Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Audiobooks Post for the Week of December 4th.
Comment below on any I missed or what you’re excited about!
Authors, narrators, producers, and publishers — any of the books featured here are prime candidates for review.
If you see yourself featured here, I would love to review your audiobook! Click the button to submit your book for review.
Book covers and bold titles may have affiliate links to Amazon (where you can buy the Audible version).
Clicking these helps support this site, so thank you if you do.
New to Audible or Audiobooks in general? Welcome!
Try Audible Premium Plus and Get Up to Two Free Audiobooks
Sign up for Audible Plus
Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey
Narrated by Abby Craden
Brilliance Publishing
Check out my review of Read Between The Lines
Check out my reviews of other titles written by Rachel Lacey
Check out my reviews of other titles narrated by Abby Craden
$7.47 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
From award-winning author Rachel Lacey comes a playful romance about a Manhattan bookstore owner and a reclusive author who love to hate – and hate to love – each other.
Books are Rosie Taft’s life. And ever since she took over her mother’s beloved Manhattan bookstore, they’ve become her home too. The only thing missing is her own real-life romance like the ones she loves to read about, and Rosie has an idea of who she might like to sweep her off her feet. She’s struck up a flirty online friendship with lesbian romance author Brie, and what could be more romantic than falling in love with her favorite author?
Jane Breslin works hard to keep her professional and personal lives neatly separated. By day, she works for the family property development business. By night, she puts her steamier side on paper under her pen name: Brie. Jane hasn’t had much luck with her own love life, but her online connection with a loyal reader makes Jane wonder if she could be the one.
When Rosie learns that her bookstore’s lease has been terminated by Jane’s family’s business, romance moves to the back burner. Even though they’re at odds, there’s no denying the sparks that fly every time they’re together. When their online identities are revealed, will Jane be able to write her way to a happy ending, or is Rosie’s heart a closed book?
How to Mars by David Ebenbach
Narrated by Gary Furlong, Tim Campbell, Gary Tiedemann, Laura Petersen, Gemma Brayden, Avi Roque
Podium Audio
Check out my reviews of other titles narrated by Tim Campbell
Check out my reviews of other titles narrated by Gary Tiedemann
What happens when your dream mission to Mars is a reality television nightmare?
For the six lucky scientists selected by the Destination Mars! corporation, a one-way ticket to Mars – in exchange for a lifetime of research – was an absolute no-brainer. The incredible opportunity was clearly worth even the most absurdly tedious screening process. Perhaps worth following the strange protocols in a nonsensical handbook written by an eccentric billionaire. Possibly even worth their constant surveillance, the video of which is carefully edited into a ratings-bonanza back on Earth.
But it turns out that after a while, even scientists can get bored of science. Tempers begin to fray; unsanctioned affairs blossom. When perfectly good equipment begins to fail, the Marsonauts are faced with a possibility that their training just cannot explain.
Irreverent, poignant, and perfectly weird, David Ebenbach’s exciting debut science-fiction outing, like a mission to Mars, is an incredible trip you will never forget.
Includes bonus story What Lights We Have.
Colony by Benjamin Cross
Narrated by Dan Calley
Tantor Audio
$7.49 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
Harmsworth. A remote, mist-shrouded island in the Russian Arctic. Archaeology Professor Callum Ross makes the discovery of a lifetime: a prehistoric ice mummy preserved for thousands of years by the sub-zero temperatures. Only, they didn’t die of natural causes…
As Callum races to unravel the mystery of the mutilated corpse, others race to sabotage the expedition. He and his team are left stranded, and they are not alone on the island. Someone, or something relentless, is stalking them.
As the arctic mist descends and the death toll rises, the team is thrust into a nightmare fight for survival, involving submarines, cyber warfare and Spetsnaz. But none of this can prepare them for the real terror that survives deep within the island’s heart: a secret so ancient it’s been overlooked by time itself.
Benjamin Cross is an archaeologist and writer based in Carmarthenshire, Wales with an M.Phil. in Landscape Archaeology from the University of Oxford. As well as excavating archaeological sites across the UK, he’s been lucky enough to explore some of the world’s most spectacular ancient sites; from the temples of Cambodia to the Andean cloud forest cities of Peru; from the burial sites of the Tibetan plateau to the Maori strongholds of New Zealand. He is now an Associate Director of Heritage and Archaeology at a national consultancy and is a member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. Colony is Benjamin’s first novel and it was written whilst he worked full-time as a professional archaeologist.
You’ll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus
Narrated by Rachel L. Jacobs, Anthony Rey Perez, Max Meyers, Malik Rashad
Listening Library
Check out my reviews of other titles written by Karen M. McManus
$9.47 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
From the author of One of Us Is Lying comes a brand-new pulse-pounding thriller. It’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with murder when three old friends relive an epic ditch day, and it goes horribly—and fatally—wrong.
