New Books: 12 September 2023
Armentrout, Jennifer L.: Fall of Ruin and Wrath
(Tor/Bramble 9781250750198, $27.99, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Fantasy romance novel, the first in a series for adults. Nine cities dot a vast wilderness teeming with monsters and unimaginable dangers, each city ruled by royalty who feed on mortal pleasure. Calista lives hidden as a courtesan of the Baron of Archwood. In exchange for protection she uses the infallible intuition she was born with to inform him, until her intuition leads her to save a traveling prince, that she knows will one day bring her doom.
Armstrong, Kelley: Hemlock Island
(St. Martin’s 9781250284198, $29, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Horror novel. Laney Kilpatrick rents out her vacation home on Hemlock Island to stay afloat, but the renters start fleeing from horrifying events. Broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and now, blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet, as though someone tried to claw their way out… and failed. Laney and her niece go to investigate, where they meet a few others interested in the phenomena too. Then their only means off the island goes missing.
Briggs, Katherine: Eternity Gates
(Enclave Escape 9798886050660, $24.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/12/2023)
Young-adult fantasy novel, first in the Threshold duology. The Eternity Gate has been found, and kings and monsters battle hoping to claim its legendary treasure. But rumors whisper that someone stole the gate’s ancient key. Seyo, handmaiden to the princess, has translated a prophecy warning that the gate does offers judgment, not treasure. And she’s been entrusted with the key by a scorned prince who has disappeared. Seyo embarks on a journey to seek help, unsure what to do with this key that could save her people or destroy them.
Chapman, Clay McLeod: What Kind of Mother
(Quirk Books 9781683693802, $21.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Southern Gothic horror novel about a palm reader caught up in a missing-child case. After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market.
There she connects with her old high school flame, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure the boy is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise—along with a terrifying nightmare coming for everyone she holds dear.
Dell’Antonia, KJ: Playing the Witch Card
(Penguin Random House/Putnam 9780593713792, $17, 352pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Fantasy novel. Flair Hardwicke gave up magic and love to take over her grandmother’s ordinary Kansas bakery. But she bakes some Halloween cookies which accidentally release magic that draws her mother and her first love to town, while cursing her ex.
Dylan, Kate: Mindbreaker
(Hodder & Stoughton UK/Hodderscape 9781529393262, $9.99, 320pp, formats: , ebook, audio, 09/14/2023)
Young-adult dystopian SF thriller novel. Born into a religious cult on the fringe of society, Indra Dyer lives a simple, tech-free existence. But when an illicit trip to the city leaves her with a terminal condition, Indra must make a choice: die faithful or betray her Order and accept the cure Glindell Technologies is offering. Instead of saving her body, Glindell uploads her mind to a first-of-its-kind MindDrive, housed in a fully robotic shell. On the outside, Indra still looks the same; on the inside, she’s not so sure. She keeps finding herself in places she shouldn’t be, with no memory of how she got there, and dangerous abilities she can’t explain.
Frey, Dan: Dreambound
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593158241, $17.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Contemporary fantasy novel. A reporter unearths mystical secrets of LA as he searches for his 12-year-old daughter, who left a note saying she was going to the Hidden World from her favorite books — and she’s not the first child to go missing that way.
Gilliland, Raquel Vasquez: Witch of Wild Things
(Penguin Random House/Berkley Romance 9780593548578, $17, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Romantic fantasy novel. The women of the Flores family are cursed with magic that brings chaos. Sage Flores is forced to move back to her old hometown, where she takes back her job at Cranberry Rose Company and uses her ability to communicate with plants to discover unusual heritage specimens in the surrounding lands. But she’s partnered with the boy who once broke her heart and is now a stunning man.
