JULY 9-29, 2014: Covering three weeks worth of releases in mid-to-late July, with picks including a terrific ending to Ben H. Winters’ The Last Policeman trilogy, new standalone epic fantasy, magical realism, near-future sf, comedic high fantasy, CornPunk, and a Kickstarter-funded anthology of megamonster invasion. Beyond the picks, there are more trilogies concluded (Hannu Rajaniemi’s Jean le Flambeur, Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy), more next books in a series (Melissa Scott and Jo Graham’s Order of the Air series, Mark Hodder’s Return of the Discontinued Man), and a fantasy classic come to audio in advance of the author’s return to the series (Robin Hobb’s Fool’s Errand), along with Rebecca Makkai’s The Hundred-Year House, a pile of Robert McCammon, William Dufris reading Isaac Asimov’s Robot trilogy, new collections (Ben Bova read by Stefan Rudnicki and company, David Drake read by Christopher Grove), Tim Pratt’s The Nex, and The Golden Compass director Chris Weitz’s fiction debut, The Young World. And! Just in time for the movie adaptation, Joe R. Lansdale’s Cold in July. But! I’m frustrated to note that the “seen but not heard” listings include Max Gladstone’s Full Fathom Five and are headlined by Nick Harkaway’s Tigerman — there’s a fantastic UK audiobook edition of Tigerman out since May, but it looks like we’ll have to wait until November to get a US audiobook.

One bit of good news, however, is the appearance of new library CD and MP3-CD editions of Glimpses by Lewis Shiner, read by Stefan Rudnicki. Out since 2011 in digital audio — and my pick that year for best new audiobook of the year — the book of time travel (of a sort) and rock-and-roll won the 1994 World Fantasy Award, and really is a wonderful book and audiobook. In other news and such, I have a fantastic narrator interview to pass along: Jeff VanderMeer interviews Bronson Pinchot for Vulture — it is a fantastic, fantastic, in-depth interview. Speaking of interviews, I hadn’t yet seen Cory Doctorow’s interview at Downpour.com by narrator Malcolm Hillgartner, so while it may not be new, it’s new to me. See you in August for the next roundup, including reviews of Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s Land and Lou Anders’ Frostborn. Enjoy! [And if you’re new to audiobooks, among the many ways to get started are: you can try Audible with a free audiobook or get your first 3 months at Audible for $7.49/month ; try a free 30-day trial at audiobook streaming service Audiobooks.com ; or sign up for a $12.99 monthly membership at DRM-free Downpour.com .]

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

The Last Policeman trilogy by Ben H. Winters concludes with World of Trouble, and I had the surreal experience of listening to it while criss-crossing the small towns of Ohio on a road trip to the midwest, which included stops at the old family farmstead, teaching my son to shoot an air rifle at another rural family home while cousins shot their first .22 or .410, and the sampling of an old friend’s home-brewed beer. Why was this a bit surreal? World of Trouble: The Last Policeman, Book 3 by Ben H. Winters (Quirk Books and Brilliance Audio) — the third and concluding book in Winters’ Edgar Award winning and Philip K. Dick Award nominated Last Policeman trilogy — sees Detective Hank Palace bicycling through Ohio, looking for his sister, hoping to reunite before everything ends. The scope of this series has grown ever more epic. In The Last Policeman, Palace is investigating one crime in one town, his home town of Concord, New Hampshire. (Of course there is more going on: his sister is already up to her ears in anti-conspiracy conspiracies to save the world from an asteroid which will kill everyone.) In Countdown City, Palace ventures further afield, seeing regional responses to the imminent catastrophe first hand from universities gone Utopian to remote state park wilderness survivalists. Here in World of Trouble, Winters brings the scope both back to pinpoint — much of the main action occurs in a small Ohio town’s police headquarters and its immediate surrounds — but with a pullback zoom in hand for both time and place as we see Palace following the clues which led him to, in the final days of the countdown, embark on a thousand-mile bicycle trip across towns graded variously red (avoid: psychopaths) to places largely unchanged, to scenes of mass suicide. And all the while, Palace struggles with doubts: what if his sister was right, what if there is a chance that this rogue scientist can alter the path of the asteroid? Here at the end of Ben H. Winters’ beautiful The Last Policeman series, if you’re one of those readers/listeners who wait for a series to be concluded before beginning, hop in now; these are fantastic books and audiobooks, and this is a fantastic conclusion to a really, really damn good series. If “an asteroid is coming to end human life on Earth, lots of people are quitting their jobs, going looting, whatever, but a few people, like Detective Henry/Hank Palace, just want to do their job and solve one last MFing case” appeals, dude. Really well narrated, too, by Peter Berkrot, who simply is Detective Palace. More: In an interview for USA Today he plays ukulele and talks about the end of the world. Buy: [Downpour | Audible | Kobo | Kindle]

Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel by Tiphanie Yanique (Riverhead, July 10, and Recorded Books, July 17) — “In the early 1900s, the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule, and an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea. Orphaned by the shipwreck are two sisters and their half brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them.” A pleasant surprise this month, as I hadn’t expected to hear this in audio until November from Recorded Books, but here it is in a 4-voice narration by Cherise Boothe, Korey Jackson, Rachel Leslie, and Myra Lucretia Taylor. Yanique’s 2012 debut collection How to Escape from a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories is also available in audio (and currently a Whispersync deal at $1.99+$3.99); this is her debut novel. (Hat tip to Yanique’s fellow Caribbean author Karen Lord for putting Yanique’s books on my radar.) Buy: [Audible | Kobo | Kindle]

Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Thomas Sweterlitsch (Putnam Adult and Penguin Audio, Jul 10, 2014) — “A decade has passed since the city of Pittsburgh was reduced to ash. While the rest of the world has moved on, losing itself in the noise of a media-glutted future, survivor John Dominic Blaxton remains obsessed with the past. Grieving for his wife and unborn child who perished in the blast, Dominic relives his lost life by immersing in the Archive—a fully interactive digital reconstruction of Pittsburgh, accessible to anyone who wants to visit the places they remember and the people they loved. Dominic investigates deaths recorded in the Archive to help close cases long since grown cold, but when he discovers glitches in the code surrounding a crime scene—the body of a beautiful woman abandoned in a muddy park that he’s convinced someone tried to delete from the Archive—his cycle of grief is shattered.” Another debut novel, bearing starred reviews and accolades for its “genre-mixing sci-fi, noir mystery”. Narrated by Adam Paul in a fairly understated fashion, perhaps a bit lackluster even for the emotionally destroyed Blaxton, his narration nonetheless conveys a permeating sense of loss, bridging the divide between noir and melancholy quite well. Buy: [Downpour | Audible | Kobo | Kindle]

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey and Recorded Books, July 15, 2014) — Abercrombie is back with a new epic fantasy, beginning a new Shattered Sea series after six novels in his The First Law series. Here: “A classic coming-of-age tale, set in a brilliantly imagined alternative historical world reminiscent of the Dark Ages with Viking overtones, the book tells the story of Yarvi, youngest son of a warlike king. Born with a crippled hand, he can never live up to his father’s expectations of what a real man should be and his destiny is not the throne but the Ministry, not the sword and shield but the book and the soft word spoken.” Ably narrated by John Keating, Abercrombie’s a bit undone (but only a bit) by the standards he himself helped set: we don’t see quite enough new here to raise our eyebrows ever higher, as Abercrombie managed to do time and time again in his previous books. Still, this book is not meant as those books. Here, as billed, it’s a “coming-of-age” tale, shorter and more direct than his First Law books, with a tenderness of spirit that would not survive first contact with Logen Ninefingers, and while the high praise from GRRM and Rothfuss and other epic fantasy luminaries feels a bit overdone for those looking for Abercrombie’s trademark “gritty” epic fantasy, it’s he, in the end, who’ll have to fulfill the promise of this book’s change of tone in future volumes. Buy: [Downpour | Audible | Kobo | Kindle]

