Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Audiobooks Post for the Week of March 6th.
Comment below on any I missed or what you’re excited about!
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Infinite by Brian Freeman
Narrated by Andrew Eiden
Brilliance Publishing
From bestselling author Brian Freeman comes an explosive new psychological thriller that pushes the limits of reality as we know it.
One rainy night, the unthinkable happens: Dylan Moran’s car plunges off the road into a raging river, his beautiful wife drowning as he struggles to shore.
In the aftermath, through his grief, Dylan experiences sudden, strange visions: wherever he goes, he’s haunted by glimpses of himself. Dylan initially chalks it up to trauma, but that changes when he runs into a psychiatrist who claims he’s her patient. She says he has been undergoing a unique hypnotherapy treatment built on the idea that with every choice, he creates an infinite number of parallel universes.
Now those parallel universes are unlocked–and Dylan’s doppelgänger has staked a claim to his world. Can Dylan use these alternate realities to get a second chance at the life that was stolen from him? Or will he lose himself…to himself?
Forget Me Not by Alexandra Oliva
Narrated by Kirsten Potter
Random House Audio
She was born for all the wrong reasons. But her search for the truth reveals answers she wishes she could forget in this suspenseful and deeply moving near-future thriller from the author of The Last One.
“In Alexandra Oliva’s timely, compelling novel nothing is as it seems, which keeps the pages flying.” (Laurie Frankel, New York Times best-selling author of This Is How It Always Is)
What if your past wasn’t what you thought?
As a child, Linda Russell was left to raise herself in a 20-acre walled-off property in rural Washington. The woods were her home, and for 12 years she lived oblivious to a stark and terrible truth: Her mother had birthed her only to replace another daughter who died in a tragic accident years before.
Then one day Linda witnesses something she wasn’t meant to see. Terrified and alone, she climbs the wall and abandons her home, but her escape becomes a different kind of trap when she is thrust into the modern world – a world for which she is not only entirely unprepared, but which is unprepared to accept her.
And you couldn’t see a future for yourself?
Years later, Linda is living in bustling Seattle, but she has never felt more alone. With social media more ubiquitous than ever before, she is hounded by the society she is now forced to inhabit. When Linda meets a fascinating new neighbor who might just be a potential friend, and who shows her the possibility of a new escape through virtual reality, she begins to allow herself to hope for more by being sucked into a world that feels safe, but isn’t real.
What would it take to reclaim your life?
Then an unexplained fire at her infamous childhood home jolts Linda back to reality. She must return to the property for the first time since she was a girl, unleashing a chain of events that will not only endanger her life but challenge her understanding of family, memory, and the world itself.
Harbinger by Olan Thorensen
Narrated by Jonathan Davis
Podium Audio
Unconnected lives intersect in a bleak setting. Nothing will ever be the same.
Harbinger (def.): Something that foreshadows or initiates a major change.
Humanity lurches into an uncertain future, dismissive of warning signs. Only the most naïve believe humanity will step back from the brink. Yet in a place that doesn’t exist, a riddle, a puzzle, hope, fear, danger, salvation – all come together.
Zach Marjek has faced death in the far corners of the Earth and survived where others have failed. Now, he’s thrust into an unimaginable situation where jaded mercenaries, an Inuit wanderer, a murderous Yupik, a young mother, a video game designer, a retired general, a new president, a Chinese marine, and mathematics prodigies must come together. Their lives and fates intertwine to revolve around a mystery with consequences that could range from disaster to salvation.
As the mystery unravels, a danger unbeknownst to the players lurks and prepares to take what cannot be taken. The future – and life – hang by the thinnest of threads.
New Arcadia: Stage One by Eric Jason Martin
Narrated by Eric Jason Martin, Matthew Mercer, Erika Ishii, Dave Fennoy, Sam Riegel, Dana Snyder, Andy Merrill, John DiMaggio
Sound Off Productions
New Arcadia: Stage One is an epic journey back to the year 199X, an ancient era where you must use your fists, your wits, and your pager to survive.
In real life, the year is 2023, and life is not great. John Chambers is a middle-aged man in a dead-end job, trapped in his home in the desert. But in the immersive virtual world of New Arcadia, John becomes Blaze, a young urban fighter in a retro beat-‘em-up city. Blaze has incredible speed and strength and absolutely zero lower back pain.
John/Blaze must team up with Kevin (a.k.a. Iceman) to save a mysterious woman named Jessica from the Spankers, a violent street gang in their gritty new neighborhood of Satan’s Pantry. But Jessica is not nearly as helpless as they believe. These loners must learn to come together and stop the deadly Drug X from taking over their city.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, New Arcadia creator Lucas Dekker battles enemies of his own – including game-breaking bugs. The fate of his virtual city – and the real world itself – is at stake.
Strap on your fanny pack, and get ready for the fight of your life.
Starring:
Eric Jason Martin (Heads Will Roll, Bubble)
Matthew Mercer (Critical Role)
Dave Fennoy (The Walking Dead)
Erika Ishii (Cyberpunk 2077)
Sam Riegel (Critical Role)
Dana Snyder (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Andy Merrill (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast)
and John DiMaggio (Futurama, Gears of War)
With Marin Ireland, Scott Brick, Suzanne Elise Freeman, P.J. Ochlan, Tara Sands, Justin Michael, Betsy Sodaro, DC Pierson, Neil Hellegers, Johnny Heller, and Ron Butler.
New Arcadia Theme by Lloyd Cole
Original Soundtrack by Casey Trela
Post Production by Mumble Media
Dead Space by Kali Wallace
Narrated by Abby Craden
Penguin Audio
An investigator must solve a brutal murder on a claustrophobic space station in this tense science-fiction thriller from the author of Salvation Day.
Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She’s surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life – and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.
Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend’s death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester’s worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.
In Plain Sight by Edmund Okocha
Narrated by Steven Osarczuk
Edmund Okocha
Meet Ebenezer Cosmen. He’s a computer programmer and a writer – a middle-of-the-road man with conventional needs and a relaxed attitude towards worldly things. He lives alone with a small cohort of trusted comrades. He wrote a fictional novel about a serial killer that was later imitated by an actual killer. Obviously, he became a little less middle-of-the-road after that. With a bit of luck, the media caught wind of the story, and it ignited a morbid fascination in people. This recognition propelled his book sales to heights he never imagined. He enjoyed the success for over a decade until the killer was captured.
Fans of the fiction labeled Ebenezer as a one-hit-wonder; unknowingly, they dared him to repeat his success. Ebenezer struggled for a while until the oddest-looking pair of FBI agents visited him on an unsuspecting Saturday morning. With an offer to be a consultant for the FBI, Ebenezer would be tracking a new killer with a similar ilk as his creation, but this time, the killer preferred a more famous prey. Now, Ebenezer is burdened with information, two women too beautiful to resist, and colleagues with atypical demeanor. The case will take him in circles until he goes back to where it all started. He will soon discover that there is nowhere left for him to hide…and no one left to trust. Only at his most vulnerable moment will he unfurl the truth that lay in plain sight the entire time.
In the Quick by Kate Hope Day
Narrated by Rebecca Lowman
Random House Audio
A young, ambitious female astronaut’s life is upended by a love affair that threatens the rescue of a lost crew in this brilliantly imagined novel “with echoes of Station Eleven, The Martian, and, yes, Jane Eyre” (Observer).
“The female astronaut novel we never knew we needed.” (Entertainment Weekly) (Must-listen books coming out in March)
June is a brilliant but difficult girl with a gift for mechanical invention who leaves home to begin grueling astronaut training at the National Space Program. Younger by two years than her classmates at Peter Reed, the school on campus named for her uncle, she flourishes in her classes but struggles to make friends and find true intellectual peers. Six years later, she has gained a coveted post as an engineer on a space station – and a hard-won sense of belonging – but is haunted by the mystery of Inquiry, a revolutionary spacecraft powered by her beloved late uncle’s fuel cells. The spacecraft went missing when June was twelve years old, and while the rest of the world seems to have forgotten the crew, June alone has evidence that makes her believe they are still alive.
She seeks out James, her uncle’s former protégé, also brilliant, also difficult, who has been trying to discover why Inquiry’s fuel cells failed. James and June forge an intense intellectual bond that becomes an electric attraction. But the relationship that develops between them as they work to solve the fuel cell’s fatal flaw threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to create – and any chance of bringing the Inquiry crew home alive.