Goodwin, Rande: The Witchfinder’s Serpent
(Greenleaf Book Group 9798886450903, $27.95, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Young-adult alternate-history fantasy novel, the first in The Witches of Windsor series. Fifteen-year-old Nate Watson moves to Windsor to live with his mysterious Aunt Celia, where he finds a witch’s workshop full of mystical artifacts, some dating back to the time of the earliest Puritan settlers, including the witchfinder’s serpent — a powerful, demonic bracelet that wraps itself around his arm and permanently embeds itself into his flesh. With Aunt Celia’s help Nate must find a way to remove the bracelet before the serpent’s previous owner returns.
Hollowell, Sarah: What Stalks Among Us
(HarperCollins/Clarion 9780063251816, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
YA speculative thriller. Best friends and high school seniors Sadie and Logan ditch their end-of-year field trip to the amusement park in favor of exploring some old, forgotten back roads where they find a giant, abandoned corn maze. They find corpses inside the maze, identical to them in every way, other than the stab and gunshot wounds. They quickly realize they’ve not only entered this maze before, they’ve died in it too. A lot.
Kane, Paul & O’Regan, Marie, eds.: In These Hallowed Halls
(Titan Books 9781803363608, $26.95, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/12/2023)
Original anthology of 12 stories of Dark Academia by authors including Olivie Blake, Tori Bovalino, M.L. Rio, J.T. Elison, and Susie Yang.
Kern, Sim: The Free People’s Village
(Levine Querido 9781646142668, $26.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/12/2023)
Alternate-history SF novel of a 2020 where Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change. English teacher Maddie Ryan, who also plays in queer punk band Bunny Bloodlust, starts fighting for her condemned neighborhood and thinking seriously about revolution.
Kristjánsson, Snorri: The Hidden Legion
(Rebellion/Solaris UK 9781786189752, $27.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/14/2023)
Fantasy novel, the first in the trilogy The Blood at Dawn. Roman soldier Aemilius thought he would die heroically in battle like his forefathers, mourned by a loving wife and many children, but he’s barely a man when a harpy flies down out of the old myths and knocks him from his horse. Stunned and helpless, he waits for his end… and is saved. Formed on the bloody battlefield of Teutoburg, the Hidden Legion are an order of soldiers, magicians, and rogues so secret that the Empire itself would hunt them down if they were exposed. And now Aemilius is one of them.
Lapite, Shade: Goddess Crown
(Candlewick Press/Walker US 9781536226522, $18.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Young-adult fantasy novel, the first in a series set in the Kingdom of Galla. Kalothia has grown up hidden away in the forested East after her parents were outed as enemies of the king. When assassins attack her home on her sixteenth birthday, she must flee to the king’s court in the West — a beautiful but lethal nest of poison, plots, and danger, overseen by an entrenched patriarchy. Guided by the Goddess herself, Kalothia navigates this most worldly of places to find her own role.
Liu, Em X.: The Death I Gave Him
(Rebellion/Solaris UK 9781786189981, $26.99, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/14/2023)
SF novel, a queer retelling of Hamlet as a high-tech thriller. Elsinore Labs’ AI Horatio discovers a researcher is dead, leaving a neuromapped model of his brain that says he was murdered. A first novel.
Matlin, Lisa M.: The Stranger Upstairs
(Penguin Random House/Bantam 9780593599952, $28, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Haunted house horror novel. A therapist and self-help writer with all the answers, Sarah Slade has just bought a gorgeous Victorian in the community of her dreams. Turns out, you can get a killer deal on a house where someone was murdered. Plus, renovating Black Wood House makes for great blog content and a decent distraction from her failing marriage.
But the renovations are fast becoming a nightmare. Though the builders attempted to cover up Black Wood’s horrifying past, a series of bizarre accidents, threatening notes, and unexplained footsteps in the attic only confirms for Sarah what the rest of the town already knew: Something is very wrong in that house.
McEwan, Stacey: Chasm
(Angry Robot UK 9781915202406, $24.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Fantasy novel, the second book in the Glacian trilogy begun in Ledge. Now on the run and struggling to tame her newly-gained and greatly unstable powers, Dawsyn continues to fight to save the people of the Ledge from the winged Glacians who treat them like animals.
