* Baxter, Stephen : Resplendent
(UK: Orion/Gollancz 0-575-07895-2, £18.99, 549pp, hardcover, September 2006)

Collection of 19 stories, one previously unpublished, set in the future history of the author's "Destiny's Children" sequence of novels: Coalescent, Exultant, and Transcendent (2003-2005) and also related to various novels in the author's "Xeelee" sequence.
• Though described as "Destiny's Children Book Four" on the cover, it's not a direct sequel but a companion volume to the earlier novels.
• Stories include three novellas first published separately by PS Publishing, "Reality Dust", "Riding the Rock", and "Mayflower II". Another novella, "The Siege of Earth", is original to this book. There's also a timeline placing all the stories from AD 476 to AD 10,000,000+.
• Wikipedia has an entry for the series.
• Gary K. Wolfe's review of the book in the January issue of Locus Magazine will be featured here on Locus Online shortly.

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* Budrys, Algis, ed. : L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXII
(Galaxy 1-59212-345-7, $7.99, 20+493pp, mass market paperback, August 2006, cover art Stephen Hickman)

Anthology of 12 original stories, with illustrations, by winners and runners-up of the 2006 Writers and Illustrators of the Future contests, along with 4 essays about writing and art, by L. Ron Hubbard, Bob Eggleton, Robert J. Sawyer, and Orson Scott Card.
• Writers include Grand Prize Writer winner Brandon Sigrist and quarterly winners Michail Velichansky, Blake Hutchins, and Diana Rowland. Illustrators include Grand Prize winner Eldar Zakirov. Budrys provides an introduction, and a summary of the year's quarterly contest results. For a report on the awards ceremony, see the October 2006 issue of Locus Magazine.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review.

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+ Campbell, Alan : Scar Night
(Bantam Spectra 0-553-38416-3, $22, 421pp, hardcover, January 2007) First US edition (UK: Macmillan/Tor UK, July 2006)

Fantasy novel, the author's first novel, set in Deepgate, a town suspended in chains over a bottomless abyss, where three allies must venture to save their city from annihilation.
• Bantam's site has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, which notes "The author, who was a video game designer, renders Deepgate beautifully. It's a complex city of creaking metal links, stone and shadow..." and concludes "Campbell has Neil Gaiman's gift for lushly dark stories and compelling antiheroes, and effortlessly channels the Victorian atmospherics of writer and illustrator Mervyn Peake as well. This imaginative first novel will have plenty of readers anxiously awaiting his follow-up."

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* Castle, Mort, ed. : On Writing Horror, Revised Edition
(Writer's Digest Books 1-58297-420-9, $16.99, 13+260pp, trade paperback, November 2007)

Nonfiction anthology of 45 essays, subtitled "A Handbook by The Horror Writers Association", updated from the earlier 1997 edition.
• Contributors include Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Harlan Ellison, Nick Mamatas, Douglas E. Winter, and Judi Rohrig.
• HWA's website has this listing for the book with the complete table of contents.
• Amazon has the back cover description, plus posts about the book from Tina L. Jens, John Everson, and Michael Arnzen.

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* Fowler, Karen Joy, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin & Jeffrey D. Smith, eds. : The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3
(Tachyon Publications 1-892391-41-4, $14.95, 13+274pp, trade paperback, January 2007)

Anthology of 12 stories and essays from last year's winner and shortlisted works for the annual James Tiptree, Jr. Award for works that "explore and expand gender roles in science fiction".
• Stories include Geoff Ryman's "Have Not Have", the first chapter from his Tiptree Award winning novel Air, and others by Ursula K. Le Guin, Ted Chiang, Aimee Bender, Vonda N. McIntyre, and others. Essays include Pam Noles's "Shame" about the TV adaptation of Le Guin's Earthsea series, and Dorothy Allison on Octavia Butler's female characters.
• The book also has an introduction by Jeffrey D. Smith, and a complete list of Tiptree winners and short lists.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review, which calls it an "eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction".

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* Hand, Elizabeth : Saffron & Brimstone: Strange Stories
(M Press 1-59582-096-5, $14.95, 240pp, trade paperback, November 2006)

Collection of eight stories, one original to this book. Three of the longer stories -- "Cleopatra Brimstone", "Pavane for a Prince of the Air", and "The Least Trumps" were earlier collected in Bibliomancy (from UK small press PS Publishing, 2003). This volume also includes "Wonderwall" and a cycle of four short stories under the title "The Lost Domain: Four Story Variations".
• The publisher's site has this description. The author's site includes reviews of the book, including Gary K. Wolfe's review from the October '06 issue of Locus Magazine: "The world may not be kind to muses in Hand's beautifully orchestrated tales, but it's a world whose gorgeous fragility, like the pistils of those tulips that are gathered for saffron, positively glows in these radiant tales."
• Amazon has the Booklist review by Carl Hays: "Her beautifully nuanced, often disquieting style should inspire poets as well as lay down the gauntlet to colleagues also reaching for expressive heights in contemporary fantasy."

