Release Week: 1 October 2024

Posted on 2024-10-01 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

FEATURED:

• The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison with J. Michael Straczynski, read by a full cast for Blackstone -- "In 1973 celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again, Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed. Now, six years after Ellison’s passing, science fiction’s most famous unpublished book is here. And with it, the heartbreaking true story of the troubled genius behind it."

FICTION PICKS:

• The Mighty Red: A Novel By: Louise Erdrich, read by Marin Ireland for Harper -- "In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people’s lives."

• Model Home: A Novel By: Rivers Solomon, read by Gabby Beans for Macmillan -- "The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned. As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?"

• The City in Glass By: Nghi Vo, read by Susan Dalian for Macmillan -- "The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot. And then the angels come, and the city falls. Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned. She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever."

• A Song to Drown Rivers: A Novel By: Ann Liang, read by Natalie Naudus for Macmillan -- "Inspired by the legend of Xishi, one of the famous Four Beauties of Ancient China, an epic novel steeped in myth about womanhood, war, sacrifice, and love against all odds as the fate of two kingdoms hangs in a delicate balance."

• The Great When: The Long London Quintet, Book 1 By: Alan Moore, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith for Bloomsbury -- "The year is 1949, the city London. Amidst the smog of the capital stumbles Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless eighteen year-old employed by a second-hand bookshop. One day, on an errand to acquire books for sale, Dennis discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, a figment from another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How? Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret: if Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks repercussions, such as his body being turned inside out (or worse)."

• Rapture By: Emily Maguire, read by Rose Akroyd for Sceptre -- "Ninth-century Mainz, in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Agnes is the motherless child of an English priest - a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. But when tragedy strikes, she is suddenly forced to choose between what is expected of her and the life she has always dreamed of. Determined to find her own freedom, she disguises herself as a man, securing a place at the revered Fulda monastery and forever altering the course of her existence."

• And He Shall Appear By: Kate Van Der Borgh, read by Elliot Fitzpatrick for Dreamscape -- "An unnamed narrator arrives at Cambridge University in the early aughts determined to reinvent himself. His northern accent marks him as an outsider, but thanks to his musical gifts, he manages to fall in with his wealthy classmate, Bryn Cavendish. A charismatic party host and talented magician, Bryn enthralls the narrator. But something seems to happen to those who challenge or simply irk Bryn—and they aren’t ever the same again."

• Good Dogs By: Brian Asman, read by Alex Picard, Erin deWard, and Joe Hempel for Blackstone -- "No one ever said being a werewolf was easy. Take Delia, for instance. She’s spent much of her life fighting against her own nature, plagued by nightmares of childhood trauma, and trying to find her place in the world. Many werewolves are just like her: ostracized by their families, forced to live alone and in secret as they await those nights when the Change overtakes them. Becoming the den mother to an odd bunch of lycanthropes in Southern California isn’t exactly the answer Delia was looking for. But under the strict rules of the house, they are able to manage the Change safely and hunt without endangering their San Diego suburb. And they aren’t lone wolves anymore, they’re a pack—a family. But when one member’s carelessness leads to the discovery of a severed leg in their backyard, Delia and the rest of her family are forced to confront the cold, hard fact they’ve known all along—they don’t belong here. Their only option is to cover up the kill and head into the wilderness, far from people. There, hopefully, they can live out their lives without posing a threat to anyone else."

• Wintry Blue By: Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, read by Cary Hite for Spotify -- "Oliver and his daughter, Katie, are looking forward to visiting with Grandma and Grandpa. Ever since Katie's mother passed away, the holidays haven't been the same, but Oliver is determined to give his daughter a magical Christmas, complete with the woods, roaring fires and jolly snowmen. Little does he know, they aren't alone in this wintry wilderness. While Oliver and Katie make their way along the icy roads, Dan and his girlfriend, Nadia, are experiencing a journey of their own out in the woods. The hike might seem like a romantic adventure to Nadia, but it's something far more important to Dan. He's on a quest to find the evil spirits hiding in this frozen landscape so he can become the hero who slayed the monsters. The voice in his head is insistent on the importance of his mission. But when Dan can't find any monsters to kill, it's everyone else who will need to be afraid of him and the darkness lurking within."

• We Need No Wings By: Ann Dávila Cardinal, read by Marisol Ramirez for Recorded Books -- "Tere Sánchez has always known who she was: a professor, a wife, a mother, and a friend. But when her husband dies unexpectedly, she finds herself completely broken. Taking a leave from the university, Tere hopes that she can mourn her husband and get back on her feet, but instead, she spends a year consumed by grief. Until the day she levitates."

NON-FICTION WATCH:

• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates, read by the author for Books on Tape -- "The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities."

• Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell, read by the author for Hachette -- "A lot has changed in 25 years. A quarter-century after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light — this time in an immersive audio format that transports you, the listener, directly inside of each riveting story."

• Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King by Dan Jones, read by the author for Books on Tape -- "The New York Times bestselling author returns with a biography examining the dramatic life and unparalleled leadership of England's greatest medieval king."

MORE FICTION:

• Season of the Swamp By: Yuri Herrera (2022), translated by Lisa Dillman, read by Thom Rivera for Recorded Books -- "New Orleans, 1853. A young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp. Years later, he will become the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas, but now he is as anonymous and invisible as any other migrant to the roiling and alluring city."

• Shred Sisters: A Novel By: Betsy Lerner, read by Rebecca Lowman for Simon and Schuster -- "A wry and riveting debut novel about family, mental illness, and a hard-won path between two sisters."

• The Glass Girl by Kathleen Glasgow, read by Gail Shalan for Books on Tape -- "A raw, heart-wrenching novel about a teenager facing down her struggles with alcohol—and the journey she must take to heal."

• Short: Indigo by Alice Hoffman, read by Bailey Carr for Scholastic -- "Three friends in search of a place to belong find that home is truly where the heart is in this new tale of enchantment from master storyteller Alice Hoffman."

MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:

• The Crescent Moon Tearoom: A Novel By: Stacy Sivinski, read by Nikki Massoud for Simon and Schuster -- "Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in the swirls of ginger, cloves, and cardamon that lie at the bottom of their customers’ cups. Their days at the teashop are filled with talk of butterflies and good fortune intertwined with the sound of cinnamon shortbread being snapped by laced fingers. That is, until the Council of Witches comes calling with news that the city Diviner has lost her powers, and the sisters suddenly find themselves being pulled in different directions."

• A Grim Reaper's Guide to Catching a Killer By: Maxie Dara, read by Jaime Lamchick for Penguin -- "It’s not like it used to be. Modern-day grim reapers wear business casual, not black cloaks, and they don’t carry scythes, they work for S. C. Y. T. H. E. (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences), where the Department of Natural Causes is the least exciting gig. And that’s how Kathy Valence likes it: boring and predictable. She has enough stress in her personal life; she’s mid-divorce, pregnant, and terrified she doesn’t have what it takes to be a good mom. Then, she goes to pick up a new client and finds his soul is missing. When she finally tracks down Conner Ortiz, he angrily insists he was murdered, and he refuses to move on until Kathy finds out why and by whom."

• The House at Watch Hill: A Novel By: Karen Marie Moning, read by Amanda Leigh Cobb, Tim Campbell for Harper -- "Zo Grey is reeling from the sudden death of her mother when she receives a surprising call from an attorney in Divinity, Louisiana, with the news she has been left an inheritance by a distant relative, the terms of which he will only discuss in person. Destitute and alone, with nothing left to lose, Zo heads to Divinity and discovers she is the sole beneficiary of a huge fortune and a monstrosity of a house that sits ominously at the peak of Watch Hill—but she must live in it, alone, for three years before the house, or the money, is hers."

• The Last Gifts of the Universe: A Novel By: Riley August, read by Robyn Holdaway, Ayesha Antoine, and Chris Thompson for Harlequin -- "When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilisations. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last ones left–and whatever came for the others will one day come for them. Scout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals–anything left behind that might be useful to Home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago. Now Scout, their brother and their sometimes-fearless, space-faring cat, Pumpkin, must race to save what matters most."

• The Hushed By: K. R. Blair, read by Elizabeth Evans for Blackstone -- "Eerie Ashwood may look like a regular college student—she has a job at a local diner and attends classes at the community college—but she’s not. She’s a Hushed, a living secret made of flesh and blood, spawned by the death of a human who had something to hide. While the Hushed blend in among humans, they are haunted by an overwhelming urge to spill their secret to those whom it would hurt the most. But once a Hushed tells their secret, they drop dead. Unlike most Hushed, Eerie and her brother, Fabian, can’t remember their secrets. All they know is they’re connected to the infamous Ironbark Prison fire, but everything else is a blur of smoke and fear. Everything changes when Eerie meets Logan Winspeare, the hell-raising son of one of the victims of the fire, who is searching for answers about the night his mother died."

• The Wild Huntress by Emily Lloyd-Jones, read by Moira Quirk for Hachette -- "Every five years, two kingdoms take part in a Wild Hunt. Joining is a bloody risk, and even the most qualified hunters can suffer the deadliest fates. Still, hundreds gamble their lives to participate—all vying for the Hunt's life-changing prize: a magical wish granted by the Otherking."

• Impractical Magic By: Emily Grimoire, read by Kate Handford for Avon -- "When Scarlett Melrose receives a call from her estranged sisters, she immediately knows something is wrong. Their mother’s inn has been cursed, and they need her help to save it. As the conflicted middle-child, returning home is giving Scarlett the heebie jeebies. And to make matters worse, she’s just come face-to-face with charming old flame and handyman, Nate. When her spell to break the curse goes horribly wrong, all Scarlett wants to do is flee back to the peace and quiet of her San Francisco flat. But she can’t keep running away forever, and she’ll need all the help she can to solve this magical mess."

• The Last Dragon on Mars: The Dragonships Series, Book 1 By: Scott Reintgen, read by Landon Woodson for Simon and Schuster -- "A boy living on Mars unexpectedly becomes a dragon rider in this first book in the sci-fi and fantasy mash-up The Dragonships series, sure to delight fans of Skandar and Eragon."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• Starship Troopers By: Robert A. Heinlein (1959, 1987), read by R.C. Bray for Blackstone -- "In Robert A. Heinlein’s controversial Hugo Award-winning bestseller, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe—and into battle against mankind’s most alarming enemy."

