 1 By: Jane O'Reilly (2017), read by Catrin Walker-Booth for Audible -- "2187. Earth is cold, dead and divided. The rich hide away while the rest will do anything to survive. Humanity have only one hope: crossing hostile alien territory to reach a habitable planet."
Insurrection: Nevermore, Book 1 By: Sherrilyn Kenyon (1985), read by Fred Berman for Tantor -- "Brought to us by the Drabs, it was the last thing we expected. But the Drabs knew. They even fought a war over whether or not they should save us. In the end, it was decided that we were diseased insects who were unfit to breathe their air. So they left the human race to die a miserable death of agonizing pain in a matter of months. Left us with no doctors or medicine. Their plan was to rid the earth of us and to take our home as their own. What they never expected was the change that would come after the plague. We didn't all die off as they'd planned. Those under the age of twenty somehow managed to survive the disease."
SERIES WATCH:
The Golden Enclaves: The Scholomance, Book 3 By: Naomi Novik, read by Anisha Dadia for Random House -- "Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for in the triumphant conclusion to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate."
Cold Water By: Dave Hutchinson, read by Lexie McDougall for Penguin -- In the same universe as Hutchinson's magnificent Fractured Europe (Europe in Autumn, Europe at Midnight, Europe at Dawn). "In a Europe fractured by a flu pandemic and crippled by economic collapse, the continent has fractured into a hundred tiny principalities of ever-shifting loyalties, borders and covert operations. For Carey Tews, a former operative with Les Coureurs des Bois—a clandestine organisation of high-risk smugglers—Europe and the coureurs are in her past. Her legend in Hungary is blown six way from Sunday, and even if she could go back to working in Europe, she wouldn't. That is until an old friend and lover is declared dead in mysterious circumstances. What she doesn't know is that the investigation will take her to places she couldn't even imagine."
House of Hunger By: Alexis Henderson, read by Jeanette Illidge for Penguin -- "A young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power in this dark and enthralling Gothic novel from the author of The Year of the Witching."
The Winners: Beartown, Book 3 By: Fredrik Backman, read by Marin Ireland for Simon and Schuster -- "Returns to the close-knit, resilient community of Beartown for a story about first loves, second chances, and last goodbyes. Over the course of two weeks, everything in Beartown will change."
Suspect: Kindle County, Book 12 By: Scott Turow, read by Helen Laser for Grand Central -- "For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation—until now."
Hell's March: Artillerymen, Book 2 By: Taylor Anderson Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan for Penguin -- "Major Lewis Cayce will need to use every weapon in his arsenal to keep his stranded men alive on a deadly alternate Earth in this gripping new adventure set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Destroyermen series."
The Vorbis Conspiracy: Warhammer Crime, Book 3 By: Jude Reid, Noah Van Nguyen, Guy Haley, Graham McNeill, Darius Hinks, Alec Worley, and Chris Wraight Narrated by: Helen Keeley, Phillip Sacramento, Richard Reed, Tom Alexander, Greg Jones, Harry Myers, and Charles Armstrong for Black Library -- "Return to the mean streets of Varangantua for another taste of just how grim life can be for the average Imperial citizen in the 41st Millennium."
MORE FICTION:
The Furrows: A Novel By: Namwali Serpell, read by Kristen Ariza, Ryan Vincent Anderson, and Dion Graham for Random House -- "Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother, Wayne, is seven. One day, when they’re alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. Their father leaves, starts another family elsewhere. But their mother can’t give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children. As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, subway cars. Here is her brother’s face, the light in his eyes, the way he seems to recognize her, too. But it can’t be, of course. Or can it? Then one day, in another accident, C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who is also searching for someone and for his own place in the world. His name is Wayne."
Best of Friends: A Novel By: Kamila Shamsie, read by Tania Rodrigues for Penguin -- "Zahra and Maryam have been best friends since childhood in Karachi, even though—or maybe because—they are unlike in nearly every way. Yet they never speak of the differences in their backgrounds or their values, not even after the fateful night when a moment of adolescent impulse upends their plans for the future. Three decades later, Zahra and Maryam have grown into powerful women who have each cut a distinctive path through London. But when two troubling figures from their past resurface, they must finally confront their bedrock differences—and find out whether their friendship can survive."
MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:
The Dark King: Deviant Kings, Book 1 By: Gina L. Maxwell, read by Aiden Snow and Avery Reid for Recorded Books -- "NY Times bestselling author Gina L. Maxwell is back with the first in the Deviant Kings series set in a modern world but with a dark, erotic fantasy twist perfect for fans of Neon Gods."
Tantalus Depths By: Evan Graham, read by Andi Arndt for Audible -- "An AI cannot lie. An AI must obey human commands. An AI cannot kill. These are the laws SCARAB has broken, and only Mary knows. The Tantalus 13 survey expedition went off the rails as soon as Mary Ketch and the crew of the Diamelen learned that the thing beneath their feet wasn’t a planet. An impossibly vast and ancient artificial structure lies below, hidden from the universe under a façade of cratered stone."
Foul Lady Fortune By: Chloe Gong, read by Emily Woo Zeller for Simon and Schuster -- "From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends comes the first book in a captivating new duology following an ill-matched pair of spies posing as a married couple to investigate a series of brutal murders in 1930s Shanghai."
MOST MISSING:
- The Swill by Michael Keenan Gutierrez (Leapfrog Press) -- "Port Kydd, 1929. Joshua Rivers, his pregnant wife Lily, his criminal sister Olive, a geriatric dog Orla, and a cast of ne'er-do-wells eke out life in The Swill, a speakeasy passed down through the Rivers family. Outside, political and race wars rage in The Bonny, the rough Irish neighborhood where they have always lived. But when Olive's in trouble and asks her brother to help her pull a job--one with roots that reach way back into the Rivers family history--who will take the fall? Can The Swill shelter the family, as it always has, or is their luck gone for good?"