Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Post for the Week of February 16th.
We share the 10 books from this week that caught our eye featuring Post-Apocalyptic, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thrillers, and more. Enjoy!
Comment below on any I missed or what you’re excited about!
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Dead Moon by Peter Clines
Narrated by Ray Porter
Audible number-one best seller Peter Clines returns to the universe of 14 and The Fold with a thrilling tale of the creature above – and the deadly threat below.
In the year 2243, the Moon belongs to the dead.
The largest graveyard in the solar system, it was the perfect solution to the overcrowding and environmental problems that had plagued mankind for centuries. And the perfect place for Cali Washington to run away from her past.
But when a mysterious meteor crashes into one of the Moon’s cemeteries, Cali and her fellow Caretakers find themselves surrounded by a terrifying enemy force that outnumbers them more than a thousand to one. An enemy not hindered by the lack of air or warmth or sustenance.
An enemy that is already dead.
Now Cali and her compatriots must fight to survive. Because if they don’t, everyone on the Moon may be joining the dead.
And maybe everyone on Earth, too….
Say You’re Sorry by Karen Rose
Narrated by Joel Froomkin
Introducing the first audiobook in the new pulse-pounding Sacramento series from New York Times best-selling author Karen Rose.
There is a serial killer on the loose preying on vulnerable women. The only identifiable mark the killer leaves are letters – sometimes one, sometimes two – all carved into the torsos of his victims. Together, they spell “Sydney”.
When he grabs Daisy Dawson, he believes he has found his next victim. But despite her small stature, she fights back with an expertise that quickly frees her. Before fleeing the scene, Daisy also manages to grab what proves to be crucial evidence: a necklace from around the killer’s neck.
The necklace is more than a trivial item – it is a link to a cold case Special Agent Gideon Reynolds has been tracking for 17 years. With Daisy’s help, Gideon finally has the opportunity to get closer to the truth than ever before.
But they might not get the chance, as the serial killer has a new target: Gideon and Daisy.
Breaking Ground by Stone Thomas
Narrated by Chris Graves
My skill set brings all the girls to the yard.
And by yard, I mean the temple of a young goddess who’s using me to build a fortified city around herself before the god of war can finish slaying every deity in the heavens.
He’d better not find us before we’re ready. Spoiler: We’re far from ready.
But hey, I get a cool skill out of it. The goddess allows me to view anyone’s strength, vivacity, and other attributes as though they were numbers on a menu and then use their life experiences to make them stronger. I can unlock their special skills, too, and it’s all stuff no one else can see.
Hence the girls: a beastkin builder, a negotiatrix made of slime, a half-elf gypsy who charms snakes – and more – seeking safe refuge and a place to belong.
Think our ragtag group can survive a divine onslaught of apocalyptic proportions? I know what I think. Come on in and find out.
The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
Narrated by Jennifer O’Donnell, Laura Knight Keating
“If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams…. And from there, it’s easy to control our entire lives.”
January is a dying planet – divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk.
But life inside the cities is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.
Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead, after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal.
But fate has other plans – and Sophie’s ensuing odyssey and the ragtag family she finds will change the entire world.
Killer Thriller by Lee Goldberg
Narrated by Adam Verner
In #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg’s action-packed sequel to The Washington Post bestseller True Fiction, a hapless writer is pitted against an enemy nation mounting a treacherous plot lifted from one of his thrillers.
Everybody loves Ian Ludlow’s action novels – especially the CIA – because the spies know something the public doesn’t: his fictional plots have a frightening tendency to come true. Ian is in Hong Kong with his resourceful assistant Margo French to research his wildest story yet – a deadly global conspiracy by Chinese intelligence to topple the United States.
What Ian doesn’t know is that his horrifying scenario is happening and that the Chinese mistakenly believe he’s an undercover superspy assigned to foil their scheme. Now Ian is trapped in his own terrifying thriller, on the run from assassins, and racing against time to prevent an epic disaster. He’s written himself into a corner that could cost his life…and his country.
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
Narrated by Thomas Hunt
The new stand-alone novel from best-selling author Jasper Fforde.
Every winter, the human population hibernates.
During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, devoid of human activity.
Well, not quite.
Your name is Charlie Worthing, and it’s your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses.
You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams that you dismiss as nonsense; nothing more than a quirky artifact borne of the sleeping mind.
When the dreams start to kill people, it’s unsettling. When you get the dreams, too, it’s weird. When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity.
But teasing truth from the winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping, and stamp collecting, ensure you aren’t eaten by Nightwalkers, whose thirst for human flesh can only be satisfied by comfort food, and sidestep the increasingly less-than-mythical WinterVolk.
But so long as you remember to wrap up warmly, you’ll be fine.
The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
Narrated by Neil Shah
In this wonderful, dark novella, an immigration test is taken to extreme levels to prove just how loyal a prospective citizen is to his or her new country.
T-Rexes and Tax Law by Rachel Ford
Narrated by John Carter Aimone
A routine tax fraud investigation. A strange lab. A mysterious button.
