New Books : 20 August 2019

New titles this week are by Jay Allan, Stephanie Andrea Allen & Lauren Cherelle, John Birmingham, Michael Bishop, Marie Brennan, Troy Carrol Bucher, Ellen Datlow, Craig Dilouie, Shane Hinton, Rokuro Inui, Morgan Llywelyn, Téa Obreht, and Juli Zeh.


* Allan, Jay : The Emperor’s Fist
(Harper Voyager 978-0062566867, $16.99, 336pp, trade paperback, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780062566928
Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9780062931634
Far Stars #4

SF novel, fourth in a series following Shadow of Empire (Nov. 2015), Enemy in the Dark (Dec. 2015), and Funeral Games (2016), about a space pirate and his band of freelance adventurers.
• HarperCollins’ site has this description with a sample.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Allen, Stephanie Andrea, & Lauren Cherelle : Black from the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Writing
(BFL Press 978-0-578-50213-7, $19.95, 244pp, trade paperback, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019

Anthology of 22 stories and poems.
• The publisher’s site has this description.
Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review: “Many of the works center experiences of queer black woman- or girlhood… Readers who prefer complex time travel or fun steampunk adventure will find those here, too. There’s something for everyone in this outstanding anthology.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Birmingham, John : The Cruel Stars
(Del Rey 978-0-399-59331-4, $28, 432pp, hardcover, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780399593321

SF novel about a renegade group of “species purists” staging an attack an Earth.
• Penguin Random House’s site has this description with an excerpt.
Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review: “Birmingham alternates between gut punches and laugh-out-loud humor, with some gore and thought-provoking philosophy thrown in for good measure. … This jarring, engrossing story of a species-wide fight for survival is recommended for all science fiction readers.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Bishop, Michael : The City and the Cygnets
(Fairwood Press/Kudzu Planet Productions 978-1933846781, $19.99, 466pp, trade paperback, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019

SF novel about the Urban Nucleus of a future domed Atlanta, reworked from two earlier books, the novel A Little Knowledge (1977) and the story cycle Catacomb Years (1979).
• The publisher’s site has this description with blurbs from Robert Silverberg, Paul Di Filippo, and others.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Brennan, Marie : Turning Darkness Into Light
(Tor 978-0765377616, $27.99, 416pp, hardcover, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781466856943
Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9781250227942

Fantasy novel about the granddaughter of the protagonist of the Natural History of Dragons series, whose research into ancient Draconean tablets reveals a dangerous conspiracy.
• Macmillan’s site has this description with an excerpt.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Bucher, Troy Carrol : Lies of Descent
(DAW 978-0-7564-1545-7, $26, 432pp, hardcover, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780756415464
Fallen Gods’ War #1

Fantasy novel, first of a trilogy and the author’s first novel, about two young people whose special powers require them to be taken from their homes for special training.
• Penguin Random House’s site has this description with an excerpt.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Datlow, Ellen, ed. : Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories
(Saga Press 978-1534413467, $32.99, 816pp, hardcover, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781534413481

Anthology of 30 ghost stories, three of them reprints, the others original to this book.
• Authors include Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Lee Thomas, Garth Nix, Pat Cadigan, and Brian Evenson.
• Simon & Schuster’s site has this description. There’s a simultaneous trade paperback edition (978-1534413474).

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Dilouie, Craig : Our War
(Orbit 978-0-316-52526-8, $26, 400pp, hardcover, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780316525251
Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9781549171536

Near future SF novel in which civil war erupts in America after the president is impeached and refuses to leave office.
• Hachette’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• The Publishers Weekly review concludes, “Dilouie makes his politics plain and occasionally resorts to stereotypes of the political right and left, appealing to readers who agree with him at the cost of alienating those who don’t. This gritty, horrifying tale of hate, fear, and hopelessness, sprinkled with moments of love, will leave readers with haunting memories.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Hinton, Shane : Radio Dark
(Burrow Press 978-1941681602, $16, 130pp, trade paperback, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019

Post-apoclyptic SF novel about a community that forms around a Florida radio tower, after the power grid has failed and the world has gone dark.
• The publisher’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• Ian Mond reviewed it in the July issue of Locus Magazine: “The human radio tower – reminiscent of Cixin’s Liu’s human-computer in The Three-Body Problem – is a striking, memorable, gruesome image. Whether it’s scientifically possible or not, the execution is brilliant…”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Inui, Rokuro : Automatic Eve
(Haikasoru 978-1-9747-0807-9, $16.99, 320pp, trade paperback, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019

SF novel, first published in Japan in 2014 and here translated by Yves Menard, about an imperial line threatened by an automaton called Eve.
• Haikasoru’s site has this description with an excerpt.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Llywelyn, Morgan : Inch by Inch
(Tor 978-0765388698, $26.99, 272pp, hardcover, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780765388711
Step by Step #2

SF novel, second in a trilogy following Drop by Drop (2018), in which global catastrophe occurs when plastic liquefies and then metal starts dissolving.
• Macmillan’s site has this description with an excerpt.

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Obreht, Téa : Inland
(Random House 978-0-8129-9286-1, $27, 384pp, hardcover, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 13 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780679644118
Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9780449807057

Literary novel with fantastic elements — one of the characters communicates with the dead — set in the American west in 1893.
• Penguin Random House’s site has this description with an excerpt.
Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review: “The novel’s unforgettable finale, evocative and grimly symbolic, crystallizes its underlying themes of how inconsolable grief and unforgivable betrayal shape the circumstances that bind its characters to their fates. Obreht knocks it out of the park in her second novel.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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* Zeh, Juli : Empty Hearts
(Nan A. Talese 978-0-385-54454-2, $26.95, 288pp, hardcover, August 2019)
Nominal Publication Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019
Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780385544559
Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9781984891686

Near-future SF novel set after both the UK and France have left the EU, about a German woman who runs an organization that supplies suicide bombers to terrorist organizations.
• Penguin Random House’s site has this description with a preview function.
• The Publishers Weekly review concludes, “…Zeh makes it easy to suspend disbelief in this cold-blooded and macabre future.”

• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound

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These listings are based on publisher schedules and availability on Amazon (rather than on confirmation of physical publication via purchase, review copies, or sightings in bookstores). Titles are listed only once they are published (with rare exception). We do not list galleys or advance reading copies. Page counts are based on publisher or Amazon listings, and typically only approximate the bibliographic page counts of finished books. * = first edition + = first US edition Date with publisher info is official publication month. ‘Nominal Publication Date’ is the day of publication, typically as indicated by Amazon.com.


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