Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Post for the Week of October 6th. We share the 10 books from this week that caught our eye featuring Post-Apocalyptic, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thrillers, and more. Enjoy!
Comment below on any I missed or what you’re excited about!
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Speed the Dawn by Philip Donlay
Narrated by Rhett Samuel Price
Publisher Oceanview Publishing
In the style of Clive Cussler, best-selling author Philip Donlay climbs to a new height of terror in his eighth Donovan Nash thriller.
Hundreds of white-hot meteor fragments plunge toward earth near Monterey Bay, California. Huge fires ignite the tinder-dry landscape, and as the sun sets, the power grid collapses and the fires grow, illuminating a nightmare created in hell itself. Donovan Nash realizes he is trapped.
Injured and growing desperate, his options dwindling, Donovan fights to keep himself and a small band of survivors alive until dawn, when they can make one last attempt to escape the inferno.
Meanwhile, Donovan’s wife, Dr. Lauren McKenna, working with the Pentagon as well as the Forest Service, envisions a bold approach to stop the fire from spreading all the way to the Bay Area and the seven million residents living there. She’s terrified that, if not executed perfectly, her plan could cause the death of thousands of people – including Donovan.
The Reckoning: The Day Australia Fell by Keith McArdle
Narrated by Geoffrey Boyes
Publisher Keith McArdle
Australia has been invaded.
While the outnumbered Australian Defence Force fights on the ground, in the air, and at sea, this quickly becomes a war involving ordinary people.
Ben, an IT consultant, has never fought a day in his life. Will he survive? Grant, a security guard at Sydney’s International Airport, finds himself captured and living in the filth and squalor of one of the concentration camps dotted around Australia. Knowing death awaits him if he stays, he plans a daring escape.
This is a dark day in Australia’s history. This is terror, loneliness, starvation, and adrenaline all mixed together in a sour cocktail. This is the day Australia fell.
Street Freaks by Terry Brooks
Narrated by Simon Vance
Publisher Audible Studios
“Go into the Red Zone. Go to Street Freaks,” his father directs Ashton Collins before the vid feed goes suddenly silent. The Red Zone is the dangerous heart of mega-city Los Angeles; it is a world Ash is forbidden from and one he knows little about. But if he can find Street Freaks, the strangest of aid awaits – human and barely human alike. As Ash is hunted, he must unravel the mystery left behind by his father and discover his role in this new world.
The Mayflower Project: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller by Rashad Freeman
Narrated by Stephen Sanders
Publisher Rashad Freeman
“Cast your reckless dreams upon our Mayflower.”
The world is falling apart, and only Max Neilman knows why.
Max lives two lives. In one, he’s an unassuming climatologist for NOAA. In the other, he runs a secret government project that only a handful of people know exist. He’s been burning the candle at both ends for years, but now his paper life is about to come crumbling down with the rest of the world.
After a rough week of work, Max and his girlfriend Cindy, decide to burn off some steam and head out for a night in the city with two friends. Their little party turns into a cyclone of chaos when Max’s worst nightmares become reality.
As the group struggles to make it out of the crumbling city, Max reveals a secret that threatens to tear them apart. Mother nature is doing her best to kill them, but it’s the shadows and webs of lies that might spell their doom.
Take a step closer to the end of the world, and learn the secrets that lie within The Mayflower Project.
Four different stories, one terrible event…this is the Deconstruction series.
What Have You Done by Matthew Farrell
Narrated by Chris Andrew Ciulla
Publisher Brilliance Audio
Family is not what it seems in this raw, edgy thriller that New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline says “you won’t be able to put down.”
When a mutilated body is found hanging in a seedy motel in Philadelphia, forensics specialist Liam Dwyer assumes the crime scene will be business as usual. Instead, the victim turns out to be a woman he’d had an affair with before breaking it off to save his marriage. But there’s a bigger problem: Liam has no memory of where he was or what he did on the night of the murder.
Panicked, Liam turns to his brother, Sean, a homicide detective. Sean has his back, but incriminating evidence keeps piling up. From fingerprints to DNA, everything points to Liam, who must race against time and his department to uncover the truth – even if that truth is his own guilt. Yet as he digs deeper, dark secrets come to light, and Liam begins to suspect the killer might actually be Sean…
When the smoke clears in this harrowing family drama, who will be left standing?
Wraithworks by Frederick H. Crook
Narrated by John Lordan
Publisher Frederick H. Crook
Gary Wraithworth is a websleuth who covers missing-persons cases, cold murder cases, stories of the paranormal, and everything in between on his YouTube channel, Wraithworks.
At a convention, Gary and his wife, Tera, meet fellow YouTubers, and the Wraithworths agree to feature a series of murders and abductions all perpetrated by the same man. When the elusive assassin’s face is exposed all over the Internet, he makes the Wraithworths his next targets.
Gary and Tera must run for their lives in this thrilling tale of a bloodthirsty political assassin out to silence them.
Scribe by Alyson Hagy
Narrated by Shannon McManus
Publisher Brilliance Audio
A haunting, evocative tale about the power of storytelling
A brutal civil war has ravaged the country, and contagious fevers have decimated the population. Abandoned farmhouses litter the isolated mountain valleys and shady hollows. The economy has been reduced to barter and trade.
