Iambik Audiobooks has just released its first crime and mystery collection – ten novels from “indie publishers [like] Akashic, Hard Case Crime, Tyrus Books, HandE and Soho.” Iambik is a new audiobook company from some of the people behind LibriVox.org. Iambik takes proven LibriVox narrators and proof-listeners and matches them with modern copyrighted novels. The audiobooks produced are then released as downloadable DRM-free audiobooks at a price point lower than you would probably imagine. These audiobooks are $6.99 per book, or you can get the entire 10 book collection for $44.99. I love the idea of selling the whole collection as a bundle – I’ve never seen that before!
I’ve checked the MP3 and M4B functions (bookmarkability, art, volume) prior to posting this. The checkout system is two steps, accepts PayPal and sends you an email with a link to your download. It’s a snap. Unless you’re a collector, or want to burn your audiobook to CD, I recommend the M4B files over the MP3. The M4B has art embedded and it works easily with Apple devices.
Until the end of March, you can get a 33% discount on all iambik purchases using the code: sffaudio-march.
Complete Crime Collection 1
By various; Read by various
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
This collection includes all the titles in our first release of Crime books.
Titles included:
– All or Nothing, by Preston L Allen, narrated by Mark Douglas Nelson
– Death of a Nationalist, by Rebecca Pawel, narrated by Elizabeth Klett
– Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips, narrated by Gord Mackenzie
– Getting Sassy, by D.C. Brod, narrated by Karen Savage
– High Season, by Jon Loomis, narrated by Charles Bice
– It’s Behind You, by Keith Temple, narrated by Ruth Golding
– Late Rain, by Lynn Kostoff, narrated by Kenneth Campbell
– Suicide Casanova by Arthur Nersesian, narrated by Mark Smith
– The Tattoo Murder Case, by Akimitsu Takagi, narrated by Mark Douglas Nelson
– Witness to Myself, by Seymour Shubin, narrated by John Michaels
All Or Nothing
By Preston L. Allen; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Preston L. Allen’s witty, charming, and very likable school bus driver, named P, is a desperate gambler. He has blown the hundred thousand dollars he won at the casino six months ago, but his wife and family still think he’s loaded. P spins out of control on the addict’s downward spiral of dependency, paranoia, and depression, as he must find ways to keep coming up with the money to fool his family and fund his growing addiction. The bets get bigger and bigger, until finally, faced with the ultimate financial crisis, he hits it really big. Yet winning, he soon learns, is just the beginning of a deeper problem. The one constant for P–who rises from wage-earner to millionaire and back again in his roller-coaster-ride of a life–is that he must gamble. That his son has died, that his wife is leaving him, that his girlfriend has been arrested, that he has no money, that he has more money than he could ever have dreamed–are all lesser concerns for P as he constantly seeks out new gambling opportunities. While other books on gambling seek either to sermonize on the addiction or to glorify it by highlighting its few prosperous celebrities, All or Nothing is an honest, straightforward account of what it is like to live as a gambler–whether a high-rolling millionaire playing $1,000-ante poker in Las Vegas or a regular guy at the local Indian casino praying for a miracle as he feeds his meager life savings into the unforgiving slot machine. All or Nothing is the first novel to dig beneath the veneer to explore the gambler’s unique and complex relationship with money. If you’ve ever wanted to get into the heart and psyche of a compulsive gambler, here is your chance.
Death Of A Nationalist
By Rebecca Pawel; Read by Elizabeth Klett
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Madrid 1939. Carlos Tejada Alonso y Lean is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist. This war has drawn international attention. In a dress rehearsal for World War II, fascists support the Nationalists, while communists have come to the aid of the Republicans. Atrocities have devastated both sides. It is at this moment, when the Republicans have surrendered, and the Guardia Civil has begun to impose order in the ruins of Madrid, that Tejada finds the body of his best friend, a hero of the siege of Toledo, shot to death on a street named Amor de Dios. Naturally, a Red is suspected. And it is easy for Tejada to assume that the woman caught kneeling over the body is the killer. But when his doubts are aroused, he cannot help seeking justice.
Fade To Blonde
By Max Phillips; Read by Gordon Mackenzie
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Ray Corson came to Hollywood to be a screenwriter, not hired muscle. But when a beautiful girl with a purse full of cash asks for your help, how can you say no? So Corson agrees to protect starlet Rebecca LaFontaine from a vengeful mobster — but what he doesn’t realize is that he’ll have to join the Mob to do it.
Getting Sassy
By D.C. Brod; Read by Karen Savage
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 9 Hours 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
With her nearly broke and practically homeless mother about to land on her doorstep, Robyn Guthrie learns that desperation can play havoc with a daughter’s scruples. Otherwise, why would she even consider kidnapping a goat and holding it for ransom?
High Season
By Jon Loomis; Read by Charles Bice
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Frank Coffin had been a well-respected Baltimore homicide detective. But when he started having panic attacks at crime scenes, he was forced to go home to Cape Cod, where the worst crimes were usually break-ins, bicycle thefts, and domestic disputes. That is, until a vacationing televangelist turns up dead on the beach wearing a wig, a muumuu, and one size-twelve pump. Not to mention the raspberry-colored taffeta scarf strangling his neck. Frank and his partner, Officer Lola Winters, begin checking out the drag bars and isolated trysting spots the reverend might have frequented. However, when the body count starts to rise, it becomes alarmingly clear that a killer with an agenda is at large in Provincetown. And Coffin’s fears—like unwelcome summer tourists—have returned in full force…
It’s Behind You
By Keith Temple; Read by Ruth Golding
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 13 Hours 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
A story about fame, megalomania and murder. Carina Hemsley, former soap star of ‘Winkle Bay’ was a hugely popular actress in her day – until her ego took over and ‘Cora Smart’, her character, was axed off. Now, after years away from the lime-light, she’s appearing as the Good Fairy in panto, terrorising the cast and crew of a tatty third-rate northern theatre and drinking and smoking herself to death. Audiences are down and the outlook isn’t good… until she starts receiving death threats in the post. Along with the police, the media circus descends, boosting her public profile and putting bums on seats in the theatre. Follow Carina and her not-so-merry troupers as they face an onslaught of assassination, romance and intrigue, but as Carina says, ‘The Show Must Go On!’
