Whispersync Daily Deals: Arwen Elys Dayton's Resurrection and E.V. Anderson's The Many Lives of Lilith Lane

Posted on 2014-03-04 at 14:49 by Sam

Tuesday March 4, 2014: While the big audiobook news today for me is the long-awaited release of Mur Lafferty’s Ghost Train to New Orleans, I did see two Kindle deals with deal-worthy Whispersync upgrade prices to mention. (OK, OK, the release of Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance is a pretty big deal, too! But on to the deals, more on the new audiobooks in the next “Release Week” roundup.)

Arwen Elys Dayton’s Resurrection is $1.99 plus $1.99 for the Kate Rudd narration. “The Kinley built a ship capable of traveling faster than light. It carried a group of scientists to a small, distant planet—a primitive place called Earth. It’s mission was peaceful observation. But when the ship was destroyed, the Kinley crew found themselves stranded in ancient Egypt, participants in the pageant of life in the time of the Pharaohs. They buried remnants of their technology deep beneath the desert and sent a last desperate message home… Five thousand years later, the Kinley homeworld hovers on the brink of extinction. An enemy that nearly obliterated their race has risen again—now with the ability to destroy them for good. A lone Kinley soldier named Pruit is sent on a desperate mission: to follow the ancient beacon back to Earth and recover the secrets to faster than light travel. It is their last hope. Technology that once allowed them to cross vast reaches of space might allow them to outrun their enemies and find a safe world to call their own. But Pruit’s mission will be harder than she can imagine. Her quest will draw her enemies after her and will awaken ancient foes on Earth. As she gets closer to what she seeks, she will find each adversary willing to risk everything to stop her. Each hoping to steal the knowledge for themselves. The rivals will meet in modern-day Egypt and their struggle will alter the fate of worlds.”

A YA title, E.V. Anderson’s The Many Lives of Lilith Lane is $1.99 Kindle plus $0.99 for the Dana Vannis narration. “Seventeen-year-old Lilith Lane has a hunk of a boyfriend, a wicked tongue, and a talent for solving the mysteries that pop up in her small home town of Mirabalis. But when her little sister goes missing in the middle of the night, both Lilith’s detective skills and her recall of sophomore year physics are put to the ultimate test. To save her sister, Lilith must race against the clock with the help of Dr. Hammer, a mad scientist who pushes Lilith off the edge – literally – of his reality-bending skyscraper. Lilith’s world is turned upside down by her sister’s disappearance, and a skyscraper that is also a portal to a parallel universe suddenly doesn’t seem that surreal. With Dr. Hammer’s help, Lilith must put her girl detective skills to the test and try to save her sister. A dashing snail expert, a scheming beauty queen, and the heir to a great advertising fortune are just a few of the unforgettable characters who round out the cast in this rollicking tale of love, loyalty, and multiple Earths.”

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged arwen elys dayton, brilliance-audio, dana vannis, ev anderson, kate rudd, resurrection, the many lives of lilith lane

Release Week: Influx, Moth and Spark, Honor's Knight, Servant of the Underworld, City of a Hundred Rows, Dan Simmons, and collections from Kim Stanley Robinson and Joe Haldeman

Posted on 2014-03-03 at 04:40 by Sam

FEBRUARY 19-25, 2014: Well. This has been a hard release week to put together for a few reasons, mostly the sheer number of interesting titles and the difficulty in limiting the space for "picks", but also I added about 100? or so more books into the "Coming Soon" listings, including the newly-announced The Peripheral by William Gibson, Margaret Killjoy's A Country of Ghosts (no audio news but man does that book look interesting), an imminently forthcoming Blackstone Audio production of The King in Yellow, a very anticipated (for me at least!) non-fiction title, Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, and almost literally tons more. Meanwhile, we've also finally published our picks for the best audiobooks of 2013, and put together a pretty sizable Whispsersync deal roundup. And! The AudioBookaneers turned 500 posts old just in time to celebrate PodCastle's 300th fiction podcast. Not a bad week's worth of work.

The big news in books this week of course is that the Nebula Awards finalists were announced, including 8 nominees for Best Novel, six of which are available in audio -- and I've listened to all of them and picked all six among my favorite audiobooks of the year: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler; The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman; Hild, by Nicola Griffith; Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie;  A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar; and The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker -- and two yet (YET I SAY) to be, Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon and The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata.