• A Fine and Private Place By: Peter S. Beagle (1960), read by Matthew Hendrickson for Simon and Schuster -- "This classic ghost story from the author of The Last Unicorn follows Jonathan who’s been living in a cemetery with a raven as his only friend amongst the newly dead until he discovers a pair of ghostly lovers bearing an extraordinary gift—the final chance for his own happiness."

• The Essential Lovecraft edited by Leslie S. Klinger, read by a full cast for Audible -- "Forty-eight of H.P. Lovecraft’s most important stories."

• Catan: The Novel: The Catan Series, Book 1 By: Klaus Teuber (2022), translated by Lisa Reinhardt (2022), read by Evan Sibley for Blackstone -- "Norway, 860. Half-brothers Thorolf, Yngvi, and Digur have conspired to help Asla—daughter of Halldor, a powerful Viking chieftain—to escape her father’s oppressive rule. However, when they are discovered the chieftain’s revenge is swift and mighty. Pillaging his way through the realms of his daughter’s liberators, Halldor banishes his kin and has the brothers driven from their land. Left with no other choice, the three brothers—together with family and their allies—depart their home, sailing for new shores and, after a treacherous voyage, finally reach their destination: Catan, Land of the Sun."

SERIES WATCH:

• The Third Realm: The Morning Star, Book 3 By: Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken, read by Edoardo Ballerini, Kelsey Jaffer, Ari Fliakos, Neil Hellegers, Raphael Corkhill, Saskia Maarleveld, Vas Eli, and Nina Yndis for Penguin -- "A kaleidoscopic novel about human nature in the face of enormous change—and the warring impulses between light and dark that live in all of us."

• Heir By: Sabaa Tahir, read by Vidish Athavale, Esme Lonsdale, Joe Pitts, Marco Young, and Rachel Petladwala for Listening Library -- "Introduces a new generation of characters set in the same world as the unforgettable An Ember in the Ashes series."

• Livesuit: The Captive's War By: James S.A. Corey, read by Jefferson Mays for Recorded Books -- "Humanity's war is eternal, spread across the galaxy and the ages. Humanity's best hope to end the endless slaughter is the Livesuit forces. Soldiers meld their bodies to the bleeding edge technology, becoming something more than human for the duration of a war that might never end."

• Candle & Crow: Ink & Sigil, Book 3 By: Kevin Hearne, read by Luke Daniels for Random House -- "An ink-slinging wizard pursues the answer to a very personal mystery: Who cast a pair of curses on his head?"

• The Janus File: Gordian Division, Book 3 By: David Weber and Jacob Holo, read by Gabriel Vaughan for Recorded Books -- "It was supposed to be a routine trip for the members of the Gordian Division, both human and AI: fly out to Saturn, inspect the construction of their latest time machines, then fly back."

INDIE WATCH:

• The Ravenswood Witch By: Jenni Keer, read by Lucy Scott for Boldwood Books -- "The year is 1885 and a young woman is on the run, knowing if she’s caught, she’ll be hanged for murder. Moments from a safe haven, she collides with a gruff stranger, falling and breaking her ankle. To her surprise, the man – Marcus Greybourne – convinces the local constable that she is his reclusive wife of ten years, Luna. He carries her back to the neglected and crumbling Ravenswood Hall, promising if she agrees to maintain this charade, he will keep her safe until her injuries have healed."

MOST MISSING:

• 1635: The Weaver's Code by Eric Flint and Jody Lynn Nye (Baen) -- "A young gentlewoman, Margaret de Beauchamp, finds her fate twisted into the lives of the up-timers when she meets the Americans imprisoned in the Tower of London."

• Freelancers of Neptune by Jacob Holo (Baen) -- "All he wanted was a simple job to make ends meet. What he got was a mysterious cat girl, a shot at a hoard of treasure, and a whole lot of trouble."

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 24 September 2024

Posted on 2024-09-24 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

PICKS:

• Playground: A Novel By: Richard Powers, read by Edoardo Ballerini, Robin Siegerman, Eunice Wong, Pun Bandhu, Krys Janae, and Kevin R Free for Spotify -- "Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough."

• I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom: A Novel By: Jason Pargin, read by Ari Fliakos for Macmillan -- "Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC. But there are rules: He cannot look inside the box. He cannot ask questions. He cannot tell anyone. They must leave immediately. He must leave all trackable devices behind. As these eccentric misfits hit the road, rumors spread on social media that the box is part of a carefully orchestrated terror attack intended to plunge the USA into civil war. The truth promises to be even stranger, and may change how you see the world."

• The Naming Song By: Jedediah Berry, read by Marisa Calin for Macmillan -- "When the words went away, the world changed. All meaning was lost, and every border fell. Monsters slipped from dreams to haunt the waking while ghosts wandered the land in futile reveries. Only with the rise of the committees of the named—Maps, Ghosts, Dreams, and Names—could the people stand against the terrors of the nameless wilds. They built borders around their world and within their minds, shackled ghosts and hunted monsters, and went to war against the unknown. For one unnamed courier of the Names Committee, the task of delivering new words preserves her place in a world that fears her. But after a series of monstrous attacks on the named, she is forced to flee her committee and seek her long-lost sister. Accompanied by a patchwork ghost, a fretful monster, and a nameless animal who prowls the shadows, her search for the truth of her past opens the door to a revolutionary future—for the words she carries will reshape the world."

• The Sapling Cage: Daughters of the Empty Throne, Book 1 By: Margaret Killjoy, read by Jackie Meloche for Dreamscape Lore -- "In the gripping first novel in the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy, author Margaret Killjoy spins a tale of earth magic, power struggle, and self-invention in an own-voices story of trans witchcraft."

• Devils Kill Devils By: Johnny Compton, read by Imani Jade Powers for Macmillan -- "Sarita has been watched over by a guardian angel her entire life. She calls him Angelo, and keeps him a secret. But secrets can’t stay buried forever. When Angelo murders someone she loves, Sarita begins to see what's really been lurking in the shadows surrounding her. And she will have to embrace the evil within if she hopes to make it out alive."

• The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society By: C. M. Waggoner, read by Cindy Piller for Penguin -- "A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in this cozy fantasy mystery."

• The Repeat Room: A Novel By: Jesse Ball, read by Erik Bloomquist for HighBridge -- "In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant's lived experience, to see as if through their eyes."

• Another Life by Karla Marie Sweet, read by Erin Doherty and Kingsley Ben-Adir for Audible Originals -- "When the External Womb Programme is launched, the news is controversial. Hundreds take to the streets in protest, feeling strongly that growing a baby outside of the human body is "unnatural". But thousands more people rejoice: at last, an alternative for those who wish to have children but worry about the physical toll it may take. A chance that throwing a baby-shaped grenade into one's career path might not derail it entirely. For Lucy, whose acting career is finally taking off, the news is well worth celebrating. Could having a baby this way mean she can have it all? As she and her husband James embark on their journey, however, it becomes clear she's not being entirely honest with him and, as an old flame returns, everything is thrown into jeopardy."

• The Witches of Santo Stefano: A Novel By: Wendy Webb, read by Xe Sands for Brilliance -- "An investigative journalist uncovers the haunting secret history of her own ancestors."

• Graveyard Shift: A Novella By: M. L. Rio, read by Jess Nahikian, M. L. Rio, Max Meyers, Si Chen, Susan Dalian, and Tim Campbell for Macmillan -- "A ragtag group of night shift workers meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave."

• A Tide of Black Steel: Age of Wrath, Book 1 By: Anthony Ryan, read by Steven Brand for Orbit -- "The spectacular first novel in a new epic new fantasy trilogy inspired by Norse mythology."

• Shallow Ends: A Novel By: David James Keaton, read by John Pirhalla, Emma Love, and Shaun Taylor-Corbett for Podium -- "An innocent celebration takes a twisted turn when thirteen unlucky people find themselves trapped on a party bus with an inscrutable driver at the wheel."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• Frankenstein Unbound By: Brian W. Aldiss (1973), read by Paul Woodson for Tantor -- "Some years into the twenty-first century, a newly devised weapon of mass destruction will do far worse than kill; it will disrupt time and space. Suddenly, land, buildings, animals, and people are falling through "timeslips" and being transported briefly back to earlier eras. One of these inadvertent time travelers, Joe Bodenland, is shocked when he finds himself parked outside a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva—and soon after, unbelievably, in the presence of nineteenth-century literary luminaries Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, along with Shelley's very enticing fiancee, budding author Mary."

• Super-State: A Novel of a Future Europe By: Brian W. Aldiss (2002), read by Keith Brown for Tantor -- "Welcome to the future European Super-State—one continent united into a not-quite-homogenous whole. Numerous historic happenings and technological advances have ushered us to this new age of solidarity and prosperity, though some of the past's problems still linger: global warming, terrorism, war, rape, murder, Alzheimer's, environmental catastrophe."

• Nine Goblins: A Novella By: T. Kingfisher (2013, as Ursula Vernon), read by Jonathan Johns for Tantor -- "When a party of goblin warriors find themselves trapped behind enemy lines, it'll take more than whining (and a bemused Elven veterinarian) to get them home again. Nine Goblins is a novella of low . . . very low . . . fantasy."

SERIES WATCH:

• Space Oddity: The Space Opera, Book 2 By: Catherynne M. Valente, read by Heath Miller for Simon and Schuster -- "The Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past returns and the fate of the Earth is once again threatened."

• Rumor Has It: You Sexy Thing, Book 3 By: Cat Rambo, read by Vivienne Leheny for Recorded Books -- "The crew of the You Sexy Thing have laid a course for Coralind Station, hoping the station's famed gardens will provide an opportunity to regroup, recoup, and mourn their losses while finding a way to track down their enemy, pirate king Tubal Last. All Niko wants to do is pry their insurance money from the bank and see if an old friend might be able to help them find Last. Unfortunately, old friends and enemies aren't the only unreliable elements awaiting her and the crew at Coralind."

• Darkside: Planetside, Book 4 By: Michael Mammay, read by R.C. Bray for Harper -- "Retired Colonel Carl Butler gears up for another military investigation, full of danger, corporate intrigue, and tech people would kill for."

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 17 September 2024

Posted on 2024-09-17 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

FICTION PICKS:

• An Academy for Liars By: Alexis Henderson, read by Tracie Frank for Penguin -- "A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come from outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger."

