New Books: 26 September 2023
Anderson, Taylor: Devil’s Battle
(Ace 9780593200773, $28, 480pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Alternate-world military SF novel, third in the Artillerymen series set in the world of the Destroyermen series. After being stranded on a very different and more perilous Earth, Colonel Lewis Cayce led his small army of Americans displaced from 1847 to defeat the Dominion and its depraved Blood Priests.
But more Dominion troops have been drawn from the west. Time has become more precious than ever, and before Lewis Cayce can even try to implement his plan for total victory, he and his force must brave their greatest challenge yet—a brutal fight against a larger, better-trained army whose commander has a gift for strategy to rival Cayce’s own.
Bancroft, Josiah: The Hexologists
(Orbit US 9780316443302, $18.99, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.
But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake—going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven—the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head.
Córdova, Zoraida & Parker, Natalie C., eds.: Mermaids Never Drown
(Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends 9781250823816, $19.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult original anthology with 14 short stories about mermaids, the second book in the Untold Legends series. Authors include Darcie Little Badger, Julie C. Dao, and Maggie Tokuda-Hall.
Crutcher, Paige: What Became of Magic
(St. Martin’s Griffin 9781250905529, $18, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/26/2023)
Aline Weir, a witch who can talk to ghosts, has kept her talents hidden ever since a disastrous middle school slumber party, choosing to be invisible and use her powers in secret to help lost souls reunite with the keys to send them home. That is, until Aline discovers the book of Mischief, and her powers are enhanced.
Aline’s life takes an unexpected turn when someone witnesses her using her powers and she is invited to a town that doesn’t exist on any map. Arriving in Matchstick, Aline learns of a lost magic that desperately needs to be found and only her unique powers can do it. But what she’s not told is that Magic is a person. One that is dangerous and seductive and has been waiting for a witch with a power like hers for centuries.
DeRose, Kim: For Girls Who Walk Through Fire
(Sterling/Union Square & Co. 9781454948872, $18.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult fantasy novel. A first novel. Every week, Elliott D’Angelo-Brandt attends a support group for teen victims of sexual assault, but Elliott’s done with talking. What she wants is justice. She found a spell book in her late mom’s belongings that actually works. Elliott recruits fellow survivors who take a turn casting a hex against their unrepentant assailants. The girls find themselves leaning on each other in ways they never expected—and realizing that revenge has heavy implications.
Epps, Omar & Haynes, Clarence A.: Nubia: The Reckoning
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593428689, $19.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult fantasy novel, the second in the Nubia series. Three teens, were among the first of a new generation of Nubians to awaken to extraordinary powers—gifts their parents lost when they fled their island home for New York City decades ago. But what should be a time of rebirth and celebration is instead one of turmoil.
Fussner, Nora: The Invisible World
(Penguin Random House/Vintage 9780593684832, $17, 301pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Horror novel. Frustrated artist Eve decides her house is haunted and keeping her from her work, and calls a TV show that does paranormal investigations. When the show descends upon Eve’s home, they’re intent on creating just another staged spectacle. But, unexpectedly, the crew encounters some very real activity — shelves collapse, electronics go haywire, a cameraman disappears in the dead of night. Meanwhile, the show’s teenage ghost hunter Caitlin is caught up in the unexplained events, convinced she’s glimpsing the “other side” and desperate to make contact—even if it means putting the investigation, and herself, in jeopardy.
Gong, Chloe: Foul Heart Huntsman
(Simon & Schuster/McElderry 9781665905619, $21.99, 560pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult fantasy novel, second in the series begun in Foul Lady Fortune. In 1932 Shanghai Rosalind Lang has suffered the worst possible fate for a national spy: she’s been exposed. She needs to rescue Orion, but with her identity in the open, the task is near impossible. The only way to leave the city is under the guise of a national tour. It’s easy to convince her superiors that the countryside needs unity more than ever, and who better than an immortal girl to stir pride and strength into the people?
When the tour goes wrong, Rosalind takes refuge outside Shanghai, old ghosts come into the open and adversaries turn to allies. To save Orion, they must find a cure to his mother’s traitorous invention and take this dangerous chemical weapon away from impending Japanese invasion.
Hannon, Kathleen: The Confession of Hemingway Jones
(CamCat Books 9780744302578, $19.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, trade papberback, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult SF novel. Moments after a devastating car accident kills his father, 17-year-old Hemingway Jones takes his body to Lifebank, the cryogenic preservation company where he interns. Hijacking the lab in a desperate attempt to reverse the natural order, Hemingway holds police and medics at bay as he works to revive his father. As dawn breaks, the heart monitor beeps, and his father slowly creeps back to life.
