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Arthur, Keri :
Tempting Evil
(Dell Spectra 0-553-58847-8, $6.99, 371pp, mass market paperback, March 2007)
Urban fantasy novel, third in a series following Full Moon Rising (2006) and Kissing Sin (Feb. '07), and followed by Dangerous Games (Apr. '07), about Riley Jenson, a half-vampire, half-werewolf guardian who protects humans from various supernatural races. This one concerns Deshon Starr, "a madman-scientist who's been messing around in the gene pool for decades."
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Bantam Dell's site has this description and an excerpt.
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The author's website has this page about the book, and an excerpt.
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Banks, Iain :
The Steep Approach to Garbadale
(UK: Little Brown 0-316-73105-6, £17.99, 390pp, hardcover, March 2007)
Associational novel by the author whose SF books appear as by "Iain M. Banks". (His most recent SF novel was The Algebraist.) This book is about a rebellious member of a family that's considering selling the basis of its fortune, a board game called Empire!, to an American corporation.
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The author's official site has the jacket description and an extract.
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Chance, Karen :
Claimed by Shadow
(Roc 0-451-46152-5, $7.99, 374pp, mass market paperback, April 2007)
Dark fantasy novel, second in a series following Touch the Dark (June 2006), about clairvoyant Cassandra Palmer.
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The author's site has descriptions of both books with links to excerpts.
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Amazon has mixed reader reviews.
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Conron, Leslie, ed. :
Irish Fireside Tales: Myths, Legends, Folktales
(SFBC/Madison Park Press 978-1-58288-262-8, $12.99, 240pp, trade paperback, March 2007)
Anthology of 26 traditional stories, variously attributed to Lady Gregory, Lady Wilde, William Carleton, Thomas Crofton Croker, Patrick Kennedy, and Jeremiah Curtin. Includes an introduction, glossary, and 8 pages of color photos of the Irish landscape.
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This edition is exclusive to the Doubleday Book Clubs, which include the Science Fiction Book Club, whose site has this description.
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Gee, Emily :
Thief with No Shadow
(Solaris 1-84416-469-1, £7.99, 463pp, mass market paperback, May 2007, cover illustration Larry Rostant)
Fantasy novel, the author's first novel, about a magician-thief who needs to steal a necklace from a den of fire-breathing salamanders.
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Solaris' site has this description, a PDF sample chapter, and an author profile.
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The author has a website (with a trailer for the book) and a MySpace page.
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James, Roby :
Beyond the Hedge
(Juno Books 0809556790, $12.95, 206pp, trade paperback, January 2007, cover art Timothy Lantz)
Time travel/fantasy/romance novel about a 21st century woman who finds herself in a land called Clipton Magna that exists 200 years in the past as a refuge for ill-fated love.
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Juno's site has this description and an excerpt.
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The author's site has information about this and earlier books; her first novel was SF Commencement for Ballantine Del Rey in 1996.
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Amazon has a review by Harriet Klausner.
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Lima, Maria :
Matters of the Blood
(Juno Books 0-8095-5790-5, $12.95, 282pp, trade paperback, April 2007, cover art Paula Guran)
Dark fantasy mystery/romance novel, the author's first novel, about a woman from a paranormal family in Texas who has a vision foretelling the murder of her cousin.
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Parent publisher Wildside's website has this description with blurbs from Charlaine Harris and others.
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Amazon has several five-star reader reviews.
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Malzberg, Barry N. :
Breakfast in the Ruins
(Baen 1-4165-2117-8, $14, 389pp, trade paperback, April 2007, cover art Stephen Hickman)
Nonfiction collection of 60 some essays, incorporating in its first half the contents of 1982 essay collection The Engines of the Night, which won the Locus Award for best nonfiction/reference book of the year, was a Hugo Award finalist, and whose concluding section, short story "Corridors", was a Nebula Award finalist.
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This volume extends that work with nearly 300 pages of additional essays and reviews published since then, including pieces on Daniel Keyes, Alice Sheldon, Robert Silverberg, J.G. Ballard, and other writers, and concluding with 1993 short story "The Passage of the Light", a follow-on to "Corridors".
