Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Post for the Week of March 23rd, 2019.
We share the books released this week that caught our eye featuring Post-Apocalyptic, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thrillers, and more.
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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Resurgence by AJ Sikes
Narrated by Bronson Pinchot
Some threats hide in plain sight….
Two years have passed since Jed Welch escaped the ruins of New York City. The monsters have begun vanishing from parts of the world, and rebuilding efforts are underway. Isolated communities and their militias are starting over, slowly reclaiming cities and countryside alike.
Now a sergeant, Jed leads a squad providing security on Galveston Island, as they await the arrival of the first refugee ships. When a saboteur’s bomb threatens everything, Jed and his people find themselves cut off from support and communication. With nothing but the gear they carry to help them survive, the squad hunts the saboteur across the Southern Texas landscape and discovers the truth behind the Variants’ disappearance.
The Liar by Bobby Adair
Narrated by Ray Porter
When the words give way to violence, the unthinkable happens.
A bomb explodes in a small mountain town. Was it a terrorist acting alone or the beginning of something much more frightening?
Tommy Joss is working long hours, making a life for his daughter and wife. He doesn’t have time to worry about politics and the endless arguments pouring across his social media feed. He has debts to pay and a boss to keep happy.
When he returns from a business trip to find his house dark and empty, he discovers blood on the floor and a cryptic message painted on the door.
His wife and daughter are missing. Kidnapped, dead, or disappeared for their political views, he doesn’t know which. But his search to find them will turn deadly for their captors and will put Tommy in the middle of a war he never had any interest in fighting.
Girls with Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young
Narrated by Caitlin Davies
Westworld meets The Handmaid’s Tale in this start to a thrilling, subversive near-future series from New York Times best-selling author Suzanne Young about a girls-only private high school that is far more than it appears to be.
Some of the prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns.
The girls of Innovations Academy are beautiful and well-behaved – it says so on their report cards. Under the watchful gaze of their guardian, they receive a well-rounded education that promises to make them better. Obedient girls, free from arrogance or defiance. Free from troublesome opinions or individual interests.
But the girls’ carefully controlled existence may not be quite as it appears. As Mena and her friends uncover the dark secrets of what’s actually happening there – and who they really are – the girls of Innovations Academy will learn to fight back.
Bringing the trademark plot twists and high-octane drama that made Program a best-selling and award-winning series, Suzanne Young launches a new series that confronts some of today’s most pressing ethical questions.
RED Hotel by Gary Grossman, Ed Fuller
Narrated by P. J. Ochlan
When a bomb rips the façade off the Kensington Hotel in Tokyo, dozens are killed and injured while one man walks calmly away from the wreckage, a coy smile playing on his lips. Former Army intelligence officer Dan Reilly, now an international hotel executive with high level access to the CIA, makes it his mission to track him down. He begins a jet-setting search for answers as the clock ticks down to a climactic event that threatens NATO and the very security of member nations. Reilly begins mining old contacts and resources in an effort to delve deeper into the motive behind these attacks, and fast.
Through his connections he learns that the Tokyo bomber is not acting alone. But the organization behind the perpetrator is not who they expect. Facilitated by the official government from a fearsome global superpower, the implications and reasons for these attacks are well beyond anything Reilly or his sources in the CIA and State Department could have imagined, and point not to random acts of terror, but calculated acts of war.
RED Hotel is an incredibly timely globe-trotting thriller that’s fiction on the edge of reality.
The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
Narrated by Cara Gee, Jackie Sanders
From the Hugo Award-winning author of The Stars Are Legion comes a brand-new science-fiction thriller about a futuristic war during which soldiers are broken down into light in order to get them to the front lines on Mars.
They said the war would turn us into light. I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world.
The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back…different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief – no matter what actually happens during combat.
Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on.
Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero – or maybe a villain; in war, it’s hard to tell the difference.
A worthy successor to classic stories like Downbelow Station, Starship Troopers, and The Forever War, The Light Brigade is award-winning author Kameron Hurley’s gritty time-bending take on the future of war.
