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

Whispersync Daily Deal: E.G. Foley's The Gryphon Chronicles

Posted on 2014-02-20 at 15:07 by Sam

Thursday, February 20, 2014: Today’s crop of Kindle Daily Deal titles includes the first two books in E.G. Foley’s middle grade The Gryphon Chronicles series, The Lost Heir (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 1) and Jake & The Giant (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 2), each priced at $1.99. The first book is Whispersync for Voice enabled with a $1.99 upgrade offer to the Audible edition, narrated by Jamie du Pont MacKenzie. “Jake is a scrappy orphaned pickpocket living by his wits on the streets of Victorian London. Lately he’s started seeing ghosts, and discovers he can move solid objects with his mind! He has no idea why. Next thing he knows, a Sinister Gentleman and his minions come hunting him. On the run for his life, Jake is plunged headlong into a mysterious world full of magic and deadly peril. A world that holds the secret to who he really is: the long-lost heir of an aristocratic family - with magical powers!”

There are 3 books (and a Christmas-themed novella) in the series, and the 3 novels are all in audio.

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged eg foley, Jamie du Pont MacKenzie, the gryphon chronicles

The 2014 Audie Award finalists have been announced

Posted on 2014-02-19 at 15:33 by Sam

Via Booklist Online, the 2014 Audies Finalists have been announced. My first thoughts are 1. that I'm thrilled to see Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman named as a finalist in the Science Fiction category. And 2, I can't recall a previous year with such a broad base of audio publishers. The big 5/6 and Amazon's imprints, along with independents both big (Recorded Books, Blackstone, Tantor, and GraphicAudio) and small: Podium (who continues to produce an extremely high quality of well-curated and well-cast audiobooks), Spokenworld, "MountainWhispers.com Audiobooks" and more. Split across 29 categories, here are the titles of speculative interest:

The Fall of the Kings; by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman; Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Nick Sullivan, Neil Gaiman, Simon Jones, Katherine Kellgren, Robert Fass, Richard Ferrone, and Tim Jerome; SueMedia Productions for Neil Gaiman Presents/Audible, Inc. [Kobo | Kindle]

Marvel Civil War; by Stuart Moore; Narrated by Richard Rohan, Richard Cutting, Tim Getman, James Keegan, Kimberly Gilbert, and a full cast; GraphicAudio [Kindle]

War of the Worlds; by M.J. Elliott and H.G. Wells; Narrated by The Colonial Radio Players; The Colonial Radio Theatre on the Air [Kindle]

[among others]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alex bledsoe, andy weir, audies, brandon sanderson, bronson pinchot, clockwork angels, doctor sleep, ellen kushner, ever after, george guidall, green space, helene wecker, joe hill, john hodgman, kate mulgrew, kevin j anderson, kim harrison, kim stanley robinson, macleod andrews, maddaddam, margaret atwood, max brooks, metatropolis, miachael page, michael kramer, neil gaiman, neil gaiman presents, neil peart, nos4a2, ocean at the end of the lane, podium, richard kadrey, rip-off, robert sheckley, scott lynch, shaman, stefan rudnicki, stephen king, the martian, will patton, world war z

Whispersync Daily Deal: Altered Destiny by Shawna Thomas and Osiris by E.J. Swift

