Whispersync Daily Deal: SEAL Team 13, Torrent, and Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins

Posted on 2014-03-16 at 13:55 by Sam

Sunday, March 16, 2014: Today’s haul includes scifi, YA time travel, and one of 2012’s best audiobooks.

First up, the scifi. Evan Currie’s SEAL Team 13, $1.99 Kindle and $0.99 Whispersync upgrade to the Audible edition read by Todd Haberkorn for Brilliance Audio. “It’s been ten years since a mysterious, horrific incident in the South China Sea annihilated a US Navy destroyer and its Navy SEAL team. Only one man survived. Now, the US Navy is determined to put a stop to the new, frightening incidents taking place with alarming frequency. Enter SEAL Team 13, an elite group of soldiers led by sole survivor Harold “Hawk” Masters. Everyone on the team has survived contact with supernatural forces from “the other side.” Will their camaraderie and duty to country be enough to defeat the malevolent undead forces threatening the country?”

In Lisa T. Bergren’s “River of Time” series for teens, adventure, romance, and time travel mix with historical fiction. Book 3, Torrent: A Novel (River of Time Series), is $1.99 in Kindle today and offers a $1.99 Whispersync upgrade to the Audible edition, read by Pam Turlow for Oasis Audio. “Gabi and Lia Betarrini have learned to control their time travel, and they return from medieval Italy to save their father from his tragic death in modern times. But love calls across the centuries, and the girls are determined to return forever—even though they know the Black Plague is advancing across Europe, claiming the lives of one-third of the population. In the suspenseful conclusion of the River of Time series, every decision is about life … and death.”

Lastly, one of 2012’s big “summer fiction reads”, Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins is “the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 … and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later.” On sale in Kindle for $1.99, the title offers a $4.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition, read by Edoardo Ballerini for Harper Audio, winner of the 2013 Audie Award for Best Male Narration, as well as a finalist in the Fiction category.

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged evan currie, lisa t bergren, todd haberkorn

Release Week: Helen Oyeyemi's "Boy, Snow, Bird" and Maureen F. McHugh's After the Apocalypse: Stories

Posted on 2014-03-15 at 04:03 by Sam

MARCH 5-11, 2014: Some highly anticipated audiobooks arrived this week, led by Helen Oyeyemi's new novel Boy, Snow, Bird and Maureen F. McHugh's 2011 collection After the Apocalypse: Stories. Also out this week are Michael Rowe's Wild Fell, a trio of Ian McDonald's backlist including 1993 BSFA finalist The Broken Land, high-end epic fantasy in the form of Miles Cameron's The Fell Sword, R.A. Salvatore's Night of the Hunter, and Simon R. Green's Once in a Blue Moon, sf in the form of Hugh Howey's Sand, horror in the form of Clive Barker's Cabal, and more including Rachel Caine's Prince of Shadows (a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet) and (hard to categorize this strangely quirky book) A Warm Place to Call Home: A Demon's Story by Michael Siemsen. Some exciting books in the "Seen But Not Heard" listings this week include Jon Sprunk's fantasy Blood & Iron and Peter Liney's dystopia The Detainee.

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Since reading Mr. Fox I have been eagerly awaiting Helen Oyeyemi's next novel, and this week brings Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel, Oyeyemi's retelling of the Snow White story, set against race and "passing white" in the United States of the 1950s. Out in print/ebook from Riverhead, it's read by Susan Bennett and Carra Patterson for Recorded Books. “From the prizewinning author of Mr. Fox, the Snow White fairy tale brilliantly recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity. In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.”

Maureen F. McHugh's 2011 Small Beer Press-published collection After the Apocalypse: Stories was named one of Publishers Weekly's 10 best books of the year in any genre, and it received quite a bit of praise in sf circles. (And among the least of its laurels, it was one of my most missing audiobooks of 2011; I have been thinking it would come "any week now" since 2012!) Finally it arrives in audio, read by Therese Plummer and Angela Lin for Recorded Books. "In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we’d do to survive the coming zombie plague."

Posted in Release Week | Tagged after the apocalypse, boy snow bird, helen oyeyemi, maureen f mchugh

Review: Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves

Posted on 2014-03-13 at 07:03 by Dave

Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves (Empire and Rebellion, Book 2) by James S.A. Corey, read by Marc Thompson Length: 9 Hours, 52 Minutes

This is the Han Solo book you're looking for.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I read all the Star Wars books. I stopped right before the New Jedi Order (when I was in college), and since then have only read two -- Zahn's Scoundrels and Schreiber's Death Troopers. In general, the Expanded Star Wars Universe became too much of a chore for me - the continuity got too bloated, I heard some of my favorite characters were needlessly killed off, and it just wasn't as much fun as when Zahn's first books came out. So when I heard that James S.A. Corey - the writing duo of Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham who write the kick ass Expanse space operas - were doing a Star Wars book, and that it'd be a stand-alone Han Solo Star Wars books, AND that it'd be set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, well, I knew I'd have to make the jump to lightspeed and pick this nerf-herder up.