• Alien Clay By: Adrian Tchaikovsky, read by Ben Allen for Orbit -- "The planet of Kiln is where the tyrannical Mandate keeps its prison colony, and for inmates, the journey there is always a one-way trip. One such prisoner is Professor Arton Daghdev, xeno-ecologist and political dissident. Soon after arrival, he discovers that Kiln has a secret. Humanity is not the first intelligent life to set foot there. In the midst of a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem are the ruins of a civilization, but who were the vanished builders and where did they go? If he can survive both the harsh rule of the camp commandant and the alien horrors of the world around him, then Arton has a chance at making a discovery that might just transform not only Kiln, but distant Earth as well."

• Evil in Me By: Brom, read by Shahjehan Khan, Stephanie Németh-Parker for Macmillan -- "Brom's newest novel of possession, damnation, and rock 'n' roll, where one woman must get the world singing in order to save her soul."

• Entitlement: A Novel By: Rumaan Alam, read by Nicole Lewis for Penguin -- "Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?"

• The Escapades of Tribulation Johnson By: Karen Brooks, read by Felicity Jurd for Harper -- "A brilliant recreation of the vibrant, optimistic but politically treacherous world of London's Restoration theatre, where we are introduced to the remarkable playwright Aphra Behn, now a feminist icon but then an anomaly, who gravitated to the stage—a place where artifice and disguise are second nature and accommodates those who do not fit in."

• We Solve Murders: A Novel By: Richard Osman, read by Nicola Walker for Penguin -- "Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s job now. Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She’s currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts. As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?"

• The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts By: Louis Bayard, read by Elisabeth Rodgers, Damian Lynch, P.J. Ochlan, Louis Bayard for Algonquin -- "A brilliantly profound and empathetic story about Oscar Wilde's wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright's imprisonment for homosexuality, told against the backdrop of Victorian England and World War I."

• Observer: A Novel By: Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress, read by Stacey Glemboski for Macmillan -- "After neurosurgeon Caro Soames-Watkins’ career has gone down in flames, she receives a strange job offer from Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sam Watkins, a great uncle she barely knows, and desperation overcomes any suspicions. Watkins’ mysterious medical facility conducts research into the nature of consciousness, reality, and life after death. Two obstacles stand in his way: an intel leak and his failing body may not last long enough for the tech to be ready."

• The Most Famous Girl in the World By: Iman Hariri-Kia, read by Samara Naeymi for Recorded Books -- "Rose Aslani is mid-bikini wax when her phone lights up with a notification: Famed scam artist Poppy Hastings will be released from prison today. It’s been two years since Rose—a first-generation Middle Eastern American, functional trainwreck, and reporter for online journal The Shred—wrote the investigative article that exposed Poppy as a socialite grifter. Normally, one of her articles going viral would be cause for celebration, but the highly publicized trial that followed turned Poppy into the internet’s favorite celebrity. And Rose has been reeling from the aftermath ever since."

• Ultra 85 By: Logic, read by Steve Blum for Simon and Schuster -- "In the year 2115, when the Earth is no longer inhabitable, the remainder of humanity lives in Babel, a giant space station. Two pilots, Quentin and Kai, must find the planet Paradise, where only the most promising citizens are allowed to live. On their journey, Quentin and Kai encounter Quentin’s estranged father, who left Babel for Paradise when Quentin was a child, and they discover just how different Paradise is from what they imagined—and how they must change it for the better."

• The Lantern of Lost Memories By: Sanaka Hiiragi, read by Hanako Footman for Grand Central -- "A heartwarming, life-affirming novel about a magical photo studio, where people go after they die to view key moments from their life—and relive one precious memory before they pass into the afterlife."

• Rejection: Fiction By: Tony Tulathimutte, read by a full cast for Harper -- "From the Whiting and O. Henry-winning author of Private Citizens, an electrifying novel-in-stories that follows a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos."

• Buried Deep and Other Stories By: Naomi Novik, read by a full cast for Random House -- "A thrilling collection of thirteen short stories that span the worlds of the New York Times bestselling author of the Scholomance trilogy, including a sneak peek at the land where her next novel will be set."

• A Sunny Place for Shady People: Stories By: Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell, read by Lee Osorio, Annette Amelia Oliveira, Sol Madariaga, Maria Liatis for Random House -- "A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre."

NON-FICTION WATCH:

• A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places By: Christopher Brown, read by the author for Hachette -- "A genre-bending blend of naturalism, memoir, and social manifesto for rewilding the city, the self, and society."

• The Wonder of Stevie by Wesley Morris, read by a full cast for Audible Originals -- "The year 1972 saw the beginning of a five-year span in which Stevie Wonder released five groundbreaking, critically acclaimed albums, garnering him more than half a dozen Grammys and more than 10 million albums sold, securing his place as one of the most important American musicians and songwriters in history."

• Health and Safety: A Breakdown By: Emily Witt, read by the author for Random House -- "From the New Yorker staff writer and acclaimed author of Future Sex, a memoir about drugs, techno, and New York City."

YA WATCH:

• The Lies We Conjure By: Sarah Henning, read by Barrett Leddy and Kristen DiMercurio for Listening Library -- "Knives Out meets The Inheritance Games with magic in this standalone supernatural thriller by Sarah Henning: thirteen witches, a locked-room murder, and two non-magical sisters trapped in a deadly whodunit."

MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:

• The Runes of Engagement By: Tobias S. Buckell and David Klecha, read by Jay Aaseng for Podium -- "No one could have been prepared for the day when orcs, trolls, and dragons fell from portals in the sky. Now, a very tough but not-quite-prepared platoon of Marines is trapped on the wrong side. The enchanting world looks like Middle Earth, but to the dismay of even the geekiest soldiers, is nothing like it."

• A Dark and Drowning Tide By: Allison Saft, read by Saskia Maarleveld for Random House -- "A sharp-tongued folklorist must pair up with her academic rival to solve their mentor’s murder in this lush and enthralling sapphic fantasy romance."

• The Escher Man By: T. R. Napper, read by Nick Atkinson for Dreamscape Lore -- "A cartel enforcer across Southeast Asia must escape a world of paranoia and violence to save his family in this cerebral and multi-layered cyberpunk science fiction novel."

• The Games Gods Play By: Abigail Owen, read by Piper Goodeve for Recorded Books -- "I have never been favored by the gods. Far from it, thanks to Zeus. Living as a cursed office clerk for the Order of Thieves, I just keep my head down and hope the capricious beings who rule from Olympus won’t notice me. Not an easy feat, given San Francisco is Zeus’ patron city, but I make do. I survive. Until the night I tangle with a different god. The worst god. Hades."

• Asunder By: Kerstin Hall, read by Alyssa Appleton for Recorded Books -- "Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with some very dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended."

• Fear the Flames: A Novel By: Olivia Rose Darling, read by Hannah Van Der Westhuysen for Random House -- "An exiled princess teams up with the last man she thought she could trust in the start of a dazzling and unforgettable epic fantasy romance series."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• Where the Evil Dwells By: Clifford D. Simak, read by Dan Calley for Tantor -- "The renowned Science Fiction Grand Master makes a foray into fantasy, with this tale of perilous adventure in a land of trolls, wizards, and terrifying malevolence."

• Dracula Unbound By: Brian W. Aldiss (1991), read by Paul Woodson for Tantor -- "Joe Bodenland has figured out how to manipulate time—a discovery that leads him to Utah and an impossible sixty-five-million-year-old human gravesite. It is here that he learns of the existence of a monstrous race of intelligent predators as old as the dinosaur, and of the remarkable "train" the undead creatures use to travel back and forth from a Paleolithic past to a monstrous far future in which Homo sapiens are enslaved cattle."

• Castle of Wizardry: The Belgariad, Book 4 By: David and Leigh Eddings (1984), read by Brian Wiggins for Tantor -- "It all began with the theft of the Orb that protected the West from the evil God Torak. Before that, Garion had been a simple farm boy. Afterward, he discovered he is a sorcerer. Now, at last, the Orb has been regained, and the quest nears it end."

• The Shadow Rising: Book Four of 'The Wheel of Time' By: Robert Jordan, read by Rosamund Pike for Macmillan -- The latest in the series of new audiobook editions narrated by the actress from the TV series.

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell By: Susanna Clarke, read by Richard Armitage with Neil Gaiman, and an introduction by V.E. Schwab -- A new audio edition coinciding with the 20th anniversary edition of the beloved Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell; Richard Armitage sounds wonderful, though it's a real pity that Gaiman's no-longer-good name is attached here, but at least the original Simon Prebble narration remains available.

SERIES WATCH:

• Wicked Problems: The Craft Wars, Book 2 By: Max Gladstone, read by Janina Edwards for Tantor -- "Gods and lawyers battle for the soul of the world in the action-packed second volume of Max Gladstone's Craft Wars, an epic fantasy like no other."

• Bringer of Dust: The Talents, Book 2 By: J. M. Miro, read by Ben Onwukwe for Macmillan -- "Agrigento, Sicily, 1883. With the orsine destroyed, Cairndale lies in ruins, and Marlowe has vanished. His only hope of rescue lies in a fabled second orsine—long-hidden, thought lost—which might not even exist. But when a body is discovered in the shadow of Cairndale, a body wreathed in the corrupted dust of the drughr, Charlie and the Talents realize there is even more at stake than they'd feared."

• Pilgrim Machines: Salvage Crew, Book 2 By: Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, read by Peter Berkrot for Aethon -- "The PCS Blue Cherry Blossom, a long range interstellar freighter, is tasked with the ultimate voyage. What lies at the heart of the galaxy? Who and what is out there? Is it even possible to survive? Against a backdrop of relentless political and corporate maneuvering, a new crew sets out, prepared to risk their lives and their deaths to set forth into the void and look for answers. To go where no human has ever gone before."

• The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal By: Jodi Taylor, read by Zara Ramm for Headline -- "From the globally bestselling author of the Chronicles of St Mary's and Time Police series - the origin story of bounty hunters extraordinaire: Smallhope and Pennyroyal."

• The Road of Storms: The Seven Swords, Book 6 By: Anthony Ryan, read by Steven Brand for Audible

TIE-IN WATCH:

• Exodus: The Archimedes Engine By: Peter F. Hamilton, read by John Lee for Random House -- "Explore EXODUS, a new sci-fi action-adventure RPG coming soon from Archetype Entertainment. Forty thousand years ago, humanity fled a dying Earth. Traveling in massive arkships, these brave pioneers spread out across the galaxy to find a new home. After traveling thousands of light-years, one fleet of arkships arrived at Centauri, a dense cluster of stars with a vast array of potentially habitable planets. The survivors of Earth signaled to the remaining arkships that humanity had finally found its new home among the stars."

