Armor
By John Steakley; Read by Tom Weiner
11 CDs – 13 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water poisonous. It is the home of the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered.
Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred. And he is protected not only by his custom-fitted body armor, the culmination of ten thousand years of the armorers’ craft, but also by an odd being which seems to live with him, a cold killing machine he calls “the Engine.”
This best-selling science-fiction classic is a story of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat and also of how strength of spirit can be the greatest armor of all.
Burn Me Deadly
By Alex Bledsoe; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
7 CDs – 8 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
Alex Bledsoe’s first novel, The Sword-Edged Blonde, drew rave reviews for its ingenious blend of fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction. Now Bledsoe returns with an all-new tale of mean streets and medieval intrigue.
Above Angelina’s Tavern in down-and-dirty Neceda, you’ll find the office of Eddie LaCrosse. He’s a scruffy sword jockey who, for twenty-five gold pieces a day plus expenses, will handle any problem short of murder for hire. Eddie’s on his way back from a routine investigation when his horse almost runs down a half-naked blonde in serious trouble. Against his better judgment, he promises to protect the frightened young woman, only to find himself waylaid by unknown assailants and left for dead beside her mutilated body. Eddie’s quest for payback leads him to a tangled mystery involving a notorious crime lord, a backwoods dragon cult, royal scandals, and a duplicitous femme fatale who has trouble keeping her clothes on. As bodies pile up, Eddie must use all his wits if he hopes to survive….
The Martian Chronicles
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Stephen Hoye
8 CDs – 9.3 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
Leaving behind a world on the brink of destruction, man came to the red planet and found the Martians waiting, dreamlike. Seeking the promise of a new beginning, man brought with him his oldest fears and his deepest desires. Man conquered Mars—and in that instant, Mars conquered him. The strange new world with its ancient, dying race and vast, red-gold deserts cast a spell on him, settled into his dreams, and changed him forever.
In connected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster enthralls, delights, and challenges us with his vision, starkly and stunningly exposing our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our poignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
The Mystery of Grace
By Charles de Lint; Read by Paul Michael Garcia and Tai Simmons
8 CDs – 9 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
On the Day of the Dead, at the Solona Music Hall, Altagracia Quintero meets John Burns—just two weeks too late.
Grace, as her friends call her, has a Ford Motor Company tattoo running down her leg and grease worked deep into her hands. She works at Sanchez Motorworks customizing hot rods. Finding the line in a classic car is her calling. Now Grace has to find the line in her own life. Grace loves John, and John loves her, and that would be wonderful, except that John, like Grace, has unfinished business: he’s haunted by the childhood death of his younger brother. He’s never stopped feeling responsible. Before their relationship can find its resolution, the two of them will have to teach each other about life and love, about hot rods and Elvis Presley, and about why it’s necessary to let some things go.
Podkayne of Mars
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Emily Janice Card
5 CDs – 5.6 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
From the author of Friday and Rocketship Galileo comes this classic tale featuring the grand master of science fiction’s most remarkable heroine. Podkayne Fries, a smart and determined maid of Mars, has just one goal in life: to become the first female starship pilot and rise through the ranks to command deep-space explorations. So when she is offered a chance to join her diplomatic uncle on an interstellar journey to distant Earth via Venus, it’s a dream come true—even if her only experience with diplomacy is handling her brilliant but pesky younger brother, Clark. But she’s about to learn some things about war and peace because Uncle Tom, the ambassador plenipotentiary from Mars to the Three Planets Conference, is traveling not quite incognito enough, and certain parties will stop at nothing to sabotage negotiations between the three worlds….
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Speaking of Ardai and new book lines, here’s an older interview from NPR member station WHYY. Terry Gross interviewed Charles Ardai for her show Fresh Air back on May 5, 2008. In the interview Ardai details his inspirations (including his stories from the holocaust, William Blake and Lawrence Block) for his novel Songs Of Innocence, and the rest of the Hard Case Crime series. Near the end of the interview Ardai discusses the then upcoming 50th book in the HCC series (called Fifty-To-One) – which is a recursive novel about an editor named “Charles” who starts a paperback book line called “Hard Case Crime” – it takes the titles of the first 50 books in the HCC series and uses them as chapter titles to inform the novel’s plot. So cool!
