Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Post for the Week of June 16th. We share the 10 books from this week that caught our eye featuring mostly Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fiction, and Thrillers with a few others thrown in. Enjoy!
Comment below on any I missed or what you’re excited about!
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End Time by Daniel Greene
Narrated by Keith Szarabajka
The protests in front of the embassy aren’t what they seem….
In the dark, primal jungles of the Congo Basin, something is ravaging the local population. When protests turn violent in front of the US embassy in Kinshasa, only the foreign policy experts paid attention. Civil war erupts, and people rip each other apart in the streets of the African capital.
To avert disaster and preserve its self-image, an overwhelmed State Department dispatches a team of elite counterterrorism agents to bring their besieged people back alive. Mark Steele, a young agent within the division, and his team of gritty operatives are used to trudging through the worst society has to offer, all while operating from the shadows. But Steele’s team is plunging headlong into a maelstrom of death so much worse than rebels in the streets.
A highly contagious microbe is spreading unchecked, killing everyone in its wake only to bring them back again as the ravenous undead. Only a lone CDC virologist understands the extent of the outbreak at hand. He cowers among the embassy staff praying for extraction from the hands of death, fearing his part to play in the epidemic.
Follow this harrowing tale of survival, duty, love and horror as the living dead bring the world to its knees. The first installment of an epic series, End Time starts as a slow burn that turns into a breakneck-paced struggle for survival. Greene does an excellent job of depicting individual stories within the larger scope of the global epidemic. Enter the End Time.
The Flipside by Jake Bible
Narrated by Andrew B. Wehrlen
The year is 2046, and dinosaurs are real.
Time bubbles across the world, many as large as 100 square miles, turn like clockwork, revealing prehistoric landscapes from the Cretaceous Period.
They reveal the Flipside.
Now, 30 years after the first turn, the clockwork is breaking down, as one of the world’s powers has decided to exploit the phenomenon for his own gain, possibly destroying everything then and now in the process.
Former head of security for Topside Command Trevon Cash must navigate his way through the chaos of the broken turns and take a team Flipside to try to figure out what is happening.
What Cash and the others don’t know is all that waits for them is horror and nightmares – a destroyed base, packs of ravenous carnivores, pterosaurs bent on plucking every human from the ground to be eaten far above, and so much more.
Can Cash and his team stop what is happening?
Or will they end up stuck Flipside forever in a perpetual prehistoric nightmare?
The Darwin Variant by Kenneth Johnson
Narrated by Emily Adams, Eric Pierpoint, Erin Chambers, Francesca Ling, Gary Graham, Jeff Marcus, Jenny Gago, Susan Appling, Katharine Jay, Terri Treas, David Henne, Mat Hayes, Stephen Mendel, John Duffy, and Kenneth Johnson
Kenneth Johnson plunges listeners into a day-after-tomorrow thriller about an imminent global catastrophe and explores how ordinary people respond to extraordinary circumstances.
When the icy shards of a rogue comet fall to Earth, they bring an unknown virus that accelerates evolution to extremes. Suddenly, infected plants grow stronger, choking out those uninfected. Animals turn aggressive and deadly. The eyes of loved ones go cold, and infected neighbors begin exhibiting signs of brutal domination.
In a small Georgia town, 14-year-old Katie McLane sees her neighbors changing, one by one.
Dr. Susan Perry, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, uncovers the frightening scope of the menace. The infected aren’t just evolving. They’re conspiring to alter the very nature of what it means to be human.
Katie and Susan become fugitives because of what they know, encountering bitter betrayals and lethal dangers, but also loves ignited and inspiring camaraderie, as they fight to prevent a viral conspiracy from creating a terrifying brave new world.
Broken Ice by Matt Goldman
Narrated by MacLeod Andrews
Nils Shapiro has been hired to find missing Linnea Engstrom, a teenager from the small northern hockey town of Warroad, Minnestota. Most of Warroad is in Minneapolis for the state high school hockey tournament, and Linnea never returned from last night’s game. Linnea’s friend Haley Housch is also missing – and soon found dead.
Shot through the arm with an arrow at the Haley Housch crime scene, Nils should be in the hospital recovering from his near fatal injury, but he knows that the clock is ticking. Linnea could be anywhere, and someone doesn’t want her found. Is Linnea a victim, or is she playing a dangerous game? As bodies start piling up, the clues lead Nils and Ellegaard north to Warroad, a small, quiet town with many secrets to hide.
Sick House by Jeff Strand
Narrated by Joe Hempel
It’s a home invasion from beyond the grave in this novel of unrelenting terror from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Pressure, Dweller, and Wolf Hunt.