MOST MISSING:

• My Lesbian Novel by Renee Gladman (Dorothy) -- "The latest in writer and visual artist Renee Gladman's ever-expanding body of imaginative investigation is a sui generis novel of queerness and art-making, philosophy and sex."

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 10 September 2024

Posted on 2024-09-10 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

PICKS:

• Next Stop By: Benjamin Resnick, read by Gilli Messer for Simon and Schuster -- "An astonishingly resonant novel that explores the precariousness of Jewish American life through one family after a black hole consumes the State of Israel and similar strange events occur in major cities around the world, ushering in a time of chaos as well as miracles."

• Guillotine By: Delilah S. Dawson, read by Elisabeth Ashby for Tantor -- "Thrift fashionista Dez Lane doesn't want to date Patrick Ruskin; she just wants to meet his mother, the editor-in-chief of Nouveau magazine. When he invites her to his family's big Easter reunion at their ancestral home, she's certain she can put up with his arrogance and fend off his advances long enough to ask Marie Caulfield-Ruskin for an internship someone with her pedigree could never nab through the regular submission route. When they arrive at the enormous island mansion, Dez is floored -- she's never witnessed how the 1% lives before in all their ridiculous, unnecessary luxury. But once all the family members are on the island and the ferry has departed, things take a dark turn. For decades, the Ruskins have made their servants sign contracts that are basically indentured servitude, and with nothing to lose, the servants have decided their only route to freedom is to get rid of the Ruskins for good."

• This World Is Not Yours By: Kemi Ashing-Giwa, read by Catherine Ho for HighBridge -- "After fleeing her controlling and murderous family with her fiancee, Vinh, Amara embarks on a colonization project, New Belaforme, along with her childhood friend Jesse. The planet, beautiful and lethal, produces the Gray, a "self-cleaning" mechanism that New Belaforme's scientists are certain only attacks invasive organisms, consuming them. Humans have been careful to do nothing to call attention to themselves until a rival colony wakes the Gray. As Amara, Vinh, and Jesse work to carve out a new life together, each is haunted by past betrayals that surface, expounded by the need to survive the rival colony and the planet itself."

• William By: Mason Coile, read by Honey St. Dennis for Penguin -- "Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career—he’s created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William. No one knows about William. Henry’s agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on his project keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife, Lily. When Lily’s coworkers show up, wanting to finally meet Henry and see the new house—the smartest of smart homes—Henry decides to introduce them to William, and things go from strange to much worse. Soon Henry and Lily discover the security upgrades intended to keep danger out of the house are even better at locking it in."

• The Witch of Colchis: Medea's Story By: Rosie Hewlett, read by Kristin Atherton for Recorded Books -- "Medea, daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis, longs for a different life. Since childhood, she has been separated from her sister, shunned by her mother, and beaten and tormented by her brother and father. All because Medea was born with a unique and seemingly dangerous talent: witchcraft. But when a dashing young hero, Jason, arrives to claim the famed Golden Fleece that her father fiercely protects, Medea sees her opportunity for escape."

• Incarnate: A Novel by Richard Thomas, read by Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Todd Menesses, and Dawn Harvey for Podium -- "In a frozen tundra, a sin-eater fights for redemption and absolution as monstrous creatures ravage a community already struggling to survive."

• Bright I Burn: A Novel By: Molly Aitken, read by Avena Mansergh-Wallace for Random House -- "A fierce, electrifying novel inspired by the true story of the first woman to be condemned as a witch in Ireland."

• The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad edited by Jennifer Trafton and A.S. Peterson, read by Simon Vance for Oasis Audio -- "With contributions from visiting scholars such as Jonathan Rogers, Malcolm Guite, Junius Johnson, A. S. Peterson, and many more, these tales have been scrupulously compiled and annotated by leading experts of dubious renown."

NON-FICTION WATCH:

• Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari, read by Vidish Athavale for Books On Tape -- "From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world."

• First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream by Jessica Hoppe, read by the author for Macmillan -- "An unflinching and intimate memoir of recovery by Jessica Hoppe, Latinx writer, advocate, and creator of NuevaYorka."

• By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle, read by the author for Harper -- "A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation's earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later."

• The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World by Ben Macintyre, read by the author for Books on Tape -- "A thrilling tick-tock recounting one of the most harrowing hostage situations and daring rescue attempts of our time: As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff, one that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath."

• Reagan: His Life and Legend By: Max Boot, read by Graham Winton for Recorded Books -- "Contextualizing Reagan’s life against American history, Boot re-creates the world in which Reagan transitioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor."

YA WATCH:

• A Darker Mischief By: Derek Milman, read by Charles Linshaw for Dreamscape -- "The Honeys meets The Secret History in a work of dark academia like no other—a boarding school thriller about a queer teen from Mississippi who finds himself swept into a world of old money, privilege, and the secret society at the heart of it all."

MIDDLE GRADE WATCH:

• Lola By: Karla Arenas Valenti, read by Daisy Guevara for Listening Library -- "A simmering tale of magic, adventure, and the extraordinary bond between a brother and sister who'd journey to the ends of the Earth to save each other."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• Ring Around the Sun By: Clifford D. Simak (1952), read by Chris Sorensen for Tantor -- "A writer searching for explanations uncovers the existence of mutants and multiple Earths."

• The Dark Light Years By: Brian W. Aldiss (1964), read by Liam Gerrard for Tantor -- "What would intelligent life—forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement? Upon first contact with the Utod—intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain—mankind instantly views these aliens as animals because of their unhygienic customs. This leads to the slaughter, capture, and dissection of the Utod. But when one explorer recognizes the intelligence behind their habits, he must reevaluate what it actually means to be "intelligent.""

• The Malacia Tapestry By: Brian W. Aldiss (1976), read by J.S. Arquin for Tantor -- "In a grand medieval city where all change has been outlawed, a roguish young actor tempts fate and dinosaurs, all in the name of love."

• The Visitors By: Clifford D. Simak (1979), read by Gary Noon for Tantor -- "An enormous, mysterious box descends upon small-town Minnesota, spelling trouble for the world."

MORE FICTION:

• Tell Me Everything: A Novel By: Elizabeth Strout, read by Kimberly Farr for Random House -- " With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”"

MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:

• The Scarlet Throne By: Amy Leow, read by Catherine Ho for Orbit -- "Binsa is a “living goddess,” chosen by the gods to dispense both mercy and punishment from her place on the Scarlet Throne. But her reign hides a deadly secret. Rather than channeling the wisdom of an immortal deity, she harbors a demon. Though, one cannot remain a living goddess forever. When her temple’s priests decide that Binsa’s time in power has come to an end, a new girl, Medha, is selected to take over her position as goddess. But Binsa refuses to be discarded into a life of uncertainty as a young woman, and she strikes a deal with her demon: She will sacrifice her people’s lives in order to magnify his power, and in return, he will help her seize control from the priests once and for all."

• Edge of the Known World: A Novel By: Sheri T. Joseph, read by Marnye Young for Tantor -- "Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refuse, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of viral DNA from a flu vaccine. If detected by the rapid genetic testing at security screens, Alex will be returned to the Federation and a likely death. Her adoptive father developed a gene therapy to mask her g-marker, but it is not fully effective. Every g-screen presents a nerve-racking one-in-ten chance of getting caught. When her father goes missing, Alex abandons her cloistered academic life in San Francisco for a globe-trotting Commission in a desperate race to warn him of a trap that will destroy them both."

• Countess By: Suzan Palumbo, read by Chanté McCormick for Dreamscape Lore -- "A queer Caribbean anti-colonial Count of Monte Cristo set in space in which a betrayed captain seeks revenge on the interplanetary empire that subjugated her people for generations."

• The Shadow Key: A Novel By: Susan Stokes-Chapman, read by Richard Harrington for Harper -- "On an isolated estate in late-eighteenth-century rural Wales, a young English doctor uncovers dangerous secrets that may threaten his own life in this spellbinding Gothic tale."

SERIES WATCH:

• The Devil by Name: Fever House, Book 2 By: Keith Rosson, read by Xe Sands for Random House -- "No one expected the apocalypse would be broadcast via phone call. But in this chilling sequel to Fever House, anyone who managed to survive that doomsday call has a harrowing answer to the question, “Where were you when the Message came through?”"

• Vilest Things: Flesh & False Gods, Book 2 By: Chloe Gong, read by Jeena Yi for Simon and Schuster -- "Calla Tuoleimi has succeeded in the impossible. Despite the odds, she has won San-Er’s bloody games and eliminated King Kasa, her tyrant uncle and the former ruler of Talin. She now serves as royal advisor to Kasa’s adopted son, August Shenzhi, who has risen to the throne. Only Calla knows it isn’t really August."

• Warlords of Wyrdwood: Forsaken Trilogy, Book 2 By: RJ Barker, read by Jude Owusu for Orbit -- "The Forester known as Cahan led the village of Harn in rebellion against the all-powerful, oppressive forces of the Rai. A great victory was won, but to avoid retaliation he must lead the people of Harn into the Wyrdwood. Cahan never wanted this responsibility, but fate has its eye on him, and without him the people will be helpless against the terrors of the forest."

• Somewhere Beyond the Sea: Cerulean Chronicles, Book 2 By: TJ Klune, read by Daniel Henning for Macmillan -- "A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything."

• The Ending Fire: The Ending Fire Trilogy, Book 3 By: Saara El-Arifi, read by Nicole Lewis and Dominic Hoffman for Random House -- "Rebellions are like fires—something needs to burn to make a flame."

• Not Till We Are Lost: Bobiverse, Book 5 By: Dennis E. Taylor, read by Ray Porter for Audible Originals -- "The Bobiverse is a different place in the aftermath of the Starfleet War, and the days of the Bobs gathering in one big happy moot are far behind. There’s anti-Bob sentiment on multiple planets, the Skippies playing with an A.I. time bomb, and multiple Bobs just wanting to get away from it all. But it all pales compared to what Icarus and Daedalus discover on their 26,000-year journey to the center of the galaxy."

