The Ninth Metal

(Run Time: approx. 10.25 hours) IT BEGAN WITH A COMET… At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet's debris field and the sky rained fire. The town of Northfall, Minnesota will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This omnimetal has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source… and a weapon. John Frontier — the troubled scion of an iron-ore dynasty in Northfall — returns for his sister's wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations. His father rightly suspects foreign leaders and competing corporations of sabotage, but the greatest threat to his legacy might be the US government. Physicist Victoria Lennon was recruited by the Department of Defense to research omnimetal, but she finds herself trapped in a laboratory of nightmares. And across town, a rookie cop is investigating a murder that puts her own life in the crosshairs. She will have to compromise her moral code to bring justice to this now lawless community. In this gut-punch of a novel, the first in his Comet Cycle, Ben Percy lays bare how a modern-day goldrush has turned the middle of nowhere into the center of everything, and how one family — the Frontiers — hopes to control it all. Benjamin Percy (Author) is the author of seven novels, the most recent among them The Sky Vault (William Morrow, 2023). He is also the author of The Unfamiliar Garden (Mariner Books/William Morrow, 2022), The Ninth Metal (Mariner Books, 2021), The Dead Lands (Grand Central/Hachette, 2015), Red Moon (Grand Central/Hachette, 2013) and The Wilding (Graywolf Press, 2010), as well as three books of short stories, Suicide Woods (Graywolf Press, 2019), Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf Press, 2007) and The Language of Elk (Grand Central/Hachette, 2012; Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006). His craft book — Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction — was published by Graywolf Press in 2016 and is now widely taught in creative writing classrooms. Percy also has numerous credits and awards in film , TV, and podcasts. Julia Whelan (Narrator) is an author, screenwriter, lifelong actor, and acclaimed audiobook narrator of over 700 titles. She is, most recently, the recipient of Spotify's Narrator of the Year Award (the most listened-to narrator globally), the first-ever Gracie Award for Best Fiction Narrator (presented by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation), the SOVAS (Society of Voice Arts and Sciences) Lifetime Achievement Award, and winner of the Audie Award for Best Fiction Narrator of 2025. She also captured both the winner and runner-up slots in the inaugural audiobook category of the Goodreads Choice Awards. Her latest books — the Audie nominated duet romance, Casanova LLC (coming in print, Spring 2027), and the annotated Victorian poetry anthology The Poetry Of My Oxford Year — debuted exclusively on Audiobrary. jmwhelan.com