Release Week: 10 June 2025
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Release Week: 10 June 2025
Posted on 2025-06-10 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
OVERALL PICK:
- King of Ashes: A Novel By: S. A. Cosby, read by Adam Lazarre-White for Macmillan -- "When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger. Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills."
BACKLIST PICK:
- Mapping the Interior By: Stephen Graham Jones (2017), read by Shaun Taylor-Corbett for Macmillan -- Winner of the Bram Stoker Award: "Walking through his own house at night, a young boy thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. The figure reminds him of his long-dead father, who drowned mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows, it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he ever knew."
INDIE PICK:
- The Universe By: Mike Matzdorff, read by Tony Shalhoub for Green Crow -- Yes, that Tony Shalhoub: "After the tragic loss of her husband, Katie seeks a fresh start and finds it when she is hired by the Universe. The job is to carefully orchestrate events, large and small, to keep existence on track—or so she's been told. During her first big assignment, Katie meets Mike--a man employed by the Universe for hundreds of years—and she begins to question her purpose. As their paths merge, and as Katie digs deeper into the secrets of the Universe, a dark secret reveals itself."
FICTION PICKS:
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil By: V. E. Schwab, read by Julia Whelan, Katie Leung, and Marisa Calin for Macmillan -- "1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. 1827. London. 2019. Boston. A new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger."
The River Is Waiting By: Wally Lamb, read by Jeremy Sisto for Simon and Schuster -- "The propulsive story of a young father who, after an unbearable tragedy, reckons with the possibility of atonement for the unforgivable."
Kill Your Darlings: A Novel By: Peter Swanson, read by Steven Weber for Harper -- "An inventive, utterly propulsive murder-mystery in reverse, tracing a marriage back in time to uncover the dark secret at its heart."
The Great Mann: A Novel By: Kyra Davis Lurie, read by Ian Hackney for Random House -- "In this poignant retelling of The Great Gatsby, set amongst L.A.’s Black elite, a young veteran finds his way post-war, pulled into a new world of tantalizing possibilities—and explosive tensions."
Great Black Hope: A Novel By: Rob Franklin, read by Justice Smith and the author for Simon and Schuster -- "An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not. It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it’s not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life—drawn back into the city’s underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future."
This Is Not a Ghost Story: A Novel By: Amerie, read by Leon Nixon, January LaVoy, and Robin Miles for Harper -- "Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Amerie’s dazzling, satirical adult debut tells the story of a Black man who walks into the light…to find himself in Los Angeles, where he becomes an instant celebrity for being the first visible and verifiable ghost."
Murder at the Patel Motel By: Maulik Pancholy, Zackary Grady, and Achilles Stamatelaky, read by a full cast for Audible Originals -- "A witty, Agatha Christie-style mystery about a complicated Indian-American family, the gay son who vowed to never return home, and a small town that prefers its secrets stay buried."
MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:
Of Monsters and Mainframes By: Barbara Truelove, read by Gail Shalan, Emana Rachelle, Chris Devon, Zura Johnson, Charlie Albers, Cary Hite, and Eve Passeltiner for Dreamscape -- "Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans."
The Palace of Illusions By: Rowenna Miller, read by Christa Lewis for Redhook -- "In the run up to the 1900s World’s Fair Paris is abuzz with creative energy and innovation. Audiences are spellbound by the Lumiere brothers’ moving pictures and Loie Fuller’s serpentine dance fusing art and technology. But for Clara Ironwood, a talented and pragmatic clockworker, nothing compares to the magic of her godfather’s mechanical creations, and she’d rather spend her days working on the Palace of Illusions, an intricate hall of mirrors that is one of the centerpieces of the world’s fair. When her godfather sends Clara a hideous nutcracker for Christmas, she is puzzled until she finds a hidden compartment that unlocks a mirror-world Paris where the Seine is musical, fountains spout lemonade, and mechanical ballerinas move with human grace. The magic of her godfather’s toys was real."
A Most Puzzling Murder By: Bianca Marais, read by Dylan Moore for Harlequin -- "How do you solve a murder that hasn't happened yet?"
A Dance of Lies By: Brittney Arena, read by Lauren Fortgang and the author for Random House -- "A debut fantasy romance filled with hope after heartbreak, secrets, and betrayal, as a dancer-turned-spy must decide how far she will go to secure her freedom."
