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DuPrau, Jeanne :
The Diamond of Darkhold
(Random House 978-0-375-85571-9, $16.99, 285pp, hardcover, August 2008)
Young adult SF novel, fourth book in the "Books of Ember", following The City of Ember (2003), The People of Sparks (2004), and The Prophet of Yonwood (2006), about refugees in an underground city.
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The first book has been made into a film starring Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, and Saoirse Ronan (from Atonement), due for release October 10th.
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The publisher's site has this description, with its "browse and search" function.
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Amazon has mixed reader reviews.
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Farland, David :
The Wyrmling Horde
(Tor 978-0-7653-1666-0, $25.95, 319pp, hardcover, September 2008, jacket art Darrell K. Sweet)
Fantasy novel, seventh volume in "The Runelords" series, following The Sum of All Men aka The Runelords (1998), The Brotherhood of the Wolf (1999), Wizardborn (2001), The Lair of Bones (2003), Sons of the Oak (2006), and Worldbinder (2007).
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Tor's website has this description -- "written in the finest tradition of Tolkien and other works that rise above the fantasy genre to special and individual heights."
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The Official Runelords Site has this sample chapter.
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "This series promises to continue as long as stalwart-stomached readers can keep turning its grisly pages."
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Greene, Brian :
Icarus at the Edge of Time
(Knopf 978-0-307-26888-4, $19.95, unppp, hardcover, September 2008)
SF picture book/short story, by the physicist author of The Elegant Universe and other books, about a boy on the first starship to Proxima Centauri who ventures too close to a nearby black hole.
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The book is designed by Chip Kidd on boards, with the text set against astronomical photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. It's 34 pages counting the front and back covers.
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Amazon's page has interviews with both Greene and Kidd about creating the book, and a page of the images used.
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The publisher's site has this description.
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The Publishers Weekly review remarks: "Greene's impulsive teenager embodies well our insatiable desire to explore the universe, and Greene offers an ingenious transposition of the Icarus myth for the modern era...."
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McKillip, Patricia A. :
The Bell at Sealey Head
(Ace 978-0-441-01630-3, $23.95, 277pp, hardcover, September 2008, jacket illustration Kinuko Y. Craft)
Fantasy novel set in a mansion, Aislinn House, on the outskirts of the seaside town Sealey Head, in which the ancient Lady Eglantyne lies dying.
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The publisher's site has a brief description, and a Q&A with McKillip; "This one was simply much more fun than anything I'd written in a very long time..."
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Romantic intrigue and touches of this fantastic make this light mystery an easy and pleasant read."
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Reeves, Joel :
Of Quills and Kings
(Leucrota Press 978-0-9800339-1-5, $14.95, 398pp, trade paperback, July 2008)
Fantasy novel about a young man who pursues a magic Orb stolen by the Sacred Hedgehog of Yurle, who is intent on world domination.
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The publisher's site has this description with background on the author, and photos from an author signing in Traverse City, MI.
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Amazon also has a product description.
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Stephenson, Neal :
Anathem
(Morrow 978-0-06-147409-5, $29.95, 17+937pp, hardcover, September 2008)
Science fiction novel about a monastic order on the planet Arbre that maintains secular knowledge, threatened by an extraterrestrial force that portends global disaster.
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The publisher's site has this description, with its 'browse inside' feature.
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Stephenson's page for the book links excerpts from reviews, a Wired interview, a trailer and video interviews, seven tracks of music "from the World of Anathem" (which came on a CD with advance reader's copies of the book -- but not with this hardcover edition), and excerpts from the book's Dictionary.
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Stephenson's expansive storytelling echoes Walter Miller's classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, the space operas of Larry Niven and the cultural meditations Douglas Hofstadter -- a heady mix of antecedents that makes for long stretches of dazzling entertainment occasionally interrupted by pages of numbing colloquy."
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Locus Magazine published reviews by Gary K. Wolfe and Paul Witcover in its September 2008 issue; Wolfe writes "For readers willing to sit through alternate-philosophy seminars as prerequisites for intellectual space opera, or readers who may be hypnotized by the elegance of these classic ideas as Stephenson re-imagines them, Anathem will more than repay the demands it makes, and will almost certainly become the topic of endless online seminars of its own. For others, it may become one of those classic philosophical fictions more browsed than read, more admired than engaged. In either case, its brilliance is undeniable..."
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Wilce, Ysabeau S. :
Flora's Dare
(Harcourt 978-0152054274, $17, 511pp, hardcover, September 2008, jacket illustration Eric Fortune)
Fantasy novel, subtitled "How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) ", sequel to Flora Segunda (2007). In this book Flora aspires to become a ranger.
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Wilce's official website has this description of the book.
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Gary K. Wolfe reviews it in the July issue of Locus Magazine, explaining that he liked the first book but didn't necessarily "expect that Flora's Dare should actually turn out to be a better novel than Flora Segunda, and decidedly better plotted and better paced..."
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