John Birmingham has 18 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 10 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 45 ratings. The most-rated is Zero Day Code.
Zero Day Code
Summary
Every modern city has one week’s worth of food to feed itself. Then it will collapse. Cut off the resources to New York, Sydney, or even a mid-size metropolis, and millions will soon starve. In Zero Day Code we see those immense and open, hyper-complex, networked supercities of the new millennium die. And in the last moments we see their vengeance take form as all the best and worst traits of humanity bubble to the surface. Zero Day Code is set in a realistic near future with dwindling global food supplies under increasing pressure from worsening droughts, floods and extreme weather events. Written by prolific Australian writer John Birmingham, the thriller follows a handful of survivors from the first day of society’s descent into violent, uncertain futures. James, a consultant to the US National Security Council, is the first to suspect that the worldwide emergence of a crippling computer virus is actually a cover for something else - a devastating cyber-attack by China on the food distribution system of the United States. The attack is a bid for the Middle Kingdom to distract America as it seizes the food bowl of South East Asia and feeds its starving population. But Beijing has miscalculated. Follow the missions of an embittered activist chasing salvation, a single mum rescuing her child from a frantic San Francisco and an army veteran who has long retreated from society, as the world they knew crumbles around them. Please note: this audiobook contains mature content and listener discretion is advised.
©2019 Audible Australia Pty Ltd. (P)2019 Audible Australia Pty Ltd.
Fail State
Summary
On Zero Day of the first and last cyberwar in human history the internet went dark, transport and power grids collapsed and cities began to starve. Ten days later millions have died from thirst and starvation, from violence and from the simple failure of the world’s machines to keep them alive. This second installment of John Birmingham’s End of Days trilogy finds James O’Donnell and his friends Rick, Michelle and Melissa hunkered down in the wilderness, where they know a horde of starving, desperate exiles from the graveyard of the US East Coast is heading their way. On the far side of the continent, in the Pacific Northwest, Jonas Murdoch helps lead the good folk of Silverton in defending themselves from waves of starving and desperate refugees pouring out of Seattle. And slowly, cautiously navigating the inland waterways of California, Jodi Sarjanan and Ellie Jabbarah negotiate an apocalyptic landscape of burning skyscrapers and marauding gangs. All of them are seeking sanctuary. A safe place where the madness hasn’t penetrated. But does such a place exist? And what if they need to sacrifice their very humanity in the struggle to reach it?
©2019 John Birmingham (P)2019 Audible Australia Pty Ltd.
Weapons of Choice
Summary
The impossible has spawned the unthinkable. In 2021, a quantum military experiment goes horrifically wrong. A multinational taskforce of ultra-modern warships is suddenly transported back in time to 1942...right into the path of the U.S. naval battle group bound for Midway Atoll. History is rewritten in an instant as the future smashes into the past, and high-tech hardware goes head to head with World War Two technology. In the chaos that ensues, thousands are killed, but the maelstrom has only just begun. The veterans of Pearl Harbor have never seen a helicopter, or a cruise missile - let alone nanotechnology, ceramic bullets, and F22 Raptor stealth jetfighters. Allied and Axis forces are then caught in a desperate struggle to gain the upper hand - each hoping to tip the balance with a fist full of 21st-century firepower. What happens next is anybody's guess - and everybody's nightmare.
©2005 John Birmingham (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
Final Impact
Summary
In the year 2021 a multinational fleet - experimenting with untested weapons technology - pitched through time, crash-landing in 1942. The world is thrown into chaos as Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Tojo, and Stalin scramble to adapt to new, high-tech killing tools, and twenty-first-century ways of war. For "uptimers" like Britain's Prince Harry and the men and women who serve aboard the supercarrier USS Hillary Clinton, war is a constant struggle with their own downtime allies, who are mired in ignorance and bigotry. As the Allies counter the Nazi assault and set off for the coast of France, Japan begins to buckle, soon every battle will be played out in a lethal dance of might and intelligence, unholy alliances and desperate gambles, and each clash will be fought with the ultimate weapon; knowledge from the future. Thanks to the historical records, all sides know that two superpowers will emerge, while the losers will be pounded into submission. But time has shifted on its axis, so none know who will survive, or how peace will take hold in a world turned upside down. These are the questions that John Birmingham brilliantly answers in his critically acclaimed adventure of war and imagination.
