Simply Audiobooks Inc.

Simply Audiobooks’ 25 Days of Christmas is back and it’s bigger and better than ever.

What: Get a new deal every day for 25 straight days. Each deal lasts for only 24 hours.  Get free shipping, free downloads, save up to 25% off your entire purchase, and get huge savings on Twilight, Harry Potter, James Patterson, Dan Brown, and MORE.

When: Thursday, November 19th, 2009  to Sunday, December 13th, 2009

Where: Right here on your Simply Audiobooks homepage

Each deal starts at noon EST and will end at 11:59 a.m. EST the following day when the next day’s offer will be revealed.

The Catch? - We’re not telling you what is being offered when. Check back each day to see what’s going on.

See The Elf? - See a little elf peeking his head out the factory windows? Click on him to get a sneak peek of what’s coming up.

Nicholas Sparks, bestselling author of The Notebook, and  Nights in Rodanthe, brings us The Last Song on September 8th.

Seventeen year-old Veronica “Ronnie” Miller’s life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from NYC to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, her mother decides it would be in everyone’s best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie’s father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church. The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story about love in its myriad forms – first love, the love between parents and children – that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that deeply felt relationships can break our hearts… and heal them.

(Random fact: Miley Cyrus chose the name Ronnie for the main character.)

On September 15th, Dan Brown releases his highly anticipated follow up to Angels & Demons, and The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol. Brown’s long time editor says “nothing ever is as it first appears in a Dan Brown novel. This book’s narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, Dan’s readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape. The Lost Symbol is full of surprises.”

On September 28th James Patterson takes a slight detour from his usual mystery thrillers with the non-fiction thriller The Murder of King Tut: The Plot to Kill the Child King.

Egyptologists have long presumed that the young king died of disease, or an accident. In The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard chronicle their epic quest to find out what happened to the boy-king. They comb through the evidence - X-rays, Carter’s files, forensic clues - and scavenge for overlooked data to piece together the details of his life and death. The result is a true crime tale of intrigue, betrayal, and usurpation that presents a compelling case that King Tut’s death was anything but natural.

Add these to your rental shelf today, and check out more hot upcoming titles here.

Philippa Gregory, author of  The Other Boleyn Girl, has a new book coming out on August 18th and next week she’ll make her twitter debut .

Starting August 11th, Gregory will be writing a series of tweets in the voice of Elizabeth Woodville, the Plantagenet queen who is the central character of the new book, The White Queen.  Her publisher, Simon & Schuster, say it is the first time a bestselling author has condensed their novel on twitter.

The 150,000 word story was a bit of a challenge to condense into nearly 250 tweets of 140 characters or less, but Gregory seems quite pleased with her results. “Tweets are a discipline, rather like a haiku, and the shortness of the sentence gives each one a rhythm which is really interesting for prose,” she said. “It was more like writing poetry than prose. And some of the tweets seem to me to be more arresting than the prose of the book.”

You can catch Gregory’s tweets as The White Queen’s Elizabeth Woodville from August 11th to 17th by following her at @ElizWoodville on twitter.

The White Queen will be available for rent, download, and purchase from Simply Audiobooks on August 18th.

You can also follow Simply Audiobooks on twitter!

August is looking to be a good month for Mystery, Thriller fans! Two of the best-selling authors of all time (and long-time member favorites) have new books coming out that are sure to heat up the last days of summer.

Sandra Brown is back this summer with Smash Cut. ‘Smash cut’ is a movie term referring to a sudden shift in scene, made specifically to shock the viewer. Brown explains this in a video on her offical website. “You see, my villan in this book is a film scholar. He eats, drinks, and sleeps movies. His conversations are sprinkled with quotes of movie dialogue - some you’ll recognize, and some you may not.  The research for this book was fun. Watching movies, trying to find the perfect line of dialogue to tie into the scenes that I was writing. Sometimes it got a little creepy, as does my villan. As the story progresses, he takes his fetish a bit further than quoting dialogue and actually begins re-enacting ….. well, I guess you’ll just have to read it, won’t you?”

The Smash Cut audiobook doesn’t come out until August 11th, but you can beat the rush and add it to your rental shelf now!

Next up, on August 24th,  James Patterson, world record holder and veritable story machine, is set to release the 15th book in his Alex Cross detective series, Alex Cross’s Trial.

Trial is written in the voice of Detective Alex Cross, as he passes down the family tale of his great uncle Abraham and his struggle for survival in the era of the Ku Klux Klan.

Washington D.C. lawyer Ben Corbett fights against oppression and racism and risks his family and his life in the process. When President Roosevelt asks Ben to return to his home town to investigate rumors of the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan there, he cannot refuse.

When he arrives in Eudora, Mississippi, Ben meets the wise Abraham Cross and enlists him to introduce Ben to the hidden side of the idyllic Southern town. Lynchings have become commonplace and residents of the town’s black quarter live in constant fear. Ben aims to break the reign of terror–but the truth of who is really behind it could break his heart.

Add Alex Cross’s Trial to your rental shelf now!

We’re big Harry Potter fans here at Simply Audiobooks. When Deathly Hallows was released, a few of us booked the boardroom, scheduled it in our Outlook calendars, and sat down to discuss the finale.

