Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Audiobooks Post for the Week of November 2nd.
Comment below on any I missed or what you’re excited about!
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Authority by A. K. Meek
Narrated by Ray Porter
Aethon Books
The aliens came. We won, but billions died. Now, it’s time to rebuild.
The neons do as they’re told. Chemically bound to their masters by the experimental chemi-chip implant created from alien technology, they are genetically engineered at rapid rates to be servants for the survivors of the war against alien invaders. Without neons, reconstruction would be impossible.
Colin Hanston – the unremarkable son of the genius who invented the chemi-chip – leads a simple life as a farmer, helping feed his district as any good citizen should. But when he redeems his voucher for a neon servant of his own named Michael, everything changes. His father’s old friend-turned-rebel shows up, and Colin learns that not everyone believes the neons are a simple commodity used by the Authority to fix the world and help prepare in case the aliens return.
Knowing he could be killed just for talking to the rebels, Colin will have to decide for himself whether his father’s work is truly a benefit to humanity as his leaders claim, or a perversion.
Is the truth worth destroying his father’s legacy and putting his family in danger? Is it worth dying for?
Don’t miss this dystopian sci-fi thriller, perfect for fans of Hugh Howey, Jasper T Scott, and Paul Antony Jones.
Shadow Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff
Narrated by R. C. Bray, Rinelle Harkin, Casey Turner, Meghan Kelly
Huntress Productions
For thousands of years, women have been prey. This time, the predators lose.
Book six of the award-winning series now available!
Does fate connect us?
Mass killer Cara Lindstrom is in the wind after a deadly encounter which leaves FBI Special Agent Antara Singh questioning her own sanity and fitness to serve. ASAC Matthew Roarke exiles Singh to Portland to work as an assistant to his old mentor, retiring profiler Chuck Snyder – but a mysterious break-in alerts Singh and Snyder to an active threat revolving around an old case: a series of brutal murders of homeless teenagers on the streets of Portland and Seattle.
Singh and Snyder must go on the road and deep into Roarke and Cara’s pasts to discover a pattern of destiny and interconnection that holds the key to unsolved child murders, past and present.
The Huntress series takes place over six months in the present and in multiple timelines in the past. Shadow Moon is a culmination of those characters and story lines, and it is strongly recommended that the series be heard in order:
Huntress Moon
Blood Moon
Cold Moon
Bitter Moon
Hunger Moon
Shadow Moon
Sigil Online: Bastions by Jeff Sproul
Narrated by Jeff Hays
Jeff Sproul
What if the death of one game meant the death of all? A terrible entity has consumed the game known as Mage World Online. But now that all virtual online worlds are connected, this monstrous hive-mind turns its sights to other games. It will take every power and friend that Riley can recruit to defeat this new, insurmountable menace. Because if he can’t stop it in Sigil Online, it will consume everything in its path.
The Soundbooth Theater team for this production:
Jeff Hays – Narration, sound design
Bonnie Price – Proofing
Nicholas Shoup – Editing and Mastering
Ahmed Mahmoud – Music
Warning: Listening to this novel may cause an uncontrollable desire to play Superhero MMOs.
Bastions is the finale to the Sigil Online trilogy.
The Vault by Mark Dawson
Narrated by Atilla Akinci, Laila Alj Philip Arditti, Kieran Brown, Ben Cartwright, Stephen Critchlow, Vera Filatova, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Gerran Howell, David Menkin, Colin Morgan, Harry Myers, Erich Redman, Mac Keith Roach, Lizzie-Aaryn Stanton, David Thorpe
Audible, Ltd
West Berlin, 1986.
The Cold War has not yet thawed, political tensions inspire bloody retribution and trust is a rare commodity – even amongst allies.
Harry Mackintosh is the head of MI6’s Berlin Station. When four of his best field agents are murdered by the Stasi during a failed defection operation, he has no choice but to respond. East German intelligence has become increasingly ruthless. MI6 has been overrun. Mackintosh knows that he won’t be able to fight back, unless he’s provided with a new kind of operative.
London.
Belfast-born Jimmy Walker is a career criminal, desperate to leave the world of organised crime behind. He’s made just enough money to think about going straight. He wants to be a family man. He wants to stay alive for his wife and son. He wants to be the man they deserve.
He reluctantly agrees to one final job with the intention that it will be his last.
Little does Jimmy know that he’s been set-up. The sins of his past are about to catch up with him.