The Bookshop and the Barbarian By: Morgan Stang, read by Ell Potter for Blackstone -- "Explore its many rooms, pick something nice off the shelf, and have a little read by the fire at the Cozy Quill Bookshop."
Six Wild Crowns By: Holly Race, read by Olivia Dowd and the author for Orbit -- "A breathtaking epic fantasy of dragons, courtly intrigue, sapphic yearning, and the wives of Henry VIII as you've never seen them before."
The Nimbus By: Robert P. Baird, read by André Santana for Dreamscape -- "On an otherwise ordinary fall day on a university campus in Chicago, the toddler son of an ambitious divinity school professor named Adrian Bennett mysteriously starts to glow. The nimbus, as the strange, soft light comes to be known, offers no clues to its origin and frustrates every attempt at rational explanation."
NON-FICTION WATCH:
- Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance by A'Lelia Bundles, read by the author for Simon and Schuster -- "A vibrant, deeply researched biography of A'Lelia Walker—daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and herself a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance—written by her great-granddaughter."
MORE BACKLIST:
Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again by Shigeru Kayama, translated by Jeffrey Angles, read by Kaipo Schwab for Tantor -- "Awakened and transformed by nuclear weapons testing, Godzilla serves as a terrifying metaphor for humanity's shortsighted destructiveness: this was the intent of Shigeru Kayama, the science fiction writer who drafted the 1954 original film and its first sequel and, in 1955, published these novellas."
The Man Who Cried I Am: A Novel By: John A. Williams, read by David Sadzin for Audible -- "Rediscover the sensational 1967 literary thriller that captures the bitter struggles of postwar Black intellectuals and artists and lays bare America's racial fault lines."
Sad Tiger By: Neige Sinno, translated by Natasha Lehrer, read by Jennifer Pickens for Tantor -- "Sinno was seven years old when her stepfather started sexually abusing her. At nineteen, she decided to break the silence that is so common in all cultures around sexual violence. This led to a public trial and prison for her stepfather, and Sinno started a new life in Mexico. Through the construction of a fragmented narrative, Sinno explores the different facets of memory—her own, her mother's, as well as her abusive stepfather's; and of abuse itself in all its monstrosity and banality."
SERIES WATCH:
Flight of the Fallen: Magebike Courier, Book 2 By: Hana Lee, read by Natalie Naudus for Simon and Schuster -- "Lee’s gritty, queer Mad Max-inspired fantasy duology continues with more high-stakes political intrigue, monsters of all kinds, and a high-speed motorcycle adventure to find a refuge for humanity beyond the wasteland."
Inked in Onyx: A Twisted Fairy Tale: Inkbound, Book 2 By: Shannon Mayer, read by Amelia Hugh for Simon and Schuster -- "Escape the page, or die trying..."
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses: The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, Book 3 By: Malka Older, read by Lindsey Dorcus for Recorded Books -- "When a former classmate begs Pleiti for help on behalf of her cousin—who’s up for a prestigious academic position at a rival Jovian university but has been accused of plagiarism on the eve of her defense—Pleiti agrees to investigate the matter."
Bee Speaker: Dogs of War, Book 3 By: Adrian Tchaikovsky, read by Gabrielle Nellis-Pain and Rod Hallett for Bloomsbury -- "The end of the world has been and gone. There was no one great natural disaster, no all-consuming world war, no catastrophic pandemic. Only scores of storms, droughts, and selfish regional conflicts. Humanity was not granted a heroic end. Instead, it bled to death from a thousand cuts. But where Earth fell apart, Mars pulled together. Engineered men and beasts, aided by Bees – an outlawed distributed intelligence – survived through co-operation, because there was simply no alternative."
The Burial Witch: A Threadneedle Novella By: Cari Thomas, read by Diana Yekinni for Harper Voyager -- "At home one memorable summer, Miranda unearths a mysterious suitcase in her attic that once belonged to her late grandmother. Inside, she finds a strange and unopenable wooden box. Determined to discover what’s inside, she ends up enlisting the help of Maya, the owner of a local spiritualist shop, and is drawn into a world of witchcraft, magic and temptation."
MOST MISSING:
- Animals by Geoff Ryman (NewCon Press) -- "The chilling tale of a family caught at the heart of a terrifying and transformative epidemic, in an astonishing fusion of beautiful writing and pure horror at its finest."