Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Audiobooks Post for the Week of February 29th.
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.
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Aliens: Phalanx by Scott Sigler
Narrated by Bronson Pinchot
Blackstone Publishing
The number-one New York Times best-selling author of Infected delivers medieval carnage as a pre-industrial society fights extinction at the hands of a massive infestation of Xenomorphs.
Ataegina was an isolated world of medieval castles, varied cultures, and conquests, vibrant until the demons rose and spread relentless destruction. Swarms of lethal creatures with black husks, murderous claws, barbed tails, and dreaded “tooth-tongues” raged through the lowlands, killing 90 percent of the planet’s population. Terrified survivors fled to hidden mountain keeps where they eke out a meager existence. When a trio of young warriors discovers a new weapon, they see a chance to end this curse. To save humanity, the trio must fight their way to the tunnels of Black Smoke Mountain – the lair of the mythical Demon Mother.
The Silver Dead by Steven Savile
Narrated by Steve West
Aethon Audio
“Read it before the end of the world!” (Kevin J. Anderson, international best-selling author of the Dune Prequels)
When Temple wakes up in a filthy hotel, he doesn’t remember a thing. Not how he got here. Not even his name. Temple just happened to be the first word he read on the bible sitting on the dusty nightstand.
When he discovers that he and all those around him are caught in the apocalyptic hellscape of a collapsing metropolis, he must carefully weigh the balance between charity and self-sacrifice as he sets out into this strange new world.
Grasping at a chance for purpose, he befriends young Nina. Someone to protect from the enumerable dangers and a glimmer of hope in his daunting quest for identity. He quickly learns protection is one of the few things he’s made for, demonstrating vicious brutality against savages who seek to prey upon the weak.
Together, they search for anywhere truly safe to call home. A task made all the more impossible as they are chased at every turn by a plague of the shambling, silver-eyed undead.
The Walking Dead meets The Road in this dark post-apocalyptic tale with a supernatural twist, perfect for fans of Michael Crichton and Stephen King.
Now on Audible, narrated by the award-winning Steve West (Scythe, Interstellar Caveman). This book was formerly published under the title Immortal.
Assassin’s Creed: Gold by Anthony Del Col
Narrated by Riz Ahmed, John Chancer, Ray Fearon, Anthony Head, Tamara Lawrance, Gemma Lawrence, Danny Wallace
Audible Original
Assassin’s Creed: Gold is a stand-alone action tale from the Assassin’s Creed universe.
Meet Aliyah Kahn, a card shark and hustler who’s been dealt a rough hand in life. Living off of her street smarts and scams, Aliyah makes do until she’s outhustled big time by a mysterious older man, Gavin Banks. Her only option to pay the debt is to become an Assassin for Banks. During her training, he tells Aliyah of the centuries-old battle between the Assassins and Templars, asking her to help him decode a secret message inscribed on an illegal form of currency during the Great Recoinage of 1696. This exciting thriller features a full cast, including Emmy winner Riz Ahmed and Anthony Head.
Featuring fan favorite characters of the beloved franchise, Assassin’s Creed: Gold tells a gripping tale of imminent economic collapse, featuring appearances from Warden of the Royal Mint, Isaac Newton, con artist and counterfeiter William Chaloner, blind assassin Omar Khaled, assassin trainer Rose Galloway, and Aliyah’s long-lost father. Equal parts adrenaline-fueled and thought-provoking, Assassin’s Creed: Gold draws a compelling parallel with the financial chaos of Isaac Newton’s 17th-century Britain and the economic uncertainty of recent times.
Audible’s full-cast drama brings the clash of the Assassins and Templars to life as a gripping audio thriller with lead performances from Riz Ahmed (Emmy winner, Golden Globe nominee, The Night Of, Rogue One, Four Lions), Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Merlin, Little Britain), Danny Wallace (BAFTA Games Award winner, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, Assassin’s Creed III), and Tamara Lawrance (Corvidae, On Chesil Beach).