• The Empress of Beasts: The Wandering Inn, Book 13 By: pirateaba, read by Andrea Parsneau for Podium -- "Tiqr awakes. The dungeon moves!"

• Task Force Hammer: Expeditionary Force, Book 17 By: Craig Alanson, read by R.C. Bray for Podium -- "The Merry Band of Pirates stopped the enemy from stealing a Sentinel, and destroyed its Elder starship, so why weren’t the Pirates planning a victory party?"

MOST MISSING:

• Dear Dickhead, by Virginie Despentes; translated by Frank Wynne (FSG) -- "The French novel taking the world by storm: an ultracontemporary Dangerous Liaisons about sex, feminism, and addiction."

• Where Dark Things Grow: A Novel by Andrew K. Clark (Cowboy Jamboree Press) -- "Fifteen-year-old Leo is watching the world crumble. His father is missing and his mother is slipping into madness as she cares for Leo, his sick sister Goldfish, and two useless brothers. Relatives are no help and the church folk have turned their backs in the midst of the Great Depression. When he discovers an enchanted wulver from ancient folklore that will do his bidding, he decides to settle old scores. Revenge is sweet, but Leo soon learns he can't control what he's unleashed. It takes his spitfire best friend Lilyfax to help Leo overcome his anger and try to escape the wulver's evil. As they search for his father, Leo, Lilyfax, and friends are pursued by dark forces and pulled into a rescue effort to find and save trafficked girls rumored to have been taken by the mysterious Blue Man."

• The Shadow Girls by Lucienne Diver (Falstaff Books) -- "Three women, bound by fate and circumstance, all trying to survive in a man’s world. They are the women of the Jucari, and they are at their breaking points. Each will rise up, determined to reshape the face of power and end the Blood War which has been raging for years. Each will make her stand for freedom, for respect, for ultimate, bloody power."

• Haunted Northern Virginia by Alex Matsuo (The History Press) -- "Discover ghostly history from Arlington to Occoquan, Leesburg to Lorton."

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 3 September 2024

Posted on 2024-09-03 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

PICKS:

• The Life Impossible: A Novel By: Matt Haig, read by Joanna Lumley and Jordan Stephens for Penguin -- "When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past."

• Creation Lake: A Novel By: Rachel Kushner, read by the author for Simon and Schuster -- "A new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive thriller of glittering insights and dark humor."

• Haunt Sweet Home By: Sarah Pinsker, read by Jennifer Blom, Jess Nahikian, Matt Godfrey, and Robb Moreira for Macmillan -- "When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself."

• Colored Television: A Novel By: Danzy Senna, read by Kristen Ariza for Penguin -- "A brilliant dark comedy about love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial-identity-industrial complex."

• The Fallen Fruit: A Novel By: Shawntelle Madison, read by Robin Miles and Adenrele Ojo for Harper -- "Combining history and fantasy, a sweeping multi-generational epic in the vein of Kindred and The Time Traveler's Wife about a woman who travels through time to end a family curse that has plagued her ancestors for generations."

• Small Rain: A Novel By: Garth Greenwell, read by the author for Macmillan -- "A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind."

• The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir, read by Mary Robinette Kowal for Macmillan -- "Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause. When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same — have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps. Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she's walked over 40,000 steps in the night."

• Safe Enough: And Other Stories by Lee Child, read by Edoardo Ballerini for HighBridge -- "Twenty crime stories by the creator of Jack Reacher, never before collected."

• The Gods Below: The Hollow Covenant, Book 1 By: Andrea Stewart, read by Eunice Wong, Jonathan Waters, and Stephanie Németh-Parker for Orbit -- "A divine war shattered the world leaving humanity in ruins. Desperate for hope, they struck a deal with the devious god Kluehnn: He would restore the world to its former glory, but at a price so steep it would keep the mortals indebted to him for eternity. And, as each land was transformed, so too were its people changed into strange new forms—if they survived at all. Hakara is not willing to pay such a price. Desperate to protect herself, and her sister Rasha, she flees her homeland for the safety of a neighboring kingdom. But when tragedy separates them, Hakara is forced to abandon her beloved sister to an unknown fate."

• In Our Likeness: A Novel By: Bryan VanDyke, read by Joe Knezevich for Brilliance -- "Graham Gooding is a leader at a tech start-up when his brilliant coworker—and work crush—Nessie Locke asks for help testing a new algorithm. Graham jumps at the chance to impress her, and to improve his floundering personal life. He soon discovers that the algo is more powerful than Nessie—or anyone—realizes. It was built to detect lies on the internet, but when Graham makes a small edit to Nessie’s online profile, hoping to see if the program will catch the lie, Nessie changes in real life. The algo can alter the real world. Now, so can Graham. No one knows what Graham has done, except his boss, enigmatic tech guru David Warwick. Graham is racked with guilt, but Warwick thrills to the possibilities of what they can do next."

• Natural Selection: A Short Story By: Elin Hilderbrand, read by Erin Bennett for Audible Originals -- "When her boyfriend bails at the last minute, a New York woman embarks on their couples’ cruise alone to find that maybe the person she was supposed to fall in love with was herself."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• Letting Go By: Philip Roth (1962), read by Luke Daniels for Blackstone -- "The first full-length novel from one of the most renowned writers of the twentieth century, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral, tells the story of a mid-century America."

• The Nymphos of Rocky Flats: Felix Gomez Series, Book 1 By: Mario Acevedo (2009), read by Andre Chapoy for Harper -- "Felix Gomez went to Iraq a soldier. He came back a vampire. Now he finds himself pulled into a web of intrigue when an old friend prompts him to investigate an outbreak of nymphomania at the secret government facilities in Rocky Flats. He’ll find out the cause of all these horny woman or die trying! But to do so, he must contend with shadowy government agents, Eastern European vampire hunters, and women who want him just for his body."

YA WATCH:

• When Haru Was Here By: Dustin Thao, read by David Lee Huynh for Macmillan -- "We Are Okay meets Wandavision in this novel about loneliness, complicated friendships, and what it means to let go."

MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:

• Roverpowered By: Drew Hayes, read by Amy Landon for Aethon -- "Wanda and Wumble are a small pair with vast ambitions. One an aspiring alchemist, and the other her faithful hound, the pair bond as wizard and familiar to begin their pursuit of magic. As a newly made wizard without any training, resources, or even a home to return to, Wanda will have to forge her own way on a path where constant dangers lurk. Even the simple act of furthering her alchemy education swiftly becomes a harrowing ordeal. Luckily for Wanda, Wumble is no ordinary hound. Contained within her one-eyed companion is a power many factions of the world are actively hunting for. A seed with unfathomable potential waiting to sprout. And anyone who trifles with Wumble’s wizard is in for a ruff time."

• Murder Most Owl: A Magical Menagerie Mystery, Book 1 By: Sarah Fox, read by Hallie Bee Bard for Dreamscape -- "It's been years since screenwriter Georgie Johansen last visited her Aunt Olivia's farm in the coastal town of Twilight Cove, and things have certainly changed. First of all, it's now an animal sanctuary, and then there's the new farmhand who's as mysterious as he is handsome. Her first day on the farm, Georgie encounters the eccentric Dorothy Shale, an older woman who lives in a cabin in the woods. There are rumours that Dorothy's a witch, but Georgie doesn't believe that. Although, Dorothy does have an unusual magical presence around her…"

• The Holy Terrors: A Holy Terrors Mystery, Book 1 By: Simon R. Green, read by Tim Bruce for Blackstone -- "Welcome to Spooky Time, the hit TV ghost-hunting show where the horror is scripted … and the ratings are declining rapidly. What better way to up the stakes—and boost the viewership—than by locking a select group of Z-list celebrities up for the night in the Most Haunted Hall in England and live-streaming the terrifying results?"

• Behind the Crimson Curtain: The Crimson Curtain, Book 1 By: E.B. Golden, read by Vanessa Johansson, Shane East for Brilliance -- "A magical con artist and an actor turned revolutionary fight for freedom in an atmospheric fantasy debut where layered secrets and daring love clash on a stage of war."

• The Cottage Around the Corner By: D. L. Soria, read by Victoria Villarreal for Random House -- "A feisty witch and a handsome mage must put their heated business rivalry aside to save their small town from supernatural forces in this charming contemporary fantasy romcom."

• Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives By: Tim Major, read by Bronwen Price for WF Howes -- "When Muriel Carew attends a lavish society party, the last person she expects to bump into is her ex-fiancee Henry Jekyll, a man she's not seen for many years. When Jekyll turns out to be investigating a series of missing persons in London, Muriel is intrigued. But Jekyll is not working alone, and if Muriel wants to aid in the investigation, she must work with both Henry and his partner, the monstrous and uncouth Mr Hyde."

OVERSEAS WATCH:

• Six Lives By: Lavie Tidhar, read by a full cast for Head of Zeus -- "Six lives, connected through blood and history, each rooted in the dirt of their inheritance, look to the future, and what it might hold."

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 27 August 2024

Posted on 2024-08-27 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

PICKS:

• The Siege of Burning Grass By: Premee Mohamed, read by Richard Trinder for Tantor -- "The Empires of Varkal and Med'ariz have always been at war. Alefret, the founder of Varkal's pacifist resistance, was bombed and maimed by his own government, locked up in a secret prison and tortured by a 'visionary' scientist. But now they're offering him a chance of freedom. Ordered to infiltrate one of Med'ariz's flying cities, obeying the bloodthirsty zealot Qhudur, he must find fellow anti-war activists in the enemy's population and provoke them into an uprising against their rulers."

• Deep Black By: Miles Cameron, read by Nneka Okoye for Orion -- "Marca Nbaro had always dreamed of serving aboard the Greatships, with their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city. They are the lifeblood of human-occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species. And now, out in the darkness of space, something is targeting them."

• The Ghost Cat: A Novel By: Alex Howard, read by the author for Harlequin -- "A charming novel for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and How to Stop Time, following a cat through his nine lives in Edinburgh, moving through the ever-changing city and meeting its inhabitants over centuries."

• Long Live Evil By: Sarah Rees Brennan, read by Moira Quirk for Orbit -- "When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favorite fantasy series. She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale. So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final moment."

• The Crimson Crown By: Heather Walter, read by Emily Woo Zeller for Random House -- "Legends tell of a witch who became a queen—the heartless villain in the story of Snow White. But now the wicked queen is stepping out of Snow White’s shadow to become the heroine of her own legend."

