Audiobooks by Barbara Hambly

Something is amiss with the world's magic. Spells don't work the way they used to-when they work at all. Only the powers of the Crystal Mages remain as they were, powers founded on the use of the mystical element adamis, the harvesting of which has enslaved the peoples of the Twilight Lands. Ravenous beasts have begun to appear, legendary creatures that seem to be proof against any magic. And Clea Stylachos, granddaughter of a great sage of the Twilight people, has reason to fear that the Crystal Mages, instead of seeking to defeat these monsters, are attempting to weaponize them in their quest for power. Clea's only hope to save her people is a wizard who retains his power, one who will not betray her. But that wizard-Ithrazel the Cursed-wants nothing to do with saving the world, helping a hero, or unraveling the terrible secret at the heart of the Crystal Mages' plans. Clea works to untwist the deadly riddles of magic and monsters-to free her mother's disenfranchised people from slavery under her father's conquering forces. To save her mageborn brother from the Crystal Mages' power; to control a sorcerer legendary for his deed of evil; to keep her own small band of friends one step ahead of her father's troops and the Crystal Order's spells. She is the Iron Princess, and she knows she must prevail or die. Contains mature themes.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Julia Anthony (Narrator)

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The Armies of Daylight

The bestselling author's epic fantasy trilogy comes to a dramatic end. The 'cold, tense, creeping dread lasts right up until the final confrontation' (Tor.com). Since the Dark Ones returned, the world has been laid to waste. The wizards have been slaughtered, cities destroyed, and people have scattered in terror. Few have witnessed more of the destruction than Rudy and Gil-two ordinary Californians who found their way across the Void, and took up arms in defense of a strange and magical world. She learned the ways of war, while he found within himself the powers of a great wizard. Both of them will need all their strength to survive this final challenge. Ingold, the master wizard, has devised a spell to hide the user from the deathly stare of the Dark, and he intends to use it to strike at their very heart. Finally, Rudy, Gil, and the rest of mankind's survivors will take the offensive, bringing an end to this terrible war, for better or for worse.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Sharon Freedman (Narrator)

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The Time of the Dark

A whirlwind fantasy classic set in the richest world imaginable, with unforgettable characters and the highest stakes-The Time of the Dark is the first book in Barbara Hambly's epic Darwath Trilogy. Gil Patterson is a woman familiar with dark stories. As a student of medieval history, she knows the Crusades, the Black Death, and the horrors of life in the Middle Ages. But it is another kind of darkness has begun to stalk her dreams: when she falls asleep she sees forces of evil assaulting a beleaguered kingdom, whose kind people are on the brink of annihilation, and awakes each morning in a cold sweat. Gil dismisses the dreams until a wizard appears in her apartment. He has crossed into her dimension, passing through the fraying fabric of the universe, to ask her help. For mankind to survive he must protect an infant prince, whom he plans to hide in Gil's world. The student of history is about to get much closer to evil than she ever imagined.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Sharon Freedman (Narrator)

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The Walls of Air

A 'tense and nerve-wracking' adventure in the epic fantasy trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Time of the Dark (Tor.com). Once upon a time, Gil and Rudy lived simple lives. Until they met Ingold, Gil was an ordinary PhD candidate and Rudy was a drifter, whiling away his life riding motorcycles under the California sun. But wizards have a way of complicating things. Ingold brought them across the Void, where an evil known as the Dark threatened to devour civilization whole. Civilization's hopes rested on an infant prince, and to protect him Gil and Rudy had to draw on newfound powers-she as a warrior, he as a wizard. With Ingold's help they escaped the Dark, and led a hardy band of survivors to a far-away keep, where humanity could be safe for a time. But now that time is past, they have been found, and there is nowhere to hide from the Dark.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Sharon Freedman (Narrator)

