Welcome to Brian’s Book Blog’s weekly New and Notable Audiobooks Post for the Week of September 19th.
Comment below on any I missed or what you’re excited about!
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Sons of War 2: Saints by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Narrated by Ray Porter
Blackstone Publishing
An i09 Pick
The civil war is over, but the struggle for power is just beginning!
In the aftermath of a devastating civil war, America has fallen into anarchy and chaos. Los Angeles is divided into different territories controlled by criminal organizations. Don Antonio Moretti has won a slice of the pie, but is hungry for more. In his quest for power, he sends his nephew and a small crew to Mexico to negotiate a new deal for their staple product, while the don returns to Italy for some unfinished business.
While the crime families battle for power in LA, Dominic Salvatore and his elite team at the LAPD fight tirelessly to stem the rot. But their fight often seems futile in a force rife with corruption. Dom’s father Ronaldo is a deputy fighting to secure the border, but when intel arises about his missing daughter, he leaves Los Angeles for the desert wastes – to find her and bring her home.
To the Morettis and the Salvatores, family is everything, and they will protect their own, no matter the cost.
But the Stars by Peter Cawdron
Narrated by Nicole Poole
Tantor Audio
“But the stars that marked our starting fall away. We must go deeper into greater pain, for it is not permitted that we stay.” (Dante Alighieri, Inferno, AD 1301)
At the start of the 22nd century, the starship Acheron is in orbit around WISE 5571, only, unbeknownst to the crew, the ship has been overrun by telepathic extraterrestrials. How do you fight an enemy that distorts everything you see? What do you do when you can’t trust your own senses, let alone anyone around you?
The Original by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal
Narrated by Julia Whelan
Recorded Books
Hugo Award-winning authors Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal team up in this exclusive audio-first production of The Original, a sci-fi thriller set in a world where one woman fights to know her true identity and survive the forces that threaten her very existence.
In the near future, humans choose life – for a price. Injectable nanite technology is the lifeblood that flows through every individual wishing to experience the world through the lens of their own theme. While death from mortal wounds is still possible, life is made easier in a socially liberated society where automation and income equality allow passion pursuits to flourish over traditional work. Renewal stations are provided to every law-abiding citizen for weekly check-ins, which issue life-sustaining repairs in exchange for personal privacy. But what becomes of those who check out, of those who dare to resist immortality and risk being edited under the gaze of an identity-extracting government surveillance system?
When Holly Winseed wakes up in a hospital room, her memory compromised and a new identity imposed on her, a team of government agents wastes no time stating their objective. With intent to infiltrate and defeat the terrorist group ICON, the agents tell Holly that she is now a Provisional Replica and has one week to hunt down and kill her Original for the murder of her husband, Jonathan. If she succeeds, she’ll assume her Original’s place in society. If she fails, her life will end. Holly’s progress is monitored by an assigned contact that feeds her information as she confronts the blank, robotic world around her, discovering that others view life through the theme of their own choosing.
With her newly implanted combat and deduction skills, Holly fends off both attacks by terrorists and doubts about her own trustworthiness as clues lead her to her Original – and to the truth about Jonathan. In the end, one body remains and one walks away. Although questions persist, one thing is certain: Life will never be the same.
To the Center of the Earth by Greig Beck
Narrated by Sean Mangan
Bolinda Publishing
Down there, beyond the deepest caves, below the crust and the mantle, there is another world. An old woman locked away in a Russian asylum has a secret – knowledge of a 500-year-old manuscript written by a long-dead alchemist that will show a passage to the mythical centre of the Earth.
She knows it’s real because 50 years ago, she and a team travelled there. And only she made it back.
Today, caving specialist Mike Monroe leads a crew into the world’s deepest cave in the former Soviet Union. He’s following the path of a mad woman and the words of an ancient Russian alchemist that were the basis of the fantastical tale by Jules Verne. But what horrifying things he finds will tear at his sanity and change everything we know about evolution and the world, forever.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
Narrated by Jennifer Hale
Macmillan Audio
This program includes an afterword read by Christopher Paolini, as well as a bonus conversation between Christopher Paolini and Jennifer Hale.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is a brand-new epic novel from New York Times best-selling author Christopher Paolini.