• Between Dragons and Their Wrath By: Devin Madson, read by Soneela Nankani, Lauren Fortgang, Ron Butler for Orbit -- "Conquest built the Celes Basin, now enemies once more threaten its borders. But when the Lord Reacher declares himself supreme ruler to enforce unity, old angers erupt, threatening to tear the basin apart from within. Tesha, a glassblower’s apprentice with a talent for poisonwork, becomes a false tribute bride as part of a desperate political plot. In the Reacher’s court, she’s perfectly placed to sabotage him, but her heart has other plans. Naili is laundress to an eccentric alchemist, a job that has left her with strange new abilities that are slowly consuming her—and attracting the notice of the city’s underground rulers. With time running out, she’ll have to gain power by any means just to survive, let alone change the world. And in the desolate Shield Mountains, sharp-shooting dragon rider Ashadi protects the basin from the monsters of The Sands beyond, but when an impossible shot pierces his dragon’s glass scales, he becomes the hunted one."

• The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois By: Ryan Graudin, read by Marisa Calin for Orbit -- "In this lush and lyrical fantasy, listeners are transported to the hidden magical pockets of early 1900s Paris, a place of enchanted salons, fortune tellers who can change your stars, and doorways that can take you to the most unexpected places—and introduces listeners to the delightful Céleste Artois, a con artist who will make a deal with the devil in exchange for her life...and change the fate of the world."

• The Mechanics of Memory By: Audrey Lee, read by Sunny Lu, Keong Sim, and Charlie Thurston for CamCat -- "Memory is Copeland-Stark’s business. Yet after months of reconsolidation treatments at their sleek new flagship facility, Hope Nakano still has no idea what happened to her lost year, or the life she was just beginning to build with her one great love. Each procedure surfaces fragmented clues which erode Hope’s trust in her own memories, especially the ones of Luke. As inconsistencies mount, her search for answers reveals a much larger secret Copeland-Stark is determined to protect."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• On the Marble Cliffs By: Ernst Jünger (1939), translated by Tess Lewis (2023), read by Julian Elfer for Tantor -- "Set in a world of its own, Ernst Jünger's On the Marble Cliffs is both a mesmerizing work of fantasy and an allegory of the advent of fascism. The narrator of the book and his brother, Otho, live in an ancient house carved out of the great marble cliffs that overlook the Marina, a great and beautiful lake that is surrounded by a peaceable land of ancient cities and temples and flourishing vineyards. To the north of the cliffs are the grasslands of the Campagna, occupied by herders. North of that, the great forest begins. There the brutal Head Forester rules, abetted by the warrior bands of the Mauretanians."

• Giovanni's Room: A Novel by James Baldwin (1956), read by Kevin Young -- "Set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni."

• Report on Probability A By: Brian W. Aldiss (1968), read by Keith Brown for Tantor -- "Mr. Mary and his wife are being observed from at least three vantage points as they go about their mundane home lives. G, the former gardener, watches them from a garden shed. Mr. Mary's dismissed secretary, S, watches them from the top room of a brick outhouse in the back. The chauffeur, C, who no longer drives, watches the Marys from the garage. Each observer must file a report with his superiors in another continuum, pausing in his surveillance only long enough to eat identical meals alone at the deserted cafe across the street. But the watchers are themselves being observed by others who are, in turn, being watched across vast and infinite dimensional planes in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of the world known as Probability A."

• Finches of Mars By: Brian W. Aldiss (2013), read by TJ Clark for Tantor -- "Doomed by overpopulation, irreversible environmental degradation, and never-ending war, Earth has become a fetid swamp. For many, Mars represents humankind's last hope. In six tightly clustered towers on the red planet's surface, the colonists who have escaped their dying home world are attempting to make a new life unencumbered by the corrupting influences of politics, art, and religion. Unable to return, these pioneers have chosen an unalterable path that winds through a landscape as terrible as it is beautiful, often forcing them to compromise their beliefs-and sometimes their humanity-in order to survive. But the gravest threat to the future is not the settlement's total dependence on foodstuffs sent from a distant and increasingly uncaring Earth, or the events that occur in the aftermath of the miraculous discovery of native life on Mars-it is the fact that in the ten years since colonization began, every new human baby has been born dead, or so tragically deformed that death comes within hours."

• The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume 3 edited by Paula Guran (2022), read by Patricia Santomasso and BJ Harrison for Tantor -- "The supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real . . . Such tales of the dark and the unknown have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows."

SERIES WATCH:

• The Masquerades of Spring: Rivers of London, Book 4 By: Ben Aaronovitch, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith for Tantor -- "New York City, New York. Meet Augustus Berrycloth-Young—fop, flaneur, and Englishman abroad—as he chronicles the Jazz Age from his perch atop the city that never sleeps. That is, until his old friend Thomas Nightingale arrives, pursuing a rather mysterious affair concerning an old saxophone—which will take Gussie from his warm bed, to the cold shores of Long Island, and down to the jazz clubs where music, magic, and madness haunt the shadows."

• Marvel: What If . . . Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings? by Seanan McGuire, read by Allyson Voller for Random House -- "All Wanda has ever known is her friendly little neighborhood in Queens. As an infant, after her parents died, she was adopted into a family where her doting Aunt May and Uncle Ben would always be at the breakfast table. One that includes her idiot brother, Peter Parker, who thinks hiding a spider bite, joining a secret fight club, and becoming a super hero are somehow good ideas. When Wanda’s own powers emerge, blood, chaos, and suspicion follow in their wake. But as she learns to harness her power under the guidance of Doctor Strange, Peter is standing beside her in the Sanctum Sanctorum. And as they try to protect New York City, the Parker siblings learn that with great powers, there must also come great responsibilities—and greater losses."

YA WATCH:

• Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay, read by Ramón de Ocampo -- "An emotionally charged, moving novel about four generations of Filipino American boys grappling with identity, masculinity, and their fraught father-son relationships."

• The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry by Ransom Riggs, read by Kirby Heyborne -- "Seventeen-year-old Leopold Berry is seeing weird things around Los Angeles. A man who pops a tooth into a parking meter. A glowing trapdoor in a parking lot. A half-mechanical raccoon with its tail on fire that just won’t leave him alone. Every hallucinatory moment seems plucked from a cheesy 1990s fantasy TV show called Max's Adventures in Sunderworld—and that’s because they are."

• Come Out, Come Out by Natalie C. Parker, read by Jeremy Carlisle Parker -- "It's never been safe for Fern, Jaq, or Mallory to come out to their families. As kids their emerging identities drove them into friendship but also forced them into the woods to hide in an old, abandoned house when they needed safety. But one night when the girls sought refuge, Mallory never made it back home. Fern and Jaq did, but neither survivor remembered what happened or the secrets they were so desperate to keep. Five years later, Fern and Jaq are seniors on the verge of graduation, seemingly happy in their straight, cisgender lives—until a spirit who looks like Mallory begins to appear, seeking revenge for her death, and the part Fern and Jaq played in it. As they’re haunted, something begins to shift inside them."

• Mysterious Ways: A Novel By: Wendy Wunder, read by Georgina Sadler for Macmillan -- "Seventeen-year-old Maya knows everything. When she looks at someone, she instantly knows their history, their private thoughts, their secret desires, their most tragic failures. Combine these private miseries with the general state of the world, and it's easy to see why Maya's power starts to get her down. Which is why she was sent to the Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility, and also why starting at a new school is going to be such a challenge. Now, faced with Tyler, a cute guy she actually wants to know everything about, Maya realizes that maybe her power isn't so horrible after all. Maybe she can use it for good. Maybe she can even get the guy. Or maybe there really is such a thing as knowing too much."

• The Sunken City By: Emma Noyes (2022), read by Renee Dorian for Dreamscape -- "Orphaned as a child and raised on a ship by the most dangerous men in the Caribbean, Amare is one thing and one thing alone: a pirate. And pirates hate magic. After a fateful storm plunges her to the depths of the ocean, Amare wakes to find herself in a strange new world: an underwater kingdom, where magic exists, but is strictly outlawed by the King—a man who claims to be her true father. As Amare struggles to fit into her new role as Princess of the Sunken City, she finds herself tangled in a web of love between two brothers—one good, one not so good. And as strange powers manifest within her, she must question everything she was raised to believe—especially if she has any hope of stopping the evil brewing at the bottom of the ocean."

INDIE WATCH:

• Rogue: The Rogue Series, Book 1 By: Danny Lenihan, read by Scott Fleming -- "The year is 2250. Earth faces apocalypse, and the future of mankind rests in the Bertram Ramsay Space Station. Home to 9 million souls, but not all of them are friendly. The Acolytes of Gaia are a formidable foe to the men and women charged with Earth’s evacuation. Their murderess intent; to see Earth is destroyed, and mankind with it. Jaxon Leith enters Compression, a three-month internment camp where he will learn to live and work in space. Within days he’s drawn into a fight against humanity’s extinction, as hostile infiltrators threaten certain annihilation."

MOST MISSING:

• Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud (Tor Nightfire) -- "Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe. It’s now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull’s invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they’re so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas. But patients aren’t the only ones with trouble on their minds, and although the spider’s been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause."

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 20 August 2024

Posted on 2024-08-20 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

Two long-anticipated titles for me are my PICKS for this week:

• Netherford Hall by Natania Barron, read by Hannah Curtis for Tantor -- Described as "Pride and Prejudice and Witches", I've had the pleasure of watching this book come to life over the past years and am so excited to get the final book: "After a mysterious fire at their home in Regency London displaces Gentlewitch Edith Rookwood and her now much-reduced family to their ancestral seat of Netherford Hall in Kent, she faces a new threat in the form of her tenant—the chaotic and lovely Poppy Brightwell. The repairs on the old pile are prohibitive, Edith's standing is uncertain, and her inheritance has been challenged by a forgotten American branch of the family. It is clear she needs to marry, soon and wisely—but the lively girl from Harrow House gradually comes to occupy all of her thoughts. As tenants, rivals, suitors, and enemies start to circle Netherford, and dark secrets about both women's pasts come to light, Edith and Poppy must confront what it means to fight for love and family, and to be their authentic selves."

• She Who Knows By: Nnedi Okorafor, read by Yetide Badaki for Brilliance -- "Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, this is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy."

