Mel Hudson has narrated 17 audiobooks on Listento.it by 7 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 1,865 ratings. The most-rated is Children of Time.
Children of Time
Summary
Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
©2016 Adrian Tchaikovsky (P)2017 Audible Ltd
Children of Ruin
Summary
Children of Ruin follows Adrian Tchaikovsky's extraordinary Children of Time, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award. It is set in the same universe, with a new cast of characters and a thrilling new narrative. It has been waiting through the ages. Now it's time.... Thousands of years ago, Earth’s terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life – but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity’s great empire fell and the program’s decisions were lost to time. Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth. But those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed. And it’s been waiting for them.
©2019 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd (P)2019 Macmillan Digital Audio
Diamond Fire
Summary
Nevada Frida Baylor and Connor Ander Rogan cordially invite you to join their wedding celebration. Summoning, weather manipulation, and other magical activities strictly forbidden. Catalina Baylor is looking forward to wearing her maid of honor dress and watching her older sister walk down the aisle. Then the wedding planner gets escorted off the premises, the bride’s priceless tiara disappears, and Rogan's extensive family overruns his mother’s home. Someone is cheating, someone is lying, and someone is plotting murder. To make this wedding happen, Catalina will have to do the thing she fears most: use her magic. But she’s a Baylor, and there’s nothing she wouldn't do for her sister's happiness. Nevada will have her fairy-tale wedding, even if Catalina has to tear the mansion apart brick by brick to get it done.
©2018 Ilona Gordon and Andrew Gordon (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
The Last Namsara
Summary
Kristen Ciccarelli's debut fantasy explores an intricately woven world of deception, inner darkness, and dragons that fantasy fans won't be able to resist. In the beginning there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit who carried love and laughter wherever he went. But where there is light, there must be darkness - and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death bringer. These are the legends that Asha, daughter of the king of Firgaard, has grown up learning in hushed whispers, drawn to the forbidden figures of the past. But it isn't until she becomes the fiercest, most feared dragon slayer in the land that she takes on the role of the next Iskari - a lonely destiny that leaves her feeling more like a weapon than a girl. Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. When she's offered the chance to gain her freedom in exchange for the life of the most powerful dragon in Firgaard, she finds that there may be more truth to the ancient stories than she ever could have expected. With the help of a secret friend - a slave boy from her betrothed's household - Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her.
©2017 Kristen Ciccarelli (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Memories of Glass
Summary
Reminiscent of Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife, this stunning novel draws from true accounts to shine a light on a period of Holland’s darkest history and bravest heroes. 1942. As war rips through the heart of Holland, childhood friends Josie van Rees and Eliese Linden partner with a few daring citizens to rescue Eliese’s son and hundreds of other Jewish children who await deportation in a converted theater in Amsterdam. But amid their resistance work, Josie and Eliese’s dangerous secrets could derail their friendship and their entire mission. When the enemy finds these women, only one will escape. Seventy-five years later, Ava Drake begins to suspect that her great-grandfather William Kingston was not the World War II hero he claimed to be. Her work as director of the prestigious Kingston Family Foundation leads her to Landon West’s Ugandan coffee plantation, and Ava and Landon soon discover a connection between their families. As Landon’s great-grandmother shares the broken pieces of her story, Ava must confront the greatest loss in her own life and powerful members of the Kingston family who will do anything to keep the truth buried. Illuminating the story and strength of these women, award-winning author Melanie Dobson transports listeners through time and place, from World War II, Holland, to contemporary Uganda, in this rich and inspiring novel.
©2019 Melanie Dobson (P)2019 Two Words Publishing LLC
Cold Comfort
Summary
Detective Gunnhildur sets to investigate two seemingly separate cases, but uncovers some disturbing links. Top class crime writing set in Icleand. Following her promotion and working now from Reykjavik, Gunnhildur is given responsibility for two cases - the first in tracking down an escaped convict who's keen to settle old scores, and the other, the murder of a TV fitness presenter in her city centre apartment. With the police short staffed and underfunded following the financial crash, Gunnhildur and her team set about delving into the backgrounds of both, where they uncover some unwelcome secrets and some influential friends of both who have no wish to be in the public eye. Set in an Iceland that is coming to terms with the deepening recession, Gunnhildur has to take stock of the whirlwind changes that have taken place as she investigates criminals at opposite ends of the social scale as some uncomfortable links appear between the two cases.
©2012 Quentin Bates (P)2013 Audible Ltd
Chilled to the Bone
Summary
When a shipowner is found dead, tied to a bed in one of Reykjavik's smartest hotels, sergeant Gunnhildur Gisladottir of the city police force sees no evidence of foul play but still suspects things are not as cut-and-dried as they seem. And as she investigates the shipowner's untimely - and embarrassing - demise, she stumbles across a discreet bondage society whose members are being systematically exploited and blackmailed. But how does all this connect to a local gangster recently returned to Iceland after many years abroad, and the unfortunate loss of a government laptop containing sensitive data about various members of the ruling party? What begins as a straightforward case for Gunnhildur soon explodes into a dangerous investigation, uncovering secrets that ruthless men are ready to go to violent extremes to keep. Although born in the UK, in 1962, through a series of coincidences Quentin Bates found himself working in Iceland in his gap year. The gap year then became 10 years, during which time he managed to get himself married, produce a family, and generally go native in Iceland. The family then moved back to the UK in 1990 where Quentin became a full-time journalist on a commercial fishing magazine. Quentin and his (Icelandic) wife frequently return to Iceland, where they have many friends, including several in the Reykjavik police.