Speaking of a change in tone, let’s turn our sights to comedic fantasy, shall we? This requires not much of a shift for British author Tom Holt (Doughnut and When It’s a Jar) or narrator Ray Sawyer on Holt’s latest novel, The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice (Orbit and Hachette Audio). “A happy workforce is a productive workforce. At the moment, the Wizard’s employees are neither. The goblins are upset with their working conditions, the dragonslayer has thrown a hissy fit over his medical insurance (or lack thereof) and everyone is upset about the terrible canteen coffee. Yet the Wizard hasn’t got time to worry about revolution in the workplace – he’s about to see his brilliant business plan (based on entrepreneurial flair and involving one or two parallel worlds) disrupted by a clueless young man. Side effects may include a huge hole in the fabric of reality. This is almost certainly going to be a bad day at the office.” Buy: [Audible | Kobo | Kindle]

CornPunk is back! Chuck Wendig’s Under the Empyrean Sky introduced young readers to Cael McAvoy and a dystopian “CornPunk” future. Wendig (and narrator Nick Podehl, also brilliantly of Patrick Rothfuss’ KingKiller Chronicles in the US) are back with Blightborn, book 2 of The Heartland Trilogy (Amazon/Skyscape and Brilliance Audio). “Cael McAvoy is on the run. He’s heading toward the Empyrean to rescue his sister, Merelda, and to find Gwennie before she’s lost to Cael forever. With his pals, Lane and Rigo, Cael journeys across the Heartland to catch a ride into the sky. But with Boyland and others after them, Cael and his friends won’t make it through unchanged. Gwennie’s living the life of a Lottery winner, but it’s not what she expected. Separated from her family, Gwennie makes a bold move – one that catches the attention of the Empyrean and changes the course of an Empyrean man’s life. The crew from Boxelder aren’t the only folks willing to sacrifice everything to see the Empyrean fall. The question is: Can the others be trusted?” Buy: [Audible | Kindle]

Lastly, a monstrous mega-monster anthology: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters edited by Tim Marquitz and Nick Sharps, with stories by Larry Correia, Peter Clines, Timothy W Long, Howard Andrew Jones, Peter Rawlik, James Swallow, C. L. Werner, James Maxey, Erin Hoffman, Natania Barron, and more. A Kickstarter anthology out in ebook since February, now in audio from Audible. “Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters is a collection of 23 stories focused around the theme of strange creatures in the vein of Pacific Rim, Godzilla, Cloverfield, and more. The anthology opens with a foreword by Jeremy Robinson, author of Project Nemesis, the highest-selling Kaiju novel in the United States since the old Godzilla books – and perhaps even more than those. Then, from New York Times best sellers to indie darlings Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters features authors that are perfectly suited for writing larger-than-life stories, including: Peter Clines, Larry Correia, James Lovegrove, Gini Koch (as J. C. Koch), James Maxey, Jonathan Wood, C. L. Werner, Joshua Reynolds, David Annandale, Jaym Gates, Peter Rawlik, Shane Berryhill, Natania Barron, Paul Genesse & Patrick Tracy, Nathan Black, Mike MacLean, Timothy W. Long, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Kane Gilmour, Peter Stenson, Erin Hoffman, Sean Sherman, Howard Andrew Jones (The Chronicles of Sword and Sand tie-in), Edward M. Erdelac (Dead West tie-in), and James Swallow (Colossal Kaiju Combat tie-in).” A physical MP3-CD edition is due in December from Brilliance Audio. I don’t have a full narrator listing, but it is a multi-narrator audiobook with (at least) the recognizable voice of Peter Ganim (Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, Gail Z. Martin’s Chronicles of the Necromancer, H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy). Available at Audible as well as through iTunes, though it’s a much better deal to go Kindle plus Whispersync upgrade, at $5.99+$1.99. Update: Thanks to the fine folks at Audible, I do have a full narrator listing, and it’s a fantastic one also including (among others) Bronson Pinchot, Simon Vance, Jay Snyder, Victor Bevine, Jonathan Davis, Marc Vietor, Jennifer Van Dyck, Scott Aiello, Mark Boyett, Allison Hirohito, Katherine Kellgren, Christian Rummel, Therese Plummer, Ray Porter, Sean Runnette, Jeff Woodman, Dina Pearlman, Suzy Jackson, R.C. Bray, and Susan Duerden. Wow!

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK(S):

ALSO ALSO OUT THIS WEEK(S):

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

COMING SOON:

SEPTEMBER 2014:

OCTOBER 2014:

NOVEMBER and DECEMBER 2014:

UNDATED or 2015: