NOVEMBER 13-19, 2013: As happened last week, amidst a fairly quiet week overall there’s still a pair of fantastic audiobooks from my “most missing in audio” list: Tim Powers’ Hide Me Among the Graves and Lewis Shiner’s Slam. Additionally, this week brings one of the most fantastically-produced non-fiction titles I’ve ever had the occasion to come across, an Audible-published Skyboat Media full cast production of Report from Nuremberg, complete with archive audio from the source material. The “also out” listings this week are led by more new releases from fantastic independent audio publisher Iambik, along with C.S. Fuqua’s poetry collection White Trash and Southern, Vonda McIntyre’s Superluminal, Philippa Ballantine’s Kindred and Wings, and new books in the Romulus Buckle, Baskerville Affair, and Jeremiah Hunt series. Coming soon — later this week in fact — are a good pile each of Dr. Who audiobooks (including one by Neil Gaiman) and an epic haul of Greg Egan’s hard sf. In terms of news, there’s been a lot, but the most recent bit is that Buzzy Multimedia has just posted a sample of James Marsters reading The Kingmakers by Clay and Susan Griffith, due out in full in January. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers, read by Fiona Hardingham for Blackstone Audio was published in print/ebook last year by William Morrow, a stand-alone follow-up to the fantastic The Stress of Her Regard which both Dave and I loved. Dave had the decency to actually write it down properly. Perhaps I made up for it by going on to listen to and love Powers’ Declare and Last Call and On Stranger Tides… Anyway. The Stress of Her Regard was performed magnificently by Simon Vance, and here the atmosphere of Powers’ secret history of mid-19th Century Europe is under the capable voice of Hardingham, whose rendition of Jane Rogers’ The Testament of Jesse Lamb was simply wonderful. A 2012 Washington Post Notable Book for Fiction and a 2013 Mythopoeic Award Nominee. “Winter 1862, London. Adelaide McKee, a former prostitute, arrives on the doorstep of veterinarian John Crawford, a man she met once seven years earlier. Their brief meeting produced a child who, until now, had been presumed dead. McKee has learned that the girl lives—but that her life and soul are in mortal peril from a vampiric ghost. But this is no ordinary spirit; the bloodthirsty wraith is none other than John Polidori, the onetime physician to the mad, bad, and dangerous Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both McKee and Crawford have mysterious histories with creatures like Polidori, and their child is a prize the malevolent spirit covets dearly. Polidori is also the late uncle and supernatural muse to poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.”





Slam [print/ebook/CD] by Lewis Shiner, read by Stefan Rudnicki, is Shiner’s 1990 novel of a paroled tax evader, anarchist skateboarders, and, well, 23 cats. (And a UFO hoaxter; an elderly blind/deaf couple seeking centuries-old pirate treasure; an arsonist; and even more cats.) Somehow it was available at Audible in mid-October (and, via a $2.99 Kindle plus $2.99 Whispersync for Voice special, an instant grab once I saw it live there) but I wanted to go ahead and feature it on its official release date this week. As I said during my listening to the audiobook, “I could listen to Stefan Rudnicki read Lewis Shiner all day.” Rudnicki was masterful on Glimpses, Shiner’s World Fantasy Award winning novel, and here Rudnicki voices one of Shiner’s mainstream fictions with the same aplomb. Slam when released in 1990 was on the liminal edge between the Cold War’s pessimism and the dawning of the modern Internet. Technological advances seemed to promise post-scarcity just across the horizon. Now looking back, Slam seems almost more a paean to that optimistic hope, that one could plug in to a new network of possibilities and live more or less disconnected from that other grid — that grid of laws and finance and capital — in peace and happiness and freedom. As it turned out, deregulated corporate power ended up the victor, buying up land, air, water, laws, politicians, prisons, countries, whatever; opting out wasn’t an option. I enjoyed the heck out of this audiobook and am looking forward to next month’s audio release of Shiner’s Collected Stories.

That Skyboat Media non-fiction title I mentioned in the intro is Report from Nuremberg: The International War Crimes Trial by Harold Burson, narrated by Christian Rummel, Richard McGonagle, Gabrielle De Cuir, Stefan Rudnicki, Kristoffer Tabori, John Rubinstein, Harold Burson, Jim Meskimen, Arthur Morey, Joe Nocera, Robert Forster, and Scott Brick for Audible. From archival audio of reporters’ typewriters clanging behind the original radio broadcasts, to Rudnicki’s introduction, to the sometimes chilling performances of this full cast, I can’t recall a non-fiction title that compares in any way to this. In terms of fiction, World War Z perhaps comes (intentionally? one would have to ask Max Brooks, but I suspect yes) closest, but it’s yet another achievement for Skyboat, really. The trial revealed and publicized much of the horrific goings on of the Nazi regime to the world, amidst enduring questions of the legal authority of its court; following down the rabbit hole of stories here, and you learn of ancient prisons converted to housing one or more of the guilty from the trial, and then being destroyed after the death or release of their final prisoner amidst fears of their becoming shrines for a new generation of fascists. That’s the thing about history — you can keep going and going. Here, though, it’s a spotlight on — and is being released on the anniversary of — the opening of the first and most famous trial, November 19, 1945.