©2013 Quentin Bates (P)2013 Audible Ltd
Frozen Out
Summary
The discovery of a corpse washed up on a beach in an Icelandic backwater sparks a series of events that propels the village of Hvalvik's police sergeant Gunnhildur into deep waters. Although under pressure to deal with the matter quickly, she is suspicious that the man's death was no accident and once she has identified the body, sets about investigating his final hours. The case takes Gunnhildur away from her village and into a cosmopolitan world of shady deals, government corruption and violence. She finds herself alone and less than welcome in this hostile environment as she tries to find out who it was that made sure the young man drowned on a dark night one hundred kilometres from where he should have been - and why. Although born in the UK in 1962, through a series of coincidences Quentin Bates found himself working in Iceland in his gap year. The gap year then became 10 years, during which time he managed to get himself married, produce a family, and generally go native in Iceland. The family then moved back to the UK in 1990 where Quentin became a full-time journalist on a commercial fishing magazine. Frozen Assets was born through the author's own inside knowledge of Iceland and its society, along with exploring the world of crime. He and his (Icelandic) wife frequently return to Iceland, where they have many friends, including several in the Reykjavik police.
©2011 Quentin Bates (P)2013 Audible Ltd
Cold Steal
Summary
A successful housebreaker who leaves no traces and no clues as he strips Reykjavík homes of their valuables has been a thorn in the police's side for months. But when one night the thief breaks into the wrong house, he finds himself caught in a trap as the stakes are raised far beyond anything he could have imagined. Gunnhildur Gísladóttir of the Reykjavík police finds herself frustrated at every turn as she searches for a victim who has vanished from the scene of the crime and wonders if it could be linked to the murders of two businessmen with dubious reputations that her bosses are warning her to keep clear of. Quentin Bates dates back to the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis and was brought up in the south of England. In the year that Margaret Thatcher became Britain's Prime Minister, he was offered the opportunity to spend a gap year working in Iceland and jumped at the chance of escape. The gap year turned into a gap decade, during which he worked as a netmaker, factory hand and trawlerman, started a family and generally went native.
©2014 Quentin Bates (P)2015 Audible, Ltd
Thin Ice
Summary
Snowed in with a couple of psychopaths for the winter.... When two small-time crooks rob Reykjavik's premier drugs dealer, hoping for a quick escape to the sun, their plans start to unravel after their getaway driver fails to show. Tensions mount between the pair and the two women they have grabbed as hostages when they find themselves holed up upcountry in an isolated hotel that has been mothballed for the season. Back in the capital, Gunnhildur, Eiríkur and Helgi find themselves at a dead end investigating what appears to be the unrelated disappearance of a mother, her daughter and their car during a day's shopping and the death of a thief in a house fire. Gunna and her team are faced with a set of riddles, but as more people are quizzed it begins to emerge that all these unrelated incidents are in fact linked. And at the same time, two increasingly desperate lowlifes have no choice but to make some big decisions on how to get rid of their accidental hostages.... Quentin Bates was born in England and, through a series of coincidences, found himself working in Iceland for his gap year. One year turned into ten, plus a wife and children. After 10 years writing on the sea and a move back to the UK, Quentin took to dry land and began work as a nautical journalist and editor of a commercial fishing magazine. He lives in Hampshire with his wife and three children. The Gunnhildur Gisladottir series was born through the author's own inside knowledge of Iceland and its society along with exploring the world of crime.
©2016 Quentin Bates (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
Going Under
Summary
Lila Black is off with the faeries... Ever since the Quantum Bomb of 2015 things have been different; the dimensions have fused and suddenly our world is accessible to elves, demons, ghosts and elementals and their worlds are open to us. Things have been different for Special Agent Lila Black too: Tortured and magic-scarred by elves, rebuilt by humans into a half-robot, part-AI, nuclear-fueled walking arsenal, and carrying the essence of a dead elfin necromancer in her chest, sometimes she has trouble figuring out who she is. And a mission to the world of the fae may not help her work it out.The fae are beautiful, glamorous, exotic, and talented. Their inventions make food taste better, make beer divine, and bring sparkle and mischief to the world but that's only the surface. And Lila is being sent in at the deep end, to the deepest, darkest levels of Faerie: On the primal level, nothing about the fae is glamorous at all.In a winter-locked, raw, and primitive world, Lila has to deal with the fae at their most basic levels, as tricksters and dealmakers and the only deals worth making are bloody ones.If Lila's quest is to succeed, and if she is ever to escape Faerie, the right question must be asked, the right sacrifice must be made, and the right quarry must be hunted down on the winter solstice. All of which is difficult, when the only aides Lila brought to Faerie are her friends...
