* Buckell, Tobias S. : Ragamuffin
(Tor 978-0-765-31507-6, $24.95, 316pp, hardcover, June 2007, jacket art Todd Lockwood)

SF novel, follow-up to the author's first novel Crystal Rain (2006, just out in paperback), about an empire of worlds linked by wormholes, where pirate descendants of humans called Raga, or Ragamuffins, have been targeted for extermination by the ruling Satrapy.
• The author's site has this page for the book, with links to the first 13 chapters (1/3 of the book) and to reviews.
• Tor's website has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Buckell plays with Caribbean and Aztec cultures, bending their exotic flavor to technology-flavored ends. Though the ending is never in doubt, the twisty ride getting there is a lot of fun."

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* David, Peter : Darkness of the Light
(Tor 978-0-765-31173-3, $24.95, 415pp, hardcover, June 2007, jacket art Mark Zug)

Fantasy novel, first of the "Hidden Earth" trilogy, about human refugees on a future Damned World where an Overseer manages exiles from the Twelve Races.
• Tor's website has this description -- "The Damned World is home to twelve races, each of which has fought the others for survival for generations. What none of them knows is that they are all creatures of Earth, a world of legend. On Earth eleven of the twelve races were creatures of human myth or folklore..." -- and an excerpt.
• Amazon has Publishers Weekly's starred review, from its April 23rd issue, which calls it a "clever, fast-paced fantasy" and concludes "David (Knight Life) is a master at juggling multiple characters and plot lines-and, in what one hopes is the first in a new series, breathes new life into some well-worn mythic tropes."

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+ Green, Simon R. : The Man With the Golden Torc
(Roc 978-0-451-46145-2, $23.95, 393pp, hardcover, June 2007, jacket painting Paul Young)

Fantasy novel, first of a new series, about Shaman Bond, aka Eddie Drood, who protects humanity from the forces of darkness.
• The publisher's site has this description.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Readers who recognize the pun on Ian Fleming's James Bond title, The Man with the Golden Gun, will find the secret agent in question has more up his sleeve than a fancy car and some high-tech gadgets in this first of a new fantasy series from bestseller Green (Deathstalker). ... This spy yarn is packed with enough humor, action and plot twists to satisfy fans who prefer their adventure shaken, not stirred."

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* Hamilton, Laurell K. : The Harlequin
(Berkley 978-0-425-21724-5, $25.95, 422pp, hardcover, June 2007)

Fantasy vampire novel, 15th in the bestselling series about Anita Blake, vampire hunter. This book concerns a feared group of vampire enforcers called the Harlequin.
• Hamilton's website has this page for the book, with links to two chapters.
• Berkley's website has this brief description.
• Amazon has numerous recent posts by the author, as well as the Publishers Weekly review: "Shorter and more tightly structured than the previous entry in the series, Danse Macabre (2006), Hamilton's latest should prove more satisfying to longtime fans with its straightforward supernatural politics and steamy (but not extreme) sex."

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* Kerr, Katharine : The Spirit Stone
(DAW 978-0-7564-0433-8, $24.95, 466pp, hardcover, June 2007, jacket art Jody A. Lee)

Fantasy Novel, second book of "The Silver Wyrm" following The Gold Falcon (2006, just out in paperback).
• DAW's site has this description: "Prince Dar of the Westlands calls the new fortress of Zakh Gral 'a dagger laid against our throat.' It was built by the Horsekin, ancient enemies of his people. To destroy the threat, the elven prince has called upon his dwarven and human allies...."
• The author's website has this page about all the previous books in the Deverry sequence.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "fans will welcome the author's usual intricate plotting and convoluted relationships in this second volume. ... Though not a good entry point for new readers, those already familiar with the Deverry setting and its complicated time lines and relationships should be satisfied."

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+ Kostick, Conor : Epic
(Viking 978-0-670-06179-2, $17.99, 364pp, hardcover, April 2007, jacket art Tony Sahara)

Young adult SF novel about a society where violence is banned, except in a massive computer game called Epic, and about a boy named Erik who creates a female persona and becomes one of the game's wealthiest players.
• The author is a game designer and teacher of medieval history at Trinity College in Dublin. He has this blog.
• This is the first US edition; the book was first published in Ireland in 2004 by The O'Brien Press, whose website has this page about the book, with excerpts and an author Q&A.
• Farah Mendlesohn reviewed it in her blog in 2005; "First of all, ignore the mildly clunky writing of this novel. I promise you, it's well worth your time..." And SF Site ran this review by Sherwood Smith also in 2005: "Can we really siphon off the all-too-human desire for violence and adventure through gaming? This book takes that idea about as far as it can go, and gives us some honest answers, while entertaining us right to the finish line."
• The starred Publishers Weekly review, from its May 21st issue, said "Kostick manages to aim his allegory at two separate targets: the pointless wastefulness of a government too big to correct its course or even know its true nature, and, on a slightly more trivial note, the waste of time gamers spend in their online 'second lives.' The elegant conclusion will linger with readers."
• Amazon has the reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist; the latter's starred review concludes "The action is nonstop, it's easy to keep track of who's who, and the story flows seamlessly as characters move between worlds, maintaining their individuality in both. A surefire winner with a sequel in the works and a third planned."