A propulsive narrative of one woman’s persistence and journey to self-discovery, In the Quick is an exploration of the strengths and limits of human ability in the face of hardship, and the costs of human ingenuity.
The Present by Jay Martel
Narrated by Fred Berman
Audible Originals
Adam Diehl is an 11-year-old in crisis. He knows his parents are going to split up—today—and he’d do anything in his power to stop them. If only he could turn back time….
As it turns out, he can.
What his parents don’t know—what his sister and brother would never suspect—is that Adam is a genius, and the computer he stares at all day has opened a gateway to knowledge beyond our comprehension.
But not Adam’s.
Now, he has a plan. He’s going to repeat this day over and over until he finds the version of it that ends with his parents staying together. But he can’t keep resetting the day forever.
Because the laws of time are strict, and they’re starting to push back.
I Think I Love You by Auriane Desombre
Narrated by Emma Galvin, Brittany Pressley
Listening Library
A YA contemporary rom com about two girls who start as rivals but after a twist of events, end up falling for one another – at least they think so. A pitch perfect queer romance – and it’s an original!
Arch-nemeses Emma, a die-hard romantic, and more-practical minded Sophia find themselves competing against one another for a coveted first-prize trip to a film festival in Los Angeles…what happens if their rivalry turns into a romance?
For fans of Becky Albertalli’s Leah on the Offbeat, full of laugh-out-loud humor and make-your-heart-melt moments.
Underlined is a line of totally addictive romance, thriller, and horror original titles coming to you fast and furious each month. Enjoy everything you want to hear the way you want to hear it.
You Again by Aurora Rey
Narrated by Keira Grace
Bold Strokes Books Inc
Sometimes, a second chance comes when you least expect it.
Kate Cormier thought she’d love Sutton Guidry forever. But when one bad decision ended things, she moved on, building a life for herself and her daughter. These days, she hardly thinks about all those dreams. Until Sutton shows up, acting like she never left and looking more gorgeous than ever.
Sutton has spent a decade avoiding her hometown, memories of first love, and the girl who broke her heart. She’s built a career, but the life that goes with it leaves her uninspired. When her father needs surgery, she decides coming home to help him recover is a chance to face those ghosts, once and for all. But with so many pieces of her life still there – including Kate – it’s hard not to imagine trying again. Can she find a way to put them together without falling apart all over again?
Paintslinger by Jeremy K. Hardin
Narrated by Kate Poels
Self Published
In the future, science and magic are indistinguishable.
Jack isn’t reliving the days of the lost Sixteen Court. She’s a rogue traveller now, letting old truths die. Until one day when she gets word of a treasure from her past. As she works with a hired gun and a warrior spider, something goes very wrong with her paints, something that should be impossible.
Jack could quit. The court is gone, after all. But when one of the canines offers her a familiar piece of her past, she is pulled into a conflict she hoped never to face.
Join Jack as she explores time, ruined realities and simulated worlds, working with sentient ship avatars, evolved canines, felines, horses, and duelling a former student turned bard, in a story that proves adventure is not bound by biology.
Listen to Paintslinger today.
Angel Born by Brian K. Fuller
Narrated by R.C. Bray
Podium Audio
When you kick evil to the curb, it kicks you back.
What peace Helo had hoped for by defeating King on the Tempest is short-lived. Evil doesn’t go quietly, and it’s always hungry for revenge.
After his parents are murdered, Helo rejoins the Ash Angel Organization ready to hunt creatures of evil and obliterate the six remaining Dread Loremasters. But terrifying portents from Tela Mirren’s dreams and dire warnings from Aclima hint that crossing darkness incurs a terrible price, and Helo will be the one who pays.
The Wedding Game by Meghan Quinn
Narrated by Lauren Sweet, Tor Thom
Brilliance Publishing
USA Today best-selling author Meghan Quinn’s latest bauble is the charming story of a crafting queen battling a jaded divorce lawyer on a wedding reality show.
Luna Rossi is a veritable crafting genius — she can bedazzle and bead so hard her Etsy site is one of the hottest in the world. So it’s only natural that Luna would convince her brother and his husband-to-be to compete on The Wedding Game, a “do-it-yourself” TV show, for the title of Top DIY Wedding Expert.
As a jaded divorce lawyer, Alec Baxter scoffs at weddings and romance. But when his recently engaged brother begs him to participate in The Wedding Game, Alec grudgingly picks up a glue gun and prepares for some family bonding.