©2007 John Birmingham (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
The Cruel Stars
Summary
With a ruthless sect of humanity intent on wiping out their species, five intrepid heroes must think like their enemies in this epic sci-fi adventure for fans of The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica. The galaxy was once terrorized by the Sturm, a group of “species purists” intent on destroying any human with genetic or cybernetic enhancements. Fashioning themselves as the one true “Human Republic,” the Sturm cut a bloody swath across the stars, killing billions before finally being defeated and driven into the far reaches of Dark Space. Centuries of peace bred complacency. Everyone believed the Sturm had died out in the Dark. They were wrong. The enemy has returned and, with a brutal and decisive attack, knocks out almost all of humanity’s defenses. Now on the brink of annihilation, humankind’s only hope is a few brave souls who survived the initial attack: Commander Lucinda Hardy, thrust into uncertain command of the Royal Armadalen Navy’s only surviving warship. Booker3, a soldier of Earth, sentenced to die for treason, whose time on death row is cut short when the Sturm attack his prison compound. Princess Alessia, a young royal of the Montanblanc Corporation, forced to flee when her home planet is overrun and her entire family executed. Sephina L’trel, the leader of an outlaw band who must call on all of her criminal skills to resist the invasion. And, finally, Admiral Frazer McLennan, the infamous hero of the first war with the Sturm hundreds of years ago, who hopes to rout his old foes once and for all- or die trying. These five flawed, reluctant heroes must band together to prevail against a relentless enemy and near-impossible odds. For if they fail, the future itself is doomed.
©2019 John Birmingham (P)2019 Recorded Books
Stalin's Hammer
Summary
Ten years have passed since Admiral Kolhammer's 21st-century battlefleet was dragged into a wormhole and thrown across oceans of time, emerging with disastrous consequences and shattering the history of the Second World War. Hitler and the Nazis have fallen, but Stalin rules half of Europe and Asia. The great Soviet engines of state power turn and burn to 'set history right'. Not just of the war, but of all future time. In Rome with his lover, Julia Duffy, an older, mellower Prince Harry is drawn into Stalin's plans when a simple game of spies goes horribly wrong. Underneath the eternal city, former Spetsnaz officer Pavel Ivanov fights a running battle with the NKVD's executioner in chief as Stalin's minions fight to preserve the secret of a weapon that could destroy the West with one fearsome blow. Moving from Rome to Paris to Cairo, Harry and the uptimers must fight a shadow war against the communist superstate and the suspicion and prejudices of their forebears. They can save the world, but the world does not want saving by the likes of them. "A weapons-grade military techno-thriller.... It's like a Clive Cussler novel fell into a transporter beam with a Stephen Ambrose history, and they came out all fused together." (Time magazine, on the original Axis of Time series)
©2016 John Birmingham (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
Without Warning
Summary
On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad, as the world waits for war, a miles-high energy wave cordons a vast area from southern Canada to northern Mexico. In a moment, 99 percent of the U.S. population has been wiped from the face of the earth. To fill the vacuum, heroes rise to meet the unimaginable challenges of the city of Seattle: James Kipper, chief engineer of the city of Seattle and Caitlin Monroe are on the trail of a Muslim fanatic ready to take advantage of what becomes known as The Disappearance, while General Tusk Musso and Admiral James Ritchie try desperately to keep the peace in a world gone mad with fear.
©2009 John Birmingham (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Designated Targets
Summary
The Second World War was turned on its head at the moment Admiral Kolhammer's ultra-modern stealth warships were hurled back through time from 2021. But no one could have predicted just how much of a nightmare would ensue... Only months after the Transition, the great powers scramble to develop the weapons of tomorrow. The year 1942 is now a world of crude jet fighters, monstrous attack helicopters, and unholy dirty bombs - a mongrel technology, born decades prematurely. Then, in a radical rewriting of history, Japanese forces sweep into Australia, foreign agents begin a campaign of terror in the USA, and Germany prepares for an all-out attack on Britain. The 21st-century forces must resort to the most extreme measures yet and face a future rife with possibilities - all of them apocalyptic. Picking up from where he left off with Weapons of Choice, John Birmingham shocks and awes us with this gripping second instalment in the Axis of Time trilogy.