In this craggy, unwelcoming world, the central character of Scribe ekes out a lonely living on the family farmstead where she was raised and where her sister met an untimely end. She lets a migrant group known as the Uninvited set up temporary camps on her land, and maintains an uneasy peace with her cagey neighbors and the local enforcer. She has learned how to make paper and ink, and she has become known for her letter-writing skills, which she exchanges for tobacco, firewood, and other scarce resources. An unusual request for a letter from a man with hidden motivations unleashes the ghosts of her troubled past and sets off a series of increasingly calamitous events that culminate in a harrowing journey to a crossroads.
Drawing on traditional folktales and the history and culture of Appalachia, Alyson Hagy has crafted a gripping, swiftly plotted novel that touches on pressing issues of our time – migration, pandemic disease, the rise of authoritarianism – and makes a compelling case for the power of stories to both show us the world and transform it.
The Last Hellfighter by Thomas S. Flowers
Narrated by Rick Gregory
Publisher Shadow Work Publishing
In the year 2044, reporters from the Public Relations Ministry gather at the home of Benjamin Harker, the last surviving member of the Harlem Hellfighters. At the age of 144, he is the oldest recorded man alive. Hidden among them, Clyde Bruner is looking for a different kind of story.
Across the US, despite the Great Walls and patrol drones built to keep America secure, something has found its way in. Now, towns are vanishing during the night. Entire populations, gone, only to return after the sun sets, changed, unholy, and lethal. Whatever this evil is, its spreading west.
According to a bedtime story Bruner’s grandfather told him when he was a boy, Benjamin Harker has seen this before. He’s faced this scourge. Fought this evil. Survived them. Killed them. From the trenches of the Great War to the jungles of Vietnam to the sands of Iraq, Harker will search his past to save our future.
But as each city light extinguishes across the country, is there no time left to stop what’s coming?
Make Something Good Today by Ben Napier, Erin Napier
Narrated by Erin Napier, Ben Napier
Publisher Simon & Schuster Audio
From Ben and Erin Napier, the stars of the hit HGTV show Home Town, comes Make Something Good Today, a memoir that tells us all to seek out the good in life, celebrate the beauty of family and friends, and prosper within our communities because everything we need in life to be happy is within our grasp.
Long before their hugely popular TV show, an expanding family, or demolition day on their dream home, Erin began keeping a daily Online journal to help her stay focused on the positive and count her blessings in life. She never expected that her depictions of small-town life in the tiny swath of Mississippi where she Ben call home would catch the eye of a television producer and set them off on the journey of a lifetime.
Make Something Good Today offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the struggles and triumphs of a couple that America has come to know and love for their easy humor, adoring relationship, and ability to utterly transform a place into something beautiful and personal. This is the poignant story of how Erin and Ben took a small, tight-knit town into their own hands (literally) and used ingenuity, community, and authenticity to rebuild a once-thriving American Main Street. And how, by combining Ben’s carpentry skills with Erin’s design eye, Home Town is making it clear to us all that small-town living can feel as big as you make it.
Complete with family photographs, Erin’s hand-painted sketches, and never-before-heard personal stories, this inspirational memoir reminds us all not to give up hope that great love stories are possible, big things can bloom in small towns, and there is always magic in the ordinary if you know where to look for it.
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally
Narrated by Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally
Publisher Penguin Audio
At last, the full story behind Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman’s epic romance, including stories, portraits, and the occasional puzzle, all telling the smoldering tale that has fascinated Hollywood for over a decade.
The year: 2000. The setting: Los Angeles. A gorgeous virtuoso of an actress had agreed to star in a random play, and a basement-dwelling scenic carpenter had said he would assay a supporting role in the selfsame pageant. At the first rehearsal, she surveyed her fellow cast members, as one does, determining if any of the men might qualify to provide her with a satisfying fling. Her gaze fell upon the carpenter, and like a bolt of lightning, the thought struck her: No dice. Moving on.
Yet, unbeknownst to our protagonists, Cupid had merely set down his bow and picked up a rocket launcher. Then fired a love rocket (not a euphemism). The players were Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, and the resulting romance, once it ignited, was… epic. Beyond epic. It resulted in a coupling that has endured to this day; a sizzling, perpetual tryst that has captivated the world with its kindness, athleticism, astonishingly low-brow humor, and true (fire emoji) passion.
How did they do it? They came from completely different families, endured a significant age difference, and were separated by the gulf of several social strata. Megan loved books and art history; Nick loved hammers. But much more than these seemingly unsurpassable obstacles were the values they held in common: respect, decency, the ability to mention genitalia in almost any context, and an abiding obsession with the songs of Tom Waits.
Eighteen years later, they’re still very much in love, and have finally decided to reveal the philosophical mountains they have conquered, the lessons they’ve learned, and the myriad jigsaw puzzles they’ve completed, in an audiobook. Featuring anecdotes, hijinks, interviews, photos, and a veritable grab bag of tomfoolery, this is not only the intoxicating audiobook that Mullally’s and Offerman’s fans have been waiting for, it might just hold the solution to the greatest threat facing our modern world: the single life.
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- 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