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House of the Patriarch

No one can talk to the dead ... can they? Freeman of color Benjamin January gets caught up in a strange, spiritual world that might lead to his own demise, as he hunts for a missing teenager in this gripping, atmospheric historical mystery. New Orleans, 1840. Freshly home from a dangerous journey, the last thing Benjamin January wants to do is leave his wife and young sons again. But when old friends Henri and Chloë Viellard ask for his help tracking down a missing girl in distant New York, he can't say no. Three weeks ago, seventeen-year-old Eve Russell boarded a steamboat-and never got off it. Mrs. Russell is adamant that Eve has been kidnapped, but how could someone remove a teenager from a crowded deck in broad daylight? And why would anyone target Eve? The answer lies in New York, a hotbed of new religions and beliefs, of human circuses and freak shows, and of "blackbirders" who will use any opportunity to kidnap a freeman of color and sell him into slavery. January is determined to uncover the truth, but will he ever be able to return to New Orleans to share it?

Barbara Hambly (Author), Ron Butler (Narrator)

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Ran Away

RAN AWAY. So began a score of advertisements every week in the New Orleans newspapers, advertising for slaves who'd fled their masters. But the Turk, Hüseyin Pasha, posted no such advertisement when his two lovely concubines disappeared. And when a witness proclaimed he'd seen the "devilish infidel" hurl their dead bodies out a window, everyone was willing to believe him the murderer. Only Benjamin January, who knows the Turk of old, is willing to seek the true culprit, endangering his own life in the process.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Ron Butler (Narrator)

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The Shirt on His Back

Benjamin January, a free Black man, physician, and musician in the American South in the antebellum years of the 1830s, ends up far away from New Orleans caught up in new adventures out West. Abishag Shaw is seeking vengeance for his brother's murder-and Benjamin January is seeking money after his bank crashes. Far beyond the frontier, in the depths of the Rocky Mountains, both men are to be found at the great Rendezvous of the Mountain Men, a month-long orgy of cheap booze, shooting matches, tall tales, and cut-throat trading. But at the rendezvous, the discovery of a corpse opens the door to hints of a greater plot-of madness and wholesale murder.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Ron Butler (Narrator)

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Scandal in Babylon

"You shall never have a penny of my money. Leave me alone or I will shoot you dead!" 1924. After six months in Hollywood, young British widow Emma Blackstone has come to love her new employer, glamourous movie-star Kitty Flint-even if her late husband's sister is one of the worst actresses she's ever seen. Looking after Kitty and her three adorable Pekinese dogs isn't work academically mindedEmma dreamed of, but Kitty rescued her when she was all alone in the world. Now, the worst thing she has to worry about is the shocking historical inaccuracies of the films Kitty stars in. Until, that is, Rex Festraw-Kitty's first husband, to whom she may or may not still be married-turns up dead in her dressing room, a threatening letter seemingly from Kitty in his pocket. Emma's certain her flighty but kindhearted sister-in-law has been framed. But who by? And why? From spiteful rivals to jealous boyfriends, the suspects are numerous. But as Emma investigates, she begins to untangle a deadly plot-and there's something Kitty's not telling her ...

Barbara Hambly (Author), Pilar Witherspoon (Narrator)

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Dead and Buried

New Orleans, 1836. When free black musician and surgeon Benjamin January attends the funeral of a friend, an accident tips the dead man out of his coffin-only to reveal an unexpected inhabitant. Just one person recognizes the corpse of the white man: Hannibal Sefton, fiddle-player and one of January's closest friends. But he seems unwilling to talk about his connection to the dead man ...

