Release Week: 7 July 2026
← Release Week: 30 June 2026Release Week: 14 July 2026 →
Release Week: 7 July 2026
Posted on 2026-07-07 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
PICKS:
* Nightjar: Stories by Emily Ruskovich, read by Robert Petkoff, Ellen Adair, Emma Ladji, and Jay Myers for Random House -- "From the award-winning author of the national bestseller Idaho comes a stunning collection of stories that explore how unexpected intuitions forever alter the lives of ordinary people."
* Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle, read by Mara Wilson for Macmillan -- "An aspiring fashion influencer by day, Poppy moonlights as a grave robber to make ends meet, wheeling and dealing dead bodies across Palm Springs. When her hero, the flamboyant, piano-slamming rockstar Eddie Michaels, unexpectedly dies, Poppy gets a call to retrieve his body from the medical examiner’s office for a lucrative sum. It could be the last job she’ll ever need—if everything goes to plan."
* Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt: A Novel by Ben Reeves, read by Mike Frankland for Simon and Schuster -- "An astonishing, deeply moving novel about finding beauty in the brevity of life, as narrated by the one who knows it best: Death."
* Tsubaki Stationery Store: A Novel by Ito Ogawa, translated by Cat Anderson, read by Hanako Footman for Penguin -- "A spellbinding and heartwarming Japanese bestseller about a young woman who inherits a stationery store from her late grandmother and becomes the trusted scribe of the town."
* Wisdom Corner: A Novel by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, read by Shane Ghostkeeper for Ecco -- "From the award-winning author of Winter Counts comes a new thriller about life—and death—on the Rosebud Indian Reservation."
* An Infinite Love Story by Chanel Cleeton, read by Barton Caplan and Kelli Tager for Penguin -- "When an astronaut is lost in space, his wife relives their epic love as she attempts to unravel what truly happened to him, in this sweeping love story set against the backdrop of the 1960s Space Race."
* Earth 7: A Novel by Deb Olin Unferth, read by Amanda Dolan for Recorded Books -- "Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth."
* The Memory Bookshop: A Novel by Song Yu-jeong, read by Jennifer J. Kim for William Morrow -- "A spellbinding novel about a mysterious bookshop that exists outside of time and space, where the past is only a page away."
* We Were Forbidden by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz, read by Samara Naeymi for Podium -- "From the author of I Who Have Never Known Men comes a startling new collection of three never-before-translated stories, each plumbing the depths of that most necessary human instinct: defiance."
* Ungodly Rich: A Novel by Katharine McGee, read by Saskia Maarleveld for Random House -- "A modern-day twist on ancient mythology in this bold reimagining of the Greek gods as a family of billionaires—with all the messy drama that entails."
* The Red Sacrament by Sara Hinkley, read by Christine Williams for Dreamscape -- "A savage, hypnotic dive into the lives and deaths of a coven of vampires living in nineteenth-century Paris on the cusp of revolt and revolution."
* The Brides: A Novel by Charlotte Cross, read by Anna Popplewell and Sam Woolf for Harlequin -- "A feminist gothic horror about the three women who became the brides of Dracula – and the fourth who managed to escape."
* The Names of a Hare by Bernice Barry, read by Emma Powell for Bolinda -- "Cornwall, 1628. A young girl guards a dangerous secret: she can leave her body and fly. Steeped in herbal lore and forbidden spells, the girl becomes a woman, while across the land whispers of witchcraft turn deadly."
* The Farewitch of Foxe Holler by Ellen Pauley Goff, read by Amanda Stribling for Simon and Schuster -- "Steel Magnolias meets Practical Magic in this charming contemporary fantasy about a thirty-something kitchen witch who is recruited to help a reclusive warlock and discovers love on the other side of the next bake."
POETRY WATCH:
* The Acrobat: Essential Poems by Wislawa Szymborska, read by Beata Pozniak for Ecco -- "A vibrant collection of the lasting, essential work of the Nobel Prize–winning poet."
MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:
* This is Where the Future Bleeds by Mike Brooks, read by Kim Bretton for Tantor -- "A thrilling adventure packed with laughs, escapes, and kick-ass action, about a smart-talking bunch of rogues and dropouts being thrust into an epic quest to save the future and meddle with the destinies of empires."
