Here are five free audiobooks by Nathan Lowell every sci-fi fan owes it to themselves to download:

Quarter Share

A Trader’s Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper : Book 1
When Ishmael Wang is orphaned by a flitter crash, he must make some hard decisions about how to survive in a Company-owned universe. With limited time and fewer options, he lands a job as the newest hand on the Solar Clipper Lois McKendrick and learns there’s more to life than making coffee. Join Ish, Pip, Big Bad Bev, and the rest of the Lois McKendrick’s crew as they sail the galaxy in search of profitable trade.

Half Share

A Trader’s Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper : Book 2
After Ishmael Wang is promoted to the environmental section, he’s caught in a swirl of mystery, doubt, belief, lust and a really nice fitting pair of jeans. He has to come to grips with what it means to be a spacer while he’s still trying to figure out what it means to be a man. Join Ishmael, Brillo, Pip, and the rest of the crew of the Lois McKendrick as they help the newest member of the crew adjust to life in the Deep Dark.

Full Share

A Trader’s Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper : Book 3
The Lois McKendrick runs headlong into trouble when a routine in-system transit goes bad. Ishmael and the rest of the crew must scramble to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it in order to keep the ship alive. Learn more about the officers and crew of the Lois McKendrick as they struggle to keep their ship and discover how Ishmael finds out how wrong he’s been about what it means to be a spacer in this latest Trader’s Tale.

Double Share

A Trader’s Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper : Book 4
When he graduates from the Academy at Port Newmar, Ishmael Horatio Wang reports for duty in his first assignment as an officer. When he gets to his new ship, he finds things are not exactly the way he’d learned in school. The coffee tastes like used engine oil, the ship has no heart, and the nearest decent tailor is two quadrants away. What’s a new Third Mate to do? Will he be able to trust Billy?

Captains Share

A Trader’s Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper : Book 5
A shuffling of cabins puts Ishmael Horatio Wang in command of the worst ship in the fleet. He learns that being Captain doesn’t make you infallible and that life in the Captain’s Cabin is filled with new kinds of challenge as he tries to keep the ship moving, the crew out of trouble, and turn a profit to earn his Captain’s Share. In a ship where the officers outnumber the crew, how can he manage to keep everybody happy? Welcome to the SC Agamemnon.

This one almost slipped past me – there’s a short prequel to J.C. Hutchins’ amazing 7th Son trilogy.  It doesn’t appear to be available through the iTunes store, so you’ll have to download each file separately.

7th Son: 7 Days is a audio prequel anthology to J.C. Hutchins’ thriller novel, 7th Son: Descent. Set two weeks before Descent’s extraordinary events, the series reveals the lives of seven seemingly unrelated men, and their everyday challenges.

In the world of 7th Son, “everyday challenges” are far from ordinary. Each of these seven stories stars a unique John Michael Smith. Witness criminal profiler Dr. Mike’s quest to hunt an unstoppable serial killer. Watch blue-collar musician John realize a lifelong dream. Ride shotgun with USMC captain Michael on a dangerous black ops mission in the Middle East. Behold the worldwide influence of deranged computer hacker Kilroy2.0 … and more.
7th Son: 7 Days represents the creative reboot of the popular 7th Son thriller series. Designed to tightly integrate with 7th Son: Descent’s print novel storyline, 7 Days is a perfect introduction to the 7th Son universe. Meet the Beta clones … before they knew they were clones.

Here’s a new Podiobook recommendation:  The Max Quick Series by Mark Jeffrey.  I suppose they’d be classified as Juveniles, but only because the main characters are young and the content is family friendly.  The story is far more sophisticated than Harry Potter.

Max Quick 1: The Pocket and the Pendant is available as a Podiobook. It was available in paperback, hardcover, Kindle edition, and in PDF, but due to the bizarre nature of the publishing world those have all been pulled.  HarperCollins bought the book, and in their infinite wisdom they have decided to stop selling it until 2011.   But you can still download it free from Podiobooks.  Whatever.