Ivy, Mateo, and Cal used to be close. Now all they have in common is Carlton High and the beginning of a very bad day. Type A Ivy lost a student council election to the class clown, and now she has to face the school, humiliated. Heartthrob Mateo is burned out from working two jobs since his family’s business failed. And outsider Cal just got stood up . . . again.
So when the three unexpectedly run into each other, they decide to avoid their problems by ditching. Just the three of them, like old times. Except they’ve barely left the parking lot before they run out of things to say. . .
. . . until they spot another Carlton High student skipping school—and follow him to the scene of his own murder. In one chance move, their day turns from dull to deadly. And it’s about to get worse. It turns out Ivy, Mateo, and Cal still have some things in common…like a connection to the dead kid. And they’re all hiding something.
Could it be that their chance reconnection wasn’t by chance after all?
Fans of the hit thriller that started it all can watch the secrets of the Bayview Four be revealed in the One of Us is Lying TV series now streaming on NBC’s Peacock!
World One by Vail Henry
Narrated by Isabelle Kerby-McGowan
Moxietastic
$7.47 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
Kat tried to be honest. She changed her emotional animation toward worried with a subset of shy. Her voice quieted by 10 percent, face tilting down to catch the blueish shadows of the limbo park in which she stood. Generic and disjointed from the rest of TruWrld2, it was the only place where she could see Tennan, in spite of their different home regions.
“I think of all those apartments on all those floors in all those buildings. Those people, they never see anybody – ”
“They see people every day. I’m seeing you now.”
Kat shifted. “Yes, Tennan. But in person.”
Tennan stepped closer to her and halted. He gazed at her, eyes nuanced with gemstone colors and deliberate wrinkles. He took in her digital form. He loved her. He would try to never meet her. “Kitty-Cat, I don’t know how to be more personal. I am here with you in as much entirety as I can muster.”
Kat laughed. “‘Muster’! At least you’re not using auto-speak!”
Every part of Kat’s life has been taken over by digital worlds and simulated experiences. Then she meets Eva, a political renegade on the fringe of society. Drawn to technology but craving human connection, Kat distrusts Eva’s attempts to lure her away from VR worlds and other sims. Worse, she suspects that the programmer Sodi is playing at more than one game. Kat can flee through dingy places and digital paradises, but will it be far enough to escape the worst of what technology created? If she can survive in any world, which will it be? Can digital worlds connect with physical lives enough to get her back?
Double Solitaire by Craig Nova
Narrated by Phil Thron
Dreamscape Media, LLC
$7.49 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
A tantalizing LA novel fans of Michael Connelly and James Ellroy.
“More than refurbished L.A. Noir. The scenes where Farrell visits with the patients [at UCLA Children’s Hospital], canny judges of character and tuning forks for emotional truth, carry devastating weight, and Nova’s smooth prose brings the roiling undercurrents to the surface. He’s fashioned a series character well worth revisiting. ” —The New York Times
Quinn Farrell is a modern-day fixer in Los Angeles — he cleans up other people’s messes. Rich people’s messes. For a lot of money. He’s so good that he’s become indispensable to Hollywood moguls and he’s managed to construct a working moral framework so that he can live with himself. That is until a new neighbor moves next door, Rose Marie, who works with terminally ill teens. Against all his survival instincts, Farrell falls in love with Rose Marie and then her uncanny patients, who shine a spotlight into his soul. When a client steps over the line and Farrell is hired to clean up after a reprehensible crime, his carefully constructed ethical house of cards comes crashing down.
Double Solitaire is the first in a series of LA-based thrillers featuring Quinn Farrell,. As with all Nova’s deeply intuitive fiction, Farrell is an unforgettable living force in a setting that needs no fiction to be any weirder than it is: contemporary Hollywood.
Killer Content by Kiley Roache
Narrated by Ana Isabel Dow, James Fouhey, Dani Martineck, VyVy Nguyen, Javier Prusky, Victoria Villarreal
Listening Library
$9.47 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
Knives Out meets One of Us is Lying! In this twisty thriller a group of famous TikTokers begin turning on each other when one member is found dead at their beachfront Malibu mansion.
35 million followers. One dead body.
The six teenagers who make up the Lit Lair have it made. A beachfront mansion, millions of followers, stunning good looks, and sponsorship deals worth more money than they ever dreamed. They live together, making videos about their perfect lives.
Except it’s not so perfect after one of them turns up dead in the infinity pool. When the group TikTok account starts posting cryptic messages, the police stop looking outside the house for suspects—and start looking straight at them. Everyone in the Lit Lair had reasons why their lives would have been easier without Sydney Reynolds.
But only one of them killed her.
