Xi Force series, Book 4 Triptych / S. C. Mitchell / 262 pages

Fourth book in the Xi Force series.  Maggie O'Donnell dreamed of becoming an astronaut, and instead she ends up flying the Xi Force super jet shuttling their superheroes around when needed. But when her grandmother passes away and she inherits the powers of the Irish goddess Morrigan from her, she is able to split herself in three to become the three aspects of Morrigan, the healer, the warrior, and the sorceress.  But she also inherited her ancestor’s enemy. Whenever the power is passed on the prison holding The Fae Queen Genevieve weakens and she can escape to cause havoc. As Maggie steps into an even bigger role with the super team Xi Force she also has to deal with her family’s ancient enemy who's out to destroy her and anyone close to her. Paul Tompkins is leader of Pike's rangers, the Xi Force support team. He’s required to keep Maggie in the friend zone because of his job, but her new position in Xi Force suddenly changes everything now that she’s a civilian contract and not part of the rangers. If all that’s isn’t enough when an earthquake causes cracks and crevices in the Xi Force base’s foundation it reveals that there’s some weird spaceship with aliens inside under the base. Narrated by Larry Gorman 7h 20min.

Mercy Thompson Series, Book 12 Smoke Bitten / Patricia Briggs / 351 pages

Latest installment in the Mercy Thompson series.  Mercy Thompson is a coyote shapeshifter who chaos just seems to follow around (but she blames that her father Coyote the primordial being from Native american myth for that). Mercy’s Husband and mate Adam has been off ever since he had to kill an old friend who succumbed to dark magic and she can feel him pulling away from their bond and becoming distant.  Even the Pack has noticed he’s been off. Adam’s Ex is causing problems like she always does which is causing tension with the pack when Mercy’s step-daughter decides to go to college in the Tri-Cities area to be close to her dad and Mercy instead of her mother.  On top of that Underhill (a sentient being and avatar of the Fae realm), who is quite bloodthirsty, likes to play games (that often end with the other person dead) and likes to take on the form of a little girl decides to put a door to her realm in Mercy’s backyard and ‘accidentally’ let out one of the dangerous creatures that roams her realm into the Tri-Cities area.  When the creature bites someone he can control them and make them do what he wants, until he kills them and moves onto his next target. And if that’s not enough a rogue werewolf pack seems to be moving into Mercy and her husband’s pack territory with the intent to take over. Just another day in the life of mechanic Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman. Narrated by Lorelei King 10h 9min.

Hopeless Series, Book 1 Hopeless Magic / A. K. Koonce / 161 pages

Zakara is thief and on one job where she breaks into a tower she finds more than what she was looking for and  when a fight breaks out she gets hurt badly but ends up saving three men that were locked inside the tower. Her first instinct is to ditch them as soon as possible, after all to survive she needs to look out for number one, herself, but they have the one thing that intrigues her more than wealth, and that’s magic. After the decline of technology, Fae magic ruled the world, until the Fae withdrew and it disappeared without a trace. Now only myths of the magic wielders linger in their destroyed society. The three prisoners she saved claim to be Fae, but she doesn't trust them. She doesn't trust anyone. Can Prince Ryder convince the pretty thief to lead them to the Hopeless City where the Fae supposedly reside? Or will she kill or ditch him and his companions before they even arrive? Narrated by Dara Rosenberg 3h 5min.

The Isle of Destiny Series, Book 3 Spear Song / Tricia O'Malley / 216 pages

Book three in the Isle of Destiny Series, Gwenith Donovan owns a hobby store called This and That, carries on one sided conversations with her chubby cat, and maintains a huge comic book collection to fuel her geeky obsession.  For all that she lived a normal routine life, everything changes when she discovers her own superpower, she can use magic.  Lochlain Laird is a high sorcerer of the light Fae and has broken one of the highest rules of the light Fae.  He broke into the Goddess Danu’s cave and stole a vial of her sacred blood in order to heal his dying mother, he returned it before anyone could figure out who he used it on knowing the Fae would also punish his mother if they knew, but to break into the cave or even touch the sacred vial is a death sentence.  However Danu punishes him by making him the next Seeker’s Protector.  Feeling that the task is beneath him and knowing that after this duty is accomplished he will still possibly face a death sentence, Loch remains withdrawn and surly during Gwenith’s quest to find the Spear and break a centuries old curse before the dark Fae can stop them.  Narrated by Amy Landon 5h 14min

