Walter Jon Williams has 18 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 14 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 100 ratings. The most-rated is Wild Cards I.
Wild Cards I
Summary
In the aftermath of WWII, an alien virus struck the Earth, endowing a handful of survivors with extraordinary powers. Originally published in 1987, the newly expanded saga contains additional original stories by eminent writers.
©1986, 2010 George R.R. Martin (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Wild Cards II: Aces High
Summary
After the alien virus struck humanity in the wake of World War II, a handful of the survivors found they possessed superhuman powers. The Wild Cards shared-world volumes tell their story. Here in book two, we trace these heroes and villains through the tumultuous 1980s, in stories from SF and fantasy giants such as George R. R. Martin, Roger Zelazny, Pat Cadigan, Lewis Shiner, Walter Jon Williams, and others.
©2011 George R. R. Martin (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Man in Charge
Summary
The Sebastians own this city. Hell, they own the whole world. All I want is one little piece of it, a corner that I can call my own. So when my boss runs away to “find herself”, I seize the opportunity and dive head first into the Sebastian’s glamorous universe. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted - fast paced and high stakes - and, even though I don’t fit in, I’m excellent at faking it. Until I come face-to-face with the man in charge, Scott Sebastian, the arrogant playboy heir with the mind of a devil and the body of a god and a mouth I can’t stop thinking about. He’s infuriating. He’s a distraction. He’s the man who wants me in his bed as much as I want to be there. And, if I get too close, he’ll be the one person who could expose me for what I really am - a fraud.
©2020 Laurelin Paige (P)2020 Laurelin Paige
Hardwired
Summary
Ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware, teams up with Sarah, an equally cyborized gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals.
©2006 Night Shade Books (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way
Summary
The time of reckoning is close at hand. Events in the New York Times best-selling Star Wars The New Jedi Order series take a decisive turn, as the heroes of the New Republic prepare for their most volatile clash yet with the enemy - from without and within. In the war against the ruthless Yuuzhan Vong, the fall of Coruscant leaves the New Republic divided by internal strife, and on the verge of bowing to conquest. But those who steadfastly refuse to consider surrender - Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa Solo, and their children and comrades-in-arms - are determined to seize victory against overwhelming odds. And now, finally, there are signs that the tide may be turning in the New Republic's favor. After capturing crucial Yuuzhan Vong intelligence, Jedi fighter-pilot Jaina Solo prepares to lead a daring surprise strike against an enemy flagship. Meanwhile, Jaina's brother, Jacen, liberated from the hands of the enemy and newly schooled in an even greater mastery of the Force by the Jedi Knight Vergere, is eagerly poised to bring his unique skills to bear against the invaders. And on Mon Calamari, the New Republic's provisional capital, the retired, ailing hero Admiral Ackbar has conceived a major tactical plan that could spell the beginning of a swift end for the Yuuzhan Vong. Yet even as opposing squadrons face off in the depths of space, intrigue runs rampant - in the heated political race for Chief of State...in the shadows where Yuuzhan Vong spies plot assassinations...and in the inscrutable creature Vergere, a Jedi Knight whose allegiance is impossible to predict. And as Luke Skywalker sets about reestablishing the Jedi Council, the growing faction opposed to the ways of the Force unveils a terrifying weapon designed to annihilate the Yuuzhan Vong species. But in doing so, they may be dooming the New Republic to becoming the very thing it has sworn to fight against - and unleashing the power of the dark side.
©2002 Lucasfilm Ltd. and TM. (P)2002 Lucasfilm Ltd. and TM. Random House Audio, a division of Random House Inc.
Quillifer
Summary
"In Quillifer, Williams has presented us with a picaresque novel in the grand tradition of Fielding's Tom Jones, big as life and three times as amazing and affecting." (Locus Magazine) From New York Times best-selling and award-winning author Walter Jon Williams comes an adventurous epic fantasy about a man who is forced to leave his comfortable life and find his fortune among goddesses, pirates, war, and dragons. Quillifer is young, serially in love, studying law, and living each day keenly aware that his beloved homeport of Ethlebight risks closure due to silting of the harbor. His concerns for the future become much more immediate when he returns from a summery assignation to find his city attacked by Aekoi pirates, leading to brigands in the streets and his family and friends in chains. First he has to survive the night. Then he has to leave his home behind and venture forth into the wider world of Duisland, where he can find friends and allies to help avenge his losses and restore Ethlebight to glory. His determination will rock kingdoms, shatter the political structure of Duisland, and change the country forever.
©2017 Walter Jon Williams (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
Conventions of War
Summary
The universe has fallen into bloody chaos now that the dread empire of the tyrannical Shaa is no more - at the mercy of the merciless insectoid Naxid, who now hunger for domination. But the far-flung human descendants of Terra have finally tasted liberty, and their warrior heroes will not submit. Separated by light-years, Lord Gareth Martinez and the mysterious guerrilla fighter Caroline Sula each pursue a different road to victory in tomorrow's ultimate battle - for the new order will be far more terrible than the old... unless one last, desperate stratagem can hold a shattered galaxy together.