Posted in reviews | Tagged james sa corey, marc thompson, star wars

Review: Star Wars: Scoundrels

Posted on 2014-03-13 at 06:56 by Dave

Star Wars: Scoundrels By Timothy Zahn, Read by Marc Thompson Length: 14 hours, 1 minute

I was born in 1977, the year of Star Wars. Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I saw in theaters, and I’ve been a would-be Jedi ever since. When Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire series came out, I ate up every page of those books, and I read many of the subsequent books. But around the time the New Jedi Order came out, I got burned out on the Expanded Universe books.

Fast forward to Disney buying Lucasfilm, and (completely coincidentally) Zahn writing a standalone Han Solo’s 11 novel. I’d read exactly one SW book in the past decade (the ridiculously fun Death Troopers), so as soon as I heard about this one, I wanted to check it out. I thought it’d be the perfect book to get back into SW – one that wouldn’t be overly bogged down by the Expanded Universe continuity, and that would be good old comfort food.

Posted in reviews | Tagged marc thompson, star wars, timothy zahn

Whispersync Daily Deal: Scott Nicholson's The Red Church

Posted on 2014-03-12 at 19:20 by Sam

Wednesday, March 12, 2014: Scott Nicholson’s Stoker Award finalist The Red Church is on sale for $0.99 in its Kindle edition, and offers a $2.99 Whispersync upgrade to the Audible edition, read by Aaron Tucker for Perfect Voices:

“For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won’t stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her. Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother’s ghost. And the ghost keeps demanding, “Free me.” Now people are dying in Whispering Pines, and the murders coincide with McFall’s return.”

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged scott nicholson

News: Bronson Pinchot to narrate Jeff VanderMeer's Authority, Book 2 of The Southern Reach; and Xe Sands to narrate Wendy Webb's The Vanishing

Posted on 2014-03-11 at 15:47 by Sam

Two narrator castings to pass along this morning, the first is both the most recent and what I’ll be listening to in the wee hours of May 6: Blackstone Audio has tapped Audie-Award winning narrator Bronson Pinchot to narrate Authority: The Southern Reach, Book 2 by Jeff VanderMeer, released fairly quickly on the heels of Annihilation, read by Carolyn McCormick, which was released in February. I’ve listened to many of Pinchot’s audiobooks (from non-fiction like How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection to the wide-ranging accents of Tim Powers’ On Stranger Tides and Last Call, to Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree), and think he’s a perfect casting for this surreal exploration of the secretive The Southern Reach, the organization charged with investigating Area X, seen through the eyes of third-generation government agent John Rodriguez, better known in the book simply as ‘Control’. Here: “The bone-chilling, hair-raising second installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy. For thirty years, a secret agency called the Southern Reach has monitored expeditions into Area X—a remote and lush terrain mysteriously sequestered from civilization. After the twelfth expedition, the Southern Reach is in disarray, and John Rodriguez (a.k.a. “Control”) is the team’s newly appointed head. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and more than two hundred hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the secrets of Area X begin to reveal themselves—and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he’s promised to serve.”

I saw this second casting about a week ago, but it’s been one I’ve been looking forward to hearing news of since hearing Wendy Webb read from her novel The Vanishing about a month ago and learning that an audiobook edition was coming. Tantor Audio has cast Xe Sands to read The Vanishing, Webb’s “Haunted Minnesota Manor House” novel. I enjoyed Sands’ narrations on Valya Dudycz Lupescu’s Chicago-set The Silence of Trees and have less than a month to wait to see how well she handles Minnesota as the audiobook is due April 8: “Recently widowed and rendered penniless by her Ponzi-scheming husband, Julia Bishop is eager to start anew. So when a stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother, Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom Julia has always admired…and who the world believes is dead. When she arrives at the Sinclairs’ enormous estate on Lake Superior, Julia begins to suspect that there may be sinister undercurrents to her “too-good-to-be-true” position. As Julia delves into the reasons of why Amaris chose to abandon her successful writing career and withdraw from the public eye, her search leads to unsettling connections to her own family tree, making her wonder why she really was invited to Havenwood in the first place, and what monstrous secrets are still held prisoner within its walls.”