The Isle of Destiny Series, Book 2 Sword Song / Tricia O'Malley / 253 pages

Book two in the Isle of Destiny Series, Sasha Flanagan has lived her life obsessed with swords, so much so that she became a collector and dealer of antique blades and an expert swordswoman.  But then she finds out that she is a Seeker for the next magical item in an ancient quest.  She has to find a mythological sword before a centuries old curse is complete and before the dark Fae can find it. She is accompanied by a rag-tag team and her Protector Declan who has grown up with her shadowed and silently watched over her since her childhood.  Narrated by Amy Landon 5h 31min.

The Isle of Destiny Series, Book 1 Stone Song / Tricia O'Malley / 296 pages

Clare MacBride has her life exactly in the order she wants it, in a year, she'll have finished her geology dissertation. But she is no closer to figuring out the answer to one question that plagues her and the reason why she went into geology, why can she feel stones pulse with energy? She’s never told anyone about her abilities, after all it sounds crazy in their science and technology driven age.  But one night when coming home from work she is attacked by a strange man with silver eyes who turns out to be a Fae only to be saved by another man who calls himself her Protector. She finds out about a centuries-old curse, a mysterious faction of protectors, and a mythological godstone, and that she is a Seeker which all sounds like old world fairy-tale nonsense to her. But she realizes that this is all real, her life plans are shattered and she is forced to throw everything she knows about the world out the window and go on a quest to find this godstone otherwise the dark Fae will be released and Ireland will be doomed. Narrated by Amy Landon 7h 2min.

Nightshade Paranormal Cozy Series, Book 1 Witch You Were Here / Lori Woods / 196 pages

Late one night Suzy Maycomber hears a strange noise in her house and goes to investigate it only to find a man trying to steal her grandmother’s old silver drinking cup, when she goes to hit him with an old broom the man disappears through the wall.  Thinking she imagined it or is going crazy she goes back to bed. The next day on a routine trip to the vet she hears a voice crying for help and Suzy Maycomber and her cat, Snowball, take a shortcut through the cemetery only to find themselves in the mystical land of Nightshade, where magic exists and cats talk, and her broom is magical.  Only the librarian, Rachel, the most powerful witch in Nightshade, can help Suzy get home, only problem, Rachel's just been murdered. Desperate to find her way home, Suzy reluctantly agrees to take Rachel's place as Nightshade's resident witch and librarian where she'll have access to the spell books that might hold the answers she needs. But her search for the truth draws Suzy ever deeper into danger. There is someone-or something-in Nightshade that doesn't want Suzy to get home. Rachel's murderer is prepared to kill again-and Suzy may be next. If Suzy wants to get home, she'll have to learn to be a witch first. Narrated by Rebecca Mitchell 5h 49min.

Love and War Series, Book 3 Antibody / R.A. Steffan / 246 pages

Vithii military cyborgs never go rogue, that's the official line that the Regime gives. How could they, when their emotion centers have been ripped out and replaced with tech? Cyborgs do 3 things: follow orders, destroy whatever target you point them at, and walk calmly into vaporization chambers when it's time to be decommissioned. PX-12 known to his friends as Pax, only performed 2 of those functions during his stint in the military. D-8, one of his unit-siblings, performed all 3. So when Pax receives D-8's distress beacon 7 years after Pax saw him destroyed, there is either something wrong with his systems or the Regime is recycling the minds of decommissioned cyborgs, turning them into weapons even more horrific than they were before. To stop it, Pax and the other members of Shadow Wing, the rogue group fighting against the Regime, will need the help of telepathic Vitharan ambassador and part time spy, Nahleene Veila'ana, the woman who once helped Ryder and Temple escape a Vithii Regime controlled prison and whose motivations are questionable. Narrated by Gwendolyn Druyor 7h 48min.