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+ Lawrence, Michael : The Underwood See
(Greenwillow 978-0-06-072483-2, $16.99, 372pp, hardcover, March 2007, jacket art Chad W. Beckerman)

Young adult novel, third in the "Withern Rise" trilogy following A Crack in the Line and Small Eternities, about male and female versions of the same person in alternate realities.
• The author's website, Wordybug, has this page for 'The Aldous Lexicon' as the trilogy is known in the UK, with this excerpt from the new book.
• HarperCollins' website has this description.
• Carolyn Cushman reviews the book in the June issue of Locus Magazine: "As before the two wander between worlds, but this time there's a strong atmosphere of despair and decay. Still, the mystery of who Aldous U. is and what he's up to remains compelling as it unravels, and Alaric and Naia finally find a surprising resolution fair to both."

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+ MacLeod, Ken : The Execution Channel
(Tor 978-0-765-31332-4, $24.95, 285pp, hardcover, June 2007) First US edition (UK: Orbit, April 2007)

Near-future SF novel about an series of terrorist attacks on Britain triggered by what seems to be a nuclear bombing of a US airbase in Scotland.
• Tor's website has this description -- "It's after 9/11. After the bombing. After the Iraq war. After 7/7. After the Iran war. After the nukes. After the flu. After the Straits. After Rosyth. In a world just down the road from our own, on-line bloggers vie with old-line political operatives and new-style police to determine just where reality lies."
• Cory Doctorow wrote this Boing Boing post: "Ken MacLeod's invented an entirely new genre -- the Blogothriller, the infinitely weirder cousin of the technothriller. More improbable, hilarious, and engrossing than 70,000,000 conspiracy sites, a trillion trackbacks, a heptillion message-board posts. This book feels like the future, like our futuristic present...."
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, from its April 16th issue: "Dizzying plot twists and a variety of fascinating, believable technological breakthroughs make this perhaps MacLeod's most compulsively readable novel to date."
• Gary K. Wolfe reviewed it in the May issue of Locus Magazine, posted here online, saying the book "is pure SF. It not only draws on traditions of the disaster novel, the alternate-world scenario, and the cyberthriller, but early on begins dropping hints that something more radical may be at stake..."

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* Nye, Jody Lynn : An Unexpected Apprentice
(Tor 978-0-765-31433-9, $25.95, 400pp, hardcover, June 2007, jacket art Michael Kaluta)

Fantasy novel, first of a series, about an orphaned female halfling who passes herself off as a man in order to avoid an arranged marriage and become a wizard's apprentice.
• Tor's website has this description.
• Nye's website has this synopsis and an excerpt.
• Carolyn Cushman reviewed it in the May issue of Locus Magazine: "[N]otably, this world's magic has some intriguing aspects, in particular the use of a special script that magically defines its subjects. It turns out that Tildi has a special talent involving the script and a stolen 'book' so powerful that changing any of its characters could change the world. The basic quest format is over-familiar, but the little tweaks and twists give it enough novelty to keep it fun."

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* Palwick, Susan : Shelter
(Tor 978-0-312-86602-0, $15.95, 576pp, trade paperback, June 2007)

Near-future SF novel about two women in 21st-century dystopian San Francisco.
• Tor's website has this page for the book, with a description and quotes from reviews of the author's earlier books.
• The author's blog Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good is subtitled "Science Fiction. Progressive Christianity. And Other Improbable Optimisms."
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review, which concludes "Younger readers may best appreciate this sprawling book."
• The book is Gary K. Wolfe's lead review in the May issue of Locus Magazine: "...Toward the end, in a scene that must have been tough to write, Palwick has no less than three disembodied personalities talking through the voice of the intelligent house which is the novel's central image of shelter, and by now they're all distinct enough that it's like a family reunion. But even if that ending cues a few too many strings, it earns your respect. Shelter, almost certainly one of the major novels of the year, is a story about damage that wants desperately to believe in compassion, and it nearly gets you there."

