Anderson, Barth : The Patron Saint of Plagues
(Bantam Spectra 978-0-553-58835-4, $6.99, 484pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Bantam Spectra, April 2006)

Near-future SF novel about a man-made plague that strikes Mexico City.
• Bantam's site has this description and an excerpt.
• The book has its own website, with news, excerpts, reviews, etc.
• Amazon has the Booklist review and excerpts from various other reviews.

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Asaro, Catherine : Alpha
(Baen 978-1-416-55512-4, $7.99, 332pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Baen, September 2006)

SF novel, sequel to Sunrise Alley (2004), about a gorgeous female android named Alpha, who's now on the run.
• Baen's Webscription website has this description with links to several chapters.
• The author's website (note new URL) has a description of the book on her near-future suspense books page.

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Bova, Ben : The Green Trap
(Tor 978-0-765-34816-6, $6.99, 353pp, mass market paperback, November 2007)
(First edition: Forge, November 2006)

Near-future thriller about the discovery of a cheap method of producing hydrogen fuel.
• The author's redesigned website now has links to Amazon instead of local descriptions; for this book, Amazon has its 'search inside' feature with an excerpt, and the Publishers Weekly and Booklist reviews; the former notes "Readers of Heinlein's 1940 short story " 'Let There Be Light!' " will note some familiar moments, but Bova adds modern twists and a genuinely surprising ending to the age-old clash between oblivious scientists and worldly schemers."

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Butcher, Jim : Cursor's Fury
(Ace 978-0-441-01547-4, $7.99, 521pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Ace, December 2006)

Fantasy novel, third in the "Codex Alera" following Furies of Calderon (2004) and Academ's Fury (2005), set in a realm where adults have bonds with magical spirits that provide defenses and talents.
• The fourth book in the series, Captain's Fury, has just been published in hardcover.
• The author's website has this page about the book, and this page for Captain's Fury.
• Carolyn Cushman's review in Locus Magazine said "Plenty of military action and some interesting revelations about Tavi's past make this one of the best volumes yet in this entertaining series."

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Campbell, Alan : Scar Night
(Bantam Spectra 978-0-553-58931-3, $6.99, 549pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First 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.
• The author has a prequel novella, Lye Street, coming in January from Subterranean Press.
• Bantam's site has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, which 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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Card, Orson Scott : Empire
(Tor 978-0-765-35522-5, $7.99, 355pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Tor, November 2006)

SF novel about a near-future civil war in the US between the red states and the blue states following the assassination of the president and vice-president.
• Card's website has this description -- "The American Empire has grown too fast, and the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point. The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone." -- and a Chapter One excerpt.
• Tor's website has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon has Roy Olson's Booklist review, which says the book, written as the basis for a video-game, "couldn't be timelier and is, for all its hyperactivity and flip, Hollywoodish one-liners, heartfelt and sobering".

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Flint, Eric, & Virginia De Marce, eds. : 1634: The Ram Rebellion
(Baen 978-1-416-57382-1, $7.99, 702pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Baen, May 2006)

Anthology of 19 stories in the "1632" series following Flint's 1632 (2000), Flint & David Weber's 1633 (2002), and Flint & Andrew Dennis' 1634: The Galileo Affair (2004), and two Grantville Gazette anthologies; many of the stories were first published online.
• See Wikipedia's entry for details of the series thus far.
• Baen's site has this description with links to excerpts and the table of contents.

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Flint, Eric : 1824: The Arkansas War
(Ballantine Del Rey 978-0-345-46570-2, $7.99, 493pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Ballantine Del Rey, December 2006)

Alternate history novel, second in a two-volume series following The Rivers of War (2005), set in the Confederacy of the Arkansas.
• Del Rey's site has a description, with an excerpt.
• Amazon has Roland Green's starred Booklist review, which says it's "Flint's finest and may become his most controversial book".

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Haydon, Elizabeth : The Assassin King
(Tor 978-0-765-34474-8, $7.99, 415pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Tor, January 2007)

Fantasy novel, third volume of the second trio in the author's "Symphony of Ages" series; it follows Requiem for the Sun (2002) and Elegy for a Lost Star (2004).
• The author's website, www.elizabethhaydon.com, has a description of the series and background about music, herbology, and weaponry, etc.
• Tor Books' website has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon has Publishers Weekly's starred review, which called it a "sweeping saga of musical magic and ancient prophecies".

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Heinlein, Robert A., & Spider Robinson : Variable Star
(Tor 978-0-765-35168-5, $7.99, 339pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Tor, September 2006)

SF novel by Robinson based on a detailed outline from 1955 by Heinlein for a novel that he never wrote. Profits from the book will help fund the $500,000 Heinlein Prize for innovation in commercial manned space flight.
• The book is a young-adult novel about a would-be composer who rejects marriage to the daughter of the wealthiest man of the solar system in order to set off on his own.
• Tor's website has this description with an excerpt.