Love and War Series, Book 2 Antigen / R.A. Steffan / 239 pages

Ryder is a member of Hunter Tarthasian’s rogue group of alien Vithii, Shadow Wing,  that fight against the tyranny of the Vithii Regime, and was once a prestigious doctor until she performed an illegal experiment to try to save a patient’s life and had her credentials revoked.  When Skye escaped with the antidote to a deadly bio weapon that could only affect humans, her brother acted as a decoy to throw off the Regime and was captured and is now a political prisoner held by the Regime to try to use against Skye.  Once Ryder and Shadow Wing created the antidote they broke into the water supply plant to put it into the water so they could get it out to everyone on the planet before the Regime could use the Bio weapon. Now Shadow Wing are searching for Temple, Skye’s brother, to get some recon on the Vithii prison he is being held in they send Ryder in under a false identity as a doctor at the prison, but when someone from her past recognizes her, the plan to get Temple out goes up in flames.  Ryder is now also a prisoner along with Temple, and Shadow Wing have to save them both. Narrated by Gwendolyn Druyor 7h 19min

Love and War Series, Book 1 Antidote / R.A. Steffan / 256 pages

Skye Chantrell has just escaped from a war zone and crash landed on a remote lunar outpost and her survival depends on a dangerous alien Vithii fugitive, Hunter Tarthasian.  Skye’s father was forced by the Regime to create a deadly bio weapon that targets humans but he also created an antidote to it, stole it, and died helping her escape. Now she has to get back to the capital before the bio weapon that targets humans is released and she has to figure out if she can trust Hunter and his rogue group of alien Vithii.   Narrated by Gwendolyn Druyor 7h 40min.

Unstoppable Liv Beaufont Series, Part 6 The Stubborn Advocate/ Michael Anderle & Sarah Noffke / 282 pages

Liv is a Warrior of the House of Seven after the mysterious deaths of her parents and older siblings and she is charged to uphold justice in the magical world by the Council of Seven. Things are not as they should be, Liv and her friend Rory the Giant have been looking into what is wrong in the magical world, they discovered everyone is missing memories of a war that happened between magicals and humans, and there is something making humans forget about magic when they were originally part of, the House of Seven that used to be the House of Fourteen. Without  humans in the House, the Council has been unbalanced without an outside perspective. But how is it possible that everyone's memories of that event are missing and how come humans can’t see magic, perhaps there are answers on the mountain where her parents died? Adler, a member of the Council who hates Liv and who Liv and her family think might be behind or helping the one responsible for the changes in the House, the one who caused humans to forget about magic, and perhaps even responsible for her parents and siblings deaths, brings back an ancient evil to distract Liv and prevent her from finding out the truth.  As she digs deeper and takes on her missions, Liv must be even more careful or else she might end up like her parents and siblings. Narrated by Dara Rosenberg 5h 33min. 

Unstoppable Liv Beaufont Series, Part 5 The Loyal Friend / Michael Anderle & Sarah Noffke / 314 pages

Book five in the Unstoppable Liv Beaufont Series.  Liv Beaufont is a Warrior of the House of Seven since taking over the position after her parents and older siblings mysterious deaths and she is charged to uphold justice in the supernatural world by the Council of Seven.  However things are not as they seem, the Council seem more concerned with their laws than doing what is right. She and her friend Rory the Giant have been looking into what is fundamentally wrong with the supernatural world and discovered that it seems that all species are missing memories of a war that happened  between magicals and humans and there is something making humans forget about magic when they were originally part of, not the House of Seven but the House of Fourteen. That is what’s wrong in the House, it is unbalanced since there are no longer any humans with an outside perspective to help keep the balance, it was never meant to be just magicians on the Council.  But how is it possible that everybody's memories of that event are gone? On Liv’s latest mission for the council she is sent to Romania to find out who all the members of a werewolf pack are and deal with them, since tourists in the area have been going missing and the Council suspects the wolves of eating humans. However since wolves can sense magic the Council decides to bind her magic so that they won’t be able to tell she is a magician and think her human.  Liv knows that certain members of the Council suggested this because they want her dead, after all she’ll be defenseless in the werewolf town without her magic. As she digs deeper for the truth and takes on her missions, she must be extra careful. Narrated by Dara Rosenberg 6h 44min. 