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Baen's site has a description with links to the first several chapters.
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Sawyer, Robert J. :
Rollback
(Tor 978-0-765-31108-5, $24.95, 320pp, hardcover, April 2007)
SF novel about an astronomer trying to decode an alien message and an experimental rejuvenation treatment to restore her youth so she can finish the task.
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Tor's website has the jacket description and a chapter one excerpt.
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Sawyer's website has this page with links to excerpts, reviews, a book club guide, and Sawyer's musings about who he'd cast in the film version.
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Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, from its January 15th issue, which calls it a "smoothly readable near-future SF novel" and concludes "By its nature, a story about moral choices tends to get talky, but the talk is intelligent and performed by sympathetic and believable people. Sawyer, who has won Hugo and Nebula awards, may well win another major SF award with this superior effort."
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Schweitzer, Darrell, ed. :
The Secret History of Vampires
(DAW 075640410X, $7.99, 310pp, mass market paperback, April 2007)
Anthology of 13 stories about vampires. Authors include Harry Turtledove, Brian Stableford, Mike Resnick, Ian Watson, and Tanith Lee.
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DAW's site has a brief description: "Garlic cloves and wooden stakes are no match for centuries of the undead's mischief and seduction. Here are thirteen original and imaginative stories that reveal the vampiric truths behind certain historical happenings."
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Sherman, Delia, & Theodora Goss, eds. :
Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing
(Small Beer Press 978-1-931520-15-9, $18, 8+291pp, trade paperback, April 2007, cover illustration Connie Toebe)
Anthology of 19 original "interstitial" stories. Authors include Christopher Barzak, Leslie What, Rachel Pollack, Colin Greenland, Matthew Cheney, Holly Phillips, and Catherynne M. Valente.
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The cover describes interstitial fiction as "the imaginative spaces between conventional genres -- realistic and fantastical, scholarly and poetic, personal and political".
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The Interstitial Arts Foundation's blog Interfictions has and Q&A with the editors and the complete table of contents. Small Beer Press's journal also posted the table of contents, with a link to Heinz Insu Fenkl's introduction.
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Amazon has a description, and a reader review Eleanor Skinner.
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Snyder, Zilpha Keatley :
The Treasures of Weatherby
(Atheneum 1-4169-1398-X, $15.95, 213pp, hardcover, January 2007, jacket illustration Brandon Dorman)
Young adult novel with fantasy elements, about a huge, mysterious house in which descendants of its builder are allowed to live in for free.
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The author's website details her earlier books, with excerpts from four of them.
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Amazon has reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist; the latter concludes "Tailor-made for children who love the thought of rambling mansions, garden mazes, and hidden treasure, this mannered but very enjoyable story strolls along at a steady pace, allowing plenty of time to savor its distinctive pleasures and unusual characters."
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Carolyn Cushman reviewed the book in the February issue of Locus Magazine: "It's debatable whether this entertaining gothic YA adventure really qualifies as fantasy, despite hints of ghosts and psychic abilities, but it has some wonderfully macabre touches, such as the autocratic aunt in a wheelchair a la Miss Havisham in Dickens' Great Expectations, that more than make up for any lack in magic."
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Stross, Charles :
On Her Majesty's Occult Service
(SFBC 978-0-7394-8112-7, $14.99, 12+562pp, hardcover, March 2007, jacket art John Picacio)
Omnibus of two books about a British secret service organization battling Lovecraftian horrors -- The Atrocity Archives (first published 2004) and The Jennifer Morgue (2006). Included are Stross' first novel "The Atrocity Archive", novella "The Concrete Jungle" (which won a 2005 Hugo Award), novel "The Jennifer Morgue", and novelette "Pimpf", along with an introduction by Ken MacLeod, an afterword by Stross, and a glossary.
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This edition is available exclusive from the Science Fiction Book Club, whose site has this description of the book by Andrew Wheeler, and several member reviews.
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