Release Week: 20 May 2025

Release Week: 20 May 2025

Posted on 2025-05-20 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

PICKS:

• Mother London By: Michael Moorcock, read by Nicholas Boulton for Simon and Schuster -- "Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, award-winning author of the Elric series Michael Moorcock offers a captivating and immersive portrait of London from World War II through the 1980s through the eyes of three outpatients from a mental hospital."

• Major Arcana By: John Pistelli, read by Nick Mills for Recorded Books -- "It begins with a gunshot: a student's public suicide on a university campus. The blast radius of this tragic explosion expands to encompass 50 years of our history and two of the grandest characters in recent American fiction: Simon Magnus, a comic-book writer who transfigured popular culture turned gender activist who transfigures the English language, and Ash del Greco, an online occultist who by the age of 20 has seen to the end of everything and wants desperately to prove the superiority of mind over matter."

• The Memory Collectors: A Novel By: Dete Meserve, read by Andrew Eiden, Erin Bennett, Hillary Huber, and Michael Crouch for Spotify -- "Elizabeth aches for one more precious hour with her son who died in a senseless accident. Andy is desperate to find his first love who vanished after a whirlwind romance. Logan craves the rush of surfing and mountain climbing, yearning to reclaim the freedom he lost after a misstep landed him in a wheelchair. Brooke is looking for an hour of relief from the guilt of an unforgivable mistake. Enter Aeon Expeditions, the groundbreaking time travel invention of Mark Saunders—which allows some lucky clients the chance to spend an hour in their past. Even though Aeon’s technology ensures time travel can’t alter the future, all four clients, including Mark’s ex-wife Elizabeth, yearn to revisit the hour that changed their lives forever. But when their “hour” extends beyond sixty minutes, they find themselves stranded in the past."

• Rockets’ Red Glare: A Sage Mendiluze Novel, Book 1 by William Webster and Dick Lochte, read by Grover Gardner for Blackstone -- "After two wilderness guides are gunned down at a remote campsite in a nearby national forest, it’s determined that the fatal shots came from Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation. Tribal Police Deputy Sage Mendiluze is called in to hike the rugged backcountry and investigate. Sussing out the sniper’s perch, he and his Australian shepherd, Peak, just escape becoming two more casualties when an IED is tripped. The site tells Sage there are two perps. The explosion confirms they are devious and extremely dangerous."

TIE-IN WATCH:

• The Eternal Warrior By: Ari Marmell, read by Michael Braun for Blackstone -- "For millennia, the Sumerian known as Gilad Anni-Padda has stood on the front lines between humanity and the vile, unnatural things that would see innocence, society, or life itself cast down. Gifted and cursed with immortality, he has been a guardian even death cannot long hold. An Eternal Warrior. But Gilad has been laid low—his past, his purpose, even his name stripped from him by a mystic ritual gone awry. In his absence, the worshippers of Nergal, a cult of death as old as Gilad himself, enact their intricate schemes. Drawn back into this forgotten conflict, aided only by new allies he does not trust, Gilad must reclaim everything he was—while facing an enemy who now has access to his own stolen memories, and intends to use that knowledge to reshape not only the Eternal Warrior, but the world he has so long protected."

YA WATCH:

• Cruel Is the Light By: Sophie Clark, read by Fiona Hardingham, Ethan Reid, and Steve West for Listening Library -- "An epic new fantasy about a demon hunter and a foot soldier thrown together in a centuries-old war. . . and the forbidden love that could change the course of history."

• The Girl in the Walls By: Meg Eden Kuyatt, read by Kira Fixx for Scholastic -- "When a neurodivergent girl finds a ghost in the walls, she must decide if the ghost is an ally or an enemy—and the wrong decision could destroy her and her family."

MORE FICTION:

• Sins of Survivors: A Carter Brothers Novel By: Joe McClean, read by Blair Underwood for Harper -- "Harlem Shuffle meets The Godfather in this fierce and dazzling crime family saga presented by award-winning actor and producer Blair Underwood and written by filmmaker Joe McClean, set in the Black Bottom neighborhood of Detroit in the dark and dangerous days of the 1930s."

• The Doorman: A Novel by Chris Pavone, read by Edoardo Ballerini for Macmillan -- "Chicky Diaz is everyone's favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York's cultural elite. Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she'd quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can't bring herself to leave him. Yet. And downstairs in 2a, Julian Sonnenberg—who has carved himself a successful niche in the art world, and led a good half-century of a full and satisfying, cosmopolitan life—has just received a devastating phone call that does nothing at all to alleviate his sense that, probably for better and worse, he has aged out and he's just not that useful to anyone any more. Meanwhile, gathered in the Bohemia's bowels, the building's almost entirely Black and Hispanic, working-class staff is taking in the news that that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city."

• The Last Ferry Out: A Novel By: Andrea Bartz, read by Dani Martineck, Imani Jade Powers, and Natasha Soudek for Random House -- "When Abby steps foot on Isla Colel, she isn’t sure what—if anything—she’ll find. She only knows that she needs to see the place where her fiancée, Eszter, died to try and make sense of the tragic accident. The island is nothing like Abby expected: Though it was once a bustling tourist hub, a hurricane has left it a shell of its former self, with only a handful of residents remaining. Even the once-daily ferry to the mainland now runs every week or so. There, Abby befriends an alluring group of expats, but her sense of unease surges when one of them says he knows the truth about Eszter’s final days. Before he can tell her more, though, he vanishes from the island. Hours turn to days with no sign of him, and the others are chillingly cavalier about his disappearance."

SERIES WATCH:

• The Malevolent Eight: The Malevolent Seven, Book 2 By: Sebastien de Castell, read by Joe Jameson for Arcadia -- "The world is teetering on the brink of annihilation. The Lords Celestine and the Lords Devilish, celestial and infernal beings locked in an age-old enmity, have at last found the perfect battlefield for their apocalyptic Great Crusade: the mortal realm."

• The Lords of Creation: Lords of Creation, Book 3 By: S. M. Stirling, read by Todd McLaren for Tantor -- "In this series conclusion, the richly imagined worlds of a habitable Venus and Mars, each with their own unique civilizations and ecosystems, come alive again."

• Strange New World: Dr. Greta Helsing, Book 4 By: Vivian Shaw, read by Catrin Walker-Booth for Orbit -- "In this witty conclusion to a delightful fantasy series finds Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, facing the latest and strangest challenge of her career...accompanying an anxious angel and a sullen demon on a road trip across America."

• Punk's Force: A Novel By: Ward Carroll and Tony Peak, read by Paul Heitsch for Blackstone -- "In the electrifying fourth novel of the Punk series, Admiral “Punk” Reichert faces a critical mission that could redefine naval warfare. With the future of the USS Gerald Ford—and the entire aircraft carrier program—hanging in the balance, Punk must prove that America’s pride can defend itself against the most advanced hypersonic missile threats. If he fails, long-range bombers may replace carriers, and the Navy’s legacy will be forever altered."

• Love, Death + Robots: The Official Anthology: Volume 4 By: Stant Litore, Siobhan Carroll, Bruce Sterling, John McNichol, Dave Hutchinson, Marc Laidlaw, John Scalzi, Robert Bisi, Andy Lyon, Amanda J. Spedding, and more

• Graveyard of Demons: Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, Book 5 By: Larry Correia, read by Tim Gerard Reynolds for Audible -- "Hero of the people Ashok Vadal lives! Now, he must face down enemies on all sides if he and the Sons of the Black Sword are to have any hope of destroying the evil Capitol."

• He Who Fights with Monsters 12: A LitRPG Adventure by Shirtaloon a.k.a. Travis Deverell, read by Heath Miller for Podium

• Tom Clancy: Line of Demarcation: A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel, Book 13 By: M.P. Woodward, read by Scott Brick

• Short: The Bookstore Family: The Once upon a Time Bookshop Stories By: Alice Hoffman, read by Jennifer Jill Araya

INDIE WATCH:

• Technomagica: Technomagica, Book 1 By: Vitaly S. Alexius, read by Keith Brown for Dreamscape Lore -- "The life of a bio-weapons designer Vladislav Kerenski ends with a bang… …Only to be reborn in a realm of gods and monsters. Escaping from the Ocean of the Dead and soulbound to his twin sister, Vladislav begins to unravel a life-altering magical system using his knowledge of the scientific method, computational mathematics, biochemistry, and virology."

MOST MISSING:

• Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars by Daniel Wallace (Bull City Press) -- "The drifter who is mistaken for a movie star, an old woman who sits on the roof of her house to smoke her secret cigarette, a man building a coffin for his wife— the men and women in these stories, hungry for connection, often find that everything hangs on a gust of wind or a single word."

(in progress)

5/15 The Quiet By: Barnaby Martin

The Tomorrow Project By: H. Critchlow Narrated by: Amy Noble

5/20 Sing to Me A Novel By: Jesse Browner

The Oblivion Bride A Novella By: Caitlin Starling Narrated by: Mollie Stark, Xe Sands

5/20 The Starving Saints A Novel By: Caitlin Starling

The Knight and the Moth By: Rachel Gillig Narrated by: Samantha Hydeson Series: Stonewater Kingdom, Book 1

Forsworn The Forsworn Oath, Volume 1 By: David Estes Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds

The Book of Records By: Madeleine Thien Narrated by: Athena Karkanis, Richard Lam, Madeleine Thien, Jeff Yung, Scott Turner Schofield

Esperance By: Adam Oyebanji Narrated by: Délé Ogundiran

Heart of the Sun By: Mia Sheridan Narrated by: André Santana, Annalee Scott

Behooved By: M. Stevenson Narrated by: Natalie Naudus

The Resurrectionist The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black By: E. B. Hudspeth (2013) Narrated by: Justin Price

Martian Time-Slip By: Philip K. Dick Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Anywhen By: Beth Duke Narrated by: Amy McFadden

The Glass Magician Glass Magician By: Caroline Stevermer Narrated by: Annalee Scott

Pawn’s Gambit And Other Stratagems By: Timothy Zahn Narrated by: Erin deWard

The Midnight Project By: Christy Climenhage Narrated by: Senn Annis

Smoke in the Cypress A Napoleonic Officer in New Orleans By: Owen Pataki Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Posted in Release Week