Xi Force Series, Book 3 Wylde / S. C. Mitchell / 250 pages

When Jonathan Wylde was a child his father experimented on him grafting wolf DNA into his own and treating him like an animal.  When he eventually escaped he made the wild forests his home and joined a wolf pack. Eventually he is captured again and most of his pack killed and Kayla Armstong’s stolen science for self repairing fabric is used on him. Now as the only survivor of that experiment he has super healing powers.  When Joel Weisberg tries to recruit him, he reluctantly becomes a member of the Xi Force super team and keeps to himself unless his talents are needed. Dove Locklear is a childhood friend of Jonathan’s and after being brought into Xi Force to act as a veterinarian to check over Jonathan’s pack, they reconnect.  But returning home from work one night Dove is kidnapped by an agent of Red Guard, the group Jonathan’s monster of a father is a part of, and is also responsible for his new healing powers, and she is whisked away to the secret Russian facility Jonathan was held for most of his formative years. They want her knowledge of her own father’s research as well as to help Mr. Wylde with his unethical research into splicing human and animal DNA.  If Wylde wants to save her he is going to have to go back to his worst nightmare and confront the father who experimented on him. Narrated by: Larry Gorman 7h 12min.

Xi Force Series, Book 2 Phaze / S. C. Mitchell / 254 pages

When Kayla Armstrong stayed late at the Xi Force lab one night working on herself repairing fabric project, she is attacked by an intruder intent on stealing her research to use it on humans.  In the commotion a cart of chemicals spills onto her and when the intruder points his gun at her intending to kill her she suddenly finds herself naked on Joel Weisberg’s bed. She phased through not just the floor of her lab but also her clothes.  Joel Weisberg is the leader of Xi Force a government funded organization created to keep up with advancing science and technology and especially when it has been used on humans to give them abilities. Joel likes to joke about creating his own group of superheroes and trying to find more for his team and he thinks that Kayla would be a perfect new member when she falls into his lap.  However an old enemy that killed Joel and got him brought back as a Z-bot, a human with tiny nanobot machines injected into the blood to heal and repair a person, bringing them back from the dead, affectionately called the zombie bot program until it was discontinued, comes back with new powers. She was suppose to be in prison until she escaped and the things she did to Joel and made Joel do under her control gives him nightmares, and then she kidnaps him and is holding him prisoner again and it’s up to Kayla to try to find and rescue him before he is murdered again.  Narrated by: Larry Gorman 7h 30min.

Xi Force Series, Book 1 Z-Bot / S. C. Mitchell / 254 pages

Chris Johnson never really lived until he was dead. When he decided to get his turn around and stop being such a shut-in with his programmer job and playing video games, he also decides that when he dies he wants to donate his body to science, since he has no family, little money, and few friends. He meet’s Heather Logan signs up to donate his body to her scientific research in the event of his death, he didn’t think he would to murdered less than a week later, he had really want to go out on a date with Heather.  Heather Logan’s newest research is a project she created to use nanobots to reanimate a corpse. Half robot and half something raised from the dead. She had had every intention of calling Chris back and then she finds out that he’s dead and her project brings him back, he is her first successful resuscitation. It was only intended to reanimate and create a living robot with the nanobot controlling him, she had no idea that he would actually come back from the dead and remain the same Chris. Is he truly alive, a machine, or some kind of zombie-hybrid?  And then there are people who want to steal her secret process and take her out of the picture permanently. Chris, with his new superpowers, is the only thing standing between Heather and an assassin's bullet. Narrated by: Larry Gorman 7h 20min.

The Family Upstairs/ Lisa Jewell/ 340 pgs

Lisa Jewell's new book sets an interesting story. Twenty-five-year-old Libby has just learned that she inherited a multi million pound house in a posh area of London. Turns out that twenty-five years ago the police were anonymously called to the home and discovered three dead adults and one very much alive ten month old baby--Libby. Four teenagers were also missing from the home. No one seemed to have any idea what was going on in the home, but it looked as if it were being run as a small isolated cult. At the same time we are hearing Libby's story, we go back twenty-five years and hear from Henry, one of the teenagers. Concurrently, we also hear from a woman named Lucy, who is struggling to stay afloat in the south of France with her two children. The multiple perspectives are interesting and of course they converge at the end to reveal the truth of what happened so many years ago. Some of the story is easy to guess and I can't quite fathom how some of the characters react to each other at the very end of the story, but Jewell always writes an interesting read.