We have a mini sorting hat that works sort of like a magic 8 ball (I’m totally Gryffindor) that we frequently play with.

There’s a group of us who have already purchased our VIP reserved seating tickets for next Wednesday’s release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in the theaters.

In celebration of all things Harry Potter, starting today and culminating on the movie’s release date of Wednesday July 15th, we are offering 40% off a different Harry Potter audiobook every day.  But, in the true spirit of Hogwarts, we’re only showing you the book that’s on sale today and keeping the others in a chamber of secrets, if you will.

Check back every day to see what’s behind the door. I’ve personally put a Colloportus charm on these doors and Alohomora won’t work, so bookmark this page and check back daily. Keep your Remembrall handy because this is a sale you won’t want to forget.

Today, save 40% off Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows!

Have your say on the best audio books written in 2009! Along with the Independent UK newspaper, a panel of experts have selected their favorite audio books published within the last 12 months. The panel, made up of key figures from audio publishing, trade press and national media, made their selections based on excellence in several criteria, including: quality of literary content, abridgement, reading, production value and sound quality. The rest is up to you!

The best audio books of 2009 will be decided by your vote. Titles include:

- White Tiger, By Aravind Adiga
- Dr. Who: Pest Control, By Peter Anghelides
- The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly
- Paul Temple and the Front Page Men, By Francis Durbridge
- A Room With A View, By E.M. Forster

Sign up to vote at CompletelyNovel.com and see a list of the expert panel’s all time favorite audio books in their Extra Titles section.

Today, the machine better known as James Patterson, releases the 4th of 9 books set to come out this year. Swimsuit,the story of a beautiful supermodel who disappears on a photo shoot in Hawaii, promises to be a heart-pounding story of fear and desire, a veritable “hell of unspeakable horrors”.

A must listen for all Patterson fans.

See all James Patterson titles available for rent, download, and purchase from Simply Audiobooks.

Joyceans rejoice! It’s Bloomsday.

Bloomsday celebrates the day on which most of  James Joyce’s novel Ulysses takes place - June 16, 1904.  It’s also believed to be the day Joyce first went out with his future wife, Nora Barnacle.

The novel follows the life and thoughts of Leopold Bloom from 8am on 16 June through to the early hours of the following morning. Bloomsday is named for Leopold.

Joyce began prep work for Ulysses in 1902 when he was just twenty, gathering his epiphanies and arranging them into notes. After A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published, Joyce earnestly dug in to work on Ulysses in 1914, finally publishing it in 1922.

Ulysses was banned in various countries for years, including the United States and Great Britain, being labeled ‘obscene’ for Joyce’s use of curse words and ‘radical’ techniques like  stream-of-consciousness narrative. Early publishers were tried under obscenity provisions in the U.S. Postal Code, found guilty, and ordered to cease publication. Publicity from the trial, and it’s designation as a banned book, only served to generate more interest around Ulysses.

During the ban, the book was frequently smuggled into the States from Paris, where an American expat had begun publishing it in 1922. It was not published legally in an english-speaking country until Random House won a 4-year court battle against obscenity charges in 1934.

Today, Ulysses is considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Celebrate Bloomsday by testing your James Joyce knowledge, or by starting a listening marathon of the classic on audio book.  (I might suggest listening to the audio book first, because I must admit, I got a shameful 3 out of 16 on the quiz.)

You can also check out #bloomsday on twitter to see how others are celebrating. (Hint: it frequently involves pints, dirty talk, and kidney, which Bloom eats for breakfast in the novel. ) Think I’ll stick to the book, and the quiz. We’ll see about the pints and dirty talk when lunch rolls around.

Just a quick post to let you know the movie version of Jodi Picoult’s My Sisters Keeper is coming out in just over two weeks and to give you links to watch the trailer (which, actually looks kind of good).

HOWEVER, (yes, I yelled it, you know, for emphasis), the movie version has a different ending from the one Picoult penned in the actual novel.  Which seems odd, considering that the ending Picoult DID write has “one of the great shocker endings of recent fiction” (USA Today).

Picoult said “Having the ending changed would certainly not have been my choice. I wrote the ending very intentionally because I wanted to leave the reader with a certain message. And changing that ending changes that message. However, I am excited to see the movie and to judge it on its strengths.”

Picoult recently posted on her site that she has since seen the movie. “I had the chance to see the movie when I was on tour in LA. Yes - it ends differently from the book. And yes, you’re still going to like it.The acting is phenomenal; the movie is beautifully shot; and I highly recommend investing in Kleenex before you go”

So, though Picoult is giving the movie the proverbial thumbs up,  you need to read the book too. 1) Because it’s good. 2) To pay homage to the author and the real story as she wrote it. 3) I said so.  And really, reason #3 is reason enough.

James Patterson, dubbed “the man who can’t miss” by Time magazine,  received the Guinness World Record for the Most Entries on The New York Times Best-Seller LIst at BookExpo America last weekend.

Patterson has had 45 of his titles on the list, including 31 titles that hit number one, and that number is only likely to grow. In 2009 alone Patterson will be releasing 9 new titles, with a new one released every month from now until the end of the year (with the sole exception of October).

See Patterson’s small mountain of audiobooks available from Simply Audiobooks.