New Books: 23 August 2022
Andrews, Ilona: Ruby Fever 
(HarperCollins/Avon 978-0-06-287839-7, $7.99, 384pp, formats: paperback, hardcover, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Paranormal romance/urban fantasy novel, the third in the trilogy featuring Catalina Baylor and sixth overall in the Hidden Legacy series.
Aryan, Stephen: The Warrior 
(Angry Robot US 978-0-85766-958-2, $14.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, August 9, 2022)
Fantasy novel, the second in The Quest for Heroes series, about a hero who believes his reputation is undeserved.
Aster, Alex: Lightlark 
(Abrams/Amulet 978-1419760860, $19.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Young-adult fantasy novel, first in a series about the island of Lightlark, where every 100 years the Centennial game is played by the rulers of six nations.
Beck, Hazel: Small Town, Big Magic 
(Harlequin/Graydon House 978-1-525-80471-7, $16.99, 416pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Humorous fantasy romance novel. Emerson Wilde wants to help her hometown thrive, but an attack awakens magical powers in her, and she discovers a magical side of town that had been hidden from her.
Briggs, Patricia: Soul Taken 
(Ace 978-0-440-00161-4, $28.00, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Urban fantasy novel, 13th in the Mercy Thompson series. Someone is taking supernatural beings from crowded places.
Hines, Jim C.: Terminal Peace 
(DAW 978-0-7564-1280-7, $27.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Humorous military SF novel, third in the Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse series. Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos and her team of janitors wind up fighting in an interplanetary war and making first contact with aliens.
Huff, Tanya: Into the Broken Lands 
(DAW 978-0-7564-1524-2, $26.00, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Fantasy novel. The Heirs of Marsan must enter the Broken Lands, once shattered by the mage wars, to save their people.
Jamieson, Trent: Day Boy 
(Erewhon 978-164566026, $25.95, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, August 23, 2022)
Dark fantasy novel. Mark is a Day Boy, a human servant to one of the dreadful Masters that rule the city. Soon he will either be retired, or transformed into a near-immortal Master himself.
Kiste, Gwendolyn: Reluctant Immortals 
(Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1-9821-7235-0, $17.99, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Dark fantasy novel. Vampire Lucy Westenra of Dracula and Mr. Rochester’s first wife from Jane Eyre fight against the toxic men in their lives after Jane Eyre herself turns up and frees Dracula in 1967 California.
Koboldt, Dan: Silver Queendom 
(Angry Robot US 978-0-85766-994-0, $16.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Fantasy novel. Con artists down on their luck take a job stealing priceless imperial dream wine.
Kuang, R.F.: Babel 
(Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-302142-6, $27.99, 560pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Alternate history fantasy novel, a decolonial response to The Secret History and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Subtitle: or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution.
Students are funneled into Babel. What comes out is the silver work (read: magic) that the British Empire is built on. Without the translators who create it – the process has to do with the resonance between similar words in different languages – several different kinds of hell will break loose and the Empire will likely fall.
—Adrienne Martini, Locus, August 2022
Kumarasamy, Akil: Meet Us by the Roaring Sea 
(Macmillan/Farrar, Straus, Giroux 9780374177706, $27.00, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, August 23, 2022)
Near-future SF novel. A grieving computer programmer reads an old Tamil manuscript about women surviving drought and war and re-evaluates her only life.
Mandanna, Sangu: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches 
(Penguin Random House/Berkley 978-0-593-43935-7, $16.00, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Fantasy novel about British witch Mika Moon, who “pretends” to be a witch online, and is asked to help three young witches learn to control their powers.
Marais, Bianca: The Witches of Moonshyne Manor 
(Harlequin/Mira 978-0-7783-8699-5, $16.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Fantasy novel about a coven of misfit octogenarian witches in debt, targeted by men who want their manor for a “Men’s World” recreation center.
Panin, Cyla: Beguiled 
(Abrams/Amulet 978-1-4197-5267-4, $18.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, August 23, 2022)
Young-adult gothic fantasy novel. A young weaver makes a deal with a spirit to fix her loom — and gets more than she bargained for.
Quantick, David: Ricky’s Hand 
(Titan Books US 978-1803360461, $15.95, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, August 23, 2022)
Horror novel. Ricky wakes up with someone else’s hand instead of his own, and slowly other body parts start being replaced as well.
Sun, Kung Li: Begin the World Over 
(AK Press 978-1-84935-472-1, $16.99, 260pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, August 23, 2022)
Alternate history SF novel. James Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved chef, gets involved with a coalition of Black revolutionaries and Muskogee resistance fighters in 1793.
Wexler, Robert Freeman: The Silverberg Business 
(Small Beer Press 978-1618732019, $17.00, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, August 23, 2022)
Weird Western hard-boiled detective novel set on Texas gulf coast in 1888. Chicago PI Shannon, in Texas for a wedding, is asked by a rabbi to find Nathan Silverberg, gone missing along with some swindlers.
[I]t’s one of the mostly deeply weird novels I’ve read in some time, at times hallucinatory and dreamlike, at other times gritty and naturalistic. We’ve heard a lot in the past several years about genre-blending or “cross-genre” fiction, but Wexler starts out by combining two genres that seldom come up in these discussions: the western and the hard-boiled private eye mystery.
—Gary K. Wolfe, Locus, August 2022
Yardley, Mercedes M.: Darling 
(Vesuvian/Black Spot Books 978-1-645481195, $17.95, 270pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, August 23, 2022)
Gothic horror novel. Cherry LaRouche is forced to return to her childhood home in Darling, Louisiana with her children, and after bodies of murdered children turn up, Cherry’s own daughter goes missing.
