EMPIRE OF LIES

Raphael Corkhill's heart-thumping performance of Khoury's new time-travel thriller is just about perfect. This audiobook is that rare thing, a whiz-bang adventure with big ideas for our time, and it busts out of the gate with a doozy--the year is 1683, and the Ottomans are at the gates of Vienna. Then a couple of heavily loaded camels blow up (wait . . . what?), and the history of Western Europe is completely altered. (That's not a spoiler; it's the prologue.) Fast forward to Ottoman Paris, 2017. Corkhill performs men, women, and children and handles French, Middle Eastern, and many other accents, all while maintaining a breathless pace. The plotting is tight, and you may think you know how it has to end, but really, you don't. B.G. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2019]