©2005 Walter Jon Williams (P)2014 Audible Inc.
The Accidental War
Summary
Blending fast-paced military science fiction and space opera, the first volume in a dynamic trilogy from the New York Times best-selling author of The Praxis, set in the universe of his popular and critically acclaimed Dread Empire’s Fall series - a tale of blood, courage, adventure, and battle in which the fate of an empire rests in the hands of a cadre of desperate exiles. It’s been seven years since the end of the Naxid War. Sidelined for their unorthodox tactics by a rigid, tradition-bound military establishment, Captain Gareth Martinez and Captain Lady Sula are stewing in exile, frustrated and impatient to exercise the effective and lethal skills they were born to use in fighting the enemy. Yet after the ramshackle empire left by the Shaa conquerors is shaken by a series of hammer blows that threaten the foundations of the commonwealth, the result is a war no one planned, no one expected, and no one knows how to end. Now, Martinez, Sula, and their confederate Nikki Severin must escape the clutches of their enemies, rally the disorganized elements of the fleet, and somehow restore the fragile peace - or face annihilation at the hands of a vastly superior force.
©2018 Walter Jon Williams (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Quillifer the Knight
Summary
"Williams knows exactly what to do with Quillifer, and it's hugely entertaining." (Locus) "Walter Jon Williams is always fun, but this may be his best yet, a delight from start to finish, witty, colorful, exciting and amusing by turns, exquisitely written." (George R. R. Martin) "Chock full of derring-do, blood and thunder, swashbuckling, and other good stuff evocative of Rafael Sabatini, Sir Walter Scott, and the penny-bloods." (Paul Di Filippo, author of The Big Get-Even) Quillifer - now a member of the nobility - finds himself further immersed in court politics as the outcast princess Floria is suddenly in a position of power with a rebellion stoked by a certain brilliant tactician, in this thrilling sequel to Quillifer. Rogue. Joker. Lover. Reluctant conspirator. The ambitious young Quillifer was been knighted for services to the crown, but was then banished from court by a queen who finds him obnoxious. Now, after a two-year voyage to improve his fortunes, Quillifer returns to court and is plunged immediately into a maelstrom of intrigue that triggers duels, plots, amours, and rollicking adventure. Bounding back and forth from the high councils of state to the warm bed of his mistress, Quillifer must exert every ounce of seductive charm and low cunning in order to survive. Queen Berlauda’s foreign husband brings war in his wake, along with a clutch of officials who enforce the royal will with violence, torture, and judicial murder. A dragon menaces the realm, and political conspiracy threatens the life of Quillifer’s young patroness, Princess Floria. It’s the traditional job of a knight to fight dragons and rescue princesses, but Quillifer is hardly a traditional knight, and he brings to the job an array of unorthodox skills that dazzles his swarm of rivals, seduces their wives, and threatens the realm. But there’s a greater menace to Quillifer than deadly political intrigue, for once again he finds himself hunted by the cruel, beautiful, and vengeful goddess Orlanda.
©2019 Walter Jon Williams (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Voice of the Whirlwind
Summary
Steward is a clone, a beta. His memories are 15 years old, because his alpha never did have a brain-scan update.In those 15 years, the entire world has changed. An alien race known as The Powers has established relations with humanity, and the Orbital Policorp which held his allegiance has collapsed. He fought and survived the off-world Artifacts War, but dozens of his friends did not. Both his first and second wives have divorced him. And, more importantly, someone has murdered him, causing the activation of the beta back-up.Now Steward must probe into the horrors of the war, its politics and betrayals, to find out who wanted him dead - if he doesn't want to die again.
©2007 Night Shade Books (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Praxis
Summary
An infinite, sweeping saga of interstellar war - the first SF classic for the 21st century. The empire of the Shaa lasted 10,000 years. Years of terror, infinite violence and oppressive, brutal order. Now the Shaa are no more, but the terror and violence are only beginning... The Shaa, rulers of the universe, began to commit ritual suicide when it became clear that their minds - profoundly intelligent but limited - would accept no further information. Near immortality was their one, great mistake. And so began the war between the Naxids, oldest client race of the Shaa, who believed themselves inheritors of the empire, and a frail alliance of other races, including humanity. And so, the story of a dread empire's fall begins...
©2002 Walter Jon Williams (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Metropolitan
Summary
Aiah has fought her way out of poverty and discovers a limitless source of plasm, the mysterious substance that powers the world-city. Her discovery soon involves her with Constantine, the charismatic, dangerous, seductive revolutionary who plans to overthrow the government and upend the cosmic order.
