Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Audiobooks Post for the Week of July 24th.
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The Alt Apocalypse by Tom Abrahams
Narrated by Kevin Pierce
Piton Press
Read my reviews of:
Ash
LIT
TORRENT
AFFLICTION
POX
Check out my reviews of other titles written by Tom Abrahams
Check out my reviews of other titles narrated by Kevin Pierce
A Neverending Race to Survive the Worst of Nature and Mankind. This Is the Alt Apocalypse.
The Alt Apocalypse is the ground-breaking, genre-bending series from Tom Abrahams. It explores survival under the most extreme circumstances, but with a twist (and no cliff-hangers). This series, which can be listened to in any order, features the same core characters in each complete story. But every book dunks them into a new, alternate apocalypse; a nuclear holocaust, an earthquake, a flood, a wildfire, a hurricane, a plague, and even zombies.
Different heroes will emerge in each novel. Different characters will survive and perish. Your favorite character dies in one book? He or she will be back in the next. In the end, you’ll unwind the loose thread that connects every character and every stand-alone story.
This collection includes all five full-length novels in the series: Ash, LIT, TORRENT, AFFLICTION, and POX.
False Witness by Karin Slaughter
Narrated by Kathleen Early
Blackstone Publishing
He saw what you did.
He knows who you are….
From the New York Times best-selling author of Pieces of Her and The Silent Wife, an electrifying stand-alone thriller.
An ordinary life…
Leigh Collier has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defense attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilized – her life is just as unremarkable as she’d always hoped it would be.
…hides a devastating past…
But Leigh’s ordinary life masks a childhood that was far from average…a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, and finally torn apart by a devastating act of violence.
…but now the past is catching up…
Then a case lands on her desk – defending a wealthy man accused of rape. It’s the highest profile case she’s ever been given – a case that could transform her career, if she wins. But when she meets the accused, she realizes that it’s no coincidence that he’s chosen her as his attorney. She knows him. And he knows her. More to the point, he knows what happened 20 years ago and why Leigh has spent two decades running.
…and time is running out.
If she can’t get him acquitted, she’ll lose much more than the case. The only person who can help her is her estranged younger sister Callie, the last person Leigh would ever want to ask for help. But suddenly she has no choice….
Chasing Rain by Brandt Legg
Narrated by Roger Wayne
Podium Audio
It made him rich…and it might end humanity. Is it even possible to stop the AI he created?
Before Chase turned 30, he developed an ultra-advanced artificial intelligence decades ahead of the competition. When he sold it, he imagined all the good TruNeural would do for the planet. He was wrong.
The CIA and Chinese both want it. The most powerful corporation in the world is after him. Who can he turn to? Wen Sung; she knows all the players. There’s just one problem: In order to help Chase, she must get out of China, and the government wants to stop her by any means. Will she outwit the assassins and escape?
Can Chase and Wen destroy the AI, save themselves, and save the world? Or will they be forced to choose?
Know When to Run: Mission 1 by J.S. Morin
Narrated by Mikael Naramore
Self Published
“Let’s just say I have pressing business anywhere but Earth.”
Chuck Ramsey is a traveling comedian trying to turn a planetside gig on Earth into a cash cow. Of course, the cost of living on Earth is astronomical. He needs to get rich quick – or at least come out ahead – and head for cheaper pastures.
Enter Mordecai The Brown. Once the golden boy of the Convocation, Guardian of the Plundered Tomes and the Convocation’s number one hunter of dark wizards, “Mort” has found himself on the wrong end of an internal investigation. You see, he was supposed to be killing mad wizard, then confiscating and locking up dangerous books – not reading them. Certainly not stealing them and destroying them.
When Mort needs quick passage off world, and off the books, he remembers a backstage meet-and-greet with funny-man who lived a nomadic existence with his family. Chuck agrees to take a passenger aboard his family starship, the Radio City, and suddenly a powerful wizard owes a favor he can never repay.
Little did either of them know the trouble that would follow.
Know When to Run is the first mission of Black Ocean: Mirth and Mayhem. It follows a mismatched duo of itinerant comedian and outlaw wizard as they roam the galaxy trying to eke out a living and stay ahead of the consequences of their actions. Black Ocean: Mirth and Mayhem takes a look back at an earlier era in the Black Ocean universe, and returning readers/listeners will get to see how some of their favorite characters came to be. Fans of morally gray heroes and slick talking conmen will love this series.