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* Patterson, James : Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
(Little, Brown Young Readers 0-316-15560-8, $16.99, 405pp, hardcover, June 2007)

Young adult SF novel, third in the series following The Angel Experiment and School's Out Forever, about genetically altered kids with wings. In this book the renegade kids fight a master plan to re-engineer part of the population and exterminate the rest.
• Series site Maximumride.com has links to an excerpt, various downloads, and entreaties to fans to support film versions of the book.
• Amazon has reader reviews.

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+ Reeve, Philip : A Darkling Plain
(Eos 0-06-089055-X, $18.99, 559pp, hardcover, June 2007, jacket art David Frankland) First US edition (UK: Scholastic UK, March 2006)

Young adult SF novel, fourth in the "Hungry City Chronicles", following Mortal Engines, Predator's Gold, and Infernal Devices, about mobile cities that consuming smaller cities in their path.
• The UK first edition was listed on Locus Magazine's 2006 Recommended Reading List.
• Reeve's website has cover images of the four books in the series.
• The Eos website has this description -- "The once-great traction city of London is now just a radioactive wreck, a ruin haunted by electrical discharges and the dashed hopes of the people who once called it home..." -- with its Browse Inside feature including an excerpt.
• The Publishers Weekly starred review, from its May 28th issue, said "Reeve's massive, ambitious Hungry City Chronicles series roars to a fine conclusion in this fourth installment. ... Taken as a whole, the Hungry City Chronicles is a remarkable body of work, one that stands beside The Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials in terms of re-readability and scope. Complex, intelligent and rewarding, Reeve's world is truly one to get lost in."
• Faren Miller reviewed the book in the March '07 issue of Locus Magazine: "it's worth the wait."

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+ Reynolds, Alastair : Galactic North
(Ace 0-441-01513-1, $24.95, 343pp, hardcover, June 2007, jacket illustration Chris Moore) First US edition (UK: Gollancz, October 2006)

Science fiction collection of 8 stories, set in the "Inhibitor" (or Revelation Space) future universe of the author's novels Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap. Three of the stories, "Weather", "Grafenwalder's Bestiary", and "Nightingale", are original to this book. Previously published stories include "Great Wall of Mars", "A Spy in Europa", and title story "Galactic North".
• The author provides an afterword explaining his idea of future histories and how these stories fit into his.
• Ace's website has this description.
• Amazon's 'search inside' feature includes an excerpt of "Great Wall of Mars".
• Locus Magazine published reviews of the book by Nick Gevers in its November '06 issue and by Gary K. Wolfe in the January '07 issue. Contrasting the book with Stephen Baxter's Resplendent (described here) , Wolfe concluded "Baxter's Gibbonesque approach sees human destiny in terms of power and conflict; Reynolds, with his mostly self-contained tales and decidedly more poetic voice, sees it in terms of legend and romance."

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* Shaw, Heather : When We Were Six
(Tropism Press no isbn, $5, 52pp, chapbook, May 2007, cover art Heather Shaw)

Chapbook collection of six stories, one original to this collection, by the co-publisher of Tropism Press and of Flytrap magazine.
• The publisher's site has this description with ordering information and links to original online publications of several of the stories. The chapbook premiered at WisCon 2007 in Madison, Wisconson.

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* Vaughn, Carrie : Kitty Takes a Holiday
(Warner 978-0-446-61874-8, $6.99, 303pp, mass market paperback, April 2007)

Fantasy novel, third in the series following Kitty and the Midnight Hour (2005) and Kitty Goes to Washington (2006), about werewolf radio talk show host Kitty Norville. In this book, her retreat to a Colorado cabin is interrupted by attacks from a local werewolf.
• Warner's site has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Kitty's matter-of-fact voice continues to mine the horror and romantic material for laughs-especially in her prank calls to a rival DJ-and Vaughn's universe is convincing and imaginative, providing enough series mythology to satisfy without slowing down the narrative."
• Carolyn Cushman reviews it in the June issue of Locus Magazine: "The snowballing crises and some interesting elements of Native American magic make this a lot of fun, with a hard edge of supernatural violence and basic human intolerance. The conclusion isn't neat and tidy, but is still satisfying."

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* Wells, Martha : Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement
(Pandemonium Books 1-905586-03-5, $7.95, 282pp, mass market paperback, March 2007)

SF novel based on the TV series, following the author's earlier Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary.
• In this book, Colonel John Sheppard and Dr. Rodney McKay discover a threat to the Pegasus Galaxy on a distant moon.
• The author's site has this page for the book, with the text of Chapter 1.

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