And one surprise from the BACKLIST:

• Mélusine: The Doctrine of Labyrinths, Book 1 By: Katherine Addison (2005), read by Shawn K. Jain for Tantor -- Addison, a pen name for Sarah Monette, is the celebrated (at least by me!) author of The Goblin Emperor and The Witness For The Dead apparently had this trilogy out in the mid 2000s as well, her first published novels? Color me very, very curious! "Welcome to Melusine, a city as wondrous as it is corrupt. Within its walls lies a stronghold of power and magic, a shining setting for the brilliant Felix Harrowgate. A well-respected wizard and darling of the court, Felix harbors sordid secrets from his peers in the aristocracy: a dark past in which a sadistic wizard enslaved him body and mind, even as he schooled Felix in how to walk among noblemen as if he were one of them. An abuser Felix believes himself free of, until a return to his former master's lair leads to his harrowing fall from grace. Broken, lost, Felix finds an unlikely accomplice in Mildmay the Fox. Trained to be an assassin, surviving as a thief, Mildmay knows what it is to be hunted. When fate brings the weakened wizard and the wanted killer together, they escape Melusine, traveling through strange lands where they encounter peculiar magic and powerful demons. A world where shocking secrets will be laid bare—dark truths that will bind them together forever."

Lastly, since it all can't be good news, my MOST MISSING this week is:

• When You Leave I Disappear by David Niall Wilson (Shortwave Media) -- "A literary horror novella in which a bestselling author's imposter syndrome draws her into a darker and darker world from which she may never escape."

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 6 August 2024

Posted on 2024-08-06 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

PICKS:

• A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, read by Eliza Foss and Jennifer Pickens for Macmillan -- "Cordelia knows her mother is . . . unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms—there are no secrets in this house—and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t evil sorcerers. When her mother unexpectedly moves them into the manor home of a wealthy older Squire and his kind but keen-eyed sister, Hester, Cordelia knows this welcoming pair are to be her mother's next victims. But Cordelia feels at home for the very first time among these people, and as her mother's plans darken, she must decide how to face the woman who raised her to save the people who have become like family."

• The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, read by a full cast for Random House -- "1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times. So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled, and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves. Two actresses, both determined to make it to the top in Golden Age Hollywood—a city overflowing with gossip, scandal, and intrigue—make for a sizzling combination. But this is the tale of three women, for it is also the story of the princess Salome herself, consumed with desire for the fiery prophet who foretells the doom of her stepfather, Herod: a woman torn between the decree of duty and the yearning of her heart."

• Hum By: Helen Phillips, read by Ariel Blake for Simon and Schuster -- "In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance. Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family."

• House of Bone and Rain By: Gabino Iglesias, read by Jean-Marc Berne and Daya Mendez for Mulholland -- "In the latest from Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME, a group of five teenage boys in Puerto Rico seek vengeance after one of their mothers is murdered; a Latinx STAND BY ME with a haunted, obsidianly dark heart."

• The Mercy of Gods: Captive's War, Book 1 By: James S.A. Corey, read by Jefferson Mays for Recorded Books -- "The Carryx—part empire, part hive—has waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy in its conflict with an ancient and deathless enemy. When they descend on the isolated world of Anjiin, the human population is abased, slaughtered, and put in chains. The best and brightest are abducted, taken to the Carryx world-palace to join prisoners from a thousand other species. Dafyd Alkhor, assistant to a prestigious scientist, is captured along with his team. Even he doesn’t suspect that his peculiar insight and skills will be the key to seeing past their captors’ terrifying agenda."

• The Dead Cat Tail Assassins By: P. Djèlí Clark, read by Lynnette R. Freeman for Recorded Books -- "Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. Those sworn to the Matron of Assassins—resurrected, deadly, wiped of their memories—have only three unbreakable vows. First, the contract must be just. That’s above Eveen’s pay grade. Second, even the most powerful assassin may only kill the contracted. Eveen’s a professional. She’s never missed her mark. The third and the simplest: once you accept a job, you must carry it out. And if you stray? A final death would be a mercy. When the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, Eveen’s newest mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget."

• Full Speed to a Crash Landing: Chaotic Orbits, Book 1 By: Beth Revis, read by Dara Rosenberg and David Bendena for Dreamscape Lore -- "Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission. But Ada doesn’t care—all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen—until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye. He’s not wrong—but he’s so pretty that Ada is perfectly happy to keep him paying attention to her—at least until she can complete the job she was sent to pull off. But as quick as Ada is, Rian might be quicker—and she may not be entirely sure who’s manipulating who until it’s too late."

• The Sunforge: The Endsong, Book 1 By: Sascha Stronach, read by Janaye Henry for Simon and Schuster -- "The steel city of Radovan is consumed by fire between. Stranded in its harbor is the crew of the Kopek, the survivors of a bioterror attack overseas. But they bear scars: their captain, Sibbi, has gone missing; Yat, their newest Weaver, is fighting for control of her own mind; and their Weaving powers are in a badly weakened state. To disable the technology that prevents the group from escaping, Sen and Kiada must plot their way through the ruins of the foreign capital, which is patrolled by a hostile militia, using wits alone. But to navigate through Radovan, Kiada will have to rely on her own history with the city—one she shares with a band of misfits dubbed Fort Tomorrow and their leader, Ari, a charismatic thief."

• The Heir of Venus By: Laura Shepperson, read by Frances Butt for Dreamscape -- "Lavinia never asked to be fought over. But now her childhood sweetheart has waged a war that threatens to destroy everything she holds dear, all because Lavinia's father has promised her to somebody else–Aeneas. Aeneas, rumored to be the son of Venus, is famed for his bravery, cunning, and his vision for a new great Empire. He is also secretive, slippery—and Lavinia wonders why he will never discuss the past he left behind. So when a stranger arrives in the camp with stories about Aeneas that suggest he is not what he seems, Lavinia realizes she has to take her future, and that of her people, into her own hands."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• Firefly Rain by Richard Dansky (2008), read by Jason Crum -- "When Jacob left home for a new life, he pretty much forgot all about Maryfield, North Carolina. But Maryfield never forgot him. Or forgave him. After a failed business venture in Boston, Jacob Logan comes back to the small Southern town of his childhood and takes up residence in the isolated house he grew up in. Here, the air is still. The nights are black. And his parents are buried close by. It should feel like home—but something is terribly wrong. Jacob loses all his belongings in a highway accident. His car is stolen from his driveway, yet he never hears a sound. The townspeople seem guarded and suspicious. And Carl, the property caretaker with so many secrets, is unnervingly accommodating. Then there are the fireflies that light the night skies . . . and die as they come near Jacob’s home. If it weren’t for the creaking sounds after dark, or the feeling that he is being watched, Jacob would feel so alone. He shouldn’t worry. He’s not. And whatever’s with him isn’t going to let him leave home ever again."

• The Breast By: Philip Roth (1972), read by David Colacci for Blackstone -- "During a stay on the beach with his girlfriend, Claire, Kepesh had wished to have breasts, to be a breast, and he struggles with the idea that apparently this wish was fulfilled."

• Go Tell It on the Mountain: A Novel by James Baldwin (1952), read by Joe Morton for Random House, with an introduction by Roxane Gay -- "With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem."

NON-FICTION WATCH:

• All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield, read by the author for Books on Tape -- "A dazzling insider’s account of the contemporary art world and the stunning rise and fall of the charismatic American art dealer Inigo Philbrick, as seen through the eyes of his friend and fellow dealer."

• The Devil Behind the Badge: The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer by Rick Jervis, read by Timothy Andrés Pabon for Harper -- "The shocking true-crime story of a U.S. Border Patrol agent turned serial killer, the four sex workers whom he mercilessly killed, and the upended border town of Laredo where his heinous crimes occurred."

INDIE WATCH:

• Feisty Felines and Other Fantastical Familiars edited by Kevin J. Anderson and Allyson Longueira, read by Brenda McGinnis for WordFire Press -- "When the witches and wizards are away, the familiars will play! Features 26 never-before-published short stories and poems crafted by Mercedes Lackey, Heather Graham, Jody Lynn Nye, John Hartness, Steve Rasnic Tem, and many others."

SERIES WATCH:

• Gilgamesh: The Sumerians Trilogy, Book 2 By: Emily H. Wilson, read by Zehra Jane Naqvi for Tantor

• Hell Divers XII: Heroes by Nicholas Sansbury Smith, read by R. C. Bray for Blackstone -- "Beloved characters will confront their fates in a desperate bid to resurrect the world, though not all will live to see the dawn of a new era in the long-awaited series finale."

• Arkangel: Sigma Force, Book 18 by James Rollins, read by Christian Baskous for Harper

MOST MISSING:

• Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology edited by Dan Coxon (PS Publishing) -- "Commemorating the 40th anniversary of Robert Holdstock’s seminal fantasy novel Mythago Wood (winner of the World Fantasy Award and British Fantasy Award), Heartwood for the first time opens Holdstock’s world to other writers. From new tales of Ryhope and Oak Lodge to strange encounters with mythagos further afield, this groundbreaking anthology revisits the old pathways and cuts new tracks through the undergrowth, drawing ever closer to the mysteries of Lavondyss—the Old Forbidden Place at the heart of the wood."

• The Jaguar Mask by Michael J. DeLuca (Stelliform Press) -- "Felipe K'icab doesn't know who he is. He only knows he was born different than his human family, and he can't relax unless he's blasting reggaeton in his cab weaving through the streets of Guatemala City. The jaguar mask and his other human faces keep him safe - until El Bufo, a corrupt ex-cop, commandeers his cab and drags Felipe into a murder conspiracy investigation, trying to expose the foreign-backed regime's ecocidal and genocidal past."

TO BE FILED:

• In Any Lifetime: A Novel By: Marc Guggenheim, read by Ramón de Ocampo for Brilliance -- "A devoted husband defies fate and risks everything to find the one universe where his beloved wife is still alive in this bold and thought-provoking novel."

• Daughter of Fire: A Novel By: Sofia Robleda, read by Ana Lucia Robleda for Brilliance -- "For a young woman coming of age in sixteenth-century Guatemala, safeguarding her people’s legacy is a dangerous pursuit in a mystical, empowering, and richly imagined historical novel."