Where we we? Ah yes. This week brings technothrillers, a fantasy debut, space sf, a crumbling sf future so byzantine it might? be fantasy, Aztec fantasy from a Nebula-nominated author, an armload of new audiobooks from the backlist of Dan Simmons, and collections from two legendary sf authors. The "also out" listings have so much to offer as well, from non-fiction (Michio Kaku's The Future of the Mind) to fiction (The Wives of Los Alamos, Pioneer Girl) to more science fiction and fantasy (Matt Forbeck's Amortals, Tricia Sullivan's Dreaming in Smoke, Freya Robertson's Heartwood) and urban fantasy (The Undead Pool) and horror (The Troop) than you could easily read this by summer. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Influx by Daniel Suarez narrated by Jeff Gurner for Penguin Audio, simultaneous with the print/ebook release from Dutton Adult. "Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they've been working toward for years: A device that can reflect gravity. Their research will revolutionize the field of physics - the crowning achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel Prize. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring." Already reviewed very positively by The Guilded Earlobe as "a nano-infused balls to the wall thriller that will spin your genetically enhanced brain while causing your artificial cyber heart to beat a kilometer a minute keeping the tension building like a fusion powered perpetual motion machine".

Moth and Spark by Anne Leonard, narrated by Christian Coulson for Penguin Audio. "Prince Corin has been chosen to free the dragons from their bondage to the Empire, but dragons aren’t big on directions. They have given him some of their power, but none of their knowledge. No one, not the dragons nor their riders, is even sure what keeps the dragons in the Empire’s control. Tam, sensible daughter of a well-respected doctor, had no idea before she arrived in the capital that she is a Seer, gifted with visions. When the two run into each other (quite literally) in the library, sparks fly and Corin impulsively asks Tam to dinner. But it’s not all happily ever after."

Posted in Release Week

Whispersync Daily Deal: Ransom Stephens' The God Patent and Rosa Montero's Tears in Rain

Posted on 2014-03-02 at 19:13 by Sam

Sunday, March 2, 2014: Another glimpse through the Kindle Daily Deals today shows me two books to pass along. The first is an actual “Daily” deal, The God Patent by Ransom Stephens, at $1.99 Kindle plus $0.99 upgrade to the Audible edition read by Luke Daniels for Brilliance Audio. “When electrical engineers Ryan McNear and Foster Reed coauthored two patents for company cash incentives, they thought it was all just a joke. One describes the soul as a software algorithm, and the other described the Big Bang as a power generator. But when the company crashes, McNear finds himself divorced, desperately hard up, and estranged from his son. As he rebuilds his life, McNear discovers Reed has used their nonsensical patents to draw in top-tier energy investors.”

The second title is (I think) on a month-long sale, and it’s one I’ve been intrigued about since its release in late 2012. A novel written in the gritty dystopian near future of Philip K. Dick’s Blade Runner (a.k.a. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) by Rosa Montero and translated by Lilit Zekulin Thwaites for AmazonCrossing, Tears in Rain is on sale for $1.99 in Kindle and has a $1.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition, read by Mary Robinette Kowal for Brilliance Audio: “As a replicant, or “technohuman”, Detective Bruna Husky knows two things: humans bioengineered her to perform dangerous, undesirable tasks, and she has just 10 years on the United States of Earth before her body automatically self-destructs. But with “antitechno” rage on the rise and a rash of premature deaths striking her fellow replicants, she may have even less time than she thought. Investigating the mysterious deaths, Bruna delves into the fractious, violent history shared by humans and replicants, and struggles to engage the society that fails to understand her - yet created her.”

Posted in Uncategorized, Whispersync Deals | Tagged luke daniels, mary robinette kowal, ransom stephens, rosa montero, tears in rain, the god patent

Whispersync Daily Deal: Matthew Mather's The Atopia Chronicles

Posted on 2014-02-28 at 19:27 by Sam

Friday February 28, 2014: Matthew Mather’s The Atopia Chronicles (Atopia series) is on sale today for $1.99 Kindle, with a $0.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition read by an absolutely stellar full cast of Luke Daniels, Nick Podehl, Angela Dawe, Tanya Eby, Amy McFadden, and Mikael Naramore for Brilliance Audio:

“What could be worse than letting billions die? In the near future, to escape the crush and clutter of a packed and polluted Earth, the world’s elite flock to Atopia, an enormous corporate-owned artificial island in the Pacific Ocean. It is there that Dr. Patricia Killiam rushes to perfect the ultimate in virtual reality: a program to save the ravaged Earth from mankind’s insatiable appetite for natural resources. The Atopia Chronicles (Book 1 of the Atopia series) is the tale of mankind’s dark slide across the apocalypse as humans and machines merge in a world teetering on the brink of ecological ruin.”