Framed, arrested and imprisoned, Jimmy is about to become a pawn in the politics, corruption and underground conflicts of Europe. Mackintosh appears in Jimmy’s Scotland Yard cell and makes him an offer. Go to Berlin to serve Queen and Country and he will be pardoned. The alternative? A life behind bars. Jimmy has no choice but to accept. He infiltrates East Berlin and, operating under cover as an arms buyer for the IRA, he works his way to the heart of the Stasi machine until he locates the defector. But all is not as it seems. Mackintosh has an ulterior motive. So does Jimmy. Neither man can trust the other and, as their objectives clash, it looks as if only one of them is going to get out alive.
Set in divided Berlin at a pivotal moment in history, and soaked in ’80s nostalgia, The Vault is a thrilling adventure set in Mark Dawson’s million-selling Group Fifteen world.
Featuring: Atilla Akinci, Laila Alj Philip Arditti, Kieran Brown, Ben Cartwright, Stephen Critchlow, Vera Filatova, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Gerran Howell, David Menkin, Colin Morgan, Harry Myers, Erich Redman, Mac Keith Roach, Lizzie-Aaryn Stanton and David Thorpe.
The 13th Continuum by Jennifer Brody
Narrated by Natalie Duke
Dreamscape Media, LLC
One thousand years after a cataclysmic event leaves humanity on the brink of extinction, the descendants of the chosen survivors take refuge in 13 contingency shelters buried deep underground, at the bottom of the ocean, and in the far reaches of outer space. In the underwater 13th Continuum, 16-year-old Myra Jackson has heard rumors and whisperings all her life of a magical place called The Surface” where people could breathe fresh air, feel the warmth of something called sunlight on their skin, and see things known as stars and trees and mountains.
Myra has never dared to ask whether the stories are true – since the very act of speaking such words aloud is an offense punishable by death. But after she discovers that the air supply aboard her underwater colony is running out, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to find this mysterious place. To get there, she must first recover the only guide to the Surface – the Beacon, an ancient device that also connects her to Captain Aero Wright, a dashing young soldier from one of the only remaining space colonies. With the fate of all humankind depending on them, Myra and Aero must escape the tyrannical forces that rule their colonies, journey through the black depths of the ocean and across the cold void of space, and find each other on the Surface that their ancestors once called home.
An Equal Justice by Chad Zunker
Narrated by Christopher Ryan Grant
Brilliance Audio
Inside a prestigious law firm, a rookie lawyer is pulled into a dark maze of lies and violence.
An ambitious Stanford graduate, David Adams has begun a fast-track career at Austin’s most prestigious law firm. It’s a personal victory for the rising superstar – a satisfying reversal from his impoverished and despairing childhood. Now he has the life he’s always wanted: an extravagant salary, a high-rise condo, a luxury SUV, and no limit to how far he can go in the eyes of the top partners.
But after the shocking suicide of a fellow associate – one who, in his final hours, offered David an ominous warning – he feels the pull of powerful forces behind the corporation’s enviable trappings. The suicide leads unexpectedly to David’s discovery of a secret enclave of the city’s homeless, where he can’t help but feel an affinity to these outcast souls. Nor can he ignore the feeling that they hold the key to the truth behind a dark conspiracy.
When one of his new street friends is murdered, David’s clear doubts about his employer start shifting into a dark reality. Now torn between two worlds, David must surrender all that he’s achieved to fight for a larger cause of justice – and become his firm’s most dangerous acquisition.
The Last Dance by Martin L. Shoemaker
Narrated by full cast
Brilliance Publishing
At the heart of a mystery unfolding in space, the opposing forces make a treacherous journey between Earth and Mars.
In space, mutiny means death – that’s why Inspector General Park Yerim is taking her investigation so seriously. The alleged mutineer is Captain Nicolau Aames, whose command of the massive Earth-Mars vessel Aldrin has come under fire. The vast System Initiative says he disobeyed orders, but his crew swears he’s in the right.
En route to Mars, Park gathers testimony from the Aldrin’s diverse crew, painting a complex picture of Aames’s character: his heroism, his failures, even his personal passions. As the investigation unfolds, Park finds herself in the thrall of powerful interests, each pushing and pulling her in a fiery cosmic dance.
Corruption, conflicting loyalties, and clashing accounts make it nearly impossible to see the truth in fifty million miles of darkness, and Park faces danger from every direction. All eyes are on her: one way or another, her findings will have astronomical implications for the Aldrin and the future of space travel.
The full list of narrators includes Natalie Naudus, Whitney Dykhouse, Rebecca Mozo, Christopher Lane, Donna Postel, Leon Nixon, Ron Butler, and Joyce Bean.
