Release Week: 19 November 2024
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Release Week: 19 November 2024
Posted on 2024-11-19 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
FEATURED PICKS:
The City and Its Uncertain Walls: A Novel By: Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel, read by Brian Nishii for Random House -- "From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times."
The Last King of California By: Jordan Harper, read by Stephen Graybill for Mulholland -- "This stirring and brutal bildungsroman tells the story of young Luke Crosswhite, who after years apart from his criminal family returns to their flock deep in the California desert. Luke’s father is serving time for a brutal murder that Luke himself witnessed; now, his uncle vies for power and rival biker gangs encroach on the family’s various criminal enterprises. A sensitive boy grown hard man, Luke navigates the vicious pressures of “home,” and the loyalties to his old friend, Cassie, who has hatched a scheme with her boyfriend Pretty Baby to escape the control of the gang."
MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:
The Last Hour Between Worlds By: Melissa Caruso, read by Moira Quirk for Orbit -- "Kembral Thorne has a few hours away from her newborn, and she’s determined to enjoy herself at the year-turning ball. But when guests start dropping dead, she can’t help sniffing out trouble—she’s a Hound, after all. Especially when her professional and personal nemesis, notorious burglar Rika Nonesuch, is also on the prowl. Everyone knows you shouldn’t get involved with Echo games. Let alone one involving ancient Echo lords who can turn layers of reality into a gameboard with human lives for pieces. But as the ballroom grows stranger and more otherworldly with each strike of the hour, it’s clearly too late. Kem knows the rules: One Echo down is no big deal. Stay alert for trouble. Four Echoes down, there are things with eyes in their teeth, and walls that drip blood. Four is the limit. As the party plunges through increasingly deadly realities, the rules can’t help Kem anymore. She’ll have to rely on her wits—and Rika—to unravel the most dangerous game of the century before it unleashes catastrophe on their world."
The Serpent and the Wolf By: Rebecca Robinson, read by Jesse Vilinsky for Simon and Schuster -- "All her life, Vaasa Kozár has been sharpened into a blade. After losing her mother—her only remaining parent—to a mysterious dark magic that has since awakened within her, Vaasa is certain death looms. So is her merciless brother, who aims to eliminate Vaasa as a threat to his crown. In one last political scheme, he marries her off to Reid of Mireh, a ruthless foreign ruler, in hopes that he can use her death as a rallying cry to finally invade Reid’s nation. All Vaasa has to do is die. But she is desperate to live. Vaasa enters her new marriage with every intent to escape it, wielding the hard-won political prowess and combat abilities her late father instilled in her. But to her surprise, Reid offers her a deal: help him win the votes to rise in power, and she can walk free. In exchange, he will share his knowledge about the dark magic running through her veins—and help keep it at bay."
The Godstone: The Godstone, Book 1 By: Violette Malan, read by Liam Price and Sarah Sampino for Tantor -- "Fenra Lowens has been a working Practitioner, using the magic of healing ever since she graduated from the White Court and left the City to live in the Outer Modes. When one of her patients, Arlyn Albainil, is summoned to the City to execute the final testament of a distant cousin, she agrees to help him. Arlyn suspects the White Court wants to access his cousin's Practitioner's vault. Arlyn can't ignore the summons: he knows the vault holds an artifact so dangerous he can't allow it to be freed."
The Lost God: The Lost God, Book 1 By: Sheila Masterson, read by Caitlin Kelly, Will Damron, and Tim Campbell for Dreamscape -- "Two kingdoms vying for an ancient power. One witch on the verge of releasing it. But all magic requires an exchange."
The Half King: The Half King, Book 1 By: Melissa Landers, read by Piper Goodeve for Recorded Books -- "The Great Betrayal changed everything for the Allied Realm. Long ago, the kingdom’s noble houses rose up against the goddess … and for their treachery, the firstborn of each noble family was cursed."
MORE FICTION:
Time of the Child By: Niall Williams, read by Dermot Crowley for Bloomsbury -- "Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love – and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care."
The Collaborators By: Michael Idov, read by Santino Fontana for Simon and Schuster -- "Slow Horses meets Red Sparrow in this electrifying, cutting-edge spy thriller featuring a brilliant young intelligence officer and a troubled heiress who stumble into a global conspiracy that pits Russia against the CIA."
Variation: A Novel By: Rebecca Yarros, read by Teddy Hamilton, and Carly Robins for Brilliance -- "From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fourth Wing comes a new contemporary romance about the summer a celebrated dancer returns home and unearths years of family secrets and deep regrets with the Coast Guard rescue swimmer she never forgot."