Posted on 2014-02-17 at 17:17 by Sam

Monday, February 17, 2014: Today’s crop of Kindle Daily Deal (and other sale) titles include two of interest here. First up, Altered Destiny by Shawna Thomas, priced at $0.99 on Kindle with a $0.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition, read by Uma Incrocci for Carina Press. Nominally, Carina is a romance-first electronic imprint of Harlequin, and they’ve also put out some stellar sf titles in their own right such as J.L. Hilton’s Stellarnet Rebel (The Stellarnet Series) (itself a perpetually recommended “Whispersync Daily Deal” at $3 and $3), Michael Merriam’s Last Car to Annwn Station, and Cathy Pegau’s Rulebreaker. Here, it’s fantasy: “Selia has run her family’s tavern since she was 15 and can hunt and fight as the equal of any male. When she rescues a badly wounded man and nurses him back to health, she has no idea she’s about to change not only her life, but also the destinies of two peoples…. The battered warrior is a Svistra - a race of bloodthirsty savages determined to destroy her homeland. Or so the stories claim. Jaden reveals a different truth: how his ancestors were driven into the barren northern mountains. Now they are strong, and war parties are pushing south, wanting their land back. The son of a Svistra commander, Jaden is looking for a way to bring peace to both humans and Svistrans. He tries to ignore his growing passion for Selia, but when she is captured, he has to decide what he would be willing to sacrifice to save the woman he loves.”

Next, Osiris: Book One of the Osiris Project by E.J. Swift, available for $1.99 in Kindle (thanks to a Night Shade Books “President’s Day Sale”) and offering a $4.49 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition, read by Khristine Hvam for Audible Frontiers. “Adelaide Rechnov. Wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, she spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family in a series of jaded social extravagances and scandals until her twin brother disappears in mysterious circumstances. Vikram Bai. He lives in the Western Quarter, home to the poor descendants of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. Can Adelaide and Vikram bridge the divide at the heart of Osiris before conspiracies bring them to the edge of disaster?”

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged carina-press, ej swift, jl-hilton, osiris, shawna thomas, uma icrocci

Whispersync Daily Deal: The Dead Run by Adam Mansbach

Posted on 2014-02-15 at 16:20 by Sam

Saturday, February 15, 2014: Today’s crop of Kindle Daily Deal titles includes the “Go the F*ck to Sleep” author Adam Mansbach’s 2013 adult supernatural suspense novel The Dead Run: A Novel for $1.99, a title which offers a $3.95 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition, read by Erik Bergmann for Harper Audio:

“Adam Mansbach, the acclaimed #1 New York Times best-selling author of Go the F**k to Sleep and Rage Is Back, turns to a new tale of suspense, horror, and supernatural action in The Dead Run. Wrongfully imprisoned in a Mexican jail, Jess Galvan, an outlaw-with-a-conscience, accepts a devil’s bargain: transport a sinister package across the border in twenty-four hours for the jail’s mythical - and terrifying - bogeyman El Cucuy. If Jess can make it across alive and give the iron box to cult leader Aaron Seth, he will be free and able to regain custody of his estranged daughter. But, as Jess navigates a blighted desert full of deadly surprises, girls go missing on both sides of the border and bodies begin to surface. It’s a deadly epidemic of crime that plunges small-town sheriff, Bob Nichols, into a monster of an investigation that he’s not equipped to handle, especially when sixteen-year-old Sherry disappears. An ancient evil has awoken in the empty wastelands along the border and now everyone - the innocent and the guilty alike - must face their deepest fears as epic myth and human malice combine to bring forth the end of the world as we know it. With The Dead Run, acclaimed author Adam Mansbach mixes horror, the supernatural, and suspense to deliver a chilling, high-octane adventure.”

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged adam mansbach, erik bergmann, the dead run

Coming to Town, post-visit edition: Deborah Johnson for The Secret of Magic

Posted on 2014-02-14 at 18:13 by Sam

Q: I enjoyed hearing you read your own author’s note for the (really fantastically well done) audiobook edition. Were you involved with or have you listened to Peter Francis James‘ narration? A: I loved Peter Francis James’s voice from the first moment I heard it on the spec. I knew he was the one to read the audio and was thrilled when he was chosen. This is a little aside: I read the author’s note and when I was working on this the director told me that Peter Francis’s grandfather, like mine, had served in WWII in a segregated army unit. Peter Francis’s grandfather had a racist officer who one day called him the N word, at which point Peter Francis’s grandfather decked him and was promptly court martialed. And who did they send out to defend him–none other than Thurgood Marshall! I’m hearing all kinds of great stories like this as I tour with this book.