This program is read by Jennifer Hale, a Canadian American actress and singer who has appeared in hundreds of cartoon episodes and taken on roles in well over 185 video games, winning multiple awards. Her varied roles include Commander Shepard in Mass Effect, Rosalind Lutece in BioShock Infinite, Cinderella in both games and animation, Kronika in MK11, Naomi Hunter in the Metal Gear series, several roles in The Powerpuff Girls, Justice League, Avengers Assemble, the Emmy Award-winning Lost in Oz, Jean Grey/Phoenix in both games and animated series, and dozens more. This is her first audiobook.
Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds.
Now she’s awakened a nightmare.
During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.
As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.
While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity’s greatest and final hope….
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books
The Trials of Koli by M. R. Carey
Narrated by Theo Solomon, Saffron Coomber
Orbit
The journey through M. R. Carey’s “immersive, impeccably rendered world” (Kirkus) – a world in which nature has turned against us – continues in The Trials of Koli, book two of the Rampart Trilogy.
The earth wants to swallow us whole….
Koli never planned to set foot outside his small village. He knew that beyond its walls lay a fearsome landscape filled with choker trees, vicious beasts, and Shunned men. But when he was exiled, he had no choice but to journey out into this strange world where every moment is a fight for survival.
And it’s not just Koli’s life that is threatened. Whole villages just like his are dying out.
But Koli heard a story, once. A story about lost London and the mysterious tech of the Old Times that may still be there. If he can find it, there may still be a way for him to change his own fate – by saving the lives of those who are left.
Adverse Effects by Joel Shulkin MD
Narrated by Madeleine Lambert
Blackstone Publishing
Determined to help her amnesiac patients recover their lives, Boston psychiatrist Cristina Silva is achieving near-miraculous results by prescribing Recognate, a revolutionary new memory-recovery drug now in trials. She understands her patients’ suffering better than most, because she’s lost her memories, too. Desperate to become herself again, she pops the same experimental drug she prescribes to her patients. And, like them, she remembers a little more each day.
Until one of her patients, a successful accountant, jumps from an eight-story window to his death. And as Cristina’s memories return, with them come violent visions and an incessant voice in her head. Maybe the drug isn’t safe after all. But discontinuing it would mean forgetting everything she’s recalled and losing herself.
Then an enigmatic, possibly dangerous man appears at Cristina’s bus stop. He seems to know more about her life than she does and says she holds a secret that puts her life in danger. Perilously balanced between an unknown past and a terrifying future, if she wants to survive, Cristina must stay on the medication and unlock those memories before it’s too late – even if the adverse effects of the drug could destroy her.
Bump by Geoff Sturtevant
Narrated by Joe Hempel
Self Published
High school graduate, Chris, disenchanted by the prospect of conventional life in “Squaresville, USA”, opts out of college to attend pro-wrestling school. Enter: Ramsay Wrestling Academy, where Chris and a group of like-minded dreamers train for an unlikely chance at fame and fortune.
Dreams do come true, they suddenly find, as a staggering string of successes changes the fledgling academy to a small federation almost overnight. Chris and his friends are living their dreams, but to stay on this unlikely trajectory, they’re forced to keep topping themselves. Can the Ramsay boys keep satisfying the blood-lust of the die-hard fans before the stakes reach life and death? What if they never had a choice in the first place?
Bump is a novel dealing with subjugation and exploitation in the workplace, and the importance of the free market to the freedom of the people who work in it.
Don’t Look for Me by Wendy Walker
Narrated by Therese Plummer
Macmillan Audio
In Wendy Walker’s thrilling novel Don’t Look for Me, the greatest risk isn’t running away. It’s running out of time.
One night, Molly Clarke walked away from her life.
She doesn’t want to be found.
Or at least, that’s the story.
The car abandoned miles from home.
The note found at a nearby hotel.
The shattered family that couldn’t be put back together.