• Temporal By: Julian Simpson, Richard MacLean Smith, Bec Boey, and Nosa Igbinedion, read by a full cast for Audible Originals

• The Story Spinner By: Barbara Erskine for Harper

• Dark Harvest By: Hazel Atkinson, read by Sofia Engstrand

• Cannibal Jack by Patricia Lee Macomber

• To Turn the Tide by SM Stirling

• Drill by Scott R. Jones

• There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories By: Ruben Reyes Jr.

• The Leap Year Gene of Kit McKinley By: Shelley Wood

• Withered by A.G.A. Wilmon, read by Hayden Bishop for Podium

• A Mask of Flies By: Matthew Lyons, read by Saskia Maarleveld for Macmillan -- "In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family’s cabin–a secluded shack in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and the site of her mother’s untimely death. Along for the ride are Jessup, Anne’s badly wounded partner, and Dutch, the police officer she’s taken hostage. As they wait for help, Anne discovers strange relics from her mother’s past and begins to unfold the mystery of her childhood at the cabin. Then Jessup goes missing, only to turn up dead. Anne and Dutch bury her friend, but that night, he comes back and knocks at the cabin door."

• Drop Dead by Lily Chu, read by Phillipa Soo and John Cho for Audible Originals -- "One mysterious mansion. Two rival journalists. Three weeks to uncover the story—and love—of a lifetime."

• Agony Hill: A Franklin Warren Mystery By: Sarah Stewart Taylor, read by Eric G. Dove

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 16 July 2024

Posted on 2024-07-16 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

PICKS:

• The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur by Lev Grossman, read by Nicholas Guy Smith for Penguin -- The bestselling author of The Magicians makes his triumphant return to adult fiction: "A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find that he’s too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table survive. They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Table, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance."

• I Was a Teenage Slasher By: Stephen Graham Jones, read by Michael Crouch for Simon and Schuster -- "1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge."

• The Lost Story: A Novel By: Meg Shaffer, read by Jorjeana Marie for Random House -- "As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived. Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy. Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister."

• The West Passage By: Jared Pechaček, read by Steve West for Macmillan -- "When the Guardian of the West Passage died in her bed, the women of Grey Tower fed her to the crows and went back to their chores. No successor was named as Guardian, no one took up the fallen blade; the West Passage went unguarded. Now, snow blankets Grey in the height of summer. Rats erupt from beneath the earth, fleeing that which comes. Crops fail. Hunger looms. And none stand ready to face the Beast, stirring beneath the poisoned soil."

• The Melancholy of Untold History: A Novel By: Minsoo Kang, read by Keong Sim for Harper -- "Famous for his dispelling of the national myth, the Historian understands the power of narrative. He has inspired another young professor to search for her own truths, while trying to understand the way fiction creates fact and how sometimes the past can only be understood by filling in holes with a new narrative. Which is exactly what he needs when his wife passes away to parse meaning out of a world that no longer makes sense. Together the protégé and the Historian find comfort in each other. Yet they know their time together is fleeting, as time usually is. Only the gods have an abundance of time, and yet—the two discover—even that might not be so clear cut. Part of their homeland’s myth tells of four gods who squabbled and argued and destroyed and rebuilt time and again. Or did they?"

• The Spice Gate By: Prashanth Srivatsa, read by Deepti Gupta for Harper -- "Relics of a mysterious god, the Spice Gates connect the eight far-flung kingdoms, each separated by a distinct spice and only accessible by those born with a special mark. This is not a caste of distinction, though, but one of subjugation: Spice Carriers suffer the lashes of their masters, the weight of the spices they bear on their backs, and the jolting pain of the Gates themselves. Amir is one such Spice Carrier, and he dreams of escaping his fate of being a mule for the rich who gorge themselves on spices like the addicted gluttons they are. More important than relieving his own pain, though, is saving his family, especially his brother, born like him with the unfortunate spice mark that designates him for a life of servitude. But while Amir makes his plans for freedom, something stirs in the inhospitable spaces between the kingdoms. Fate has designs of its own for Amir, and he soon finds himself drawn into a conspiracy that could disrupt the delicate dynamics of the kingdoms forever."

• Trinity: A Novel By: Tom DeLonge and A.J. Hartley, read by Kyle Snyder for Tantor -- "It's 1962, in Trinity, Nevada, a small town on the edge of the desert, home to a military base serving the nuclear testing grounds. Van Lopez and his brother Andy have enough to do keeping their truck running and the local criminal gang happy to be concerned about nuclear tests. Van has dreams, or-he's not sure what to call them-that he cannot explain or forget, but when he sees mysterious lights in the sky, he struggles to make sense of what now feel like his earliest memories. On the day of the atomic test, the nuclear blast brings down something over Trinity that wasn't supposed to be there-something not of this world. Now Van is running for his life, pursued by a murderous Soviet agent and government forces bent on keeping all he has seen from getting out."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• Pawn of Prophecy: The Belgariad, Book 1 By: David Eddings (1982), read by Brian Wiggins for Tantor -- "Long ago, so the Storyteller claimed, the evil God Torak sought dominion and drove men and Gods to war. But Belgarath the Sorcerer led men to reclaim the Orb that protected men of the West. So long as it lay at Riva, the prophecy went, men would be safe. But that was only a story, and Garion did not believe in magic dooms, even though the dark man without a shadow had haunted him for years. Brought up on a quiet farm by his Aunt Pol, how could he know that the Apostate planned to wake dread Torak, or that he would be led on a quest of unparalleled magic and danger by those he loved—but did not know?"

• Cold Welcome: Vatta's Peace, Book 1 By: Elizabeth Moon (2017), read by Carrie Coello for Tantor -- "Summoned to the home planet of her family's business empire, space-fleet commander Kylara Vatta is told to expect a hero's welcome. But instead, she is thrown into danger unlike any other she has faced and finds herself isolated, unable to communicate with the outside world, commanding a motley group of unfamiliar troops, and struggling day by day to survive in a deadly environment with sabotaged gear."

SERIES WATCH:

• Descent: The Palladium Wars, Book 4 By: Marko Kloos, read by Seth Podowitz for Brilliance -- "A nationalist uprising triggers an interstellar wrest for control."

• The Black Bird Oracle: All Souls, Book 5 By: Deborah Harkness, read by Jennifer Ikeda for Random House -- "Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself—and her family history."

WTF WATCH:

• Why Cheese? By: Ellen Mint, read by Genevieve Jones -- "Violette Reely walks into her great uncle’s abandoned cheese shop then promptly runs back out. You would too if you discovered a secret basement hiding beneath a trapdoor. One second, there’s nothing down there but cheese wheels in an old chest, the next four naked men are chasing her out the door. Refusing to give up the million-dollar property to her wild imagination, Violette returns the next day. Despite the place being ransacked, she’s certain she made up those mysterious men who vanished inside a locked store. Then, as the sun sets, cheeses lying on piles of discarded clothing roll across the floor until they poof into the four men from last night. Men who transform into cheese."

(in progress)

Posted in Release Week

Release Week: 9 July 2024

Posted on 2024-07-09 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

PICKS:

• Navola: A Novel by Paolo Bacigalupi, read by Marc Vietor for Audible -- "From the New York Times best-selling author of The Windup Girl and The Water Knife comes a sweeping literary fantasy about the young scion from a ruling-class family who faces rebellion as he ascends to power."

• Bury Your Gays By: Chuck Tingle, read by André Santana, with Charlie Jane Anders, CJ Leede, Georgia Bird, Liz Kerin, Mara Wilson, Mark Oshiro, Sarah Gailey, Stephen Graham Jones, T. Kingfisher, and TJ Klune for Macmillan -- "Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell. But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, "for the algorithm," in the upcoming season finale. Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he’s just put a target on his back. And what’s worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles. Haunted by his past, Misha must risk his entire future—before the horrors from the silver screen find a way to bury him for good."

• The Spellshop By: Sarah Beth Durst, read by Caitlin Davies for Macmillan -- "Join Kiela the librarian and her assistant, Caz the sentient spider plant, as they navigate the low stakes market of illegal spellmaking and the high risk business of starting over."

• The Sky on Fire By: Jenn Lyons, read by Lauren Fortgang for Macmillan -- "Anahrod lives only for survival, forging her own way through the harsh jungles of the Deep with her titan drake by her side. Even when an adventuring party saves her from capture by a local warlord, she is eager to return to her solitary life. But this is no ordinary rescue. It’s Anahrod’s past catching up with her. These cunning misfits—and their frustratingly appealing dragonrider ringleader—intend to spirit her away to the dragon-ruled sky cities, where they need her help to steal from a dragon’s hoard."

• All This and More: A Novel By: Peng Shepherd, read by Helen Laser for Harper -- "Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything—romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure—and is desperate for a do-over. She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right this time."

• Daughters of Chaos By: Jen Fawkes, read by Stina Nielsen for Recorded Books -- "In 1862, after a tragedy at home, twenty-two-year-old Sylvie Swift parts ways with her twin brother to trace the origins of an enigmatic playscript that’s landed on their doorstep. This text leads her to Nashville, an occupied city bustling with soldiers, saboteurs, partisans, powerful men—and powerful women. Sylvie translates the playscript by day, but at night, drawn into the work by the chief of the Union Army’s Secret Service, she acts as a spy."

(in progress...)

The Unreliable Nature Writer

Silent Sister

Earthlight by J. Michael Straczynski

The Family Experiment By: John Marrs Narrated by: Clare Corbett, Clifford Samuel, Eilidh Beaton, Joshua Riley, Justin Avoth, Thomas Judd, and Nneka Okoye for Harlequin

Quoz A Financial Thriller By: Mel Mattison Narrated by: Kyle Snyder for Tantor

The Dallergut Dream Department Store A Novel By: Miye Lee Narrated by: Shannon Tyo

Black Tide Son Winter Sea, Book 2 By: H.M. Long Narrated by: Moira Quirk, Samuel Roukin

Aftermath Sirantha Jax, Book 5 By: Ann Aguirre Narrated by: Kate Wisniewski

This Great Hemisphere A Novel By: Mateo Askaripour Narrated by: Emana Rachelle for Penguin

Toward Eternity A Novel By: Anton Hur Narrated by: David Lee Huynh, Nicky Endres, Zoleka Vundla, Katherine Littrell for Harper

The Price of Redemption By: Shawn Carpenter Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan for Simon and Schuster

These Deathless Shores By: P. H. Low Narrated by: Mirai for Orbit

Dark Yonder: Issue 6

Posted in Release Week