©2008 Justina Robson (P)2014 Audible Studios
Down to the Bone
Summary
The gap between the worlds was so thin in places, you could almost step across without meaning to... Lila Black can still turn into a lethal war-winning machine with the merest thought but she doesn't work for the agency any more. Problem is, she has no idea what to do next.Teazle is a demon who may have become Death's Angel. Zal is a has-been elven musician without a band. They don't add up to much and when they get together major stuff goes down. But the dead are walking, the veil between the worlds is tearing and if it fails altogether all bets are off.Someone has to do something and it looks like it's going to have to be Lila. Is attitude enough to get you through life and death? Will it get you a happy ending?
©2011 Justina Robson (P)2014 Audible Studios
Chasing the Dragon
Summary
Lila Black returns in the fourth volume of high-octane, high-magic, high-tech adventures.Ever since the Quantum Bomb of 2015 things have been different; the dimensions have fused and suddenly our world is accessible to elves, demons, ghosts, and elementals-and their worlds are open to us. Things have been different for Special Agent Lila Black too: She's been tortured and magic-scarred by elves; rebuilt by humans into a half-robot, part-AI, nuclear-fueled walking arsenal; married to a demon; and is in love with a recently-deceased elf. It was confusing enough before she was catapulted fifty years into her own future.Returning to the life of a secret agent, Lila finds herself left all of her former boss's old offices and whatever mysteries they contain, as the elf has disappeared some fifty years previously. Appointed head of the new android division, she can see all too clearly what's in store for her if the growth of the alien technologies in her cyborg body continues unchecked.But there are more immediate concerns. Like resurrecting her lover, Zal. And her husband, the demon Teazle, is embroiled in a fatal plot in Demonia, and her magic sword is making itself happy as a pen whose writing has the power to affect other worlds. The world is off its rocker and most everyone is terrified of faeries. And all the while, she hears the voices of the machine-material projections of an immaterial form, The Signal. The Signal talks constantly-if only she knew what it meant.
©2009 Justina Robson (P)2014 Audible Studios
Selling Out
Summary
Book two of the Quantum Gravity series sees Lila Black drawn into the intoxicatingly dangerous demon realm. Capricious, in love with beauty, demons are best left to themselves. This is not easy when they can't resist tampering with humans.Justina Robson's new series is a joyful melding of science fiction and fantasy brought together in the figure of the dangerously lovely Lila Black, a 21-year-old secret agent who's had much of her body replaced with weapon-and-armor-heavy intelligent metal and who isn't sure where her mind ends and her installed AI begins. Lila's world is one where demons, elves, and elementals live alongside people. And somehow Lila and the other agents of the security agency have to provide security for all and stay alive themselves.
©2007 Justina Robson (P)2014 Audible Studios
Keeping it Real
Summary
The Quantum Bomb of 2015 changed everything. The fabric that kept the universe's different dimensions apart was torn and now, six years later, the people of earth exist in uneasy company with the inhabitants of, amongst others, the elfin, elemental, and demonic realms. Magic is real and can be even more dangerous than technology.Elves are exotic, erotic, dangerous, and really bored with the constant Lord of the Rings references. Elementals are a law unto themselves and demons are best left well to themselves.Special agent Lila Black used to be pretty, but now she's not so sure. Her body is more than half restless carbon and metal alloy machinery, a machine she's barely in control of. It goes into combat mode, enough weapons for a small army springing from within itself, at the merest provocation.As for her heart, well, ever since being drawn into a game by the elfin rockstar Zal (lead singer of the No Shows), who she's been assigned to protect, she's not even sure she can trust that any more either.
©2006 Justina Robson (P)2014 Audible Studios
Cold Breath
Summary
Gunnhildur reluctantly allows herself to be taken off police duties to act as bodyguard to a man with a price on his head.... Hidden away in a secure house outside Reykjavík, Gunna and the high-profile stranger, a guest of the interiors minister, are thrown together - too close for comfort. They soon find they are neither as safe nor as carefully hidden as Gunna and her boss had thought. Conflicting glimpses of the man's past start to emerge as the press begin to sniff him out, as does another group with their own reasons for locating him. Gunna struggles to come to terms with protecting the life of a man who may have the lives of many on his conscience - or indeed may be the philanthropist he claims to be. Isolated together, the friction grows between Gunna and the foreign visitor, and she realises they are out of their depth as the trails lead from the house outside Reykjavík to Brussels, Russia and the Middle East.
©2018 Quentin Bates (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
Cold Malice
Summary
Reykjavík Detective Gunnhildur Gísladóttir tries not to believe in ghosts. But when Helgi, one of her team, is certain he's seen a man who had been declared dead more than 15 years ago, she reluctantly gives him some unofficial leeway to look into it. Has the not-so-dead man returned from the grave to settle old scores, or has he just decided to take a last look around his old haunts? Either way, there are people who have nursed grudges for years, hoping for a reckoning one day. Even the rumour of his being alive and kicking is enough to spark a storm of fury and revenge, with Gunnhildur and Helgi caught up in the middle of it.
©2020 Quentin Bates (P)2020 Hachette Audio UK