Winter Dark by Alex Callister
Narrated by Ell Potter
When you buy murder online, who is there to stop you?
GCHQ agent Winter has just 14 days to bring down the website of a formidable criminal organisation before a teenager is tortured to death in front of an online audience of millions. Going deep under cover disguised as the paid assassin Snow White, Winter must infiltrate the inner circle of the extraordinarily powerful man at the heart of the dark web. This is a gripping, fast-paced ride through a disturbingly plausible technological future in which Callister’s protagonist must battle to bring down the terrifying crimes tearing through society.
About Winter
Master hacker, highly intelligent, combat trained: Winter is a very modern spy. Worlds apart from the straitlaced characters created in the minds of Ian Fleming and John le Carré , Alex Callister’s lead protagonist wouldn’t dream of playing the part of the impeccable agent. However, despite her intimidating skillset, Winter is delightfully human and often prone to prioritizing her libido over her employer. Undeniably sexy and exceptionally accomplished, Winter is a true 21st-century heroine.
About the Author
Alex Callister is the pseudonym of an industry expert on media, telecoms and internet stocks. She studied history at Oxford and the British School at Rome and was set for a career in academia until the beginning of the tech boom woke a lifelong interest in internet shares. Alex has spent her career visiting high security web hosting sites and speculating on what might go wrong. Winter Dark is her debut novel and the first in the Winter series.
Please note: This audiobook contains graphic adult content.
Off Planet by Aileen Erin
Narrated by Frankie Corzo
From USA Today best-selling author Aileen Erin
In an all-too-plausible future where corporate conglomerates have left the world’s governments in shambles, anyone with means has left the polluted Earth for the promise of a better life on a SpaceTech-owned colony among the stars.
Maité Martinez is the daughter of an Earther Latina and a powerful Aunare man, an alien race that SpaceTech sees as a threat to their dominion. When tensions turn violent, Maité finds herself trapped on Earth and forced into hiding.
For over 10 years, Maité has stayed hidden, but every minute Maité stays on Earth is one closer to getting caught. She’s lived on the streets. Gone hungry. And found a way to fight through it all. But one night, while waitressing in a greasy diner, a customer gets handsy with her. She reacts without thinking.
Covered in blood, Maité runs, but it’s not long before SpaceTech finds her….
Arrested and forced into dangerous work detail on a volcano planet, Maité waits for SpaceTech to make their move against the Aunare. She knows that if she can’t somehow find a way to stop them, there will be an interstellar war big enough to end all life in the universe.
There’s only one question: Can Maité prevent the total annihilation of humanity without getting herself killed in the process?
Internment by Samira Ahmed
Narrated by Soneela Nankani
Rebellions are built on hope.
Set in a horrifying near-future United States, 17-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are forced into an internment camp for Muslim American citizens.
With the help of newly made friends also trapped within the internment camp, her boyfriend on the outside, and an unexpected alliance, Layla begins a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against the internment camp’s director and his guards.
Heart-racing and emotional, Internment challenges listeners to fight complicit silence that exists in our society today.
“A riveting and cautionary tale. Internment urges us to speak up and speak out, to ask questions and demand answers, and when those answers prove unsatisfactory, to resist.” (Stacey Lee, award-winning author of Outrun the Moon)
Inspection by Josh Malerman
Narrated by Michael Crouch, Brittany Pressley
Boys are being trained at one school for geniuses, girls at another. Neither knows the other exists – until now. The New York Times best-selling author of Bird Box invites you into a world of secrets and chills in a coming-of-age story like no other.
“Josh Malerman is a master at unsettling you – and keeping you off-balance until the last page is turned.” (Chuck Wendig, New York Times best-selling author of Blackbirds)
J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world.
J is one of only 26 students, all of whom think of the school’s enigmatic founder as their father. J’s peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know – and all they are allowed to know.
But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he’s beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place? Why can the students never leave? And what secrets is their father hiding from them?
Meanwhile, on the other side of the forest, in a school very much like J’s, a girl named K is asking the same questions. J has never seen a girl, and K has never seen a boy. As K and J work to investigate the secrets of their two strange schools, they come to discover something even more mysterious: each other.
