Page 24 of posts by: Sam

Release Week: Countdown City, This is How You Die, The Long War, and Helen & Troy's Epic Road Quest

Posted on 2013-07-23 at 03:43 by Sam

JULY 10-16, 2013: Well... yet another Release Week post coming nearly a week late. I could try to excuse this with time spent on a lot of additions to the "Coming Soon" listings, including Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam (September 3), James Gunn's Transcendental (August 27), Mur Lafferty's Ghost Train to New Orleans (March 4, 2014) and, well, too many to list up here. But! Honestly I've had it mostly ready since mid last week, and just couldn't find the time to finish it up. On the plus side, it allowed time

Posted in Release Week | Tagged a. lee martinez, ben h. winters, machine of death, stephen baxter, terry pratchett, the long earth

News: Blackstone Audio to release two Lewis Shiner audiobooks later this year

Posted on 2013-07-16 at 15:04 by Sam

I'm very pleased to report that later this year, Blackstone Audio will release two audiobooks by Lewis Shiner, the author of the World Fantasy Award-winning (and my favorite new audiobook of 2011) Glimpses.

First up, to be released November 15, is Slam, Shiner's 1990 novel of a paroled tax evader, anarchist skateboarders, and, well, 23 cats. Called "An unqualified delight." by Publishers Weekly and re-released in 2011 by Subterranean Press in the series of "Definitive Editions" of Shiner's works:

Posted in news | Tagged blackstone audio, lewis shiner, stefan rudnicki

Release Week: The Curiosity, Burton and Swinburne, The Flames of Shadam Khoreh, and David Tallerman's Crown Thief

Posted on 2013-07-15 at 18:18 by Sam

JULY 3-9, 2013: Whew. Another nearly week late Release Week roundup. What gives? Have I forsaken all that is audio? No, just busy. My picks this week include two concurrent new releases, one from the "genre in the mainstream" side of the fence and the other the latest in Mark Hodder's series of "Burton and Swinburne" Steampunk adventures, along with two audiobooks which belatedly continue fantasy series. Also see the "also out this week" listings, particularly the return of the Fiction River original

Posted in Release Week

The Orbital Drop, Whispersync for Voice, and SFSignal's impressive ebook deals list

Posted on 2013-07-10 at 02:42 by Sam

I've posted fairly frequently about Whispersync for Voice deals, and one sure source for finding new ones is following Orbit Books' The Orbital Drop ebook deals, which each month "drops" the price on one or more ebooks in Orbit's catalog -- this month the titles include T.C. McCarthy's Germline and Mira Grant's Feed. Another pretty good source is watching for sequels or new follow-on books in a series, and checking to see if maybe the publisher has dropped the price on book one to try to tempt people to

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged brandon sanderson, germline, legion, oliver wyman, whispersync

Release Week: Hannu Rajaniemi's The Fractal Prince, Django Wexler's The Thousand Names, Anthony Ryan's Blood Song, Melissa Marr's The Arrivals, Matt Haig's The Humans, and Stephen Graham Jones' Zombie Bake-Off

Posted on 2013-07-09 at 03:32 by Sam

Posted in Release Week | Tagged anthony ryan, django wexler, hannu rajaniemi, scott brick, stephen graham jones

Release Week: Niven and Harrington's The Goliath Stone, Christopher Priest's The Adjacent, Madeline Ashby's iD, Paul S. Kemp's A Discourse in Steel, Calvino's Invisible Cities, and Ballard's The Drowned World

Posted on 2013-06-26 at 15:00 by Sam

JUNE 19-25, 2013: June goes out with quite a bang -- limiting the picks to even the four pairs below still leaves titles of interest in the "also out this week" listings, such as a literary historical fantasy from Andrew Sean Greer and Jeff Noon's follow-on to Vurt; it's also another big week for self-published releases with David D. Levine, M.R. Mathias and Hugh Howey all publishing well-produced audiobooks of their works.

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

I'll start the pairings with two top-flight concurrent new

Posted in Release Week | Tagged christopher priest, italo calvino, jg ballard, john lee, kevin hearne, larry niven, luke daniels, madeline ashby, melissa scott, paul s. kemp

Guest Post on BookLifeNow: Want to Read More? Think About Audiobooks

Posted on 2013-06-25 at 16:19 by Sam

I'm very happy to have contributed a guest post on the topic of audiobooks to BookLifeNow, the website "expansion kit" to Jeff VanderMeer's book Booklife. Entitled "Want to Read More? Think About Audiobooks" it's addressed to writers who know they need to be reading more to help feed their creative feedback loop, but can't make time to sit down and read. I hope you enjoy!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged booklifenow

Links to some recent Laura Miller audiobook reviews on Salon.com's "The Listener"

Posted on 2013-06-25 at 15:17 by Sam

I haven't been keeping up as well with Salon.com's "The Listener", a weekly audiobook review blog, and apparently I have been missing some good ones. Here are a few from Laura Miller that are definitely worth checking out:

“River of Stars”: Picture “Game of Thrones” in China

Guy Gavriel Kay's exquisite Asian-inspired epic fantasy offers a fresh twist on intrigue and adventure

“The Golem and the Jinni”: Magic in the New World

A master narrator reads a tale of two creatures from folklore making new lives in

Posted in Uncategorized

Release Week: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Lexicon, Wisp of a Thing, Before the Fall, The Indigo Pheasant, Dark Eden, and Ken Scholes' Requiem

Posted on 2013-06-19 at 15:45 by Sam

JUNE 12-18, 2013: Well, there's no question on the most-anticipated title this week, Neil Gaiman's first novel for adults since 2005: The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel. But there's also a cerebral thriller from Max Barry, one of last year's most missing audiobooks in Chris Beckett's Dark Eden, a trio of second books in a series, and a full-cast narrated book 4 in Ken Scholes' "Psalms of Isaak" series, Requiem. Enjoy! And, not to worry, if (as it is for me) Gaiman's book is the one to most catch your

Posted in Release Week | Tagged alex bledsoe, chris beckett, daniel rabuzzi, dark eden, francis knight, ken scholes, lexicon, max barry, neil gaiman, the ocean at the end of the lane

Briefly, On Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Parable of the Sower

Posted on 2013-06-16 at 20:50 by Sam

As I have been finishing Octavia E. Butler's Kindred over the past day and a half or so, of the many thoughts swirling around in my head was this: that no author I've read had such a command of both the history of where America has come from (Kindred) and a prescience for the future of where America seems to be going (Parable of the Sower) than Butler.

And what perhaps boggles the mind further about this is that Kindred was published in 1979, and Parable of the Sower was published in 1993, and yet both

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged octavia butler