©2006 John Birmingham (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
American Kill Switch
Summary
Why do some societies collapse into lawless savagery while others prove resilient and lasting? On Zero Day of the first and last cyberwar in human history, the internet went dark, transport and power grids collapsed and cities began to starve, showing just how vulnerable the world could be to a targeted campaign of online sabotage. This final instalment of this prescient epic of civilisation collapse finds the small ragtag band of survivors come together to face a new, but eerily familiar threat - the rise of a fascist militia among the ruins of a failing country. With American Kill Switch, John Birmingham’s End of Days trilogy comes to a high-octane, thrilling conclusion.
©2021 John Birmingham (P)2021 Audible, Ltd
After America
Summary
March 14, 2003, was the day the world changed forever. A wave of energy slammed into North America and devastated the continent. The U.S. military, poised to invade Baghdad, was left without a commander in chief. Global order spiraled into chaos. Now, three years later, a skeleton U.S. government headquartered in Seattle directs the reconstruction of an entire nation - and the battle for New York City has begun. Pirates and foreign militias are swarming the East Coast, taking everything they can. The president comes to the Declared Security Zone of New York and barely survives the visit. The enemy - whoever they are - controls Manhattan's concrete canyons and the abandoned flatlands of Long Island. The U.S. military, struggling with sketchy communications and a lack of supplies, is mired in a nightmare of urban combat. Caught up in the violence is a Polish-born sergeant who watches the carnage through the eyes of an intellectual and with the heart of a warrior. Two smugglers, the highborn Lady Julianne Balwyn and her brawny partner, Rhino, search for a treasure whose key lies inside an Upper East Side Manhattan apartment. Thousands of miles away, a rogue general leads the secession of Texas and a brutal campaign against immigrants, while Miguel Pieraro, a Mexican-born rancher, fights back. And in England, a U.S. special ops agent is called into a violent shadow war against an enemy that has come after her and her family. The president is a stranger to the military mindset, but now this mild-mannered city engineer from the Pacific Northwest needs to make a soldier's choice. With New York clutched in the grip of thousands of heavily armed predators, is an all-out attack on the city the only way to save it?
©2010 John Birmingham (P)2010 Tantor
Resistance
Summary
John Birmingham is the master of alternate history adventure - and now he's mastered a new genre with the volcanically fast-paced and wildly inventive Dave Hooper urban fantasy series. The series is anchored by a thrilling high concept: An oil rig opens a deep ocean rift that unleashes terrifying monsters into the world. But perhaps its coolest asset is its hero, Dave Hooper: a tough, bleakly funny, down-on-his luck oil rig worker with an unlikely destiny as a monster slayer and world savior. With a memorable concept and an unforgettable new hero, the Dave Hooper series will satisfy Birmingham's large fanbase and convert a new legion of devoted fans.
©2015 John Birmingham (P)2015 Recorded Books
Angels of Vengeance
Summary
When an inexplicable wave of energy slammed into North America, millions died. In the rest of the world, wars erupted, borders vanished, and the powerful lost their grip on power. Against this backdrop, with a conflicted US president struggling to make momentous decisions in Seattle and a madman fomenting rebellion in Texas, three women are fighting their own battles - for survival, justice, and revenge. Special Agent Caitlin Monroe moves stealthily through a South American jungle - her target: a former French official now held prisoner by a ruthless despot. To free the prisoner, Caitlin will kill anyone who gets in her way. Then she will get the truth about how a master terrorist escaped a secret detention center in French Guadeloupe to strike a fatal blow in New York City. Sofia Pieraro is a teenage girl who witnessed firsthand the murder and mayhem of Texas under the rule of General Mad Jack Blackstone. Sofia might have tried to build a life with her father in the struggling remnants of Kansas City - if a vicious murder hadn’t set her on another course altogether: back to Texas, even to Blackstone himself. Julianne Balwyn is a British-born aristocrat turned smuggler. Shopping in the most fashionable neighborhood of Darwin, Australia - now a fantastic neo-urban frontier - Jules has a pistol holstered in the small of her lovely back. She is playing the most dangerous game of all: waiting for the person who is hunting her to show his face - so she can kill him first. Three women in three corners of a world plunged into electrifying chaos; nation-states struggling for their survival; immigrants struggling for new lives - John Birmingham’s astounding conclusion to the series begun in Without Warning and After America is an intense adventure that races from the halls of power to shattered streets to gleaming new cities as humanity struggles to grasp its better angels - and purge its worst demons. John Birmingham is the author of the Axis of Time trilogy and several other novels and nonfiction titles. He and his family live in Brisbane, Australia.
