Audio NewsBriefs, May 15, 2011

In June, HighBridge Audio will release on CD and as digital downloads several works of Scandinavian crime fiction never before available on audio. David Thorn will read Camilla Läckberg’s The Preacher, her follow-up to The Ice Princess, also available from HighBridge, while Simon Vance will narrate five of Håkan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren mysteries: Borkmann’s Point, The Return, Mind’s Eye, Woman with Birthmark, and his latest, The Inspector and the Silence. More at www.­highbridgeaudio.com.

To reflect better its increasingly digital direction, California-based publisher Christian­audio—whose imprints include Hovel Audio, Christianaudio Seed, and Christianaudio Fiction and whose titles are distributed digitally, via christianaudio.­com, and on CD, by Ingram, Baker & Taylor, IPG/GL Services, and STL—has changed its name to eChristian. At the time of this writing, the company’s new website, echristian.com, was still under construction.

AudioGO will publish the audio editions of internationally best-selling author Karin Slaughter’s next two thrillers, Fallen and Criminal, in June 2011 and 2012, respectively. The titles, to release simultaneously in print, will be available in audio formats including CD, MP3-CD, Playaway®, and digital download. Fallen (see Major Audio Releases, p. 50) will be read by Shannon Cochran; the narrator of Criminal has yet to be determined. Slaughter, who has been championing libraries since March through her Save the Libraries Campaign, will be a panelist at LJ ’s Day of Dialog this year, held concurrent to BookExpo America, on May 23. More at www.libraryjournal.com/DayofDialog2011.

While data from the Audio Publishers Association indicates that 52 percent of audiobook listeners are most likely to listen to audiobooks while commuting in their cars and that CDs still dominate as the most popular mode of listening, the growth in sales of alternate digital formats has convinced at least one car company, Fujitsu Semiconductor America, to create a CD-less car audio design kit. Built around the Fujitsu MB9G711 SoC Series and sold in four configurations, the kit supports MP3, WMA, Ogg Audio, and Advanced Audio Coding formats, radio tuner, Bluetooth, USB mass-storage, SD/SDHC Card, and iPod devices—basically, everything but CDs and all that came before them.—Raya Kuzyk