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Hobb, Robin : Forest Mage
(Eos 978-0-06-075829-5, $7.99, 726pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)

Fantasy novel, second in the "Soldier Son" trilogy following Shaman's Crossing. The conclusion of the trilogy, Renegade's Magic, is due in January.
• The publisher's site has this description, and a text excerpt.
• Faren Miller's review in Locus Magazine said "At once harrowing, unexpected, and morally complex... I'm eager to see what happens next."

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Lee, Sharon, & Steve Miller : Crystal Dragon
(Ace 978-0-441-01549-8, $7.99, 372pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Meisha Merlin, February 2006)

SF novel set in the authors' Liaden universe, second in the "The Great Migration Duology", concerning the founding of Clan Korval.
• First edition pubisher Meisha Merlin has this description, an excerpt, and quotes from reviews of the first book. Ace's website, for this mass market reprint, has only this one-line description.
• Amazon's page for the book has a long letter from Anne McCaffrey, which concludes "I rarely rave on and on about stories, but I am devoted to Lee and Miller novels and stories. Start at the beginning, dear reader, and you will be rewarded with a sanctuary you can escape to, as I do when this world we're stuck with is impossible to endure."

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Park, Paul : The Tourmaline
(Tor 978-0-765-35296-5, $7.99, 420pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Tor, July 2006)

Fantasy novel, second in the "White Tyger" tetralogy following A Princess of Roumania (2005), set in an alternate world where Roumania and Germany dominate Europe. This volume continues the adventures of contemporary teenager Miranda Popescu, who becomes separated from her friends Peter and Andromeda.
• Tor's website has this description and an excerpt.
• The third volume, The White Tyger, was published in hardcover last January (the paperback is due in February '08). The concluding volume, The Hidden World, is due from Tor in hardcover in April 2008.
• Locus Magazine reviewer Gary K. Wolfe said "this is no ordinary fantasy novel and no ordinary fantasy world, and it could be leading us somewhere wonderful"; fellow reviewer Nick Gevers called it "the second panel of a quartet, and necessarily inconclusive in some ways; but it has originality and thematic depth enough for an entire trilogy."

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Powers, Tim : Three Days to Never
(Harper 978-0-380-79837-7, $7.99, 405pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)

Supernatural time-travel/thriller, about a long-lost Charlie Chaplin film, Albert Einstein, and various forces interested in a weapon that might have prevented World War II.
• The HarperCollins site has this description with its "browse inside" feature and excerpt.
• Nick Gevers' review in Locus Magazine called it "a powerful work, as tense a narrative and complete a morality tale as fantasy produces."

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Scott, Martin : Thraxas at War
(Baen 978-1-416-55513-1, $6.99, 293pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: UK: Time Warner UK/Orbit, July 2003)

Humorous fantasy detective novel, 7th in the series about a portly private eye in the mystical city of Turai. In this book Thraxas faces winter in Turai and a new war with the Orcs.
• The first in the series, Thraxas, won the 2000 World Fantasy Award. There are eight books in the series so far, as listed at Thraxas.
• Baen's site for this book has the jacket blurb and links to several chapter excerpts.

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Simmons, Dan : The Terror
(Back Bay Books 978-0-316-01745-9, $14.99, 771pp, trade paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Little Brown, January 2007)

Historical fantasy/horror novel about the 1845 Franklin Expedition to the Arctic, which never returned from its search for a Northwest Passage, aboard two ships called Erebus and Terror.
• The parent publisher's site -- it's now Hachette Book Group USA -- has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, which notes "the monstrous creature from the ice, the thing like a polar bear but many times larger, possessed of a dark and vicious intelligence" and concludes "This complex tale should find many devoted readers and add significantly to Simmons's already considerable reputation.", plus the Washington Post review by David Masiel.
• The book has appeared on numerous best-of-2007 lists, including Amazon's SF and Fantasy list, where it's ranked #1.

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Ward, James M. : Dragonfrigate Wizard Halcyon Blithe
(Tor 978-0-765-35111-1, $7.99, 319pp, mass market paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Tor, December 2006)

Fantasy novel about a wizard academy graduate serving aboard a dragonship, sequel to Midshipwizard Halcyon Blithe.
• Tor's website has this description and an excerpt.
• Carolyn Cushman wrote in her Locus Magazine review: "This second volume in the series finds Midshipwizard Halcyon Blithe assigned to a new dragonship taking its maiden voyage on an ambassadorial mission to the land of the dwarves, facing pirates, demons, and enemy treachery on the way."

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Wolfe, Gene : Soldier of Sidon
(Tor 978-0-765-31670-7, $14.95, 319pp, trade paperback, December 2007)
(First edition: Tor, October 2006)

Fantasy novel, third volume in the series that began with Soldier of the Mist (1986) and Soldier of Arete (1989) about Latro, a soldier in 5th century B.C. Greece whose lack of short-term memory requires him to write down his daily experiences so he can remember them the next morning. He's also able to perceive the gods and other supernatural beings. In this volume Latro travels through Egypt.
• The two previous volumes have been published as trade paperback omnibus Latro in the Mist.
• Tor's website has this description with excerpts from reviews (but no excerpt).
• The novel won the 2007 World Fantasy Award for best novel.

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