They called it a “walk away.” It happens all the time. Women disappear, desperate to leave their lives behind and start over. But is that what really happened to Molly Clarke?
Broken by John Rector
Narrated by Lauren Ezzo
Brilliance Publishing
Trust becomes a fatal mistake in this shocking thriller by the bestselling author of The Ridge.
Welcome to Beaumont Cove, a slowly decaying tourist town at the edge of the world, and the place where Maggie James’s worst fears for her estranged twin sister, Lilly, have come true.
Lilly is dead, and Maggie has arrived to identify her body.
Lilly’s husband, Mike, is in custody for her murder. With his long history of abuse, no one in town is surprised at the inevitable end to their stormy marriage, least of all Maggie. All she wants is to clean up her sister’s affairs, see Mike punished, and get out of Beaumont Cove.
With the help of the local sheriff, a retired private investigator, and a strange but friendly carnival psychic, Maggie begins to uncover the truth about what really happened to her sister. But the truth comes at a price, and soon Maggie finds herself walking a dark path toward the same deadly trap that killed Lilly.
The more Maggie discovers about her sister’s final days, the more she realizes that nothing is as it appears in this strange boardwalk town.
The First Love by Erinne Bates
Narrated by Lucy Emerson
When 17-year-old Calli meets her new riding instructor, Justine, their attraction to each other is nearly immediate. But while young Calli is learning what falling in love is about, Justine is driven by her competitive nature to have it all.
Twenty years after their initial meeting, Calli travels to France to write her new novel. It’s been 10 years since she’s last seen or heard from Justine, and all she knows of her is that she resides somewhere in France – and even that isn’t certain. If she were to find Justine, would she still be the same person and could they finally take the path they planned on so long ago?
Is anyone ever truly free from their first love?
The Roommate by Rosie Danan
Narrated by Brittany Pressley, Teddy Hamilton
Penguin Audio
House Rules:
Do your own dishes
Knock before entering the bathroom
Never look up your roommate online
The Wheatons are infamous among the East Coast elite for their lack of impulse control, except for their daughter Clara. She’s the consummate socialite: over-achieving, well-mannered, predictable. But every Wheaton has their weakness. When Clara’s childhood crush invites her to move cross-country, the offer is too tempting to resist. Unfortunately, it’s also too good to be true.
After a bait-and-switch, Clara finds herself sharing a lease with a charming stranger. Josh might be a bit too perceptive – not to mention handsome – for comfort, but there’s a good chance he and Clara could have survived sharing a summer sublet if she hadn’t looked him up on the internet….
Once she learns how Josh has made a name for himself, Clara realizes living with him might make her the Wheatons most scandalous story yet. His professional prowess inspires her to take tackling the stigma against female desire into her own hands. They may not agree on much, but Josh and Clara both believe women deserve better sex. What they decide to do about it will change both of their lives, and if they’re lucky, they’ll help everyone else get lucky too.
What Are Friends For? by Lizzie O’Hagan
Narrated by Joe Leat, Sofia Zervudachi
Headline Publishing Group Ltd
Sliding Doors meets The Flatshare meets One Day in December in this sweeping romantic comedy for the digital age! Perfect for fans of Josie Silver and Beth O’Leary.
Everyone gives their friends advice when it comes to dating, but what happens when it all goes wrong?
Eve doesn’t have time for dating, but having watched her best friend and flatmate have her heart broken one too many times, she reluctantly volunteers to play her Cupid.
Max is too much of a hopeless romantic to find the algorithms of online dating anything other than clinical, but he lives with his romantically challenged best friend who desperately needs his advice.
And after all, what are friends for?
As Eve and Max become more involved in their best friends’ relationship, they quickly realise there is a fine line between instruction and imitation, especially when they find they can’t stop thinking about their best friend’s date….
- Disease X by N.J. Croft (Narrated by Joshua Saxon) - December 1, 2023
- A Purrfect Gift by Jae (Narrated by Anastasia Watley) - November 30, 2023
- Wraith King (Wraith Knight #3) by C.T. Phipps (Narrated Narrated by Samuel E. Hoke) - November 28, 2023