Posted in news | Tagged authority, bronson pinchot, jeff vandermeer, the vanishing, wendy webb, xe sands

Whispersync Daily Deal: Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Coraline, Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, and more

Posted on 2014-03-09 at 21:22 by Sam

Sunday, March 9, 2014: The Kindle “Gold Box Deal of the Day” is a wide-ranging list of Books That Inspired Our Passion for Reading, all priced at $2.99 or less, and quite a few have Whispersync upgrades to the Audible editions — though many are $10 or more, that still puts the overall audiobook package at less than a credit and (in most cases) less than the retail price.

First up, two from Neil Gaiman, starting with American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition: A Novel for $1.99 Kindle and $12.99 Whispersync upgrade to the full cast tenth anniversary audiobook, well under the $33 Audible price: “First published in 2001, American Gods became an instant classic, an intellectual and artistic benchmark from the multiple-award-winning master of innovative fiction, Neil Gaiman. Now, discover the mystery and magic of American Gods in this 10th anniversary edition. Newly updated and expanded with the author’s preferred text, this commemorative volume is a true celebration of a modern masterpiece by the one, the only, Neil Gaiman.”

Next up, Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition, on sale for $1.99 Kindle as well. Adding the $10.49 Whispersync upgrade still sneaks under the $13.95 Audible price, albeit just barely. Read by the author: “In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.”

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury is $1.99 Kindle plus $1.99 Whispersync upgrade to the Audible edition, read by Paul Michael Garcia for Blackstone Audio: “Ray Bradbury’s moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author’s most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928.”

Another significant discount can be had on Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible, at $1.99 Kindle plus $0.99 Whispersync upgrade. “The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil.”

Also available for $1.99 Kindle plus $12-ish upgrade: C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: The Chronicles of Narnia ($12.49), The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition by Paolo Coelho ($12.49), Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City (P.S.) ($12.99), and Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ($12.99).

Also in the sale, among others, is Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, however this title does not appear to be Whispersync enabled.

Posted in Uncategorized, Whispersync Deals

Release Week: Words of Radiance, Ghost Train to New Orleans, Tropic of Serpents, Half Bad, The King in Yellow read by Stefan Rudnicki, and Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West performed by Jonathan Frakes

Posted on 2014-03-06 at 21:33 by Sam

FEBRUARY 26-MARCH 4, 2014: And here I thought that last week was packed. This week saw almost 200 titles released on March 4 alone, with another 100 on March 3. My picks of this avalanche include an epic fantasy sequel from Brandon Sanderson, an urban fantasy sequel from Mur Lafferty, anthropological dragon memoir fantasy (yes, it exists, it's totally a genre, and yes, it's a sequel), and hey, more fantasy, the highly-anticipated debut Half Bad by Sally Green, and a classic 1895 novel-in-stories, performed by Stefan Rudnicki with Gabrielle de Cuir. And! Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West, read by Jonathan Frakes. Because why not have "Number One" read a book by an author who enjoys making "Number Two" jokes? During a time when dysentery was widespread? Why not indeed.

Also out this week: Indexing by Seanan McGuire, read by Mary Robinette Kowal; Anne Bishop's Murder of Crows; Kelly McCullough's Broken Blade; Fredric Brown's 1955 comic science fiction novel Martians, Go Home read by Stefan Rudnicki; fantasy shorts from Michael J. Sullivan and Brian McClellan; Rohan Gavin's Knightley & Son; Phil Klay's powerful Redeployment; Scott Nicholson's McFall; James S.A. Corey's Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves; and a free 8-chapter sampler of Hugh Howey's Sand; an intriguing genre-bending book I don't know quite what to make of yet is Rene Denfeld's The Enchanted, though I know that I'm interested. (Of note: McGuire's Indexing and book one in both Brandon Sanderson and Mur Lafferty's series are in the latest massive Whispersync deal roundup.) But what release week coverage is complete without my bemoaning some "seen but not heard" titles? This week, Black Moon: A Novel by Kenneth Calhoun, John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey's anthology The End is Nigh, Robert Reed's The Memory of Sky, and The Barrow by Mark Smylie top that list. Speaking of topping my weekly lists...

