Posts by: Sam

Whispersync Deals for December 8, 2025

Posted on 2025-12-08 at 12:00 by Sam

I know it has been a quiet year here on the blog itself, but I happened upon two old-school "Whispersync Deals" today while browsing around. (To refresh, a "Whispersync Deal" is a term I came up with some years ago for when a Kindle title goes on such a steep sale that the price for the Kindle title plus the "Whispersync" Audible add-on is well under the cost of a credit.)

First up, David Drake's Lord of the Isles, book one of his "Lord of the Isles" epic fantasy series, with the

Posted in Whispersync Deals

The Most Missing Audiobooks of January 2025

Posted on 2025-02-11 at 12:00 by Sam

The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison (Subterranean Press) -- "Set in the world of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee The Goblin Emperor, The Orb of Cairado offers an unlikely hero in historian Ulcetha Zhorvena. Five years ago, Ulcetha was studying at the University of Cairado, working his way toward becoming a scholar first-class in the Department of History. Then a prize artifact disappeared and Ulcetha, deftly framed, was kicked out. Now he works for a crooked

Posted in Uncategorized

The Most Missing Audiobooks of 2024

Posted on 2025-01-13 at 12:00 by Sam

Another year has come and gone, bringing so many books and audiobooks that already, of course, one can't get to them all in a lifetime, let alone 12 months. Still, some of the titles I most anticipated -- or was most surprised by! -- last year did not come out in audio editions, and as I used to do years ago, I'm going to survey some of these for you, and hopefully some audio publishers (Podium? Tantor? Scribd?) will take notice.

First, yes, let's get it out of the way that the new Dungeon Crawler Carl

Posted in Uncategorized

The Audiobookaneer, January 2018: Frankenstein in Baghdad, Beneath the Sugar Sky, The Beautiful Ones, and more

Posted on 2018-02-10 at 21:15 by Sam

I've no idea if I'll keep this up, but it doesn't seem like too much to tiptoe back onto the blog with one small monthly feature. I'm still chugging along with weekly release picks over on reddit, but I haven't tried to go back and pick the "picks of the picks" for a month in a long, long time, and, hey, this gives me a chance to put in pretty pictures again! Anyway, here's the first in what I hope is a monthly column this year, of use especially to those really looking for one or two recommendations, and

Posted in Sam's Monthly Listening Report

April 27th #WhispersyncDeal roundup: Madeline Ashby, Peter Watts, Jo Walton, Robert J. Sawyer, Steven Erikson, and more

Posted on 2017-04-27 at 14:16 by Sam

While I'm putting the finishing touches on the full #WhispersyncDeal roundup of the Monthly Deals in Kindle Books, today's crop of Daily Deal eBooks with Audible Narration is too good to just share out one Tweet at a time. Feast your eyes and ears on:

Company Town by Madeline Ashby, read by Cecelia Kim for Audible for $2.99+$4.49 -- "They call it Company Town--a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of

Posted in Whispersync Deals

"Twisted and Frighteningly Relatable" -- James reviews The Circle

Posted on 2017-04-06 at 13:25 by Sam

The Circle
By Dave Eggers
Narrated by Dion Graham for Random House
 [Audible | Downpour]

-- Review by James Alexander --

Like a novel-length episode of Black Mirror, Dave Eggers’ The Circle paints a twisted and frighteningly relatable picture of technology and human nature gone wrong. The story beings with Mae Holland, a recent college graduate, bored, broke and overqualified at her nightmare of a job in public utility. She’s eventually recruited into the Circle, an exciting, all-encompassing tech

Posted in reviews | Tagged dave eggers, dion graham, james alexander, the circle

March #WhispersyncDeal roundup: Kate Reading reading Marie Brennan, Simon Vance reading Brian Staveley and James Maxwell, and more

Posted on 2017-03-31 at 03:56 by Sam

I'm getting this roundup just, barely, under the wire, as the main roundup expires at midnight on March 31. So... without further adieu, here's what most catches my #WhispersyncDeal-attuned eyes and ears among the 218 eBooks with Audible Narration in the March Monthly Deals in Kindle Books:

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan, read by Kate Reading for $2.99+$3.99 NOTE: it looks like the Audible add-on portion of this price changed to $12.99? or? I somehow had the wrong

Posted in Whispersync Deals

What ever happened to Sam's "Release Week" roundup posts? They're on reddit!

Posted on 2017-03-02 at 02:27 by Sam

I've realized that I never made any kind of "formal" post or announcement here on the blog, when I moved the "Release Week" roundup posts from here to reddit's /r/audiobooks... So... Yeah... Sorry about that. I've been a moderator there for quite a long time now, and when push came to shove for that particular column, the formatting, linking, images, and such just became a bit too much to both write up here and then sanitize a bit for posting over there, and I just took to using the more or less "barebones"

Posted in Release Week

"The past can’t be changed, but it can be learned from." -- James reviews Snapshot

Posted on 2017-02-28 at 19:21 by Sam

Snapshot
By Brandon Sanderson
Narrated by William DeMeritt for Audible

— Review by James Alexander —

Snapshot is one of those books you know will probably be a movie soon right away. I mean that in the best possible sense, the premise is just too good. In a city of millions, detectives Davis and Chaz are the only real people. Cops in this futuristic world have taken to using “Snapshots”, large scale, holodeck-like re-creations of the past to solve crimes.

Let’s say a murder is committed Monday with no

Posted in reviews | Tagged brandon sanderson, james alexander, snapshot, william demeritt

February #WhispersyncDeal roundup: Octavia Butler, Julie McElwain, Wesley Chu, Greg Bear, Rysa Walker, Veronica Rossi, Ben Fountain, and more

Posted on 2017-02-26 at 17:52 by Sam

All right! February's Monthly Deals listings, of which 269 are eBooks with Audible Narration, aren't actually that long in terms of what I would call outstanding #WhispersyncDeal titles. But! A solid dozen are well worth checking out, starting with some time travel:

Kindred by Octavia Butler, read by Kim Staunton for $2.99+$3.49 -- "Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the

Posted in Whispersync Deals