Underlined is a line of totally addictive romance, thriller, and horror titles coming to you fast and furious each month. Enjoy everything you want to read the way you want to read it.
Insult to Injury by Gun Brooke
Narrated by Keira Grace
Bold Strokes Books Inc
Check out my reviews of other titles narrated by Keira Grace
$7.49 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
World famous violinist Gail Owen is devastated after a car accident leaves her unable to play her beloved instrument. She withdraws from her privileged life to an old farmhouse in Rhode Island.
Romi Shepherd is homeless in New York City and barely survives by singing for pennies in the subway. After being wrongfully arrested, she hitchhikes back to Rhode Island and, out of money and options, hides in a secret room in the house she grew up in, unaware that the new owner is about to move in permanently.
When Gail discovers Romi has been living in her house, she is curiously drawn to the young woman. Romi is torn between feeling guilty for lying to Gail and enamored of her, and she fears the truth will set them on a path toward heartbreak.
Escape from the Center of the Earth by Greig Beck
Narrated by Sean Mangan
Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
$7.47 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
“Help me, it’s Ally. Please help me.”
A ghostly, sobbing voice is detected from the depths of Russia’s Kola super deep borehole – 9 miles down. A Russian team is dispatched in a desperate rescue mission to find the woman. But how did she get there?
Meanwhile, the Americans prepare their own expedition after a new rift leading to the center of the Earth has been discovered at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Western Pacific Ocean. Mike Monroe and Jane Baxter agree to accompany the team of soldiers and scientists to seek a compound that is potentially a cure for cancer… a cancer that is slowly eating away at them, and the legacy of their time in the boiling red hell at the core of the planet.
Now, a two-pronged mission seeks answers from the Earth’s interior, a place of impenetrable jungles, fallen kingdoms, and monstrous creatures that have never been seen on the surface and have evolved into nightmarish, deadly forms.
But there is something else – a mountainous ancient being that is as old as the world and has been awaiting them. And this time will not let them leave.
Escape from the Center of the Earth is the final edition of the blockbusting Center Earth trilogy and closes the series with a climax that will blow reader’s minds.
Hello, Transcriber by Hannah Morrissey
Narrated by Angela Dawe
Macmillan Audio
Check out my reviews of other titles narrated by Angela Dawe
$7.49 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
Hannah Morrissey’s Hello, Transcriber is a captivating mystery suspense debut featuring a female police transcriber who goes beyond the limits to solve a harrowing case.
Every night, while the street lamps shed the only light on Wisconsin’s most crime-ridden city, police transcriber Hazel Greenlee listens as detectives divulge Black Harbor’s gruesome secrets. As an aspiring writer, Hazel believes that writing a novel could be her only ticket out of this frozen hellscape. And then, her neighbor confesses to hiding the body of an overdose victim in a dumpster.
The suspicious death is linked to Candy Man, a notorious drug dealer. Now, Hazel has a first-row seat to the investigation and becomes captivated by the lead detective, Nikolai Kole. Intrigued by the prospects of gathering eyewitness intel for her book, Hazel joins Kole in exploring Black Harbor’s darkest side. As the investigation unfolds, Hazel will learn just how far she’ll go for a good story – even if it means destroying her marriage and luring the killer to her as she plunges deeper into the city she’s desperate to claw her way out of.
A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books
Alien Hostiles by Ian Douglas
Narrated by Nick Sullivan
HarperAudio
Check out my reviews of other titles narrated by Nick Sullivan
$12.99 Whispersync Deal with Kindle Purchase
New York Times bestselling author Ian Douglas delivers the action-packed second military sci-fi adventure in his Solar Warden series set in a wildly imaginative alternate present where conspiracy theories are terrifying realities and reptilian aliens team up with Nazis in space.
By exposing the sinister Saurians, Navy SEAL Lieutenant Commander Mark Hunter and his team have more than proven themselves. Yet the war between humanity and the intergalactic aliens has only begun—now they must save themselves and all of civilization.
The JSST—the Joint Space Strike Team Hunter has put together from all branches of the U.S. military—is again deployed on board the Earth starcraft carrier Hillenkoetter on a mission to probe a possible historical connection between the Saurians and the Nazi Third Reich. At a planet called Paradies orbiting the red giant star Aldebaran, they discover a long-rumored colony of expatriate Nazis… and the beginnings of a plan to enslave Earth under Nazi—and Saurian—rule.
With Earth at stake, governments deeply compromised, and evil at the door, Solar Warden must fight together to end it all…even if it means sacrificing everything.
- Muted (Silence Jones #10 by Erik Carter (Narrated by Gary Bennett) - December 4, 2023
- New and Notable Audiobook Releases for the Week of December 3rd on Brian’s Book Blog - December 3, 2023
- Disease X by N.J. Croft (Narrated by Joshua Saxon) - December 1, 2023