It doesn’t seem like the perfect house, but screw it, it’s good enough to rent for a year. Unfortunately for Boyd, Adeline, and their two young daughters, it’s immediately clear they chose the wrong place.
The nightmare begins with violent coughs and headaches. Food starts to rot almost as soon as they take it inside. A pet tarantula goes missing. Some family members begin to exhibit creepy behavior.
Then the ghosts arrive, and all hell breaks loose….
The Redemption of Michael Hollister by Shawn Inmon
Narrated by Johnathan McClain
All Michael Hollister wanted was death. What he got was time travel.
Convicted of murder, and with nothing left to live for, Michael commits suicide in his jail cell in 1977, then opens his eyes in 1966, in his eight-year-old body, with all memories of his previous life intact.
His first thoughts are of the dark intentions of his father. When the man who raised him once again tries to do the unthinkable, Michael has a chance to right his childhood’s greatest wrong. But, can he do that without becoming a killer all over again?
Includes a special bonus note read by the author.
Icebound by Dean Koontz
Narrated by Jim Frangione
The arctic night is endless. The fear is numbing. Screams freeze in the throat. Death arrives in shades of white. And cold-blooded murder seems right at home.
Conducting a strange and urgent experiment on the Arctic icefield, a team of scientists has planted sixty powerful explosive charges that will detonate at midnight. Before they can withdraw to the safety of their base camp, a shattering tidal wave breaks loose the ice on which they are working. Now they are hopelessly marooned on an iceberg during a violent winter storm. The bombs beneath them are buried irretrievably deep…and ticking. And they discover that one of them is an assassin with a mission of his own.
Polar Midnight by Aric Shaw
Narrated by Teralyn Davis
She’s only 18, but Cassie Ingram knows how to survive…and kill…to save those she loves.
It’s December. It’s winter. The sun won’t rise for months.
Cassie Ingram survived an attack by terrorists seeking revenge against her billionaire father, the CEO of a huge oil company. But when Russian mercenaries capture her father in the oil fields of Deadhorse, Alaska, this 18-year-old must rely on her survival training to save him – and prevent an ecological disaster.
Polar Midnight is a pulse-pounding thriller featuring a new kick-ass heroine. The twists and turns will leave you breathless…and listening straight through to the end.
Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin
Narrated by MacLeod Andrews
“Bearskin is visceral, raw, and compelling – filled with sights, smells, and sounds truly observed. It’s a powerful debut and an absolute showcase of exceptional prose. There are very few first novels when I feel compelled to circle brilliant passages, but James McLaughlin’s writing had me doing just that.” (C. J. Box, number one NYT best-selling author of The Disappeared)
Rice Moore is just beginning to think his troubles are behind him. He’s found a job protecting a remote forest preserve in Virginian Appalachia where his main responsibilities include tracking wildlife and refurbishing cabins. It’s hard work, and totally solitary – perfect to hide away from the Mexican drug cartels he betrayed back in Arizona. But when Rice finds the carcass of a bear killed on the grounds, the quiet solitude he’s so desperately sought is suddenly at risk.
More bears are killed on the preserve, and Rice’s obsession with catching the poachers escalates, leading to hostile altercations with the locals and attention from both the law and Rice’s employers. Partnering with his predecessor, a scientist who hopes to continue her research on the preserve, Rice puts into motion a plan that could expose the poachers but risks revealing his own whereabouts to the dangerous people he was running from in the first place.
James McLaughlin expertly brings the beauty and danger of Appalachia to life. The result is an elemental, slow burn of a novel – one that will haunt you long after you hear the final words.
Afterimage by J. Kowallis
Narrated by Brenda Scott Wlazlo
Reggie’s dreams… aren’t dreams.
Visions of the future flood her mind like shards of broken puzzles. Caged in her cell, every morning begins the same. She’s drugged, tortured, and images are torn from her memory by Public One.
Until the morning everything changes. The vision is different. The future’s never been about her, and now she knows they’re coming for her: Nomads.
How will she convince them to keep her alive when Nate, their leader, doesn’t like or even trust her? To him, she’s a science experiment. A machine.
When Public One will do anything to keep her, Reggie must make a decision: remain a slave to her past, or risk her future to venture into a world more terrifying than she’s ever known.
- Snapped (Agent Jade Monroe #1) by C. M. Sutter (Narrated by Meghan Kelly) - March 21, 2023
- Dungeon World Drifters (System Apocalypse – Relentless #2) by Craig Hamilton & Tao Wong (Narrated by Shamaan Casey) - March 19, 2023
- New and Notable Audiobook Releases for the Week of March 18th on Brian’s Book Blog - March 18, 2023