Marnie Baranuik Files Series, Book 1 Touched / A. J. Aalto / 582 pages

Marnie Baranuik is a rare dual-talented forensic psychic. She has the ability to feel the emotions of others, and read impressions left behind on objects.  She also has a doctorate in preternatural or supernatural biology, a working knowledge of the dark arts, and is considered without peer in the psychic community. But after her first big FBI case ended with a bullet in one shoulder and a chip on the other, a broken heart and a serial killer in the wind, she decides that working with the FBI just isn’t for her and retires. Then the FBI's preternatural crimes comes knocking on her door at her remote mountain lodge for her insight on a local case, goodbye quiet retirement.  She is promptly besieged by a stab-happy starlet, a rampaging ghoul, and a vampire-hunting jackass in tight Wranglers. Not to mention that vampire-hunter is one of the detectives and is the man who broke her heart. They’d had a brief affair while they worked the case that Marnie got shot on, he didn’t visit her in the hospital, and then she found out while in the hospital that he has a fiance.Narrated by Amy McFadden 18h 9 min.

Alison Brownstone Series, Book 1 Her Father's Daughter / Judith Berens & Martha Carr / 352 pages

Allison Brownstone is a Drow Princess, part Fae and part human, and having graduated from a mundane university she moves to Washington DC and starts her own recovery specialist business when she realizes she doesn’t want to go into the Brownstone family business as either a tomb raider like her mother or a bounty hunter like her father. Prologue starts out in a secret lab where someone is trying to create a virus that will only affect people with magic and the virus makes it more and more difficult to use magic until the carrier no longer has any.  We find out that Allison has somehow contracted the virus . As she deals with it and tries to find a cure she Rescues damsels in distress, finds and recovers artifacts and busts bad guy, frightens the government functionaries and blows up food courts. Then she moves to Seattle, WA and incorporates with a few friends to seriously set up her business! Narrated by Kate Rudd 7h 52min.

Kings Series, Book 1 The Vampire King / Heather Killough-Walden / 210 pages

Roman has never lost control of his emotions once in three thousand years or his heart. Everything changes the moment he laid eyes on Evelynne Farrow, the woman who has been haunting his dreams. One of Roman’s enemies has set up their meeting and plans to use it to his advantage, so that he can destroy everything Roman loves and take away his position as Vampire King. Evie Farrow has always loved a good vampire romance. One of the reasons why she makes a living writing them. Evie supports her parents with her income and has to complete a new book soon in order to pay the bills.  But the main character she has been dreaming of for her newest book is being elusive when it usually comes to her so easily But while sitting in a coffee shop and working on her next mega-hot book, Evie is approached by a tall, dark, and handsome man who could have been pulled directly from one of her novels and is the man she has dreamed about. Unbeknownst to her, Roman D'Angelo is exactly what he appears to be-a vampire, and not just any vampire, but the king of vampires.Unfortunately, while Roman is both ancient and invulnerable, Evie is flesh and blood. Narrated by Antony Ferguson 7h 19min.

The Others Series, Book 1 One Bite With A Stranger / Christine Warren / 352 pages

Regina and her friends have monthly girls nights, on one especially drunk night they come up with the idea of fantasy fix to help set each other up with different men that meet their fantasy needs.  Regina hasn’t ever participated, as she had a boyfriend, but when she finds her fiance doing his secretary she breaks off their engagement. To help her get over her cheating ex, her friends set up her fantasy fix.   Not really interested, she dreams up some kinky out of this world encounters they couldn’t possibly bring to life, after all vampires aren’t real, and the consequences for the rest of the group if they can’t find her fantasy fix is a month of celibacy, which Regina thinks they need. But the joke is on her when her friends drag her downtown for the annual Vampire Ball.  For Dmitri Vidâme, the Vampire Ball wouldn’t be his idea of a good time with all the mortals dressed up pretending to be vampires. As a member of the Council that governs the Others, he has to keep an eye on all the young vamps who prey on the pretenders. But after his dark eyes fall on the breathtaking Regina at the bar, he knows that he has to have her. Narrated by Kate Reading 8h.