New Books, 25 June 2024
Ackley-McPhail, Danielle, ed.: The Chaos Clock: Tales of Cosmic Aether
(eSpec/NeoParadoxa 9781956463354, $17.95, 328pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 07/01/2024)
Anthology of short stories involving time, mixing the cosmic weird of H.P. Lovecraft and the steam-age technology of H.G. Wells. Authors include James Chambers, Carol Gyzander, Will McDermott, Jody Lynn Nye.
Adeyemi, Tomi: Children of Anguish and Anarchy
(Macmillan/Holt 9781250171016, $24.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel based on West African lore, the third book in the Legacy of Orisha trilogy. Zélie finds herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship as warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland.
Bayron, Kalynn: Sleep Like Death
(Bloomsbury USA 9781547609765, $19.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 06/25/2024)
Young-adult horror novel, based on Snow White. First in a series. 17 year old Princess Eve was raised to destroy the Knight, using her own unique magic — the ability to conjure weapons from nature. But Eve’s mother the queen has been acting strangely, talking to a mirror every night, and a messenger from the Knight reveals a shocking truth.
Buba, Gabriella: Saints of Storm and Sorrow
(Titan Books 9781803367804, $17.99, 480pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy novel inspired by Philippine history and mythology, the first in the Stormbringer Saga duology. Lunurin, a bisexual woman, promised her life to a storm goddess for power to destroy the colonizers, but she accidentally destroys her own village and gets sent away to a convent until ten years later decides to take up the fight again. A first novel.
Buehlman, Christopher: The Daughters’ War
(Tor 9781250887672, $28.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy novel set in the world of The Blacktongue Thief. Galva has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights, who march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids.
Carey, M.R.: Echo of Worlds
(Orbit US 9780316504690, $19.99, 512pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
SF space opera adventure novel, second in the Pandemonium duology. The artificial intelligence known as Rupshe assembles a team to find the Mother Mass — a force that exists somewhere in the multiverse, which can end the war between two mighty empires.
Dimova, Genoveva: Foul Days
(Tor 9781250877314, $17.99, 368pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy novel mixing Slavic lore and elements of Soviet-era city life, first in the Witch’s Compendium of Monsters duology. Kosara, a witch in the walled city of Chernograd, has to trade away her shadow — the source of her powers — to escape her ex, and develops a deadly sickness that plagues shadowless witches. To survive she has twelve days to get her shadow back. A first novel.
Foul Days … mixes folklore and modernity, setting itself between the walled ghetto-city of Chernograd – where monsters roam the streets, magic is as commonplace as poverty, and in order to leave you have to pay people-smugglers to get you across the wall – and the prosperous city of Belograd on the far side of the wall, rich where Chernograd is poor, safe where Chernograd is dangerous.
Gallagher, Elaine: Unexploded Remnants
(Tordotcom 9781250325211, $16.99, 111pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/25/2024)
SF novella. Alice, the last human, finds an AI in an antique data core, the “ghost” control unit of an ancient weapon system that refuses to believe the war is over, so she decides to use the stargate network to take it home and lay it to rest.
Grant, John Linwood: An Unkindness of Shadows: The Strange Encounters of Justin Margrave
(Lethe Press 9781590217726, $19, 260pp, formats: trade paperback, 06/23/2024)
Collection of occult fiction with a frame narrative, set in 1970s England.
Hearne, Kevin: The Hermit Next Door
(Subterranean Press 9781645241959, $40, 96pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 06/30/2024)
Urban fantasy mystery novella. A widow coping with grief moves to Oregon hoping for peace and quiet, but it turns out her neighbor is a stranded alien who needs some help getting home.
Kenemore, Scott: Edge of the Wire
(Skyhorse/Arcade 9781945863875, $27.99, 216pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 06/25/2024)
Satirical SF thriller/horror novel. Astronauts are sent to an unknown planet to wire it with the AI system called The Goo, but they discover mysterious secrets beneath the planet’s surface, and their faith in the all-powerful AI begins to wane.
Lackey, Mercedes & Dixon, Larry: Gryphon’s Valor
(Astra House/DAW 9780756418892, $28, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy novel in the world of Valdemar, the second in the Kelvren’s Saga trilogy. On the border between Valdemar and the deadly Pelagirs Forest, the gryphon hero Kelvren returns from a near-fatal self-sacrifice that won him the approval of Valdemar’s ground troops—but caused a diplomatic crisis.
Lee, Geneva: Filthy Rich Fae
(Entangled Amara 9781649375773, $17.99, 364pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy romance novel. Cate Holloway has to go to the powerful Gage crime family to beg for her brother’s life, and winds up bound to the Unseelie Court of New Orleans’ decadent underworld.
Linsmeier, Amanda: Six of Sorrow
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593707760, $19.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
YA feminist horror novel. Six girls, all born on the same day, are best friends until a rift causes their friendship to fracture. Then one of them disappears on the night of their sixteenth birthday, only to reappear two days later, very sick and with no memory of what happened. The girls reunite, realizing that something has come to claim them, one by one.
Ludwigsen, Will: A Scout Is Brave
(Lethe Press 9781590216606, $3.50, 148pp, formats: ebook, 07/01/2024)
Lovecraftian horror novella. In the summer of 1963 Boy Scout Bud Castillo moves with his family from New York to Innsmouth, Massachusetts. There he makes a friend and founds a new troop. But as summer comes to an end, Bud discovers that Reverend Pritchett of the Evangelical Progress Temple has plans to return Innsmouth to greatness and glory.
MacLeod, Ken: Beyond the Light Horizon
(Start/Pyr 9781645060666, $21, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/25/2024)
SF novel, third in the Lightspeed trilogy. Hurled into the past by a time-slip, John Grant and his onboard AI navigate the long way back. They return to the present in a distant system, where they find Terre Nouveau, a human settlement already two hundred years old.
Many of the series’ underlying questions are those of humankind’s place among the infinities – about where we might go and why, how far is too far, and when is sufficiency enough.
—Russell Letson, Locus, June 2024
The remaining question at the end of Beyond the Light Horizon is whether humans are ready to accept limits, and the answer appears to be: probably not, even if we should. Chalk another one up for realism, I guess.
—Niall Harrison, Locus, June 2024
MacRae, Molly: Come Shell or High Water
(Kensington Cozies 9781496744272, $26.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy mystery novel, first in the Haunted Shell Shop series. Following cryptic letters addressed to her late husband from a stranger, Folklorist Maureen Nash visits The Moon Shell, a shop on Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina, and encounters its resident ghost pirate.
Malerman, Josh: Incidents Around the House
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593723128, $28, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Horror novel. Eight-year-old Bella sees an Other Mommy, who asks every day to go inside Bella’s heart. Horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is getting tired of waiting, and unless Bella says yes, her family will soon pay.
Millican, Joshua: Teleportasm
(Shortwave 9781959565284, $13.99, 176pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/25/2024)
Horror novel. Third in the Killer VHS series. Four friends unearth a unique VHS tape that, when viewed, causes short-distance teleportation with euphoric after-effects, inadvertently launching a perilous trend. As copies of the original tape are made, the results become less predictable and more dangerous due to analog copying loss.
Napper, T.R.: Ghost of the Neon God
(Titan Books 9781803368115, $17.99, 128pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 06/25/2024)
SF thriller novel. Jackson Nguyen, a petty crook in Melbourne, steals the shoes of a wealthy Chinese dissident, inadvertently acquiring Earth-shattering technology. Now he has to make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
O’Keefe, Megan E.: The Bound Worlds
(Orbit US 9780316291576, $19.99, 496pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Space opera SF novel, the third in The Devoured Worlds series. Naira and Tarquin have found a new home on Seventh Cradle. But the peace they’ve built is short-lived as mysterious assailants ambush the settlement and Naira is haunted by visions of a monstrous future.
Perry, Carol J.: Haunting License
(Kensington Cozies 9781496743602, $17.95, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy mystery novel, third in the Haunted Haven series. Florida innkeeper Maureen Doherty hosts a fishing tournament to drum up business, but then discovers that one of the contestants has been murdered. Maureen, together with the ghosts that inhabit her inn, must solve the mystery before the killer strikes again.
Pierlot, Ciel: The Hunter’s Gambit
(Angry Robot UK 9781915998170, $18.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy novel. Kazan Korvic has made it her life’s work to craft weapons to kill vampires, until she is captured by an entire clan and is forced to attend the Vampire Court where she must act as their Queen — for three days. Then she will be consumed.
Poston, Ashley: A Novel Love Story
(Penguin Random House/Berkley Romance 9780593640975, $19, 384pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy romance novel of second-chances. An English professor winds up in the fictional town in which her favorite romance stories are set — but the town has been stuck where it was when the author died.
Shelby, Ashley: Honeymoons in Temporary Locations
(University of Minnesota Press 9781517917074, $22.95, 152pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, 06/25/2024)
Collection of 16 stories (ten reprints) of climate fiction, set in a strange near future, mixing elements of the weird, absurd, fantastic, and humorous.
Sim, Tara: We Shall Be Monsters
(Penguin Random House/Nancy Paulsen 9780593407424, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy novel, the first in a duology, based on Frankenstein and Indian Mythology. Unable to stand the horror of living without her sister, Kajal prepares to resurrect her, but the worst happens and her sister’s soul warps into a bhuta — a murderous wraith like spirit.
Volodine, Antoine & Stamm, Gina M.: Mevlido’s Dreams
(University of Minnesota Press 9781517917142, $22.95, 352pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/25/2024)
Postapocalyptic noir novel, part of the author’s Post-Exotic series. Mevlido, a double-agent in the last habitable city on Earth, dreams of a mysterious mission that he is told he must accomplish, unaware than an enigmatic organization is observing him and debating his fate and that of humanity as a whole. Translated by Gina M. Stamm from the French.
Zanetti, Rebecca: One Cursed Rose
(Kensington 9781496748355, $32, 368pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/25/2024)
Fantasy romance novel, the first in the Grimm Bargains series, a twist on the story of “Beauty and the Beast”. In an alternate Silicon Valley, Alana is heir to a social media empire which is about to fail. Her father’s solution is to marry her off to the son of a competing family, but then someone tries to assassinate Alana, and her rescuer is the man destroying her father’s business.