©2011 John Birmingham (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Without Warning
Summary
America is Gone. It’s 2003 and American forces are assembled in Kuwait for the invasion of Iraq. In Paris an assassin wakes from a coma, in the Cascades a lone hiker watches a plane fly into a mountain and just north of the Equator a modern-day pirate, a rogue-Tasmanian, is witness to the unspeakable.
In one instant an inexplicable wave of energy has changed the world. From Canberra to Cairo things will never be the same. As the jihadists celebrate, Saddam plots revenge and the Israeli’s act, allied soldiers are left to fight a war without command. The functioning remnants of American government are left at Pearl Harbour, Guantanamo and in one desperate and isolated corner of the Pacific Northwest. A noxious waste darkens Europe’s skies and Australasia beckons as a sanctuary. An unknowable future struggles to be born.
©2008 John Birmingham (P)2011 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
On Father
Summary
A son's homage to his father. John Birmingham's father died. And his life fell apart. The next six months were spent grinding through the dark forests of depression until he finally emerged out of the darkness onto sunlit upland. A unique yet universal story, On Father reaches out to everyone who has experienced and survived deep grief.
©2019 John Birmingham (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
Angels of Vengeance
Summary
This is the New World. Born of chaos and madness. Remember that if nothing else. Jed Culver, President Kipper’s right hand man, knows that what is right and what is best, is rarely the same thing. Can he go against the President’s wishes? Mad Jackson Blackstone, rogue governor of the Republic of Texas, is slowly but surely destroying the new United States of America. The time has come. In New York, Caitlin Monroe came within a hair’s breadth of vengeance. Is her old nemesis still alive? Lady Julianne Balwyn is being hunted in the grimy freeport of Darwin. Can she survive long enough to save her friends? Sofia Pieraro is completely alone, revenge her only reason to stay alive. This time it’s personal. The final battle to save America will not be fought with armies, but the choices of individuals, whose vengeance drives them to make the wrong decisions at the right time.
©2011 John Birmingham (P)2011 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
A Girl in Time
Summary
On the eve of a huge breakout success, a poor but brilliant young game developer is pulled out of her world and time itself by a cowboy desperately searching for the daughter he lost 200 years ago. Cady McCall is ready to be rich and famous. She has sacrificed everything, putting her work ahead of family and friends. Now, with breakout success and huge, insane wealth so close she can taste it, her life is blown apart by Deputy Marshal John "Titanic" Smith, the man who rescues her from two muggers only to carry her off into history. Lost on the seas of time, Smith is desperate to get home to his family in 1876, and now Cady is lost along with him, facing danger and finding love in Victorian London, ancient Rome, and the near-future America of President for Life Donald Trump.
©2016 John Birmingham (P)2017 Tantor
Ascendance
Summary
As a hardworking monster slayer, Dave Hooper tries not to bring his work home with him. But nowadays it's hard to keep them separate. Email, cellphones, empath daemons, they never let a guy rest. The Horde has been raising hell and leveling cities from New York to Los Angeles, keeping Dave and his fellow monster killer, Russian spy Karin Varatschevsky, very busy. But when the legions of hell invade the small seaside town his boys call home, Dave has to make a call. Save the world? Or save his family? Not as easy a choice as you'd think, since Dave's ex-wife expects to be saved, too. And there's no convincing her that the super sexy Russian spy isn't his girlfriend. She's just his sidekick - and an assassin.
©2015 John Birmingham (P)2015 Recorded Books
Emergence
Summary
John Birmingham is the master of alternate history adventure - and now he's mastered a new genre with the volcanically fast-paced and wildly inventive Dave Hooper urban fantasy series. The series is anchored by a thrilling high concept: An oil rig opens a rift deep in the ocean that unleashes terrifying monsters into the world. But perhaps its coolest asset is its hero, Dave Hooper, a tough, bleakly funny, down-on-his luck oil rig worker with an unlikely destiny as a monster-slayer and world savior. With a memorable concept and an unforgettable new hero, the Dave Hooper series will satisfy Birmingham's large fanbase and convert a new legion of devoted fans.
©2015 John Birmingham (P)2015 Recorded Books