Raising Prosperity by David F. Berens, Cherie Mitchell
Narrated by Camilia Lalani
A dead bubblegum heiress, a handful of unrelated clues, and a small island community where everyone is a suspect until they’re not….
Prosperity Spartanburg is gaining confidence in her new role as forensic pathologist for Martha’s Vineyard Police Department. Her associate Reuben Jackson certainly makes her job easier and a whole lot more enjoyable.
As the chaos of clues surrounding Ophelia Rump’s untimely death slowly start to make sense, Prosperity and Reuben get ever closer to finding her killer.
However, everything isn’t what it seems in Martha’s Vineyard and there’s more to this story than first meets the eye. As Prosperity’s mama always used to say, “you never know what you’re going to find until you unzip the sealed tab.”
If you like your suspenseful mystery with a little zany fun and a touch of romantic tension, you will love The Prosperity Spartanburg Files. Fans of Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, and J. D. Robb are sure to grow to love this series.
Grab yours today!
Your Perfect Year by Charlotte Lucas
Narrated by Carly Robins, P. J. Ochlan
Brilliance Publishing
A man consumed by a meaningless life is going to do something he’s never considered doing before. He’s going to enjoy the day…
For hyper-particular publishing heir Jonathan Grief, the day starts like any other – with a strict morning fitness regimen that’ll keep his divorced, easily irritated, cynical, forty-two-year-old self in absolutely flawless physical condition. But all it takes to put a crimp in his routine is one small annoyance. Someone has left a leather-bound day planner with the handwritten title Your Perfect Year in his spot on his mountain bike at his fitness course!
Determined to discover its owner, Jonathan opens the calendar to find that someone known only as “H.” has filled it in with suggestions, tasks, and affirmative actions for each day. The more he devotes himself to locating the elusive H., the deeper Jonathan is drawn into someone else’s rich and generous narrative – and into an attitude adjustment he desperately needs.
He may have ended up with a perfect year by accident, but it seems fate has set Jonathan on a path toward healing, feeling, and maybe even loving again…if only he can meet the stranger who’s changing his life one day at a time.
Gravemaidens by Kelly Coon
Narrated by Bahni Turpin
Listening Library
The start of a fierce fantasy duology about three maidens who are chosen for their land’s greatest honor…and one girl determined to save her sister from the grave.
In the walled city-state of Alu, Kammani wants nothing more than to become the accomplished healer her father used to be before her family was cast out of their privileged life in shame.
When Alu’s ruler falls deathly ill, Kammani’s beautiful little sister, Nanaea, is chosen as one of three sacred maidens to join him in the afterlife. It’s an honor. A tradition. And Nanaea believes it is her chance to live an even grander life than the one that was stolen from her.
But Kammani sees the selection for what it really is – a death sentence.
Desperate to save her sister, Kammani schemes her way into the palace to heal the ruler. There she discovers more danger lurking in the sand-stone corridors than she could have ever imagined and that her own life – and heart – are at stake. But Kammani will stop at nothing to dig up the palace’s buried secrets even if it means sacrificing everything…including herself.
“A dark and utterly enthralling journey to an ancient land, Gravemaidens grabs you by your beating heart and refuses to let go until the bitter, breathtaking end.” (Sarah Glenn Marsh, author of the Reign of the Fallen series)
Deception by Teri Terry
Narrated by Kathryn Drysdale, Laura Aikman, Dominic Thorburn
Recorded Books
The second book in the spine-tingling Dark Matter trilogy. Finding the cause of a deadly epidemic and a cure has never been more urgent – or uncertain.
Shay, one of the rare survivors of the epidemic sweeping the UK, has surrendered herself to the Army because she believes she’s a carrier of the deadly disease. Along with other survivors, she unwillingly becomes a test subject in an effort to find a cure. When the lab where she’s being held is attacked, Shay and a few others escape – with the help of Dr. Alex Cross, Kai’s hated stepfather and Callie’s father. Alex is the leader of the cult-like group Multiverse. Their agenda is murky, but genetic engineering might be one of their goals.
Meanwhile, a heartbroken Kai is determined to find Shay. He’s discovered survivors aren’t carriers, and Shay sacrificed herself for nothing. Teaming up with other survivors who are being hunted, Kai races to rescue Shay before it’s too late. His sister, Callie, the true carrier of the epidemic, continues to hide her secret, and a wave of infection follows in her wake as she travels across the country.
As mysteries deepen, the teens must decide whom to trust, and their friendships are tested. Is Callie who she says she is? Should Shay trust the man her mother ran away from – a man Kai hates? Will Kai ever forgive Shay for her betrayal?
“Authority” sounds right up my alley — I love me some ethical quandary SF!