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* Harrison, M. John : Nova Swing
(UK: Orion/Gollancz 0-575-07027-7, £17.99, 247pp, hardcover, October 2006, cover illustration Dominic Harman)

SF novel, a noir space opera companion novel to Light (2002), in which pieces of the chaotic region of space called the Kefahuchi Tract have begun to fall to Earth.
• An early version of the first chapter was published on Amazon.com as "Tourism".
• The author's site has this excerpt, with quotes from reviews.
• Online reviews include Abigail Nussbaum's at Strange Horizons and John Clute's in the Guardian, and the book was named one of Time Out's best of 2006: "Harrison's latest SF tome reads like mainstream fiction soaked in noir."
• Gary K. Wolfe reviewed it in the November issue of Locus Magazine: "There may be a fair amount of stuff in Nova Swing that's savagely incapable of interpretation, but the lives touched by the novel's inchoate engmas are disturbingly real, and Harrison's vision of the longing of failed lives disturbingly authentic."

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* Knight, E. E. : Dragon Avenger: Book Two of the Age of Fire
(Roc 0-451-46109-6, $14, 375pp, trade paperback, December 2006)

Fantasy novel, second in the series following Dragon Champion (2005). In this book the sister of the first book's protagonist struggles to avenge the death of her family.
• The author's website has pages about the background of the series, and future titles.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Coming-of-age themes such as personal responsibility and family give the novel a strong YA slant, but Knight makes the story complex enough to entertain readers of all ages."

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* McCaffrey, Anne, & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough : Maelstrom
(Ballantine Del Rey 0-345-47004-4, $23.95, 237pp, hardcover, January 2007)

SF novel, second in the "Twins of Petaybee" trilogy following Changelings (2005), about telepathic selkie twins who help rescue endangered species.
• Del Rey's site has a description and excerpt.
• Amazon has reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, the former concluding "A cliffhanger ending, ecological lessons, anthropomorphic animals and simplistic good vs. evil morality will speak to middle-school readers but not adults."

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* O'Day-Flannery, Constance : Twice in a Lifetime
(Tor Paranormal Romance 0-765-35404-7, $6.99, 292pp, mass market paperback, December 2006)

Paranormal romance novel about a member of a women's club called the "Metaphysical Misadventures in the Search for Enlightenment" who, seven years after her husband's death, meets a sexy younger man.
• The author has this website with information about her earlier books.
• Tor's Paranormal Romance website has a section about the author, but it also not quite up-to-date.
• Amazon has the book description, quotes from reviews of previous books, and Harriet Klausner's review of this book.

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* Rankin, Robert : Eddie Bear, Private Detective
(SFBC 978-0-7394-7744-1, $14.99, 580pp, hardcover, November 2006, jacket art Omar Rayyan)

Omnibus of two fantasy novels, The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse and The Toyminator, about a private investigator in a world where toys come to life. The original books were first published in 2002 and 2005 respectively.
• The edition is available exclusively from the Science Fiction Book Club, whose website has this page for the book with the dust jacket description and reader reviews.

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* Robson, Justina : Keeping It Real
(UK: Orion/Gollancz 0-575-07862-6, £10.99, 279pp, trade paperback, May 2006, cover illustration Larry Rostant)

Fantasy/SF novel, "Quantum Gravity Book One", about cyborg secret agent Lila Black in a future when the Quantum Bomb has made elves and elementals part of everyday life.
• The author's website has this page about the series, which she calls "a shameless romp. It is fun from start to finish."
• Locus Magazine's April 2006 interview with Robson is excerpted here; in it she says about this book "It's a departure for me. Slightly more fun, slightly more adventure, a mix of fantasy and science fiction -- much more a 'laugh riot' than my other books!"
• Gary K. Wolfe reviewed it in the June '06 issue of Locus Magazine: "Keeping It Real, which seems bent on showing that interstitiality can be a lark, is not as conceptually ambitious as Robson's earlier novels, though it carefully sets the stage for a series which could and might go almost anywhere, but it's the work of a smart and sexy novelist having smart and sexy fun, and what's the problem with that?"

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* Rucker, Rudy : Mad Professor: The Uncollected Short Stories of Rudy Rucker
(Thunder's Mouth Press 1-56025-974-4, $15.95, 15+301pp, trade paperback, January 2007)

Collection of 13 stories, one original to this book, five of the others in collaboration (with Terry Bisson, Paul Di Filippo, Rudy Rucker Jr., Bruce Sterling ("Junk DNA"), and John Shirley). The author provides an introduction and notes to the stories.
• Amazon has the publisher's description and the Publishers Weekly review, which concludes "While readers who want rigorously developed plots or characterization may be disappointed, those who can groove on something like a collaboration between Italo Calvino and Jimmy Buffett will find themselves grinning and humming along."

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* Walker, Wendy : Knots
(Aqueduct Press 1-933500-08-5, $9, 121pp, trade paperback, October 2006)

Collection of four previously-published stories. This is part of the publisher's "Conversation Pieces" chapbook series of feminist SF. Includes notes on the stories by the author.
• The publisher's site has this description.
• Faren Miller reviews it in the January 2007 issue of Locus Magazine, saying that it is Walker's "eccentric mingling of ideas and imagery, sensory impressions of a world almost disturbingly alive, that distinguish her work from anyone else's."

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