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson, book 2 in The Stormlight Archive after The Way of Kings, is -- ahem -- the biggest release this week. With a runtime of 48 hours, it already had 74 ratings before it had been released for 24 hours -- Sanderson's fans listen even faster than he can write! But there's more than size here, as Michael Kramer and Kate Reading continue to work their huge cast epic fantasy magic that worked so well for The Wheel of Time and the first volume in this planned 10-volume series. Out from Macmillan Audio in physical and digital formats concurrent with the print/ebook release from Tor, this is a secondary world epic fantasy with huge worldbuilding, massive battles, intricate magic, and millenia-spanning scope. [More links: IndieBound CD | Kindle | Amazon CD | Amazon Hardcover]

Ghost Train to New Orleans by Mur Lafferty continues the reigning John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer's "The Shambling Guides" series as a direct sequel to The Shambling Guide to New York City, which introduced Lafferty's sardonic, sarcastic take on urban fantasy through the eyes of Zoe Norris, travel guide writer for New York City's visiting "coterie" of zombies, vampires, and everything else out of every mythology, ever. Out in digital audio from Hachette Audio concurrent with the print/ebook release from Orbit, this time, Zoe takes a bigger train than her usual subway trips around NYC: "Zoe Norris writes travel guides for the undead. And she's good at it too - her newfound ability to talk to cities seems to help. After the success of The Sbambling Guide to New York City, Zoe and her team are sent to New Orleans to write the sequel. Work isn't all that brings Zoe to the Big Easy. The only person who can save her boyfriend from zombism is rumored to live in the city's swamps, but Zoe's out of her element in the wilderness...." [More links: Kindle | Amazon Paperback]

Posted in Release Week | Tagged brandon sanderson, ghost train to new orleans, half bad, jonathan frakes, kate reading, marie brennan, mur lafferty, sally green, seth macfarlane, stefan rudnicki, stormlight archive, the king in yellow, the shambling guides, words of radiance

Another massive Whispersync Deal roundup

Posted on 2014-03-06 at 09:08 by Sam

SFSignal has another massive list of 300 Kindle titles under $4, and while there's a lot of overlap with the last time I went through it a month ago, there's some new listings as well.

First up, some high-end titles that are inexpensive on Kindle and have a Whispersync upgrade of $10 or more:

• Dreams and Shadows: A Novel by C. Robert Cargill (Harper Voyager)
• Star Corps (The Legacy Trilogy, Book 1) by Ian Douglas (HarperCollins e-books)
• Stories: All-New Tales by Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio (William Morrow)
• Dead Set: A Novel by Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager)
• The Shambling Guide to New York City (The Shambling Guides) by Mur Lafferty (Orbit)
• Promise of Blood (The Powder Mage Trilogy) by Brian McClellan (Orbit)
• Snuff (Discworld) by Terry Pratchett (Harper)
• The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive, The) by Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books)
• Partials (The Partials Sequence) by Dan Wells (Balzer + Bray)

Posted in Whispersync Deals

Review: Ancillary Justice

Posted on 2014-03-06 at 06:11 by Dave

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, Read by Celeste Ciulla Length: 13 hours, 47 minutes

A long time ago, Breq was part of a consciousness that made up Justice of Toren – one of the Radch Empire’s AI starships. She was one of many – an ancillary, a meat puppet, a single aspect of a collective. Then she was betrayed, stripped away from the rest of her consciousness, trapped in a human body, and stranded alone in the universe. Now, she’s a displaced and dysfunctional AI, and she’s out for revenge.

Wait, I said “she.” Here’s one of the fun things about this space opera - she isn’t necessarily a she. In the Radch Empire, all people are referred to as “she,” despite their gender. It’s a cool bit of world building, but more importantly – it defies gender conventions and defaults. There are a lot of interesting and fascinating characters in this book. And most of them, we have no idea what gender they are.

It’s smart and though-provoking, yes, but Ancillary Justice also manages to be a really fun ride. As an AI who is forced to become a fraction of herself, Breq is one of the most unique protagonists I’ve ever come across, and she’s a lot of fun to route for. The story is split over two timelines - one of Breq as a lone figure seeking out the means for her revenge, the other is her as an aspect of the near omniscient Justice of Toren occupying a conquered planet and people. Seeing how these two storylines crescendo is a blast. If you’re a fan of the Expanse books by James S.A. Corey, you’ll want to give this one a shot.

I’ll admit I was a little concerned at first with Celeste Ciulla’s narration. Initially, her delivery felt a bit stilted, almost forced. However, after an hour or two, I came to realize she was a really solid match for a displaced and dysfunctional AI.

Ancillary Justice has already been nominated for a Nebula, BFSA, and won a Kitchie for Best Debut Novel, and it’s easy to see why. I’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t get a nomination for the Hugo. Ancillary Justice is a smart, though-provoking thrill ride of a space opera. It’ll nuke your brain from orbit, then send its ancillary meat puppets planetside with blasters - just to make sure.

(Full Disclosure: Ann Leckie is a friend of mine who I’ve worked with for the past four years at PodCastle, and I first read this book before it had landed an agent or a publishing house. I loved it, so much so that I ended up buying the book when it came out in audio.)

Posted in Uncategorized