Release Week: 28 May 2024
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Release Week: 28 May 2024
Posted on 2024-05-28 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
PICKS:
Fight Me! by Austin Grossman, read by Adam Sims for Penguin -- "Dr Rick Tower is a mild-mannered English professor easing into middle-age at a medium-sized New England college. A genial blur, he thinks. Even his vices are unremarkable. But it wasn’t always like this. Not until they changed his name, altered his looks and told him: ‘pretend you were never different’. Because, decades earlier after a very bad day at high school, he was committed to a secret government facility with three other kids, Cat, Jack and Stephanie, each special in their own way. Tested, tutored and trained, this extraordinary quartet were then told to save the world. It was the best thing that ever happened to them. Until it became the worst."
Many Worlds: Or, the Simulacra By: Rebekah Bergman, Justin C. Key, Darkly Lem, M. Darusha Wehm, Cadwell Turnbull, Josh Eure, and various other authors, read by James Anderson Foster, Roger Clark, Em Grosland, Robin Miles, Amy Landon, Deanna Anthony, Dion Graham, Gail Shalan, Eunice Wong, Natalie Naudus, James Fouhey, and Neil Hellegers for Blackstone -- "An anthology of reality-bending stories from a one-of-a-kind collective of authors building a shared multiverse. The stories in this anthology range from quietly strange to ambitiously speculative. Humans transform into cosmic energy or sentient algae. A man wakes up in a new body in a world with continents cut out, months absent from the calendar year, and souls misplaced. Students at a high school regularly vanish without a trace. A woman descends into the depths of the ocean and encounters all-knowing creatures who may have the answers to her deepest questions. Mech-suits and parallel selves, conspiracy forums and interstellar telepaths, and a mysterious cosmic force connecting it all; the stories in this collection are revelatory and offer a breathtaking portal into worlds far more mysterious than our own. Subversive, transgressive, and utterly original, this collection compels the listener to believe in the fantastical."
Ninetails: Nine Tales By: Sally Wen Mao, read by Nancy Wu, Annie Q, Jen Zhao, and Eunice Wong for Penguin -- "A “lyrical and virtuosic” fabulist debut collection of stories re-imagining the nine-tailed fox spirit of Asian folklore."
Hex By: Jenni Fagan (2022), read by Lianne Walker for Tantor -- "It's the 4th of December 1591. On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh's High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor—Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still persecuted for who they are and what they believe."
MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:
The Fireborne Blade By: Charlotte Bond, read by Helen McAlpine for Macmillan -- "Kill the dragon. Find the blade. Reclaim her honor. It’s that, or end up like countless knights before her, as a puddle of gore and molten armor."
Evocation: Summoner's Circle, Book 1 By: S.T. Gibson, read by Oscar Reyes for Tantor -- "As a teen, David Aristarkhov was a psychic prodigy, operating under the shadow of his oppressive occultist father. Now, years after his father's death and rapidly approaching his thirtieth birthday, he is content with the high-powered life he's curated as a Boston attorney, moonlighting as a powerful medium for his secret society. But with power comes a price, and the Devil has come to collect on an ancestral deal. David's days are numbered, and death looms at his door."
Dreadful By: Caitlin Rozakis, read by Keval Shah for Tantor -- "A sharp-witted, debut high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, evil wizards, and a garlic festival-all at once."
Tinderbox By: W.A. Simpson (2022), read by Ruthie Bowles for Dreamscape Lore -- "A tinderbox, three huge hounds within, and an underground kingdom of old magic."
SERIES WATCH:
Camino Ghosts: Camino, Book 3 by John Grisham, read by Whoopi Goldberg for Books on Tape -- "Takes you back to Camino Island where bookseller Bruce Cable and novelist Mercer Mann always manage to find trouble in paradise."
Ghostdrift: The Finder Chronicles, Book 4 By: Suzanne Palmer, read by Paul Woodson for Blackstone -- "The fourth and final installment of the Finder Chronicles, a hopepunk sci-fi caper described as Macgyver meets Firefly."
Drowning World: Humanx Commonwealth, Book 7 By: Alan Dean Foster (2003), read by Eric Jason Martin for Tantor
MOST MISSING:
Blood Covenant by Alan Baxter (Cemetery Dance) -- "What should have been a breeze of a bank heist for James Glenn and his crew goes violently wrong, forcing them to flee, blood-stained and angry. They stumble onto a remote lodge that doesn’t open for another month—a perfect place to lie low until the heat’s off. Except it’s occupied. The Moore family, just arrived to prepare for the season, are taken hostage by the criminals, but not without bloodshed. And when blood gets spilled, something ancient notices. Something malevolent. Something ravenous."
The Default World by Naomi Kanakia (Amethyst Editions) -- "A trans woman sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates, only to fall under the spell of their glamorous, hedonistic lifestyle in tech-bubble San Francisco."