The Audible Original also features the talents of Laura Aikman, Rachel Atkins, Brian Bowles, Andrew Branch, John Chancer, Lily Donovan, Rupert Fairley, Ray Fearon, Owen Findlay, Jason Forbes, Nicholas Goh, David John, Jim Johnson, Will Kelly, John Last, Gemma Lawrence, Nicholas le Prevost, Simon Lipson, Hayward Morse, Paul Panting, Laila Payne, Nigel Pilkington, Joseph Radcliffe, David Rintoul, Anne Rosenfeld, Jennifer Saayeng, Gyuri Sarossy, and Daniel Weyman.
Please note: This title contains explicit language.
Sims by F. Paul Wilson
Narrated by Braden Wright
Blackstone Publishing
Just a few hundred genes separate humans from chimpanzees. Imagine someone altering the chimp genome, splicing in human genes to increase the size of the cranium, reduce the amount of body hair, enable speech. What sort of creature would result?
Sims takes place in the very near future, when the science of genetics is fulfilling its vaunted potential. It’s a world where genetically transmitted diseases are being eliminated. A world where dangerous or boring manual labor is gradually being transferred to “sims”, genetically altered chimps who occupy a gray zone between simian and human. The chief innovator in this world is SimGen, which owns the patent on the sim genome and has begun leasing the creatures worldwide.
But SimGen is not quite what it seems. It has secrets, secrets beyond patents and proprietary processes – secrets it will go to any lengths to protect. Sims explores this brave new world as it is turned upside down and torn apart when lawyer Patrick Sullivan decides to try to unionize the sims.
Right now, as you read these words, some company somewhere in the world is toying with the chimp genome. That is not fiction, it is fact. Sims is a science thriller that will come true, one way or another.
Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus
Narrated by Amara Jasper
Macmillan Audio
“Kraus gets under your skin with brutal, elegant efficiency. Necessarily horrifying, devastatingly timely.” (Kiersten White, New York Times best-selling author of The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein and Slayer)
From New York Times best-selling author Daniel Kraus comes a breakneck, genre-defying YA thriller perfect for fans of Kiersten White, Neal Shusterman, and M. T. Anderson.
Liv Fleming’s father went missing more than two years ago, not long after he claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Liv has long accepted that he’s dead, though that doesn’t mean she has given up their traditions. Every Sunday, she and her lifelong friend Doug Monk trudge through the woods to check the traps Lee left behind, traps he set to catch the aliens he so desperately believed were after him.
But Liv is done with childhood fantasies. Done pretending she believes her father’s absurd theories. Done going through the motions for Doug’s sake. However, on the very day she chooses to destroy the traps, she discovers in one of them a creature so inhuman it can only be one thing. In that moment, she’s faced with a painful realization: Her dad was telling the truth. And no one believed him.
Now, she and Doug have a choice to make. They can turn the alien over to the authorities…or they can take matters into their own hands.
On the heels of the worldwide success of The Shape of Water, Daniel Kraus returns with a horrifying and heartbreaking thriller about the lengths people go to find justice and the painful reality of grief.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company
“Bent Heavens is the darkest, angriest alien horror story that I’ve ever encountered. Hell. Yes.” (Stephanie Perkins, New York Times best-selling author of There’s Someone Inside Your House)
The In Between by Michael Landweber
Narrated by Brittany Pressley, Mark Boyett
Audible Original
In this wildly imaginative novel for fans of Dark Matter and Ready Player One, listeners are transported to the near future, and when a young boy attempting to teleport gets lost in transit, his parents will do whatever it takes to find him in “the in between.”
The year is 2047, and teleportation is the cutting-edge transportation method of choice – Teleportation Services International (TSI) operates facilities in all of the world’s major cities. When Lillian, a TSI employee, wins a once-in-a-lifetime family vacation, she knows it’s just a photo op for the tech giant, but she takes the opportunity and books a trip to Tokyo with her husband Jackson and their six-year-old son Cole. But before they arrive, tragedy strikes: Cole disappears in transit.
