Shadows from Boot Hill
by L. Ron Hubbard
Directors: Jim Meskimen and Tait Ruppert
Voice Cast: Phil Procter, Corey Burton, R.F. Daley, John Mariano, Jim Meskimen, Tait Ruppert, Fred Tatasciore, Josh R. Thompson
Studio: Galaxy Press
Release Date: October 24, 2011
Retail: $9.98
ISBN: 978-1592123476
Running Time: 2 hours 10 minutes
Buy Links: Audiobook, Paperback

Review:

Saturday, July 26, 2014 is the official National Day of the Cowboy, which is an official holiday in 8 states. To celebrate the holiday, I'm reviewing several western titles by the late L. Ron Hubbard. The audiobooks are produced by Galaxy Press using a talented voice cast and outstanding sound effects. These stories were published in the 1930s and 1940s, or otherwise known as the Golden Age, in Pulp magazines.

Shadows from Boot Hill first appeared in the June 1940 issue of Wild West Weekly and centers on the hired-gun, murderer and outlaw, Brazos, who bailed out on his payment for killing a banker, as lawmen were hot on his trail. He takes shelter briefly in Los Hornos, where his so-called friend, Whisper Monahan, offers him $200 to murder a man named Scotty Brant.

Scotty Brant has beeb using cyanide to extract gold from an oxide ore, which is located on the land owned by Whisper. Now all 4,000 of acres of his land has been poisoned. All Brazos has to do is kill Brant and collect the $200. It may sound simple enough, but Brant has a surprise in store for him - a witchdoctor, who happens to put a curse on Brazos.

Orders Is Orders
Stories form the Golden Age
by L. Ron Hubbard
Directed by Jim Meskimen
Voice Cast: Brooke Bloom, Corey Burton, R.F. Daley, Jim Meskimen, Josh R. Thompson and Michael Yurchak
Studio/Publisher: Galaxy Press
Release Date: March 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-1592122332
Running Time: 2 hours 33 minutes
Buy Link: Amazon

Review:

Long before Kindles, Nooks and the Tablets, people relied on paperbacks, newspapers and magazines for their reading entertainment. In the 1930s and 1940s, cheap-made magazines, dubbed Pulp Magazines, flew off the newsstands, featuring adventure stores of every genre by well-established writers, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Elmore Leonard and Ray Bradbury. The great science-fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard, published over one-hundred-fifty short stories during this era, known to most as the Golden Age. Galaxy Press has been releasing Hubbard's titles on audiobooks, with a talented voice-cast and amazing sound effects.

Each and every month, I participate in the Earlier Reviewers program on LibraryThing, in which a reader gets a chance to win a copy of a book in exchange for a review. Over the last four years, I have won a handful of titles, several eBooks, a few paperbacks and a couple of audiobooks. Back in November 2013, I won a copy of Orders Is Orders, which I received a few weeks later in December. I was busy around the holidays, so I kept pushing the audiobook aside, well that is until last month when I finally got around to listening to it.

Orders Is Orders first appeared in the December 1937 issue of Argosy and is set in the worn-torn Chinese city of Shunkien, The US has a small consulate that is filled with frightened and starving refugees in the city. To make matters worse, some are suffering from the Asiatic cholera. Their only hope is the USS Miami, which is located two hundred miles away, but the US can't take any sort of military action, including bringing supplies to the consulate, without causing an 'act of war' with the Japanese.

The No-Gun Man
by L. Ron Hubbard
Directors: Jim Meskimen and Tait Ruppert
Voice Cast: David O'Donnell, Luke Bayback, R.F. Daley, Jim Meskimen, Tait Ruppert, Josh R. Thompson and Michael Yurchak
Studio: Galaxy Press
Release Date: June 23, 2014
Retail: $12.95
ISBN: 978-1592123834
Running Time: 2 hours 8 minutes
Buy Link: Audiobook, Paperback

Review:

Arriving in paperback and audiobook format this month is the thrilling western adventure, The No-Gun Man written by the late L. Ron Hubbard. Though the author is known for the classic science fiction epics, Battlefield Earth and the Mission Earth Series, many people have probably forgotten that Hubbard wrote countless stories during the 1930s and 1940s, or otherwise known as the Golden Age. During this era, readers devoured adventure stories. Whether it was set in WWI or on a distant planet, the Pulp magazines that contained these stories flew off the magazines racks. Galaxy Press has been releasing Hubbard's short stories and novellas on audiobooks and paperback editions.

To celebrate the upcoming National Day of the Cowboy on July 27th, Galaxy Press is releasing a few new wild west titles, including last week's release of The No-Gun Man, featuring an outstanding voice-cast and amazing sound effects.

Originally published in the May 1950 issue of Thrilling Western, The No-Gun Man centers on Monte Calhoun, a young man with a rocky past. When he was a child, his gold obsessed father dragged his ailing mother and him across the country to find riches, but his mother ended up dying, though his father did strike it rich. As soon as he was old enough, Monte left to become his own man.

Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light
By David Downie
Narrated by Max Winter
Pub. Date: 2011
By Blackstone Audio
ISBN of the paperback: 978-0307886088
Duration:  9:58 hours
Genre: Nonfiction/Travel
Source: Audiobook Jukebox
Goodreads

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
By Neil Gaiman
Narrated by Neil Gaiman
Publisher: HarperAudio
Pub. Date: June 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-0062263032
Duration:  5:48 hours
Genre: Fantasy
Source: public library
Goodreads: Goodreads Choice winner for Fantasy (2013)