New Books : 11 September 2018

Christopher Priest’s An American Story, Sjón’s CoDex 1962, and titles by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare, Glen Cook, Susan Forest & Lucas K. Law, Sara Hanover, Dean Koontz, Malka Older, Parker Peevyhouse, Angus Watson, and Scott Westerfeld

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* Black, Holly, & Cassandra Clare : The Golden Tower
(Scholastic Press 978-0545522403, $17.99, 256pp, hardcover, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Magesterium #5

Middle-grade fantasy novel, fifth in a series following The Iron Trial (2014), The Copper Gauntlet (2015), The Bronze Key (2016), and The Silver Mask (2017), about a teenaged boy on summer break from the magical world of the Magisterium.
• Scholastic’s site has this teacher’s description.
• Publishers Weekly gave the first book a starred review: “The strange, subterranean Magisterium is vividly rendered, and a string of ominous revelations will leave readers eager for future installments.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Cook, Glen : Port of Shadows
(Tor 978-1-250-17457-4, $25.99, 400pp, hardcover, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781250174567
• Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9781250299574
• The Black Company #11

Military fantasy novel, 11th in a series about an elite mercenary unit, though apparently 3rd in the series by internal sequence. The previous novels have been collected in four omnibuses published by Tor: Chronicles of the Black Company (2007), The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (2008), The Return of the Black Company (2009), and The Many Deaths of the Black Company (2010).
• Macmillan’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• The Publishers Weekly review concludes, “Cook’s convoluted style is in full flower, and between the forgetting and the fact that Croaker is often kept in the dark, the plot can be somewhat hard to follow. With no lasting impact on the Company or their over-arching story, this makes for a pleasant diversion for fans of the series.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Forest, Susan, & Lucas K. Law, eds. : Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders
(Laksa Media Groups 978-1988140056, $17.95, 408pp, trade paperback, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Sat 8 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 978-1-988140-07-0

Anthology of 21 original stories about human migration.
• Authors include Matthew Kressel, Rich Larson, Karin Lowachee, Seanan McGuire, and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro.
• The publisher’s site has this description with the table of contents, excerpts, and a media kit.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Hanover, Sara : The Late Great Wizard
(DAW 978-0-7564-1434-4, $16, 336pp, trade paperback, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780756414351
• Wayward Mages #1

Fantasy novel, first in a series, about a young woman who is contacted by a wizard to help her find her missing father.
• Penguin Random House’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• The Publishers Weekly review concludes, “Though comfortably nestled in familiar tropes, this clever romp delivers strong characters and a heartfelt tone that will charm fans of the genre.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Koontz, Dean : The Forbidden Door
(Bantam 978-0525483700, $28, 480pp, hardcover, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780525483922
• Jane Hawk #4

Fantasy thriller, fourth in a series following The Silent Corner (2016), The Whispering Room (2017), and The Crooked Staircase, about a woman whose investigation of mysterious suicides has led to the discovery of a secret government mind-control program.
• Penguin Random House’s site has this description with a preview.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Older, Malka : State Tectonics
(Tor.com 978-0765399472, $27.99, 432pp, hardcover, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780765399465
• Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9781250306548
• The Centenal Cycle #3

Near-future SF novel, third in a series following Infomocracy (2016) and Null States (2017), about threats to the global micro-democracy.
• Macmillan’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• Publishers Weekly said of the previous book, “There are great character moments, including Information employee Roz’s slow-building romance with a local sheik, and teammate Minzhe dealing with potential conflicts of interest due to his mother’s presence in a local government; those will please returning fans.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Peevyhouse, Parker : The Echo Room
(Tor Teen 978-0765399397, $17.99, 320pp, hardcover, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780765399410
• Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9781250300782

Young adult SF novel about a boy at a boarding school who wakes up, day after day, in a locked room with blood on his jumpsuit.
• Macmillan’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• This is the author’s second novel, after Where Futures End (2016).

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Priest, Christopher : An American Story
(Gollancz 978-1473200579, $26.99, 320pp, hardcover, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Thu 6 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781473200609

Near-future SF novel, set 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, in which the recovery of an unidentified plane crash causes a survivor of one of the victims on the planes to re-examine everything he thought he knew.
• This is the UK edition, available from Amazon.com through the link.
• Orion’s site has this description
• Paul Kincaid reviews the book in the September issue of Locus Magazine: “On the surface, An American Story seems like one of Priest’s most straightforward narratives, but underneath the surface it is brilliantly constructed, cleverly contrived to fox our memories, so you end the novel trying to puzzle out what it was you just read.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Sjón : CoDex 1962: A Trilogy
(Farrar, Straus, Giroux/MCD 978-0374125639, $30, 528pp, hardcover, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780374717742

Trilogy of three novels by the Icelandic author, first published in Icelandic in 1994, 2001, and 2016; the novels are subtitled “a love story,” “a crime story,” and “a science-fiction story.”
• This edition is translated by Victoria Cribb.
• Macmillan’s site has this description (noting that the work “encompass[es] genre fiction, theology, expressionist film, comic strips, fortean studies, genetics…”) with an excerpt.
• Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review: “…it might make more sense to consider this book an ornate frame story for the fables with which Sjón studs his narrative. Sjón is more than a novelist; he is a storyteller in the ancient tradition, and this work may be remembered as his masterpiece.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Watson, Angus : The Land You Never Leave
(Orbit 978-0316317399, $16.99, 528pp, trade paperback, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780316317405
• Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9781478988397
• West of West #2

Epic fantasy novel, second in a series following You Die When You Die (2017), about a group of refugees crossing a continent to fulfill destiny.
• Orbit’s site has this excerpt.
• Hachette’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• The Publishers Weekly review of the first book called it a “bloody, brutal historical fantasy … inspired by the Vikings’ settling North America a millennium ago, albeit with a magical twist.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Westerfeld, Scott : Impostors
(Scholastic Press 978-1-338-15151-0, $18.99, 416pp, hardcover, September 2018)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 11 Sep 2018
• Imposters #1

Middle grade fantasy novel, first in a new series set in the world of the author’s “Uglies” books, about a young girl’s secret twin and body double.
• Scholastic’s site has this description.
• The author’s website has this announcement about the four books of this new series.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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These listings are based on publisher schedules and availability on Amazon (rather than on confirmation of physical publication via purchase, review copies, or sightings in bookstores). Titles are listed only once they are published (with rare exception). We do not list galleys or advance reading copies.

Page counts are based on publisher or Amazon listings, and typically only approximate the bibliographic page counts of finished books.

* = first edition
+ = first US edition

Date with publisher info is official publication month.

‘Nominal Publication Date’ is the day of publication, typically as indicated by Amazon.com.

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