Lillian and Jackson take very different paths to cope: Lillian wants justice for her son’s death and attempts to find those responsible by conducting a covert investigation from within TSI. Jackson, meanwhile, is convinced that Cole is still alive somewhere in “the in between” and teleports back and forth from Japan, over and over again, to find him.
Ultimately, this explosive and thought-provoking story asks ambitious questions about technology, power, and our rapidly changing world.
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
Narrated by Brittany Pressley
Macmillan Audio
“Reminiscent of Liane Moriarty’s What Alice Forgot and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Oona Out of Order is a delightfully freewheeling romp.” (Booklist starred review)
Oona Out of Order is a remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of sequence.
Just because life may be out of order, doesn’t mean it’s broken.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight, she will turn 19, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens 32 years in the future in her 51-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order….
Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met?
Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books
Star Fire by M.R. Forbes
Narrated by Jeffrey Kafer
Quirky Algorithms
New from million-copy best seller M.R. Forbes.
One man’s epic story of loyalty, perseverance, and hope in a galaxy at war.
Alliance Navy Commander Grayson Stone is patrolling a nearby space station, when a mysterious starship appears. It emerges from a storm of fire, its shields impenetrable, its weapons overwhelming, attacking without provocation and annihilating everything in its path.
While his ship is badly damaged in the assault, Grayson manages to survive. Suddenly trapped behind the front line of the invasion and faced with gut-wrenching choices and near-impossible odds, he’ll do whatever it takes to escape the grasp of the terrifying new enemy.
Because, if he fails, humankind will fall.
Robert Ludlum’s The Treadstone Resurrection by Joshua Hood
Narrated by Ron Butler
Penguin Audio
The first novel in an explosive new series inspired by Robert Ludlum’s Bourne universe, The Treadstone Resurrection introduces an unforgettable hero and the shadowy world that forged him….
Treadstone made Jason Bourne an unstoppable force, but he’s not the only one.
Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all but invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site. Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him – lightning reflexes and a cold conscience – in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now.
Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.
Follow Me by Kathleen Barber
Narrated by Corey Brill, Erin Moon, Emily Tremaine, Kathleen Barber
Simon & Schuster Audio
From the author of Truth Be Told (formerly titled Are You Sleeping) – now an Apple TV series of the same name – comes a cautionary tale of oversharing in the social media age for fans of Jessica Knoll and Caroline Kepnes’ You.
Everyone wants new followers…until they follow you home.
Audrey Miller has an enviable new job at the Smithsonian, a body by reformer Pilates, an apartment door with a broken lock, and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers to bear witness to it all. Having just moved to Washington, DC, Audrey busies herself impressing her new boss, interacting with her online fan base, and staving off a creepy upstairs neighbor with the help of the only two people she knows in town: an ex-boyfriend she can’t stay away from and a sorority sister with a high-powered job and a mysterious past.
But Audrey’s faulty door may be the least of her security concerns. Unbeknownst to her, her move has brought her within striking distance of someone who’s obsessively followed her social media presence for years – from her first WordPress blog to her most recent Instagram Story. No longer content to simply follow her carefully curated life from a distance, he consults the dark web for advice on how to make Audrey his and his alone. In his quest to win her heart, nothing is off-limits – and nothing is private.
With “compelling, suspenseful” (Liz Nugent) prose, Kathleen Barber’s electrifying new thriller will have you scrambling to cover your webcam and digital footprints.
- Disease X by N.J. Croft (Narrated by Joshua Saxon) - December 1, 2023
- A Purrfect Gift by Jae (Narrated by Anastasia Watley) - November 30, 2023
- Wraith King (Wraith Knight #3) by C.T. Phipps (Narrated Narrated by Samuel E. Hoke) - November 28, 2023
Must be a big week for new releases, since you had to break it down into two posts😁