Oakes, Stephanie: The Meadows
(Penguin Random House/Dial 9780593111482, $20.99, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Dystopian queer young-adult SF novel. Eleanor is thrilled to be accepted to the prestigious Meadows school, but even after graduation the school enforces relentless conformity — and Eleanor’s one of the enforcers.
Penney, George & Johnson, Tony: OverLondon
(Swashbuckler Press 9781916674011, $11.99, 358pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/12/2023)
Humorous fantasy mystery novel. Priests from OverLondon’s Church of Vengeful Acquisition are exploding. Is the cause divine retribution, ballistic undergarments or something more sinister? Notorious pirate-turned privateer-Captain Alex Reign needs cash fast and will take any job, including investigating the exploding priests. Armed with nothing but her roguish wit, her reliably unreliable crew and a rogue artificer experiencing a mortal crisis, Alex is convinced they’ll have this crime solved and the reward pocketed by teatime.
Percy, Benjamin: The Sky Vault
(HarperCollins/Morrow 9780358331551, $30, 320pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Post-apocalyptic SF novel, the third and final book in the Comet Cycle series. The comet, Cain, came from beyond our solar system, its debris containing elements unknown. Now, in the isolated region of Fairbanks, Alaska, the skies shift and stretch as an interstellar dust cloud seeds the atmosphere. When a plane shudders its way through pulpy, swirling clouds, lit with sudden cracks of lightning, the sky opens and the aircraft vanishes… but only for a minute. When the flight lands, everyone on board and in the community will be changed forever. The answer to the comet’s origin is about to be unveiled, and its impact on Earth is more treacherous and sublime than humanity could imagine.
Rowe, Andrew: Edge of the Woods
(Podium Publishing 9781039439221, $34.99, 546pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Fantasy novel, the first in a series set in the Arcane Ascension universe. Lien bears only half a name, an ancient word meaning “blade” or “edge”—and has no knowledge of his heritage. As he grows, so too does his need for independence and answers. Thus, he begins his adventure, seeking a shattered sword and the truth behind the mysterious mark on his right hand.
Solis, Michael: Deficient
(BHC Press 9781643973494, $23.99, 230pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Young-adult near-future SF novel. The near future is free from discrimination based on race, class, and sexual orientation. But in a world populated by the gifted, fifteen-year-old Alejandro Aragon (Alé) is part of the only remaining minority — he’s a Deficient. Powerless. The one that accelerated genetics left behind. But he still has dreams of a legal career in the capital — until his gifted ally Yalamba is kidnapped and Alé is blamed.
Speller, Maureen Kincaid: A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller
(Luna Press UK/Academia Lunare 9781915556202, $21.99, 308pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/12/2023)
Non-fiction, a selection of 48 pieces of critical writing from Speller, who reviewed for fanzines, BSFA’s Vector, and other venues, as well as being active in SF fandom. Some pieces have been edited somewhat to fit the book format by Nina Allan, who also provides an Introduction. Foreword by Paul Kincaid and afterwords by Jonathan McCalmont and Aishwarya Subramanian & Dan Hartland.
Vo, Nghi: Mammoths at the Gate
(Tordotcom 9781250851437, $19.99, 128pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Fantasy novella. Fourth in The Singing Hills Cycle series. The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the abbey. Cleric Thien’s granddaughters have arrived on the backs of royal mammoths, demanding their grandfather’s body for burial. Chih must somehow balance honoring their mentor’s chosen life while keeping the sisters from the north from storming the gates and destroying the history the clerics have worked so hard to preserve.
Young, Laura Kat: Collector 
(Titan Books, $16.95, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/12/2023)
Dystopian horror novel. Lieutenant Dev Singh spends his days recording the memories of people who, struck with incurable depression, will soon have their minds erased in order to be more productive members of society. At night though, hidden in the dark, Dev remembers and writes in his secret journal the special moments shared with him – the small laugh of a toddler, the stillness of a late afternoon. The first flutter of love. Until the Bureau finds out he’s been recounting the memories – and that the depression is in him, too.