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged angela dawe, atopia chronicles, brilliance-audio, luke daniels, matthew mather, nick podehl

Whispersync Deal Roundup: Night Shade Books, the Baen Free Library, and The Shambling Guide to New York City

Posted on 2014-02-27 at 19:01 by Sam

Thursday, February 27, 2014: I didn’t see a particular Kindle Daily Deal title to feature today, so I’ll take the time to write up a few more “general” cases. First up, because I understand this to be a limited time offer (though my inquiries as to how long have not yet made it through the aether and spam filter and inbox queue yet, or, most likely, didn’t look to be worth answering) is from Night Shade Books, which has put a pretty sizable crop of its titles on sale. (BUT WHERE IS MY JM McDERMOTT? MY KAMERON HURLEY? MY ELI MONPRESS?! NIGHT SHADE BOOKS I ASK YOU. Er. Sorry. I now return you to our regularly scheduled program.)

I mentioned Teresa Frohock’s Miserere: An Autumn Tale in my last big roundup of Whispersync deals, and it’s still on sale for $2.99, plus a $3.99 upgrade to the Eileen Stevens-narrated Audible edition.

The Constantine Affliction (Pimm and Skye) by T. Aaron Payton, read by John Lee for Audible. Lee is a masterful narrator, with some favorites of mine including China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. “Payton” is otherwise known as Tim Pratt. (And T.A. Pratt. And “that bastard who is both more good looking and prolific and hard-working than me. Poop on him. Esquire.“)

A few more that caught my eye: Hitchers by Will McIntosh, read by Andy Paris for Recorded Books; Zendegi by Greg Egan, read by Parisa Johnston for Audible; and Yarn by Jon Armstrong, read by Mark Boyett for Audible Frontiers. They’re all in the $4 Kindle plus $4 Whispersync upgrade to Audible range.

Next general category: The Baen Free Library includes a lot of titles, but once Baen signed a distribution deal with Amazon for Kindle ebook sales, the ebooks juggernaut’s price matching meant a pretty good decimation was in order. Still, plenty of titles somehow remain free in both places, and some of them even have Whispersync upgrade prices.

While book one (free in Kindle) doesn’t (yet?) have a Whispersync upgrade option, book two of David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, The Honor of the Queen (Honor Harrington), does — free plus $1.99 is pretty darned cheap. This is also apparently the book which forms the bulk of the basis for the current script work on the first film based on the series. Another Weber title, the fantasy Oath of Swords (War God), is also “free plus $1.99” in audio.

Also priced at “free” plus $1.99 Whispersync upgrade is the first book in David Drake’s “Lt. Leary” series, With the Lightnings (Lt. Leary). I’ve listened to and enjoyed this one, narrated by sf narrator of legend Victor Bevine.

And, while not “free plus” I have to mention Mark Van Name’s “Jon and Lobo” series, starting with 2007’s One Jump Ahead (Jon and Lobo), continuing with Slanted Jack (Jon and Lobo), Overthrowing Heaven (Jon and Lobo), and Children No More (Jon and Lobo) all available for $6.83 on Kindle and (with the exception of Children No More) with a $1.99 Whispersync upgrade to the Audible edition, ready superbly by Tom Stechschulte. The most recent book in the series, 2012’s No Going Back (Jon and Lobo), is $9.99 in Kindle and is Whispersync for Voice enabled to the tune of $1.99. I’m hoping for the next book in this series later this year. Both Children No More and No Going Back were solidly 5-star listens for me — this is a space action/adventure sf series you should be reading. Er. Listening to.

Since I’m already talking about $6.83 plus $1.99, how about Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Spirit Ring, Beguilement (The Sharing Knife, Book 1), and Paladin of Souls? How about them.