Short: Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishøi, translated by Caroline Waight, read by Jesse Vilinsky for Simon and Schuster -- "Beautifully told with humor and tenderness, a Norwegian Christmas tale of sisterhood, financial hardship, and far-off dreams, acclaimed by reviewers and beloved by readers and listeners across Europe, where it has been a major bestseller."
TIE-IN WATCH:
- Red Sonja: Consumed By: Gail Simone, read by Felicia Day for Orbit -- "Red Sonja, the iconic, fiery, she-devil with a sword, is reinvented for a new generation in this action-packed epic fantasy by legendary comic book writer Gail Simone."
BACKLIST WATCH:
- Today We Choose Faces By: Roger Zelazny, read by Eric Michael Summerer for Tantor -- "Organized crime magnate Angelo Di Negri is a man out of time and place. He'd been gunned down more than a century ago. But through the wonders of cryogenic storage his body had been preserved until such a time as his "family" had need of him and he could be safely revived. That time had arrived. But Angela discovered that not everything was as it seemed and that the fate of mankind would be determined by his success or by his failure."
NON-FICTION WATCH:
Cher: The Memoir, Part One By: Cher, read by the author and Stephanie J. Block for Harper
From Under the Truck: A Memoir by Josh Brolin, read by the author for Harper -- "A unique and decidedly un-celebrity memoir, by turns affecting, funny, uncanny, and unforgettable. Weaving a latticework of different strands, moving back and forth through time, Brolin captures a life marked by curiosity, pain, devotion, kindness, humor."
Growing Up Urkel by Jaleel White, read by the author for Simon and Schuster -- "An incisive and insightful memoir by one of the most beloved icons of nineties television Jaleel White, the actor who portrayed Steve Urkel on the hit sitcom Family Matters."
A Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings By: Peggy Noonan, read by the author and Hillary Huber for Penguin -- "From Pulitzer-prize winning Wall Street Journal columnist and New York Times bestselling author Peggy Noonan, a masterclass in how to see and love America."
Short: The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, read by the author for Simon and Schuster -- "From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world."
SERIES WATCH:
The Mirror: The Lost Bride Trilogy, Book 2 By: Nora Roberts, read by Brittany Pressley for Macmillan -- "When Sonya MacTavish inherits the huge Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine, she has no idea that the house is haunted."
And the Mighty Will Fall: NeoG, Book 4 By: K. B. Wagers, read by Marisha Tapera for Harper -- "With the fourth stand-alone NeoG novel, Die Hard meets A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this nail-biting, action-filled story that’s as much about found family as it is about survival when a peaceful transition of power in the Mars Orbital Station goes terribly wrong as rebels decide this is the moment to make their move, leaving two NeoG members stranded inside a ticking time bomb."
Blade: Inverted Frontier, Book 4 By: Linda Nagata, read by Nicole Poole for Tantor -- "The starship Dragon, accompanied by its fleet of outriders, is faring ever deeper into that region known as the Hallowed Vasties. Here, at the shattered heart of ancient human civilization, once-living worlds were ripped apart by the dimensional intrusions of a Blade. Yet despite the apocalyptic-scale destruction, the fleet's telescopes have picked out signs of life among the ruins and the ship's company is eager to go on—but should they?"
Where Is Anybody?: Gideon Sable, Book 5 By: Simon R. Green, read by Gideon Emery for Recorded Books -- "Gideon Sable specializes in stealing the kind of things that can’t usually be stolen. But these days the legendary master thief is officially retired from the caper game. Now, instead of pulling off elaborate heists with his crew of supernatural specialists, he runs a magical shop in the heart of London with his partner Annie Anybody. Still, he can’t resist occasionally going out in the night to steal things when Annie’s not looking. For old times’ sake—and for the joy of the con."
MOST MISSING:
The Wolf and the Wild King by K.V. Johansen (Crossroad Press) -- "Assassin, executioner, shapeshifter, and dutiful son of the undying Queen of the land called only the Forest, Mairran is haunted by the voice of an Immortal long lost, who runs with him as a wolf in his dreams. More used to being the instrument of death than an arbiter of justice, he is dispatched by his mother to find the killer of an earl whose life was offered in an unsanctioned sacrifice to the Forest."
The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature by Alan Lightman (Pantheon) -- "Nature is capable of extraordinary phenomena. Standing in awe of those phenomena, we experience a feeling of connection to the cosmos. For acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, just as remarkable is that all of what we see around us—soap bubbles, scarlet ibises, shooting stars—are made out of the same material stuff and obey the same rules and laws. This is what Lightman calls “spiritual materialism,” the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview."