New Books, 24 September 2024
Alkaf, Hanna: The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette’s
(Simon & Schuster/Salaam Reads 9781534494589, $19.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Young-adult horror novel. A highly reputable school for girls has an outbreak of screaming, first one student in the middle of class, and by the end of the day 17 girls are affected. One girl trying to save her sister, and another afflicted by screaming herself, dig into the school’s dark history, hunting for the truth.
Ball, Jesse: The Repeat Room
(Catapult 9781646221400, $27, 256pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Dystopian novel. Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes. The case to which Abel is assigned is involves a boy’s broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, with a tragic ending.
Haunting, spare, and inventive, it’s a bleak tale that’s nonetheless rich with sparkling turns of phrase and vivid ideas. While the social and personal cruelties of the novel are its most immediately striking features, Ball has an eye for the human even at our most inhumane, and he crafts a generative ambiguity within its strictures, with much of the story’s potency – and perhaps its clemency – left to the reader to extrapolate.
–Jake Casella Brookins, Locus, September 2024
Berry, Jedediah: The Naming Song
(Tordotcom 9781250907981, $28.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Fantasy novel set in a world where language failed. All meaning was lost and every border fell. Only with the rise of the committees of the named could people withstand the nameless wilds. For one unnamed courier of the Names Committee, the task of delivering new words preserves her place in a world that fears her. But after a series of monstrous attacks on the named, she is forced to flee her committee and seek her long-lost sister, accompanied by a patchwork ghost, a fretful monster, and a nameless animal who prowls the shadows.
Cho, Ian X.: Aisle Nine
(HarperTeen 9780063206809, $19.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Young-adult dystopian horror novel. Ever since the world filled with portals to hell and bloodthirsty demons started popping out on the reg, Jasper’s life has gotten worse and worse. Jasper spends his days working as a checkout clerk at the Here for You discount mart, where a hell portal in aisle nine means danger every shift.
Compton, Johnny: Devils Kill Devils
(Tor/Nightfire 9781250841681, $28.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Horror novel of angels, devils, and vampires — and a woman who sees the world in a new way when her guardian angel murders someone she loves.
Craig, Erin A.: The Thirteenth Child
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593482582, $20.99, 512pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Young-adult fairytale fantasy novel based on the Grimm Brothers’ “Godfather Death”. Hazel Trépas has always been a thirteenth child, promised away to one of the gods, she spends her childhood waiting for her godfather—Merrick, the Dreaded End—to arrive. When he does, he lays out Hazel’s future. She will become a great healer, known throughout the kingdom for her precision and skill. To aid her endeavors, Merrick blesses Hazel with a gift, the ability to instantly deduce the exact cure needed to treat the sick. But she will also see who can’t be saved, and have to kill them.
Enriquez, Mariana: A Sunny Place for Shady People
(Hogarth 9781803511238, $28, 256pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/17/2024)
Collection of 12 horror stories of people dealing with the surreal and the supernatural. Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.
Gorman, W.R.: We Kept Her in the Cellar
(The Quick Brown Fox/Crooked Lane 9781639109142, $29.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Horror novel, a drastic revisioning of the story of Cinderella from a stepsister’s point-of-view. Eunice lives her life by three simple rules: One, always refer to Cinderella as family. Two, never let Cinderella gain access to rats or mice. Three, never look upon Cinderella between the hours of twelve and three a.m. A first novel.
Harrison, Margot: The Midnight Club
(Harlequin/Graydon House 9781525809880, $28, 368pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Mystery novel with fantasy elements. Estranged college friends reunite 25 years after a friend’s death, and their host has a secret substance that will let them relive their memories of that terrible night, and figure out what really happened.
Killjoy, Margaret: The Sapling Cage
(The Feminist Press at CUNY 9781558613317, $17.95, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Fantasy novel of trans witchcraft, the first in the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy. Lorel dreams of becoming a witch, but can’t, because she was born a boy.
King, Crystal: In the Garden of Monsters
(Harlequin/Mira 9780778310570, $30, 301pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Gothic fantasy romance novel reimagining the story of Persephone and Hades in 1948 Italy. A woman with no memory of her past is asked to go with Salvador Dali to Italy’s Garden of Monsters, a place full of giant statues that sometimes seem alive.
Koontz, Dean: The Forest of Lost Souls
(Amazon/Thomas & Mercer 9781662500510, $28.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Thriller/horror novel. A young woman raised in the forest by her great uncle, has an “almost preternatural affinity for nature,” especially the wolves that live in the nearby mountains. Then the love of her life and cherished local hero dies in a tragic accident — but it wasn’t really an accident, and the same powerful men who got rid of him want to make her disappear.
Mammay, Michael: Darkside
(Harper Voyager US 9780063320130, $18.99, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Military SF novel, fourth in the Planetside series. Retired Colonel Carl Butler refuses to get caught up in another government investigation. But when a runaway 12-year-old girl whose father has gone missing asks him for help it’s a lot harder to say no.
Martin, Kat: Haunted
(Kensington 9781496744050, $28, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Romantic thriller novel. In the fabulously wealthy copper mining town of Jerome, Arizona 1898, robbery, violence, and prostitution are common, and one murder in particular echoes through the ages, affecting the quaint tourist town of Jerome, Arizona in 2024, where eerie occurrences including ghost sightings are hurting Jenny Spencer’s saloon and hotel business.
Moren, Dan: The Armageddon Protocol
(Angry Robot 9781915998002, $18.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/24/2024)
SF novel, the fourth and final book in the Galactic Cold War series. On the heels of the terrorist attacks on the planet Nova’s capital, the Special Projects Team finds itself targeted by the ambitious new head of the Commonwealth Intelligence Directorate, Aidan Kester. When Kovalic and General Adaj are arrested on charges of treason, Tapper, Brody, Sayers, and Taylor are forced to go on the run. While Kovalic and the general attempt to uncover an Illyrican mole within the Commonwealth’s intelligence apparatus, it’s up to the rest of the team to clear their friends’ names, even if that means making a deal with an old enemy to carry out a daring heist that might just get them all killed.
Ni, Xueting C., ed.: Sinophagia
(Rebellion/Solaris UK 9781837861170, $16.99, 448pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/24/2024)
Original anthology of 14 Chinese horror stories in their first English-language appearance, translated by editor Ni, who provides notes on each. Authors include Zhou Dedong, Cai Jun, Su Min, and Gu Shi.
Pargin, Jason: I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom
(St. Martin’s 9781250285959, $30, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Darkly humorous horror novel. A rideshare driver is offered $200,000 cash to carry a young woman and her mysterious box from LA to Washington, DC. Then rumors about the box begin to spread online, setting off pursuit.
Pell, Tanya: Cicada
(Shortwave 9781959565345, $13.99, 192pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/24/2024)
Horror novella, fourth in Shortwave’s Killer VHS series. Ash is stranded at a rural horror film festival about a giant killer cicada and can’t decide what’s worse, the movie or her idiot boyfriend, until she realizes she’s starring in the bloody sequel when people start dying and the locals won’t let them leave.
Rambo, Cat: Rumor Has It
(Tor 9781250269393, $28.99, 261pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
SF novel, third in The Disco Space Opera series. The crew of the You Sexy Thing have laid a course for Coralind Station, hoping the station’s famed gardens will provide an opportunity to regroup, recoup, and mourn their losses while while finding a way to track down their enemy, pirate king Tubal Last. All Niko wants to do is pry their insurance money from the bank and see if an old friend might be able to help them find Last. Unfortunately, old friends and enemies aren’t the only unreliable elements awaiting her and the crew at Coralind.
Riordan, Rick: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Wrath of the Triple Goddess
(Disney/Hyperion 9781368107631, $19.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel, seventh in the series about teens descended from the Greek gods. Percy Jackson, now a high school senior, needs three recommendation letters from the Greek gods in order to get into New Rome University. He earned his first one by retrieving Ganymede’s chalice. Now the goddess Hecate has offered Percy another “opportunity” — all he has to do is pet sit her polecat, Gale, and mastiff, Hecuba, over Halloween week while she is away. But of course nothing goes as planned. Despite being warned not to touch anything, Grover drinks a strawberry potion, turns into a goat and rampages through Hecuba’s mansion, letting her pets escape.
Rivera, Lilliam: Tiny Threads
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593600474, $28, 256pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Supernatural thriller novel. Fashion-obsessed Samara who takes a dream job with a famous California designer Antonio Mota. As a new show approaches and the pressure ramps up, she starts hearing voices and seeing things but it may not be her imagination, because she soon discovers hints that her new city—and the House of Mota—may be built on a foundation of secrets and lies.
Rousseau, Tim: God Is a Tequila Worm
(Running Wild 9781960018458, $19.99, 240pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/09/2024)
SF novel. A man struggling with Alzheimer’s and unable to communicate moves into a nursing home, where without permission his mind is loaded into a simulated universe. Meanwhile Johanna’s employer takes possession of a fully autonomous, simulated universe she’s created on their equipment with plans to turn it into a luxury resort for disaffected citizens of her own universe. Peter and Johanna must struggle against their given lots in life for something greater — an overcoming of despair and an indestructible hope for a more human future.
Ryan, Anthony: A Tide of Black Steel
(Orbit US 9780316574587, $19.99, 560pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Fantasy novel, the first in The Age of Wrath series inspired by Norse mythology. The land of Ascarlia, a fabled realm of bloodied steel and epic sagas, has been ruled by the Sister Queens for centuries. But now whispers speak of longships of mysterious tattooed warriors, sailing under the banners of a murderous cult of oath-breakers long thought extinct. A tide of black steel that threatens to vanquish all in its path.
Ryan, Anthony: The Road of Storms
(Subterranean Press 9781645242048, $45, 152pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/30/2024)
Fantasy novella, sixth in the Seven Swords series. As the ancient Kingdom of Alcedon struggles with a bloody rebellion sparked by an ancient evil, Guyime, legendary ravager king of the north made immortal by the demonic sword he carries comes leading his band of sword bearers. Guyime must prevent the arch-demon Kalthraxis claiming the Warlord’s Tulwar.
Valente, Catherynne M.: Space Oddity
(Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 9781534454521, $28.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
SF novel, second in the Space Opera series. The Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past returns and the fate of the Earth is once again threatened. The civilizations opposed to humanity have been plotting and want to take down the upstarts.
Waggoner, C.M.: The Village Library Demon Hunting Society
(Ace 9781984805881, $19, 352pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/24/2024)
Contemporary fantasy novel. Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she’s concerned by just how many killers she’s had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count… but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural. When someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town’s new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the “Demon-Hunting Society,” Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon.