* Killswitch Protocol by M. J. Kuhn, read by Laura Jennings for Tantor -- "In New Avarita, every person is born with a purpose. Once fulfilled, they are eligible for Ascent, a peaceful passing and assumed rebirth on the next plane of existence, celebrated for having left their perfect mark upon the world. At least, that's what the powers that be want them to believe."
MORE FICTION:
* Summer of Love by Kerri Maher, read by Lauryn Allman for Penguin -- "In this moving novel about the transformative power of storytelling, three women make life-changing decisions set in motion by the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco."
* The Simp: A Novel Without a Hero by Roshan Sethi, read by Vidish Athavale for Simon and Schuster -- "A razor-sharp novel about the rise and fall of an unemployed actor who lands the greatest role of his life when he’s hired as a personal assistant to an absurd Hollywood family"
* We Will See You Bleed by Ron Currie, read by Lisa Flanagan for Penguin -- "It's late summer 1984, and Babs Dionne’s hometown of Waterville, Maine is on the verge of collapse. A strike at the paper mill has dragged on for a year, pitting neighbor against neighbor, leaving everyone broke and exhausted."
BACKLIST WATCH:
* Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey (2017), read by Gabra Zackman and Scott Aiello for Blackstone -- "A collection of shockingly prescient stories covering topics from aliens to AI, including some that have never before been seen, from the New York Times best-selling author of the Silo trilogy."
* AL:ICE by CW Lamb (2014), read by Daniel Thomas May for Tantor -- "Captain Jacob Thomas USMC is a divorced combat veteran just trying to get his life back on track. Returning to the Marine Corps after a failed attempt at reconciliation with his estranged wife, Jake volunteers for a DARPA experiment that catapults him into a future where humanity has been stripped of 200 years of technological advancements and more than half its population."
SERIES WATCH:
* Manor of Decay: A Novel by Maxym M. Martineau, read by Alexandra Hunter and Stephen Dexter for Harper Voyager -- "In the high-stakes sequel to House of Blight, Edira must decide if the world is worth saving… and if she has enough power left to save herself too."
* False Gods: The Horus Heresy Saga, Book 2 by Graham McNeill, read by Jonathan Keeble for Black Library -- "The Great Crusade that has taken humanity into the stars continues. The Emperor of Mankind has handed the reins of command to his favoured son, the Warmaster Horus. Yet all is not well in the armies of the Imperium."
NEW EDITION WATCH:
* Queen of the Damned: The Vampire Chronicles, Book 3 by Anne Rice (1988), read by Robin Miles and Vikas Adam for Audible -- "The rock star known as Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco. Among the audience—pilgrims in a blind swoon of adoration—are hundreds of vampires, creatures who see Lestat as a "greedy fiend risking the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals," fiends themselves who hate Lestat's power and who are determined to destroy him."
* The Odyssey by Homer, read by MacLeod Andrews for Literati Audio -- "The epic ten-year journey of King Odysseus home after the Trojan War."
INDIE WATCH:
* Splinter: Splintered World, Book 1 by Brian Moyer, read by Luke Daniels for Unbound Books -- "Ama is two days from her graduate program at Montana State when she pulls off a Wyoming highway to rest her eyes. She wakes on bare earth beneath unfamiliar stars. Her car is gone. The highway is gone. The world she's fallen into looks like Wyoming—the Red Desert, the Great Divide Basin, sage and sandstone—but it runs on different rules. People here develop capabilities: the ability to move water, heat stone, push air in ways physics back home can't explain. Those without capabilities survive on skill, trade, and instincts about who to trust."
* The Keepers by Alys Mackay, read by a full cast for Abandoned Gods Press -- "Tsunala is carried through a land that no longer remembers mercy—guarded by monsters, watched by a half-breed who should be her enemy, and pulled toward truths she is not ready to name. Power lingers beneath her skin, unclaimed and dangerous. As desire stirs where fear should live, something ancient begins to breathe again. The gods, long silent, are waking—not as legends, but as beings who can bleed, ache, and love."
MOST MISSING:
* The Language of Knives: Stories by Haralambi Markov (Mythic Delirium) -- "A murderous nine-headed monster from legend permits a podcast interview. The mall has opened its doors, and nothing, not even certain death, will keep the shoppers away. A dead man’s curse drives his descendants to drown themselves, no matter how far from home they flee. An eerie haunted house attraction receives an even more unnerving guest. A grieving widower, knife in hand, undertakes a painstaking, gruesome ritual to appease the gods. If seeking a boon from Baba Yaga sounds nerve-shattering, imagine having to live under her roof."