Posted in Uncategorized

Release Week: Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others, Glen Duncan's By Blood We Live, Iain Banks' Matter, and Octavia Butler's Patternmaster and Imago

Posted on 2014-02-14 at 05:19 by Sam

FEBRUARY 5-11, 2014: While much more quiet in terms of quantity -- in particular in concurrent new releases, as apparently every publisher had the same "FEBRUARY 4 OR BUST" idea this year -- there's some absolutely exquisite quality in this week's audiobooks haul, led by Ted Chiang's 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others, along with backlist titles from Iain Banks and Octavia Butler, and the only week delayed conclusion in audio for Glen Duncan's Last Werewolf trilogy, By Blood We Live. Highlights of the "also out this week" listings include M.D. Waters' Archetype, Matthew Quick read by Oliver Wyman, Neve Maslakovic read by Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugh Howey's Vonnegutian short story Peace in Amber, some blockbuster YA titles, and a pile of fiction including Michael Piafsky's "Tarot-inspired" debut, All the Happiness You Deserve. Meanwhile in the news department, Audible's "Begin at the Beginning" sale includes over 200 titles, so I picked some highlights including Tad Williams, Richard Kadrey, Mira Grant, and Paolo Bacigalupi; Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale (in audio narrated by Oliver Wyman) is set to come to theatres this Friday; and Wendy Webb's haunted house novel The Vanishing is set to come to audio this year as well. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

In a memorable (to me!) SFFaudio column in June 2011, Jesse Willis asked "Where are all the Ted Chiang audiobooks?" Well, this week Tantor Audio finally answered with a fantastic production of the multiple-award-winning Chiang's 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others. Read by Todd McLaren and Abby Craden, with McLaren providing the majority of the narration ("Tower of Babylon", "Understand", Seventy-Two Letters", "The Evolution of Human Science", and "Hell is the Absence of God") and Craden offering fantastic turns on "Division by Zero", "Story of Your Life", and "Liking What You See: A Documentary". My initial reaction was the quite sophisticated: "Wow. So, Ted Chiang. Y'all told me, and now I know. I was warned in advance and yet still am amazed." It's hard to follow sf and not hear praise for the stories of Ted Chiang, and I'd been blown away by his multiple-award winning "Exhalation" a few years ago, but even so my jaw dropped and then fell further still as one story and then another, packed with science, math, and intense characters and situations emerged from this collection. In these stories I found clear inspirations for so many of my favorite current writers (J.M. McDermott's "Maze" and Jason Erik Lundberg's "Tower" stories, Ken Liu's "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary") and also a stunningly original and unique genre to itself. From "Babylonian science fiction" to recursive brain augmentation, suicide and incompatible maths to alien language and simultaneity and the loss of a child, golems, "lookism", ... Capped by brief (yet fantastic) "Story Notes" at the end. Very, very highly recommended. Since his 2002 collection, Chiang has published several more major works, including "The Merchant at the Alchemist's Gate", "Exhalation" (in audio at EscapePod, originally podcast in StarShipSofa), a long novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects, and the novelette "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" -- more than enough for a second audiobook. Oh, Tantor... And did I mention that "Story of Your Life" is set for a film adaptation?

I highlighted Glen Duncan's By Blood We Live in last week's seen but not heard listings, in particular a fantastic interview with the author by Matt Staggs for Suvudu. Well, it's here this week in a fantastic 4-narrator audiobook, read by Abby Craden, Amber Sealey, Steve West, and Rob Shapiro for Random House Audio. "First Glen Duncan gave us his monstrously thrilling, genre-reinventing The Last Werewolf: the tale of Jake, a werewolf with a profoundly human heart, considering bringing to an end the timeless legend of his kind.... Then Talulla Rising: Jake’s werewolf lover, mother to newborn twins, on the run from those who want her destroyed... And now By Blood We Live: a stunningly erotic love story that gives us the final battle for survival between werewolves and vampires, and one last searing - and brilliantly ironic - look at what it means to be, or not to be, human."

