SEPTEMBER 24-30, 2014: I already knew this was going to be a big week, ahead of a huge October slate (previewed by Bookpage, io9, SFSignal, and BuzzFeed) and then several surprises made coming up with a manageable set of picks a nearly impossible task. Beyond the five audiobooks I do highlight this week, there’s plenty more to check out in the “also out” listings including Garth Stein’s A Sudden Light, Hilary Mantel’s The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Jason Mott’s The Wonder of All Things, Jonathan L. Howard’s latest “Brothers Cabal” book, a new full cast production of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, a Recorded Books collection of Asimov’s Robot Dreams, Rich Horton’s Superheroes anthology, and! Elizabeth May’s debut The Falconer comes to audio as well. I’m also updating the October Whispersync Deal Roundup with a big list of titles from SFSignal’s monthly ebook sales listings. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Hurricane Fever By Tobias Buckell, Narrated By Prentice Onayemi for Audible finally sees Buckell’s follow-on to Arctic Rising come to audio. OK, it’s only been since July 1, but seeing — hearing — more of Buckell’s near-future world of climate change is a very welcome surprise this week. In contrast to so many of these novels, where we either see post-apocalyptic worlds well into the future, or completely disintegrating societies unable to cope, Buckell’s “Arctic Rising” has both a more global outlook (no surprise given his Afro-Caribbean background) and a world of gradual changes, of climate losers, sure, but also some “winners” as well. (Hey, the predicted availability of those trans-Arctic shipping lanes are already impacting economic plans of massive companies and forward-thinking countries.) Here: “Prudence “Roo” Jones never thought he’d have a family to look after—until suddenly he found himself taking care of his orphaned teenage nephew. Roo, a former Caribbean Intelligence operative, spends his downtime on his catamaran dodging the punishing hurricanes that are the new norm in the Caribbean. Roo enjoys the simple calm of his new life—until an unexpected package from a murdered fellow spy shows up. Suddenly Roo is thrown into the center of the biggest storm of all.” The book was also subject of a release-week Big Idea piece on Scalzi’s Whatever blog back in July.

Sherwood Nation By Benjamin Parzybok, Narrated By Andi Arndt for Audible was just published in print/ebook by Small Beer Press. It’s the brilliant young writer Parzybok’s second novel, reviewed quite positively by Paul Di Filippo in Locus, another near-future novel of gradual climate change, though this one a little further along than Buckell’s, and more looking at drought and water shortages: “It was morning and the power was not yet on. Zach and Renee lay in the heat of the bed listening to the city wake outside the building’s windows. Water rations are down to one gallon per person per day…the mayor is proposing digging a trench to the Pacific Ocean…dried out West Coast cities are crumbling and being abandoned by the east…and in Portland, Oregon, water is declared a communal right but hoarding and riots persist. Amidst this, a young water activist nicknamed Maid Marian becomes a hero.”

Goodhouse: A Novel [Audible] by Peyton Marshall (FSG and Brilliance Audio, Sep 30, 2014) is “a bighearted dystopian novel about the corrosive effects of fear and the redemptive power of love” with an excerpt is available via FSG. “With soaring literary prose and the tense pacing of a thriller, the first-time novelist Peyton Marshall imagines a grim and startling future. At the end of the twenty-first century—in a transformed America—the sons of convicted felons are tested for a set of genetic markers. Boys who test positive become compulsory wards of the state—removed from their homes and raised on “Goodhouse” campuses, where they learn to reform their darkest thoughts and impulses. Goodhouse is a savage place—part prison, part boarding school—and now a radical religious group, the Holy Redeemer’s Church of Purity, is intent on destroying each campus and purifying every child with fire.”

J: A Novel by Howard Jacobson (Whole Story Audio, Sep 25) is “Man Booker Prize–winner Howard Jacobson’s brilliant and profound new novel” which “invites comparison with George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World” (Sunday Times, London), set in a world where collective memory has vanished and the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited. Jacobson has been openly anti-genre over his literary career, yet here brings us a dystopian love story? Yes, yes he does, and it’s just been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The US print/ebook editions are due Oct 14, so we get the US audio a bit early, narrated by Colin Mace and Adjoa Andoh, the former mostly unknown to me, the latter I enjoyed quite immensely on Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon.

Consumed: A Novel [Downpour] by David Cronenberg is the debut novel from the acclaimed filmmaker, being “the story of two journalists whose entanglement in a French philosopher’s death becomes a surreal journey into global conspiracy.” Narrated by actor William Hurt for Simon & Schuster Audio, it’s a dark, brooding novel evocative of the body horror Cronenberg is known for: “Stylish and camera-obsessed, Naomi and Nathan thrive on the yellow journalism of the social-media age. They are lovers and competitors – nomadic freelancers in pursuit of sensation and depravity, encountering each other only in airport hotels and browser windows. Naomi finds herself drawn to the headlines surrounding Célestine and Aristide Arosteguy, Marxist philosophers and sexual libertines. Célestine has been found dead and mutilated in her Paris apartment. Aristide has disappeared.”

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

ALSO ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

COMING SOON:

NOVEMBER and DECEMBER 2014:

UNDATED or 2015: