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NEWS : Monitor Listing



July
Daniel Abraham
Kage Baker
Brenda Cooper
David Louis Edelman
George Alec Effinger
Steven Erikson
Elizabeth Haydon
Herbert & Anderson
E.E. Knight
Richard K. Morgan
Warren Rochelle
Rudy Rucker
Sherwood Smith
Michael A. Stackpole
Whitley Strieber
Sheri S. Tepper
John Twelve Hawks
Weber & Evans
White & Meier

June
Kevin J. Anderson
Elizabeth Bear
Tobias S. Buckell
Mike Carey
Dann & Dozois
Paul Di Filippo
Sara Douglass
William Gibson
Austin Grossman
Tanya Huff
Elizabeth Kostova
Ken MacLeod
Martin Millar
Mel Odom
Mary Jo Putney
Alastair Reynolds
Brandon Sanderson
Mark L. Van Name
Robert Charles Wilson

Monitor Listings Archive

2008 Books Directories



KEY

This page lists books newly available in mass-market or trade paperback editions, previously available only in more expensive editions.

These lists are compiled independently of Locus Magazine's Books Received listings; publishers may send review copies to the Locus Online address on this page.

Date with publisher info is official publication month;
Date in parentheses at paragraph end is date seen or received.

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New in Paperback : August 2008
posted 3 September 2008

Bradbury, Ray : Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99
(Harper 978-0-06-113157-8, $7.99, 221pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: HarperCollins/Morrow, September 2007)

Collection of two novellas, both original to this book but begun decades ago.
• The first, "Somehwere a Band Is Playing", concerns an idyllic rural Arizona town and was originally conceived as a screenplay for Katharine Hepburn; the second, "Leviathan '99", is a science fictional version of Melville's Moby Dick.
• The publisher's site has this description with a "Browse Inside" function including an excerpt.
• Amazon has Publishers Weekly's starred review: "This slim volume eloquently displays two sides of the venerated Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles) with two highly contrasting tales of the fantastic. ... Bradbury's brief summaries of each novella's decades-long path to completion invoke the extraordinary length of one of the most distinguished careers in speculative fiction."

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Card, Orson Scott, & Aaron Johnston : Invasive Procedures
(Tor 978-0-7653-5282-8, $7.99, 400pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Tor, September 2007)

Medical thriller about a geneticist, whose treatment for incurable genetic diseases has disastrous results for some, pursued by government agents.
• The book is a novelization of Johnston's screenplay based on Card's 1977 story "Malpractice" (published in Analog, November 1977 -- Card's second genre publication, following "Ender's Game" in the August issue). It includes an introduction by Johnston, and an afterword by Card.
• Tor's website has this description and a text excerpt.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review, which concludes "the novel plays out with few surprises, but raises pertinent regulatory questions."

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Dantec, Maurice G., translated by Noura Wedell : Babylon Babies
(Ballantine Del Rey 978-0-345-50597-2, $6.99, 533pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Semiotext(e), September 2005)

SF novel about a Special Forces veteran hired to transport a woman from Russia to Canada who turns out to be part of an artificial biosphere program and carrier of an animal clone.
• This is a movie tie-in edition to the current film Babylon A.D., which has gotten rather poor reviews.
• Del Rey's site has a description and an excerpt.

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Donaldson, Stephen R. : Fatal Revenant
(Ace 978-0-441-01605-1, $16, 24+610pp, trade paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Putnam, October 2007)

Fantasy novel, second book in the "Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" following The Runes of Earth (2004).
• The publisher's site has this description; the author's website has links to several PDF excerpts.
• Amazon has several 5-star reader reviews, and reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. PW concludes "Difficult but worthwhile, this complicated and emotional continuation of the Thomas Covenant saga is exactly what Donaldson's fans have been hoping for."

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Durham, David Anthony : Acacia
(Anchor Books 978-0-385-72252-0, $7.99, 753pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Doubleday, June 2007)

Fantasy novel, first book in the "War with the Mein" trilogy, about the four children of the assassinated ruler of Acacia, an idyllic island empire founded on drug trafficking and slave trade, who vow to avenge their father's death.
• Doubleday's site has this description with an excerpt.
• As the emblem on this paperback edition proclaims, Durham was a finalist for this year's John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (scroll down).
• Nick Gevers' review in Locus Magazine said: "Here the social relevance and complex characterization of contemporary fiction fuse very effectively with the broad-canvas exoticism and excitement of high fantasy, in a notable and knowledgeable genre debut. ... Rarely has medieval epic been quite this pertinent."

(Thu 14 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Farland, David : Worldbinder
(Tor 978-0-7653-5584-3, $7.99, 363pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Tor, September 2007)

Fantasy novel, sixth 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), and Sons of the Oak (2006).
• The seventh volume, The Wyrmling Horde, is due Sept 16th in hardcover.
• Tor's website has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon also has an excerpt, and the Publishers Weekly review.