Previously only available (at least in the US) as a 5.5 hour abridgement, Matter: Culture, Book 8 by the late Iain M. Banks, narrated by Toby Longworth for Hachette Audio is now available in its unabridged edition. Not all of the Culture audiobooks are available in the US just yet, as Hachette has been bringing them over from the UK well behind their publication there. Excession, Inversions, and Look to Windward have yet to make their way here, though each has been published in the past year in the UK. Still it's a very welcome addition, and one of the (many) ways to read the Culture books starts right here: "In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one man it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever."

Patternmaster: The Patternist Series By Octavia E. Butler, Narrated By Eugene H. Russell IV --. Listed by Audible as "Book 4" in the series (which is where it stands in the modified internal chronology), it was the first published, in 1976, and it's the one I've been waiting for to get started on the series in audio. "The Patternist is a telepathic race, commanded by the Patternmaster, whose thoughts can destroy, heal, rule. Coransee, son of the ruling Patternmaster, wants the throne and will stop at nothing to get it, including venture into the wild mutant-infested hills to destroy a young apprentice - his equal and his brother." Also out in Audible extremely welcome and well-produced series of audiobooks bringing Butler's works to audio this week: Clay's Ark: Patternist, Book 3 (narrated by Neal Ghant -- though it's the last remaining Butler novel not in audio, 1978's Survivor, which was the third published book in the Patternist series and which Butler later disowned and declined to return to print) and Imago, the concluding third book in her Xenogenesis trilogy, narrated by Barrett Aldrich.

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

Posted in Release Week | Tagged by blood we live, glen duncan, hugh howey, iain m banks, imago, matter, octavia butler, patternist, stories of your life and others, ted chiang, the last werewolf, xenogenesis

Armchair Audies 2014!

Posted on 2014-02-14 at 01:20 by Sam

Eagerly awaiting the Armchair Audies just about as much as I’m eagerly awaiting the Audie Awards finalists lists themselves:

Posted in Uncategorized

Whispersync Daily Deal: The Return Man by V.M. Zito, read by Bernard Clark

Posted on 2014-02-12 at 14:49 by Sam

Wednesday, February 12, 2014: Today’s crop of Kindle Daily Deals includes V.M. Zito’s The Return Man, a 2012 novel of post-zombie-apocalypse, priced at $1.99, and offering a $3.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition, narrated by Bernard Clark for Hachette Audio. As “Bernard Setaro Clark”, the narrator was absolutely amazing on Hal Duncan’s Vellum: The Book of All Hours, and I’ve had my eye on The Return Man since The Guilded Earlobe’s review which calls it “a well paced thriller that offers a lot of fun zombie action and some truly emotional moments. While Zito relies heavily of thriller conspiracy tropes and stereotypical bad guys, he does a good job creating emotionally complex situations and uses the zombie tableau to examine the value of human life in a way that truly pays off for the reader.”

The book copy: “The outbreak tore the US in two. The East remains a safe haven. The West has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace. Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other: He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again. But in the wastelands of America, you never know who - or what - is watching you.”

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged bernard clark, bernard setaro clark, the return man, vm zito

Audible's "Begin at the Beginning" sale, including Tad Williams, Richard Kadrey, Mira Grant, Paolo Bacigalupi, and more

Posted on 2014-02-11 at 18:37 by Sam

Running through February 19, Audible.com's Begin at the Beginning sale on first books in a series includes 206 books all priced at $4.95. Now, 206 titles is a pretty long list. Here's what caught my eye, with covers and "PICK:" notations for the ones I really recommend, which include Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan, Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer, Mira Grant's Feed, Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim, Paolo Bacigalupi's Shipbreaker, Tad Williams' The Dirty Streets of Heaven, and Michael J. Sullivan's The Crown Tower, among others. Enjoy!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alan cumming, jonathan davis, leviathan, michael j sullivan, mira grant, paolo bacigalupi, richard kadrey, sandman slim, scott westerfeld, simon vance, tad williams, tim gerard reynolds