Grab your copy before someone else does.
Disobedience by Kaitlyn Andersen
Narrated by Andrea Emmes
Tantor Audio
Finn No Last Name has fled her crewmates aboard Independence, after discovering that she’d been betrayed by the person she trusted most.
Now on her own, she searches for other hybrids like her, with powers she can only imagine. That search brings her to Enyo, a Sirian warrior who has been a captive of the Reliance for years. Finally free, she is more than eager to join Finn on her mission to locate and free more hybrids.
But that search brings her back to Independence, whether she likes it or not. And back to Conrad, who she is starting to realize has feelings for her she can’t quite fathom. And to Iliana, her long-lost sister, whose breach of trust left Finn feeling even more alone than she had when she thought Iliana dead.
With Enyo and AJ in tow, Finn goes on a mission to locate and free other hybrids, only to find herself in a true battle between life and death, in front of an audience of thousands….
Isn’t It Bromantic? by Lyssa Kay Adams
Narrated by Andrew Eiden
Penguin Audio
One of Bustle’s Best New Books of July 2021
A PopSugar Best Book and Best Romance of July 2021
With his passion for romance novels, it was only a matter of time before Vlad wrote one.
Elena Konnikova has lived her entire adult life in the shadows. As the daughter of a Russian journalist who mysteriously disappeared, she escaped danger the only way she knew how: She married her childhood friend, Vladimir, and moved to the United States, where he is a professional hockey player in Nashville.
Vlad, aka the Russian, thought he could be content with his marriage of convenience. But it’s become too difficult to continue in a one-sided relationship. He joined the Bromance Book Club to learn how to make his wife love him, but all he’s learned is that he deserves more. He’s ready to create his own sweeping romance – both on and off the page.
The bros are unwilling to let Vlad forgo true love – and this time they’re not operating solo. They join forces with Vlad’s neighbors, a group of meddling widows who call themselves the Loners. But just when things finally look promising, Elena’s past life intrudes and their happily-ever-after is cast into doubt.
The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig
Narrated by Xe Sands, George Newbern
Random House Audio
A family returns to their hometown – and to the dark past that haunts them still – in this masterpiece of literary horror by the New York Times best-selling author of Wanderers.
“The dread, the scope, the pacing, the turns – I haven’t felt all this so intensely since The Shining.” (Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times best-selling author of The Only Good Indians)
Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father – and has never told his family what happened there.
Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have – and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures.
Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania.
Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver.
And now what happened long ago is happening again…and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic.
This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family – and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.
Abandoned: Arrivals and Awakenings by Katie Berry
Narrated by Alex Knox
Tantor Audio
On December 31, 1981, high atop a snowy mountain peak in the rugged interior of British Columbia, Canada, 98 beautiful people eat, drink, laugh, and dance inside the opulent grand ballroom of the Sinclair Resort Hotel.
The clock strikes 12, a cheer goes up, and the music swells; balloons drop and streamers swirl.
Then blackness….
Fifteen seconds later, the power returns and every living soul inside the ballroom has vanished, never to be seen again.
Now, 40 years later, preternatural investigator Lively Deadmarsh and his psychic twin sister, Minerva, have been brought in to solve this decades-old mystery once and for all.
Should they fail, they may become part of it, forever.
Is This It? by Hannah Tovey
Narrated by Catrin Walker-Booth
Hachette Audio UK
Employed (you have frequent nightmares about your job)
Single and fabulous (swiping Tinder in your pyjamas while your best friend shops for engagement rings)
Thriving (surviving)
Ivy and Mia have been best friends since the fun, messy, hungover years of their 20s.
Ten years later, Mia has it all – the man, the house, the career. Ivy is skint, single, and scared that she isn’t a ‘hot mess’ any more – she’s a walking disaster.
But one night, Ivy switches her phone off, peels last night’s drunken pizza off the sofa, and makes a list. A list that changes everything….
The new Ivy has a proper job. She goes on fancy dates in wine bars. She’s starting to think: maybe ‘faking it till you make it’ is easy?
But then she meets Scott.
Curly-haired, sarcastic Scott. Sh*t.
Find out why everyone is falling in love with Ivy….
Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta
Narrated by Catherine Ho, Cindy Kay
Recorded Books
Two girls on opposite sides of a war discover they’re fighting for a common purpose – and falling for each other – in Zoe Hana Mikuta’s high-octane debut Gearbreakers, perfect for fans of Pacific Rim, Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga, and Marie Lu’s Legend series.
We went past praying to deities and started to build them instead….
The shadow of Godolia’s tyrannical rule is spreading, aided by their giant mechanized weapons known as Windups. War and oppression are everyday constants for the people of the Badlands, who live under the thumb of their cruel Godolia overlords.
Eris Shindanai is a Gearbreaker, a brash young rebel who specializes in taking down Windups from the inside. When one of her missions goes awry and she finds herself in a Godolia prison, Eris meets Sona Steelcrest, a cybernetically enhanced Windup pilot. At first, Eris sees Sona as her mortal enemy, but Sona has a secret: She has intentionally infiltrated the Windup program to destroy Godolia from within.
As the clock ticks down to their deadliest mission yet, a direct attack to end Godolia’s reign once and for all, Eris and Sona grow closer – as comrades, friends, and perhaps something more….
Praise for Gearbreakers:
“An absolute joyride of a story set in a vivid, arresting world. Gearbreakers is sci-fi at its very finest, combining the grandeur of mecha fighting machines with the intimacy of (splendidly feral) found family. Zoe Hana Mikuta is a talent to be in awe of.” (Chloe Gong, New York Times best-selling author of These Violent Delights)
Shaula (Stinger) by A. M. Kherbash
Narrated by James Wolven
Self Published
The sight of the body did not sicken Ben. Not right away. Guilt was what got him: The mounting consequences rising in his throat, and the truth which would inevitably come spilling out.
Sometime after the events at Duncastor, two men are dispatched to make a delivery. It was a straightforward assignment: Take the sealed cargo – a container roughly the size of a child’s casket – and deliver it to a reclusive specialist residing in a lakeside cabin. What this specialist did or specialized in was never mentioned. Not that it mattered, when the task was simple – simple enough that even a young and inexperienced bureaucrat like Ben could handle it. If only he weren’t charged with keeping an eye on his wayward senior.
The lakeside cabin was the last remnant of a closed down resort, which Ben guessed was bought by a dummy corporation belonging to their employer. All the other cabins were torn down, leaving them with an empty property that served to distance the lakeside cabin from public grounds. Something about it reminded Ben of the horticultural practice of pruning spent flowers to further enhance the beauty of the crowning blossom. Not that it did anything to improve the cabin’s appearance he observed, as they stood in front of the stocky wooden building, sheltered under interlacing branches of towering evergreens. Much like the faded photos, an eerie hush permeated the place: No breeze ruffled the reflected image on the lake’s surface, nor susurrated through the green needles above. It was all very quiet.
The Retreat by Elisabeth de Mariaffi
Narrated by Erin Moon
Mulholland Books
A “gorgeously written and atmospheric thriller” following a woman on a long-awaited visit to a mountain arts retreat – where she soon finds herself trapped among strangers and in a deadly race to survive (Robyn Harding).
“Magnificently absorbing and haunting…. With a dabble each of Hitchcock thriller, cozy mystery, and domestic noir, The Retreat offers a terrifyingly fun read.” (Amy Stuart, author of Still Water)
She came looking for inspiration.
Instead, disaster strikes.
Maeve Martin arrives at the High Water Center for the Arts, a gorgeous lodge nestled deep in the Rocky Mountains, determined to do one thing: begin her own dance company. A retired performer and mother of two, time is running out for her to find her feet again after the collapse of her disastrous – and violent – marriage. And at first, there’s a thrill to being on her own for the first time in years. Isolated in the snowy beauty of the retreat, Maeve can forget the ghost of her past for an hour, for a day.
But when an avalanche strikes, Maeve finds herself trapped with six other guests. They’ve lost all power, phone service, heat, and the road back to town. At first, there’s a sense of camaraderie – the fire is warm, the freezer well-stocked. But as the days pass and the storm rages on outside, tensions start to run high. Help is coming, so they just have to hold on, right?
Then the first guest meets an unspeakable death.
Followed by another.
Soon Maeve must admit how little she knows about these strangers…and how useless a locked door is if the darkness is already inside.
- 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