He shouldn’t have pushed the button. But Alfred Favero, senior analyst with the IRS, pushed the button. And now he’s 67 million years in the past, stranded out of time with a coworker who hates him and a bunch of tax cheats. Oh, and then there’s the other inhabitants of his prehistoric home: the dinosaurs that want to make a meal of him. Things couldn’t get worse.
Until a mysterious visitor from an uncertain future shows up with murder on his mind.
The Good Lie by Tom Rosenstiel
Narrated by David Colacci
An intelligent and propulsive international political thriller in which political fixer Peter Rena is hired by the president to investigate the bombing of an American military base overseas.
When a shadowy American diplomatic complex is attacked in North Africa, the White House is besieged by accusations of incompetence and wild conspiracy theories. Eager to learn the truth, the president and his staff turn to Peter Rena and his partner, Randi Brooks. The investigators dive headfirst into the furtive world of foreign intelligence and national security, hoping to do it quietly. That becomes impossible, though, when it blows up into an all-out public scandal: Congress opens hearings and a tireless national security reporter publishes a bombshell exposé.
Now, Rena and Brooks are caught in the middle. The White House wants to prevent debilitating fallout for the president, the military appears to be in shutdown mode, the press is hungry for another big story, and rival politicians are plotting their next move. Rena learns the hard way that secrets in Washington come with a very high price.
With intelligence, style, and a breakneck pace, The Good Lie explores the contours of secrets, lies, and the dangers of a never-ending war.
Praise for Shining City:
“One of the smartest thrillers in recent memory.” (Dallas Morning News)
“A debut that will be remembered for years.” (Michael Connelly)
“Skillful and memorable.” (Wall Street Journal)
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
Narrated by Gary Furlong, Elle Newlands, Morag Sims, Imogen Church, Moira Quirk
Everyone’s invited…everyone’s a suspect….
For fans of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a shivery, atmospheric, pause-resisting novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge…and murder and mayhem ensue.
All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.
During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of 30-something friends from Oxford meets to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students 10 years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands – the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.
They arrive on December 30, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.
Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.
The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.
Now, one of them is dead…and another of them did it.
Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?
Depth Charge by Andrew Warren & Aiden L. Bailey
Narrated by Chris Abell
The Hai Long is 110 meters long, and glides silently beneath the waves at incredible speeds. It is the most lethal nuclear submarine in China’s naval arsenal. And only one woman knows how to find it.
CIA Paramilitary officer Thomas Caine is assigned to bring in a terrified Chinese defector who claims she can track the stealthy submarine’s movements. But he soon uncovers an unholy alliance between the commander of the deadly vessel and a sadistic organized crime cartel.
Caine and his allies must battle Chinese assassins, Colombian killers, and nature’s savage fury, as they struggle to crush an international criminal conspiracy. But when his enemies strike at the person he cares for most, the CIA’s deadliest killer takes on a new mission: Revenge.
The Braille Killer by Daniel Kuhnley
Narrated by TJ Spehar
How can you catch what you can’t see?
Blind at birth, Alice Bergman’s sight has been restored – but her childhood struggles and the assault she endured have never been forgotten. For the last 10 years, she’s been secretly receiving letters from her attacker – letters written in Braille.
Now a homicide detective, Alice is assigned a murder case. The victim? A blind girl. The scene is preternaturally clean, far more than can be explained in any rational way. Alice is able to relive the girl’s last moments – but she can’t see the girl’s killer.
That doesn’t matter, though. Alice knows the killer is the same person who attacked her as a teen.
When another girl is murdered, Alice herself becomes a suspect due to grisly evidence at the murder scene. When the stress of the case and the trauma of her past combine to bring on the same blindness she faced as a child, Alice must struggle in the dark to catch the killer and regain her sight before the Braille Killer strikes again – this time, much closer to home.
A dark and gritty beginning to a new and thrilling series. Listen to the first Alice Bergman novel today!
Trigger by David Swinson
Narrated by Christopher Ryan Grant
In the latest novel from David Swinson, “one of the best dialogue hounds in the business” (New York Times Book Review), Frank Marr, a good cop with a bad habit, must choose between justice and loyalty to an old friend.
Frank Marr was a good cop, until his burgeoning addictions to alcohol and cocaine forced him into retirement from the DC Metro police. Now, he’s barely eking out a living as a private investigator for a defense attorney – also Frank’s ex-girlfriend.
Ostracized by his family after a botched case that led to the death of his baby cousin, Jeffrey, Frank was on a collision course with rock bottom. Now clean and clinging hard to sobriety, Frank passes the time – and tests himself – by robbing the houses of local dealers, taking their cash and flushing their drugs down the toilet. When an old friend from his police days needs Frank’s help to prove he didn’t shoot an unarmed civilian, Frank is drawn back into the world of dirty cops and suspicious drug busts, running in the same circles that enabled his addiction those years ago.
Never one to play by the rules, Frank recruits a young man he nearly executed years before. Together – a good man trying not to go bad and a bad man trying to do good – detective and criminal charge headfirst into the DC drug wars. Neither may make it out.
I’m loving the sound of some of these!!