(Wed 20 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Haldeman, Joe : The Accidental Time Machine
(Ace 978-0-441-01616-7, $7.99, 275pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Ace, August 2007)

SF novel about a research assistant at MIT who discovers that a device to calibration quantum forces functions as a time machine.
• The publisher's site has this brief description.
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review: "Haldeman's skillful writing makes this unusually thoughtful and picaresque tale shine".
• Russell Letson reviewed the book last year in Locus Magazine, in the context of Haldeman as an heir to Robert A. Heinlein; "Starting with The Forever War, he has displayed a Heinleinesque grasp of the craft while diverging from many of the social and political attitudes of many hard-core Heinleinists (if not always Heinlein himself)." Letson's review concludes that the book is "more evidence that Joe Haldeman has become a better writer, line by line and scene by scene, than his very able ancestor."
• The book placed 5th in this year's Locus Poll for Best SF Novel.

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Lessing, Doris : The Cleft
(HarperPerennial 978-0-06-083487-6, $13.95, 260pp, trade paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: HarperCollins, August 2007)

Alternate history novel about the origin of the human race, in which an ancient cult of women called the Clefts live an Edenic existence until the birth of a strange child, a boy.
• HarperCollins' site has this description with its "browse inside" feature.
• Despite Lessing's Nobel Prize, the book got poor reviews; Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review, as well as Elizabeth Bear's Washington Post review, in which she says the book "is not merely a flawed novel or a failed novel. It is an actively bad novel. ... Critic John Clute has said, tongue-in-cheek, that novels have a 'real year,' which is to say that no matter when a book purports to be set, there are always clues to when it's really set. And this novel is so firmly crystallized in post-WWII social roles of the Valium-housewife-and-unavailable-working-stiff variety that it feels more native to 1954 than to 2007."

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Monette, Sarah, & Elizabeth Bear : A Companion to Wolves
(Tor 978-0-7653-5778-6, $6.99, 305pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Tor, October 2007)

Fantasy novel set in a land where warriors telepathically bond with wolfcarls to protect their land from trolls.
• Tor's site has this description, and an excerpt.
• Faren Miller reviewed the book in last October's issue of Locus Magazine: "A Companion to Wolves provides a vivid and remarkably believable experience of the Nordic fantasy world - another insider's view, with none of the formal distancing of epic prose."

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Resnick, Mike : Stalking the Unicorn
(Pyr 978-1-59102-648-8, $15, 280pp, trade paperback, August 2008, cover illustration Dan Dos Santos)

Humorous fantasy novel subtitled "A Fable of Tonight", set in an alternate Manhattan, in which private investigator John Justin Mallory is hired to track down a stolen unicorn.
• It's the first in a series, the second volume of which, Stalking the Vampire, has just been published by Pyr.
• Pyr's site has this description, with excerpt from reviews.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "The crisp dialogue and imaginative setting will have many fantasy readers wanting to revisit Manhattan's magical side."

(Fri 1 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Ruff, Matt : Bad Monkeys
(HarperPerennial 978-0-06-124042-3, $13.95, 230pp, trade paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: HarperCollins, July 2007)

Offbeat SF thriller by the author of Tiptree Award-winner Set This House in Order, about a woman arrested for murder who claims to be a member of a secret organization called Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, "Bad Monkeys" for short.
• HarperCollins' site has this description with its Browse Inside feature.
• Book site areyouabadmonkey.com has a sample chapter, quotes from reviews, a crossword puzzle, etc.
• The book was on Locus Magazine's 2007 Recommended Reading List and placed #16 in the Locus Poll for Best SF Novel.

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Scalzi, John : The Last Colony
(Tor 978-0-7653-5618-5, $7.99, 324pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Tor, May 2007)

SF novel, third in a trilogy following the author's popular first novel Old Man's War (2005) and its sequel The Ghost Brigades (2006). In this book John Perry and his family emigrate to a new colony planet.
• The book was a finalist in this year's Hugo Awards and, in fact, placed second (scroll down).
• Tor's website has this page for the book with a description and an excerpt.
• Scalzi's current novel Zoe's Tale retells the events of this novel from the point of view of Perry's adopted daughter.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Full of whodunit twists and explosive action, Scalzi's third SF novel lacks the galactic intensity of its two related predecessors, but makes up for it with entertaining storytelling on a very human scale..."

(Fri 22 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Stross, Charles : Halting State
(Ace 978-0-441-01607-5, $7.99, 324pp, mass market paperback, July 2008)
(First edition: Ace, October 2007)

SF novel set in 2018, in which a supposedly-impossible robbery has been committed against a bank located in a virtual reality called Avalon Four.
• The publisher's website has only a brief description.
• The book was a finalist for this year's Hugo Awards, and placed 3rd in the Locus Poll for best SF Novel.
Locus Magazine reviewer Nick Gevers wrote last year, "Halting State may come to be seen as the SF novel about gaming, inasmuch as it presents not only exceptionally vivid impressions of what gaming is like, the typical contexts and textures it offers, but also analysis of the phenomenon's origins and impulses."

(Fri 1 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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Zahn, Timothy : The Third Lynx
(Tor 978-0-7653-5669-7, $7.99, 332pp, mass market paperback, August 2008)
(First edition: Tor, November 2007)

SF novel, sequel to Night Train to Rigel (2005). In this book former agent Frank Compton battles a telepathic intelligence that threatens the Qudrail interstellar train.
• Tor's site has this description with an excerpt.
• The next book in the series, Odd Girl Out, is due in hardcover in November.
• Amazon has mostly-positive reader reviews.

(Fri 1 Aug 2008) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense • (Directory Entry)

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