Max Quick 2: The Two Travelers is also on Podiobooks, and just like Max Quick 1 the print editions have been pulled.  It’s a shame because the cover has a picture of my favorite building. The story really picks up in The Two Travelers.  In both books Mark Jeffrey has done a great job of moving the story along and never falling in to the trap of relying on a simple mechanism (like a magical power) to fill pages (or minutes, as the case may be.)

Max Quick 3: The Bane of the Bondsman is currently being written.  No word yet if it will be made in to a Podiobook, but I certainly hope so – especially since HarperCollins doesn’t want to sell books.

The author reads the podiobook himself, which I normally don’t care for, but Mark Jeffrey has done a great job with these productions.

More from Podiobooks:

Shadowmagic

“Hi, my name is Conor. Other than my father being a bit of an eccentric lunatic, my life was pretty normal until I got attacked in my living room and whisked away to Tir na Nog, the mystical land of the ancient Celts, where it turns out Dad is the usurped heir to the throne and everybody wants me dead because of some prophecy. Don’t you just hate when that happens?”
Shadowmagic is a rip roaring fun fantasy adventure novel by John Lenahan very loosely based on Irish mythology where every chapter ends on the edge of a cliff (or at least a high curb.) Join Conor as he grapples with typical teenage problems like, how to deal with a father’s high expectations, how to survive in the world on your own and how to woo a beautiful girl – that wants you dead. Shadowmagic a podcast novel for young adults from 12 to 112.

Lost and Not Found

Lost and Not Found details one man’s journey all the way from being laid off from his mundane corporate job to becoming the author he truly dreams to be by following his attempt to write his first novel within the challenging timeframe of only four weeks. As his story unfolds we get to read what he is writing and can see the relationship between the author and his work unfold until his life literally unfolds around him.

Fried Green Zombies

Chett and Harry are two recently unemployed construction workers on their way to a weekend of beer, Southern Comfort, and frog gigging at their musty-rusted 1970′s RV parked at their favorite hunting camp when they stumble on Bob, the mysterious, busty, burqa-clad, non-English speaking beauty just standing in the middle of nowhere on the side of dusty Nine Mile Cutoff in rural Bovina, Mississippi.
Then all hell breaks loose. Their favorite pond is missing. They’re being chased by truck driving zombies, dirty cops, UFOs and other ne’er-do-wells. Someone stole Chett’s jacked up Scottsdale four-by-four. Zombies are traipsing around their trailer, and crazy Uncle Crank is trying to feed them zombie chicken for dinner.
Aided by a classic computer nerd, a crazy man wielding a frying pan, and a space babe who gets nekkid any time someone turns out the lights, follow Chett and Harry as they battle their way across the rural countryside and ultimately save the world.
Why is their pond missing, and why did the Dodge of Death spring from the muddy crater left in its center? Who is Bob and why is she so good with shotguns? Why are they being chased by two really skinny, pale, bald, goatee-clad wierdos? What is the dirty county sheriff hiding? And will Chett and Harry ever make it out alive?

The Immortals

The future story of United States Internment Camps … of the dreams of the pre-deceased … and of triumph beyond oblivion.
It’s 2020, and an attempted cure for AIDS has mutated into a deadlier disease, V-CIDS. The U.S., under martial law, has set up “quarantine centers” in the Southwest. Searching for his gay son, Jon, media mogul Michael Barris smuggles himself into one of centers only to discover that it and the other centers are actually extermination camps. With a strange assortment of allies, including the leader of the camp’s gay barracks, an army officer and a local cowboy, Barris precipitates an inmates’ rebellion that promises the unraveling of the death-camp system and the overthrow of the government that established it.

Forget What You Can’t Remember

Featuring a zombie outbreak and a strange sort of doomsday, but really focusing on how coming through those experiences into utopia and freedom effects different people, Forget What You Can’t Remember is an exploration of the human mind under pressure. It’s about relationships, memory, opportunity, and dealing with their loss – and other kinds of loss. Forget What You Can’t Remember is a spin-off novel in the same universe as Lost and Not Found (also available on Podiobooks.com) which doesn’t require you to have read that book to understand it.