I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for cheering on the underdogs. And it certainly helps when said pint-sized upstart does fantastic work the right way. For Canada-based Iambik Audiobooks, that’s releasing exquisite and often edgy, innovative, and diverse fiction from fantastic small press publishers, Mundania Press in the case of my last pick this week, Krista D. Ball’s Tranquility’s Grief. Tranquility’s Grief is volume 2 of the Tales of Tranquility, following Book 1: Tranquility’s Blaze. “As the bodies of her father and her sister burned, Bethany refused to say good-bye. She would say it only when she saw the release of their spirits and the burning of every person connected to their deaths. Only then would they rest in peace. Thousands are dead. Lady Champion Bethany’s tainted sister is slain. Her home lost forever. And Magic yet survives. Bethany thought she’d given everything in the fight against Magic. She was wrong. When the deaths of those closest to her shake her already crumbled world, she doesn’t wilt and die. She still has one thing left to gain even now: revenge. Prophecy or no, half-goddess or not, Bethany vows to bring order back to the world with the edge of her blade. No matter who she must defy. No matter what stands in her way. No matter who must die. For what they’ve done to her, all will pay.” The narrator here is Cori Samuel, who is a longtime LibriVox contributor and in terms of commercial audiobooks was absolutely fantastic on J.M. McDermott’s Last Dragon last year.

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

The Quest for the Immortal Walker is the fourth and last book of the Chronicles of Valonia series by Katie Paterson, narrated by Karen Savage for Iambik; the print/ebook edition was published by KAMedia Works. “The Master of Hades has waited centuries to fill the world with his evil, and now he has his chance, with his despicable sorceress and his heinous creatures of death. Only the Immortal Walker can stop this catastrophe, and it is Rachel and Gareth’s final quest to find him. But who is the Immortal Walker and where is he? Faced with dangerous situations the twins have to battle on and solve the mystery, before the Master of Evil takes over. But can Rachel and Gareth do this, and will they be in time to save the world from the eternal fires of Hades and its Supreme Master of Darkness?” First line: “Deep under the black mountains in her damp, dark caverns Rathyen rattled six stones in her gnarled, grimy hands and threw them across the stone table for the second time.”

Inner Diverse is Book 2 of the Splintered Universe series, a metaphysical thriller trilogy which started with Outer Diverse. Written by Nina Munteanu and narrated by Dawn Harvey, originally published by Starfire World Syndicate. “Detective Rhea Hawke continues her quest for truth and justice in a world that is not what it seems. Rhea’s search takes her to the far reaches of the known universe from the Weeping Mountains of Horus to the blistering deserts of Upsilon 3. Amidst the turmoil of an imminent extra-galactic war, Rhea holds the key even as those she trusts betray her. No one is what they seem…” First Line: “I pulled out a second wad of soyka gum and chewed nervously then resumed paddling, eyes sharp for any boiling masses of water snakes.”

White Trash & Southern: Collected Poems, Volume 1 by C. S. Fuqua, narrated by C.S. Fuqua for his own “Cooperative Ink” label. He released a (short!) short story earlier this year, Hush, Puppy!: A Southern-Fried Tale of fried cornbread, complete with barking dogs and other sound effects, and here takes on his new collection: “Two hundred thirty-two poems, 232 stories of life, from birth to death, domestic bliss to domestic violence, political stupidity to flatulent bus travelers, celebration, mourning, joy, sadness…Poetry in this data-saturated age is not, for most, a viable way to make a living. So why expend the time and energy to create something that few people will listen to and even fewer will purchase? To which I must ask, why do people sing in the rain, paint pictures, dance? Because it provides pleasure and reward and perhaps even keeps them sane. As a writer of fiction and nonfiction, I am most concerned with story. When I write poetry, I view it not as some lofty literary tool to fool or condescend, but as an exercise in crafting story within the strictest confines. White Trash & Southern is a collection of such exercises, spanning nearly three decades. To create a complex story within a limited number of words – to communicate far more than appears – is a challenge that can provide enormous reward and satisfaction. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I don’t. But at least I remain sane. Sort of.” It’s Fuqua’s second collection to come to audio this year, after his fiction collection, Trust Walk, Narrated By Timothy B. Phillips for Celeritas Unlimited LLC. “Descend into a world of dark and light, a world in which karma is real. The 35 stories collected here explore the motivations of the human spirit, the qualities that lead us into temptation as well as deliverance, that make even the most ordinary among us extraordinary. In ‘Walking After Midnight,’ a Year’s Best Horror Stories selection, a man sinks in self-pity as he drives home in a snowstorm after a long day’s work, his wife recently deceased, his son a casualty of war decades before. In the swirling snow, he swerves to avoid a man at the edge of the road. The truck flips and fatally injures the driver, but he won’t die alone.”