Lastly, from Orbit’s “Orbital Drop” ebook feature: The Shambling Guide to New York City (The Shambling Guides) by Mur Lafferty is still on sale for $1.99 in Kindle, with a $10.99 Whispersync upgrade to the Audible edition, read by the author for Hachette Audio. Certainly on the higher range, but still well under most people’s per-credit cost. Still time to catch up on this series ahead of the release of book two, Ghost Train to New Orleans (The Shambling Guides), in just a few days.

OK, so it wasn’t “lastly” after all. Since it’s still seriously on sale, another mention for Three (Legends of the Duskwalker) by Jay Posey, narrated by Luke Daniels, available for $1.99 Kindle plus $3.49 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition. And Six Heirs (The Secret of Ji, Volume One) by Pierre Grimbert, read by Michael Page. And Slam by Lewis Shiner, read by Stefan Rudnicki. And Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence) by Max Gladstone, read by Claudia Alick for Blackstone Audio. And…

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged angry robot on brilliance audio, baen, david drake, david weber, honor harrington, jay posey, john lee, luke daniels, mark van name, mur lafferty, night shade books, the shambling guide to new york city, three, tom stechschulte

Whispersync Daily Deal: The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories of Jonathan Carroll

Posted on 2014-02-26 at 15:31 by Sam

Wednesday, February 26, 2014: Today’s Kindle Daily Deal lineup includes The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories by Jonathan Carroll priced at $1.99, with a $1.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the 19-hour audiobook narrated by Robin Bloodworth and Suehyla El Attar for Audible. Carroll first came to my attention when Neil Gaiman selected a pair of his novels, The Land of Laughs and White Apples, for his Neil Gaiman Presents imprint. Here, it’s the 600-page collection of his short fiction:

“Thirty-eight extraordinary stories from award-winning author Jonathan Carroll. For more than thirty years, Jonathan Carroll’s writing has defied genre conventions. Known for his novels—including The Land of Laughs, Bones of the Moon, Sleeping in Flame,and many other compelling and often surreal stories—Carroll has also created an eloquent body of short fiction. The Woman Who Married a Cloud brings his stories together for the first time. In the title story, a matchmaking effort goes awry and leads one woman to a harrowing moment of self-discovery. In “The Heidelberg Cylinder,” Hell becomes so overcrowded that Satan sends some of his lost souls back to Earth. And in “Alone Alarm,” a man is kidnapped by multiple versions of himself. By turns haunting, melancholic, and enchanting, Carroll’s richly layered stories illuminate universal experiences, passions, and griefs. Described by NPR’s Alan Cheuse as “so richly imaginative, so intellectually daring,” The Woman Who Married a Cloud is essential reading for Carroll fans and short-story lovers alike.”

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged audible, jonathan carroll, open road media, the woman who married a cloud

PodCastle turns 300!

Posted on 2014-02-26 at 14:55 by Sam

PodCastle has published its 300th fiction podcast! The 300th episode is E. Lily Yu’s Ilse, Who Saw Clearly, read by Wilson Fowlie. Congrats to Dave and the whole PodCastle team:

PS: This also happens to be the 500th post on The AudioBookaneers. Happy coincidences, everyone!

Posted in Uncategorized

At Long Last! The AudioBookaneers Favorite Audiobooks of 2013!

Posted on 2014-02-24 at 14:53 by Dave

Yes, it's been a looooooooong wait. But 2013 was a pretty good year, and we have the audiobooks to prove it! In our wrap-up of 2012 in audiobooks, we had a consensus pick for best new audiobook, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. This year, we are a house -- er, pirate ship? -- divided. Last year, we also split things up quite a bit between "best new audiobook of a new book" and "best new audiobook of a previously released book". This year, there are no second class citizens among our listens, though as last year we each single out some audiobooks that were "new to us" in 2013. But enough pre-amble! On to:

BEST NEW AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR:

Sam: Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson, read by Graeme Malcolm for Hachette Audio -- I loved everything about this "novel of the ice age", from its narrative voice of "the third wind" to the memorable characters: Loon, Thorn, Heather, Elga, and Click. And Malcolm brought it to life wonderfully. I'm not the only one to think so -- it was recently named a finalist for the 2014 Audie Award for Science Fiction audiobook of the year. [Kobo| Kindle]

Dave: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, read by the author for Harper Audio -- This is an easy one for me. I'm a huge fan of Gaiman's work, but I'll admit with talk of sequels to Odd and the Frost Giants, American Gods, and Neverwhere - all books I'll gobble up as soon as they come out, if they come out - left me a little bit weary. But this book is a small, quiet treasure. It's a wonderful meditation on mortality, a license to keep dreaming of wondrous and mysterious things no matter how old you get, and easily the most personal novel Gaiman's written. Read Dave's full review here. [IndieBound CD | Kobo | Kindle | Amazon CD]

RUNNERS UP, BEST NEW AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR:

Posted in The Arrrdies | Tagged american elsewhere, ancillary justice, ann leckie, doctor sleep, hild, kate atkinson, kim stanley robinson, lauren beukes, life after life, neil gaiman, niccola griffith, robert jackson bennett, shaman, stephen king, the ocean at the end of the lane, the shining girls

Whispersync Daily Deal: Kill City Blues by Richard Kadrey

Posted on 2014-02-23 at 13:36 by Sam

Sunday, February 23, 2014: Hot on the heels of being announced as a finalist for the 2014 Audie Awards, Richard Kadrey’s latest Sandman Slim novel, Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel, is a Kindle Daily Deal today at $1.99. As the Kindle edition offers a $3.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition, read by MacLeod Andrew for Harper Audio, it’s quite a discount:

“Another day, another apocalypse. James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, has managed to get out of Hell, renounce his title as the new Lucifer, and settle back into life in L.A. But he also lost the Qomrama Om Ya, an all-powerful weapon from the banished older gods. Older gods who are returning and searching for their lost power. The hunt leads Stark to an abandoned shopping mall—a global shopping paradise infested with Lurkers and wretched bottom-feeding Sub Rosa families, squatters who have formed tight tribes to guard their tiny patches of retail wasteland. Somewhere in this kill zone is a dead man with the answers Stark needs. All Stark has to do is find the dead man, recover the artifact, and outwit and outrun the angry old gods—and natural-born killers—on his tail. But not even Sandman Slim is infallible, and any mistakes will cost him dearly.”

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged kill city blues, macleod andrews, richard kadrey, sandman slim

Release Week: Alice Hoffman's The Museum of Extraordinary Things and David Weber's Like a Mighty Army, Broken Homes and The New Watch, Metro 2034 and Z 2135, and more

Posted on 2014-02-20 at 18:19 by Sam

FEBRUARY 12-18, 2013: A packed week this week, both in terms of releases and news. New audiobooks range from magical realism (Alice Hoffman's The Museum of Extraordinary Things) to space sf (David Weber's Like a Mighty Army) to dystopian sf (Metro 2034 and Z 2135) to the London-set urban fantasy of Ben Aaronovitch and the Russia-set urban fantasy of Sergei Lukyanenko, to backlist audiobooks from Tricia Sullivan and H. Beam Piper, and plenty more including sf from Ian Whates and Joel Shepherd, Arthurian fantasy from M.K. Hume, the latest Alex Verus novel from Benedict Jacka and Saga of Recluse novel from L.E. Modesitt, and more books in Audible Frontiers' very welcome productions of A.C. Crispin's StarBridge series. In terms of news: The 2014 Audies finalists have been announced! I ran down the sf/f/h titles (and collected ebook and CD set links) yesterday, and now that the nominees are out it's definitely time to jump aboard The Armchair Audies and play along. Pick a category -- or two or three! I am more than a book behind in both Richard Kadrey's and Scott Lynch's series, so it's hard for me to take on fantasy (though I'm looking forward to getting to all 5 of those audiobooks eventually); I've no hope at all this decade of catching up in either Bujold's or Cherryh's, or even Maberry's, series in the science fiction category. Meanwhile, apparently I missed two bits of recent news: Andy Weir's Audie-nominated The Martian, initially self-published and then produced into audio by Podium Publishing (who, again, has consistently been doing very high-quality work since its founding), has been completely re-recorded to match the updated Random House edition of the book. And! With a new partnership with Brilliance Audio, the audiobook will soon be available in physical CD formats. Contests? Yup. Blackstone Audio is giving away three signed CD sets of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. One last thing: do check out the "seen but not heard" listings this week -- the Kaiju Rising anthology is out, as well as the first installment of Tim Pratt's new serial project, Heirs of Grace, along with some really intriguing-looking UK releases. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Bestselling magical realist Alice Hoffman's latest book, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, takes a look at the territory of early 1900s Coney Island, of boardwalk freak show mermaids and a striking photographer, of the dramatic fire which changed New York City in 1911. Drawing comparisons to The Night Circus, the book has been lovingly produced by Simon & Schuster Audio, performed by Judith Light, Grace Gummer, and Zach Appelman concurrent with the print/ebook release from Scribner. "Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk freak show that thrills the masses. An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father’s “museum,” alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man taking pictures of moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River. The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen, a Russian immigrant who has run away from his father’s Lower East Side Orthodox community and his job as a tailor’s apprentice. When Eddie photographs the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he becomes embroiled in the suspicious mystery behind a young woman’s disappearance and ignites the heart of Coralie." [Other links: IndieBound CD | Amazon CD | Kindle | Book Trailer | Audio Excerpts]

Oliver Wyman returns as the voice of David Weber's Safehold military sf series with the release of book 7, Like a Mighty Army, out from Macmillan Audio concurrent with the print/ebook release from Tor. "For centuries, the world of Safehold, last redoubt of the human race, lay under the unchallenged rule of the Church of God Awaiting. The Church permitted nothing new—no new inventions, no new understandings of the world. What no one knew was that the Church was an elaborate fraud—a high-tech system established by a rebel  faction of Safehold’s founders, meant to keep humanity hidden from the powerful alien race that had destroyed old Earth. Then awoke Merlyn Athrawes, cybernetic avatar of a warrior a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which Earth was lost. Monk, warrior, counselor to princes and kings, Merlyn has one purpose: to restart the history of the too-long-hidden human race. And now the fight is thoroughly underway." [More links: IndieBound CD | Amazon CD | Kindle]

While the first three of Ben Aaronovitch's fantastic contemporary London-set urban fantasy "Peter Grant / Rivers of London" series came to audio from Tantor, Penguin Audio takes the helm for the fourth book, Broken Homes: A Rivers of London Novel, just a couple of weeks behind the US print/ebook release from DAW -- though quite a bit behind the July 2013 UK publication. Very, very happily, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith returns as narrator, for who else could say: "My name is Peter Grant, and I am a keeper of the secret flame—whatever that is. Truth be told, there’s a lot I still don’t know. My superior Nightingale, previously the last of England’s wizardly governmental force, is trying to teach me proper schooling for a magician’s apprentice. But even he doesn’t have all the answers. Mostly I’m just a constable sworn to enforce the new year, I have three main objectives: pass the detective exam so I can officially become a DC; work out what the hell my relationship with Lesley Mai—an old friend from the force and now fellow apprentice—is supposed to be, and most importantly; and get through the year without destroying a major landmark. Two out of three isn’t bad, right?" [More links: IndieBound CD | Amazon CD | Kindle]

Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch began a 4-book Russia-set urban fantasy series, all read by Paul Michael for Audible Frontiers in late 2010. Now, Lukyanenko and Michael are back with The New Watch: Watch, Book 5, translated by Andrew Bromfield, well ahead of the physical (and even other digital) US releases. "For a millennium, the Others have maintained an uneasy peace that has protected them and the Twilight, their shadowy parallel world beneath our own. But the battle for supremacy between the forces of the Light and the Darkness is far from over . . . Older and more powerful, Light magician Anton Gorodestsky has risen to the top levels of the Night Watch. He is also father to a 10-year-old girl who is destined to become a magician of unprecedented power. When he hears a young boy at the airport screaming that a plane will crash, Anton suspects the child is a prophet—a rare type of Other who portends catastrophe. If Anton is right, than the boy has awakened a terrifying danger—a rare, multi-faced beast that exists to stop the prophecy from coming true. With all of their lives in mortal peril and time running out, Anton must to find a way to keep his gifted young daughter safe . . . and save the Twilight world."

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

Posted in Release Week | Tagged alice hoffman, ben aaronovitch, david weber, kobna holdbrook-smith, oliver wyman, peter grant, safehold, sergei lukyanenko, the museum of extraordinary things, tricia sullivan