Barbara Hambly (Author), Ron Butler (Narrator)

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Dead Water

Nineteenth-century New Orleans is a blazing hotbed of scorching politics and personal vendettas. And it's into this fire that Benjamin January falls when he is hired to follow Oliver Weems, a bank official who has absconded with $100,000 in gold and securities. But it's more than just a job for January. The missing money is vital to the survival of the school for freed slaves that he and his wife Rose have founded. Following the suspected embezzler-and the money-onto the steamboat Silver Moon, January, Rose, and their friend Hannibal Sefton are sworn to secrecy about the crime until they can find the trunks containing the stolen loot. And then the unexpected happens: Weems is found murdered and suddenly the job of finding the pirated stash grows not only more difficult-but more deadly. There is no shortage of suspects-from the sinister slave dealer to the bullying steamship pilot, to the suspiciously innocent "lady" with connections to every river pirate in the riotous port of Natchez-Under-the-Hill-who all seem to have something to hide. Now, with time running out, January seeks clues wherever he can find them-and allies among whoever can help. Working in tandem with a young planter named Jefferson Davis, he must uncover the dark web of corruption, betrayal, and greed that has already cost one man his life ... and, if he can't catch a brutal, remorseless killer, will soon cost January and his friends theirs.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Ron Butler (Narrator)

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Days of the Dead

Mexico City in the autumn of 1835 is a lawless place, teeming with bandits and beggars. But an urgent letter from a desperate friend draws Benjamin January and his new bride Rose from New Orleans to this newly free province. Here they pray they'll find Hannibal Sefton alive-and not hanging from the end of a rope. Sefton stands accused of murdering the only son of prominent landowner Don Prospero de Castellón. But when Benjamin and Rose arrive at Hacienda Mictlán, they encounter a murky tangle of family relations, and more than one suspect in young Fernando's murder. While the evidence against Hannibal is damning, Benjamin is certain that his consumptive, peace-loving fellow musician isn't capable of murder. Their only allies are the dead boy's half sister, who happens to be Hannibal's latest inamorata, and the mentally unstable Castellón himself, who awaits Mexico's holy Days of the Dead, when he believes his slain son will himself reveal the identity of his killer. The search for the truth will lead Benjamin and Rose down a path that winds from the mazes of the capital's back streets and barrios to the legendary pyramids of Mictlán and, finally, to a place where spirits walk and the dead cry out for justice. But before they can lay to rest the ghosts of the past, Benjamin and Rose will have to stop a flesh-and-blood murderer who's determined to escape the day of reckoning and add Benjamin and Rose to the swelling ranks of the dead.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Ron Butler (Narrator)

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Wet Grave

In such stunning novels of crime and character as Die Upon a Kiss, Sold Down the River, and A Free Man of Color, Benjamin January tracked down killers through the sensuous, atmospheric, dangerously beautiful world of Old New Orleans. Now, in this new novel by bestselling author Barbara Hambly, he follows a trail of murder from illicit back alleys to glittering mansions to a dark place where the oldest and deadliest secrets lie buried ... It's 1835 and the relentless glare of the late July sun has slowed New Orleans to a standstill. When Hesione LeGros-once a corsair's jeweled mistress, now a raddled hag-is found slashed to death in a shanty on the fringe of New Orleans's most lawless quarter, there are few to care. But one of them is Benjamin January, musician and teacher. He well recalls her blazing ebony beauty when she appeared, exquisitely gowned and handy with a stiletto, at a demimonde banquet years ago. Who would want to kill this woman now-Hessy, they said, would turn a trick for a bottle of rum-had some quarrelsome "customer" decided to do away with her? Or could it be one of the sexual predators who roamed the dark and seedy streets? Or-as Benjamin comes to suspect-was her killer someone she knew, someone whose careful search of her shack suggests a cold-blooded crime? Someone whose boot left a chillingly distinctive print ... His inquiries at taverns, markets, and slave dances reveal little about "Hellfire Hessy" since her glory days in Barataria Bay, once the lair of gentlemen pirates. Then the murder is swept from his mind by the delivery of a crate filled with contraband rifles-and yet another telltale boot print left by its claimant. When a murder swiftly follows, Ben and Rose Vitrac, the woman he loves, fear the workings of a serpentine mind and a treacherous plot: one only they can hope to thwart in time. All too soon they are fugitives of color in the stormy bayous and marshes of slave-stealer country, headed for smugglers' haunts and sinister plantations, where one false step could be their last toward a ... Wet Grave.

Barbara Hambly (Author), Ron Butler (Narrator)

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