Summer Knight

Summer Knight, the fourth Dresden Files novel, puts Harry Dresden in the worst possible position: the Winter Queen of Faerie calls in a debt that requires him to discover who murdered the Summer Knight — and clear the Winter Queen's name — or his faerie godmother will claim him. The investigation takes him into the politics of the Sidhe courts with characteristic misdirection and escalating stakes, building to a revelation about the nature of the conflict that changes what the reader thought was at stake. Butcher's world-building deepens significantly.

James Marsters's narration is definitive. By the fourth Dresden Files novel his performance has fully inhabited Harry's voice — the wisecracking Chicago wizard's combination of genuine competence, bad luck, and loyalty is Marsters's performance as much as Butcher's writing. At eleven hours the audiobook delivers one of the series' great middle entries, establishing the magical infrastructure that later books depend on.