Advance praise for Inspection:
“Inspection proves that Josh Malerman is a master magician of narrative form. He’s distilled the zeitgeist of our terrible times into this dazzling chameleon of a story, part Grimm’s fairy tale of innocent youth, part dystopian gender politics, and authoritarianism run amok, with a satisfying Tarantino-esque ending.” (Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger)
“A twisted fairy tale set in a truly unique world that should not be spoiled, Josh Malerman’s Inspection reimagines the pillars of childhood in a smart, witty, and compulsively readable story of growth and rebellion. Read it and enjoy the discovery.” (Scott Hawkins, author of The Library at Mount Char)
“Engaging and suspenseful! Malerman creates a fiendish fairy tale of a world where boy was never meant to meet girl and the hell unleashed when they finally do.” (J. D. Barker, internationally best-selling author of The Fourth Monkey and Dracul)
The Municipalists by Seth Fried
Narrated by Robert Petkoff
A novel about an unlikely pair of lonely outsiders – one human, one AI – on an adventure to save the great American city of Metropolis written by “one of the most exciting new voices in fiction” (Charles Yu).
Named Library Journal’s “Debut of the Month” and one of NYLON’s “50 Books You’ll Want to Read in 2019”
In Metropolis, the gleaming city of tomorrow, the dream of the great American city has been achieved. But all that is about to change, unless a neurotic, rule-following bureaucrat and an irreverent, freewheeling artificial intelligence can save the city from a mysterious terrorist plot that threatens its very existence.
Henry Thompson has dedicated his life to improving America’s infrastructure as a proud employee of the United States Municipal Survey. So when the agency comes under attack, he dutifully accepts his unexpected mission to visit Metropolis looking for answers. But his plans to investigate quietly, quickly, and carefully are interrupted by his new partner: a day-drinking know-it-all named Owen, who also turns out to be the projected embodiment of the agency’s supercomputer.
Soon, Henry and Owen are fighting to save not only their own lives and those of the city’s millions of inhabitants, but also the soul of Metropolis. The Municipalists is a thrilling, funny, and touching adventure story, a tour de force of imagination that trenchantly explores our relationships to the cities around us and the technologies guiding us into the future.
Celtic Empire by Clive Cussler, Dirk Cussler
Narrated by Scott Brick
Clive Cussler, “The Grand Master of Adventure”, sends his intrepid heroes Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino on their wildest, boldest mission into the ancient world, unlocking extraordinary secrets and solving hideous crimes. Another fabulous story from the most beloved series from the number-one New York Times best-selling author.
The murders of a team of United Nations scientists in El Salvador…. A deadly collision in the waterways off the city of Detroit…. An attack by tomb raiders on an archaeological site along the banks of the Nile…. Is there a link between these violent events? The answer may lie in the tale of an Egyptian princess forced to flee the armies of her father 3,000 years ago.
During what was supposed to be a routine investigation in South America, NUMA Director Dirk Pitt finds himself embroiled in an international mystery, one that will lead him across the world and will threaten everyone and everything he knows – most importantly, his own family. Pitt travels to Scotland in search of answers about the spread of an unknown disease and the shadowy bioremediation company that may be behind it.
Meanwhile, his son and daughter face a threat of their own when the discoveries they have made in an Egyptian tomb put killers on their trail. These seemingly unrelated riddles come together in a stunning showdown on the rocky isles of Ireland, where only the Pitts can unravel the secrets of an ancient enigma that could change the very future of mankind.
- New and Notable Audiobook Releases for the Week of March 25th on Brian’s Book Blog - March 25, 2023
- Charm City by Monica McCallan (Narrated by Lori Prince) - March 24, 2023
- Snapped (Agent Jade Monroe #1) by C. M. Sutter (Narrated by Meghan Kelly) - March 21, 2023
Don’t forget, the new Expeditionary Force book by Craig Alanson comes out on Tuesday 🙂
Hey! That’ll most likely be in next weeks post! Thanks Elizabeth.