©2012 Walter Jon Williams (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Fleet Elements
Summary
"Space opera the way it ought to be...Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams." (George R. R. Martin) Following The Accidental War, the second book of a brand-new series set in the Praxis - an epic mix of space opera and military science fiction, from a grand master of science fiction, Walter Jon Williams. The Praxis, the empire of now extinct Shaa, has again fallen into civil war, with desperate and outnumbered humans battling several alien species for survival. Leading the human forces are star-crossed lovers Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula, who must find a way to overcome their own thorny personal history to defeat the aliens and assure humanity’s survival. But even if the human fleet is victorious, the divisions fracturing the empire may be too wide to repair, as battles between politicians, the military, and fanatics who want to kill every alien threaten to further tear the empire apart. While Martinez and Sula believe they have the talent and tactics to defeat an overwhelming enemy, what will prevent their fellow humans from destroying themselves?
©2020 Walter Jon Williams (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
This Is Not a Game
Summary
Imagine a game with no boundaries - waiting in parking lot, sitting at your computer, walking down the street. You could be called at any moment - and you'd better be ready. This is not a game. This is a novel of greed, betrayal, and social networking.
©2008 Walter Jon Williams (P)2012 Recorded Books
The Rift
Summary
Fast-paced and terrifyingly real, The Rift is a blockbuster novel of destruction, heroism, and survival that is sure to grab fans of recent disaster movies.
It starts with the dogs. They won’t stop barking. And then the earth shrugs - 8.9 on the Richter scale. It’s the world’s biggest earthquake since Lisbon in 1755, and it doesn’t hit California or Japan or Mexico, but New Madrid, Missouri, a sleepy town on the Mississippi River. Seismologists had predicted the scope of the disaster - but no one listened.
For hundreds of miles around, dams burst, engulfing entire counties in tidal waves of mud and debris. Cities collapse into piles of brick and shards of glass. Hospitals and schools crumble. Bridges twist and snap, spilling rush-hour traffic into rivers already swollen with bodies. Within minutes, there is nothing but chaos and ruin from St. Louis to Vicksburg, from Kansas City to Louisville. Every bridge down, every highway torn, every house gone.
America’s heartland has fallen into the nightmare known as the Rift, a fault line in the earth that wrenchingly exposes the fractures in American society itself. As a strange white mist smelling of sulfur rises from the crevassed ground, the real terror begins for the survivors, who will soon envy the dead, including:
Jason Adams, a teenager separated from his mother;
Nick Ruford, an African-American engineer searching for his estranged daughter;
Noble Frankland, the television preacher whose visions of hell have become all too real;
Larry Hallock, a technician working frantically to prevent a nuclear meltdown at his power station;
And Omar Paxton, a sheriff and Ku Klux Klansman who seeks racial vengeance in the turmoil of disaster.
Walter J. Williams has created a modern American disaster saga, a story based on terrifying fact, filled with non-stop action, peopled with characters who are heartbreakingly real. Witnessing authentic heroes surfacing in the unlikeliest places, you will share their horror, feel their despair, and triumph with them in their struggle to survive. One thing you will know for sure: It can happen here. And sooner or later, it will.
©2013 Walter Jon Williams (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Fourth Wall
Summary
Walter Jon Williams regularly draws praise for pushing the limits of the science fiction genre. His third novel featuring AR (augmented reality) games designer Dagmar Shaw, The Fourth Wall follows Sean, a washed-up child actor recruited to star in Dagmar's latest movie project. But when people on set start dying, Sean wonders if Dagmar's secretive behavior is hiding a more dangerous game.
©2012 Walter Jon Williams (P)2012 Recorded Books
City on Fire
Summary
Nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Award, City on Fire returns to the world-city of Metropolitan, a city dominated by plasm, the magical substance capable of both creation and destruction. With her help, Aiah's lover Constantine has established himself in the metropolis of Caraqui, a nation dominated by corrupt officials, gangsters, and the genetically altered known as the "twisted." Here they hope to create a revolution in the cosmic order - but first they must fend off treachery, war, and the threat of Taikoen, the "hanged man", a deadly creature that lives within plasm itself. Aiah must fight not only for her revolution and for her place in the world, but for Constantine's very soul. Finalist for the 1998 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
©1996, 2019 Walter Jon Williams (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Sundering
Summary
The Dread Empire of the Shaa is no more, following the death of the last oppressor. But freedom remains elusive for the myriad sentient races enslaved for 10 centuries, as an even greater terror arises. The Naxids - a powerful insectoid species themselves subjugated until the recent Shaa demise - plan to fill the vacuum with their own bloody domination, and have already won a shattering victory with superior force and unimaginable cruelty. But two heroes survived the carnage at Magaria: Lord Gareth Martinez and the fiery, mysterious gun pilot Lady Caroline Sula, whose courageous exploits are becoming legend in the new history of galactic civil war. Yet their cunning, skill, and bravery may be no match for the overwhelming enemy descending upon the loyalist stronghold of Zanshaa, as the horrific battle looms that will determine the structure of the universe - and who shall live to inhabit it - for millennia to come.
©2004 Walter Jon Williams (P)2014 Audible Inc.