Late Rain
By Lynn Kostoff; Read by Kenneth Campbell
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 10 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Corrine Tedros is a Lady Macbeth wannabe who sets in motion the murder of her uncle-in-law (a soft-drink mogul), and things go awry when the murder is witnessed by a senior citizen in the late stages of Alzheimers. Things are complicated by the fact that the daughter of the man with Alzheimers is involved with a former homicide detective who has resigned and moved South in an attempt to reshape and simplify his life; on his own, Decovic starts to make connections in the case that cause Corrine Tedros to up the ante in keeping herself out of the murder investigation.
Suicide Casanova
By Arthur Nersesian; Read by Mark Smith
MP3 or M4B Download – 11 Hours 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
What do Gary Condit, Woody Allen, and O.J. Simpson have in common with Leslie Cauldwell, protagonist of Nersesian’s latest offering? They are Suicide Casanovas. What compels powerful men in the prime of their professional lives to risk so much? Following the commercial success of his first three novels (Manhattan Loverboy, The Fuck-Up, and Dogrun), Nersesian’s new novel is a psychosexual thriller, a dramatic departure from his youthful black comedies: Humbert Humbert without the pedophile penchant, Hannibal Lechter without the appetite. Corporate attorney Leslie Cauldwell is middle-aged, handsome, and rich, but has only a few swipes left on his mental Metrocard. During a rough sex session, he garrotes his beloved wife; now he’s an officially designated “sex offender,” off on a bender, looking for love in all the wrong places. Twenty years earlier, when his office was high above the pornographic purgatory of Times Square, Leslie became involved with the adult-film star, Sky Pacifica. She needed a refuge, and he was ripe for the using. Following a brief fling, each went their own way. Two decades later, in 2001, Leslie is still working in Times Square — recently sanitized with its ESPN Zone and MTV window — and fraught with guilt about his “accident” with his wife. Like Jay Gatsby pursuing an erotic American dream, Leslie, with the help of a private detective, hunts down Sky Pacifica, his latter-day Daisy. Across a landscape of S&M mistresses and porn producers, from L.A. of the ’80s to New York of the new millennium, we see a modern-day tale of love and loss, innocence and corruption, crime and redemption.
The Tattoo Murder Case
By Akimitsu Takagi; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
MP3 or M4B Download – 11 Hours 58 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Miss Kinue Nomura survived World War II only to be murdered in Tokyo, her severed limbs left behind. Gone is that part of her that bore one of the most beautiful full-body tattoos ever rendered by her late father. Kenzo Matsushita, a young doctor, must assist his detective brother who is in charge of the case, because he was Kinue’s secret lover and the first person on the murder scene.
Witness To Myself
By Seymour Shubin; Read by John Michaels
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 5 Hours 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Fifteen years ago, teenager Alan Benning jogged off a beach – and into a nightmare. Because what awaited him in the Cape Cod woods was an unspeakable temptation, a moment of panic, and a brutal memory that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Now a successful lawyer, Alan finds himself drawn back to the scene of the crime, desperate to learn the truth about what happened on that long-ago summer day. But even as he grapples with his own dark secrets, he finds himself hounded by a shadowy adversary – and by the forces of justice, drawing their net around him tighter by the day…
Posted by Jesse Willis
The admirable Mark Douglas Nelson has completed his SFFaudio Challenge #5 project… 
See You At The Morgue
Don W. Jenkins, a San Diegan, may not be the ideal narrative match for this 1919 English murder mystery/Science Fiction novel, but he’s competent enough for the price, 100% FREE! The novel itself isn’t going to break any heads open with its sheer awesomeness either – but The Green Rust is a competent reading of a competent early twentieth century murder mystery (that’s also got some SF elements in it). Plus, it’s got some great vocabulary, a fairly compelling mystery at the center of it (who would kill a man on his deathbed?), the occasional dollop of hilarious dialogue (“Drunk or sober he is a man! Drunk or sober he is a man!” and “she’s as dumb as an oyster”) as well as some quaint technology on display (home gas meters run by coins). 
Going in, and liking Robert Sheckley, I was surprised how much I didn’t respond to his most famous short story Seventh Victim. Upon first reading it I didn’t think of it as terrific story. Nor did I think of it as having much in the way of intellectual heft. But, upon reflection, particularly after watching the film adaptation I am coming around a bit. Indeed, plenty of folks, it seems, think of Seventh Victim as an academic story. It’s been used in both introductory psychology and philosophy textbooks. It has been reprinted more than a dozen times in different anthologies or collections. The 1965 film adaptation, called The Tenth Victim (La Decima Vittima), prompted Sheckley to expand the short story into a novel under the same name (which spawned more novel sequels Victim Prime and Hunter / Victim. 
Future Tense – The Seventh Victim
X-Minus One – The Seventh Victim
