Exit Music by Ian Rankin won the Sounds of Crime Award at CrimeFest on Saturday 7th June. The award was sponsored by Audible.co.uk, the Internet’s leading audio download website. Published in 2007, Exit Music is read by Ian MacPherson and was one of 5 audio titles nominated.
Four Orion audiobooks have been chosen in the Guardian’s 40 Best Audiobooks promotion. Our featured titles include Agent Zigzag by Ben MacIntyre, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday, Exit Music by Ian Rankin and Horrid Henry’s Stinkbomb by Francesca Simon. The audiobooks will feature in a supplement in the Guardian on 28th June and will be promoted 3 for 2 in all Waterstone’s bookstores.
Look out for them on the shelves – they don’t look like any audiobook CDs you’ve seen before – or you can order them here.
This month sees an exciting new concept in audiobooks being pioneered by Orion. We’ve launched two specially-designed packs for the new releases of two of our most prestigious authors, Ian Rankin and Nick Mason.
The Rebus’s Scotland CD/booklet pack is No 1 crime writer Ian Rankin’s exclusive insight into the world of his books. It’s read by the author himself, unabridged – recording an audiobook for the first time – with incidental music by Jackie Leven and excerpts from the novels read by Rebus’s alter ago, actor James Macpherson. Its three CDs are packaged into a new-design pack with a booklet containing 30 pages of stunning photographs of the places Rebus inhabits and that inspired the author, taken from the book published by Orion.
The Inside Out CD/booklet pack is another amazing production. Nick Mason reads his own personal history of Pink Floyd, the first time a Floyd member has ever told their own version of the story, bringing it right up to date with Live8. As well as reading, he also made it his own production by adding specially-created sound effects linking the chapters. The pack of three CDs is enhanced by a booklet of photographs taken from the Orion paperback, including rare photographs from Nick’s own archive. Some copies signed by Nick will be available in bookshops.
They’re the Oscars and the Booker Prize combined for the audiobook world. We’re delighted to say that Orion Audiobooks had a fantastically successful evening at the Spoken Word Awards at the Curzon Cinema in London with two gold awards, a silver and two bronzes.
Our GOLD winners were:
Wolf Brother, the atmospheric children’s adventure by Michelle Paver, read by Ian McKellen. scooped SILVER.
BRONZE awards went to Italian Fever the compelling novel by Orange Prize-winner Valerie Martin and the bestselling biography Catherine de Medici by Leonie Frieda, read by Anna Massey.
And Stalin picked up yet another award in the Radio Times Readers’ Choice Awards, winning a classy third equal.
Listen to audio extracts and find out more about these prize winners.
We have all fallen under the spell of Ian McKellen, who did a fantastic reading of Michelle Paver’s audiobook for children, Spirit Walker, the second in her Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series. It’s now out in the shops. Reviewer Amanda Craig wrote “just as stunning [as Wolf Brother]. McKellen is an enchanter, and this recording is one of his great professional achievements. I can pay it no higher compliment than to say it made the five-hour drive to Cornwall pass without a single quarrel.” Amanda Craig, Independent
listen to an audio extract from Wolf Brother read by Ian McKellen
It’s not just the book of The Da Vinci Code that had been an unprecedented bestseller. Orion Audiobooks has just won The Neilson Bookscan Gold Award for its phenomenal sales of The Da Vinci Code on CD and tape. The Stories behind the Code are also now available on audio in Dan Burstein’s The Secrets of the Code.
listen to an audio extract from The Da Vinci Code read by Jeff Harding listen to an audio extract from The Secrets of the Code read by Jeff Harding
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse shot to the top of the charts in record time, so we’re going to rush release the audiobook in November. This spellbinding story of two women linked through time will be read by two of our most popular readers, Emilia Fox and Anton Lesser.
Is one ever really enough? The answer is out there on Orion Audiobooks. Or, at least it will be soon, as we’re releasing Adele Parks’ savvy, sassy bestseller, Husbands, in December. The story of Bella who inadvertently finds herself married to two men at the same time, is, in fact, the story of four people, and it will be told on audio by four actors new to audio, playing the parts of Bella, Stevie, Laura and Philip, so it should really do justice to the way the book describes each extraordinary event from four different viewpoints.
This is going to be an amazing CD and a must-have for Pink Floyd fans old and new, who first saw their reunion for Live8. Nick Mason has read his autobiography for us and has been fantastically involved throughout the production of the audio version of Inside Out, so that it has become something far more than simply an author reading his work. To fit the book on the CDs we had to lose a couple of the jokes so we’ve added a lot of funny noises instead! For once we can genuinely say this is an audiobook that comes complete with bells and whistles – not to mention some Arctic winds, Venetian canals, telephones, aeroplanes and a squealing pig or two!
Wherever you see this symbol you can listen to an audio extract.
For a complete listing of all the audio extracts available on OrionBooks.co.uk view the audio extracts page, where you can sort the listing by author, title or reader.