Both fierce competitors, Luna and Alec clash on national TV as harsh words and glitter fly with abandon. But as they bicker over color swatches and mood boards, they find themselves fighting something else: their growing mutual attraction. While Luna is torn between family loyalty and her own feelings, Alec wonders if he might have been wrong about love and marriage all along….
Love in Lockdown by Chloe James
Narrated by Sid Sagar, Harrie Dobby
HarperCollins Publishers Limited
A joyful love story set against the backdrop of lockdown – perfect for fans of The Flatshare.
Do you believe in love before first sight?
Lockdown is putting Sophia’s life on pause – just as she planned to put herself out there and meet someone. When the first clap for the keyworkers rings out around her courtyard, she’s moved to tears for all kinds of reasons.
Jack is used to living life to the fullest. He’s going stir-crazy after just days isolating. Until the night he hears a woman crying from the balcony under his. He strikes up a conversation with the stranger and puts a smile on her face.
Soon their balcony meetings are the highlight of Jack and Sophia’s days. But even as they grow closer together, they’re always kept apart.
Can they fall in love during a lockdown?
The Fossil by Greig Beck
Narrated by Danny Montooth
Severed Press
Klaus and Doris have just made the discovery of their lives – a complete Neanderthal skeleton buried in a newly opened sinkhole. But on removing it, something else tumbles free. Something that switches on, and then calls home.
Soon the owners are coming back, and nothing will stop their ruthless search for their lost prize.
Gruesome corpses begin to pile up, and Detective Ed Heisner of the Berlin Police is assigned to a case like nothing he has ever experienced before in his life. Heisner must stay one step ahead of a group of secretive Special Forces soldiers also tracking the strange device, while trying to find an unearthly group of killers that are torturing, burning, and obliterating their victims all the way across the city.
The Fossil is a time jumping detective novella, where humans soon find that time can be the greatest weapon of all.
The Power of Three by JC Ryan
Narrated by Gary Bennett
Self Published
On a mission to Afghanistan to gather information about the opium trade, Rex Dalton stumbles across spine-chilling deceit and corruption reaching the highest hallways of power in Afghanistan, America, and Europe.
His requests to his superiors to wipe out the drug stores, labs, and drug lords, fall on deaf ears.
With no time to waste, and US politicians failing to act, Rex takes matters into his own hands and stirs up a hornet’s nest. One so deadly, even Rex, one of the world’s most lethal assassins, might not survive.
Venomous by Wes Lowe
Narrated by Wes Lowe
Self Published
Indiana Jones meets Bruce Lee in this adrenaline-pumping action thriller
Noah Reid is now the president of a charity that assists at-risk youth, funded with the billions that was ripped off from a brutal Triad Leader.
To get the family fortune back, the criminal overlord’s son will do anything and use anyone from his arsenal of snakes to his own hired guns to Noah’s inner circle.
He launches attacks via land, sea, and air when Noah brings his dying mentor on a final pilgrimage to the mystical Chinese monastery, where the aged master learned Shaolin martial arts.
Wes Lowe is an award-winning writer and filmmaker based in Vancouver, BC.
When We Were Hackers by Byron A. Aris
Narrated by Robert J. Townsend
Self Published
Pete thought his life was made. A college student with an uncanny ability to hack into almost any system, he and his group of select friends begin to stretch their reach. It started with hacking the school’s database to change grades for some of the football players and then grew to anything they desired or coveted. Soon, others started coming to them with requests. Unable to handle the mounting pressure, the group moves off campus and away from prying eyes.
Everything was running smoothly until a notorious Chinese gang contacts Pete and offers to assist them in their endeavors for a small favor in return. They were to conduct a two-million-dollar hack.
The plan goes off without a hitch, until a member of the group becomes greedy, and gets caught by Agent Griffith of the FBI’s Cyber Security Division. Forced to go on the run, not only from the FBI, but the Chinese gang, as well, these friends find the limits of their bond tested and strained. Agent Griffith edges closer with every move. Lurking in the background is a mysterious figure who has his own designs on Pete and the group.
A star will rise. Another will burn out. None of their lives will be the same once the dust clears.
When We Were Hackers is a tale of love, greed, and betrayal. It is a debut novel by author Byron A. Aris.
- 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