Days later, Hemingway arrives at the hospital to learn that his father’s skin has turned ashen gray, he can’t exist in temperatures above 55 degrees, and hydrogen sulfide has become his only source of food. Facing arrest for his reckless actions, Hemingway is offered a proposal by the billionaire owner of the lab: recreate the experiment he swore he’d never do again, or go to prison, leaving his father to die a second time.
Kaplan, Ariel: The Pomegranate Gate
(Erewhon 9781645660576, $29, 576pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Fantasy novel, first in the Mirror Realm Cycle trilogy inspired by Jewish folklore. After the Queen demands every Jew convert or face banishment, Toba and Naftaly are among thousands of Jews who flee their homes. Defying royal orders to abandon all possessions, Toba keeps an amulet she must never take off; Naftaly smuggles a centuries-old book he’s forbidden to read. But the Inquisition is hunting these particular treasures–and they’re not hunting alone.
Toba stumbles through a pomegranate grove into the mirror realm of the Mazik: mythical, terrible immortals with an Inquisition of their own, equally cruel and even more powerful. With the Mazik kingdoms in political turmoil, this Inquisition readies its bid to control both realms.
Mansbach, Adam: The Golem of Brooklyn
(Penguin Random House/One World 9780593729823, $18, 272pp, formats: trade paperback, audio, 09/26/2023)
Fantasy novel. A Brooklyn art teacher steals a large quantity of clay from his school, gets extremely stoned, and manages to bring a golem to life despite knowing little about Judaism and even less about golems.
A golem’s sole purpose is to defend the Jewish people against the immediate threat of violence. He demands to know what crisis has prompted his re-creation and whom must he destroy. When Miri shows him a video of white nationalists marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” the answer becomes clear.
O’Keefe, Megan E.: The Fractured Dark
(Orbit US 9780316291132, $18.99, 544pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Space opera SF novel, the second in The Devoured Worlds series. Naira and Tarquin need to find out the Mercator family secrets to learn the truth behind the blight that has been killing habitable planets. But, when the head of Mercator disappears, taking the universe’s remaining supply of starship fuel with him, chaos breaks loose between the ruling families.
Oyemakinde, Tomi: The Changing Man
(Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends 9781250868138, $19.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult horror novel. Teen Ife Adebola, a new scholarship student at the prestigious boarding school Nithercott, investigates a missing student and the old legend of the Changing Man.
Preston, Natasha: The Haunting
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593481516, $12.99, 384pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult horror novel. Penny’s parents have forbidden her to have anything to do with her ex boyfriend, after his father was arrested for the brutal murder of four teenagers on Devil’s Night last year. When Penny goes to the Halloween store what she finds instead is ripped from a horror movie: a classmate bleeding out on the floor of a dressing room, stabbed. Penny knows this must be related to what happened last year.
Ruthnum, Naben: The Grimmer
(ECW Press 9781770417045, $19.95, 256pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult supernatural horror thriller/mystery novel. After his father returns from treatment for addiction, highschooler Vish is uncertain what the future holds. It doesn’t help that everyone seems to know about the family’s troubles, and they stand out doubly as one of the only brown families in town. When Vish is mistaken for a relative of the weird local bookseller and attacked by an unsettling pale man who seems to be decaying, he is pulled into the world of the occult. Vish must work with the bookstore owner and his mysterious employee to stop an interdimensional invasion that would destroy their town.
Schaeffer, Rebecca: Cage of Dreams
(HarperCollins/Clarion 9780358645542, $19.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult dark fantasy novel. Sequel and conclusion to the City of Nightmares duology. Ness is forced to make a twisted deal with the Nightmare Phantom—only to find herself embroiled in the explosive fallout of the agreement when a botched assassination attempt unleashes chaos into the City of Newham.
Schwab, V.E.: The Fragile Threads of Power
(Tor 9780765387493, $29.99, 656pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Fantasy novel, first in the Threads of Power trilogy, set in the same world as the Shades of Magic trilogy. Once, there were four worlds, each pulsing with fantastical power and connected by a single city: London. Until the magic grew too fast and forced the worlds to seal the doors between them. The few magicians who could still open the doors grew more rare as time passed and now, only three Antari are known. Then a girl with an unusual magical ability comes into possession of a device that could change the fate of all four worlds.
Shurin, Jared: The Big Book of Cyberpunk
(Penguin Random House/Vintage 9780593467237, $28, 1136pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/26/2023)
Anthology of over 100 cyberpunk short stories from more than 25 countries. Includes authors Madeline Ashby, Maurice Broaddus, Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, Janelle Monáe, and Bruce Sterling.
Skrutskie, Emily: The Salvation Gambit
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593499757, $17.99, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
SF adventure novel. A hotheaded hacker and her crew of con women are imprisoned in a sentient warship–turned–penal colony. Justice, the ship’s AI has styled itself into a punitive god, watching over its small world stitched together from the galaxy’s sinners—some fighting for survival, some struggling to build a civilized society, and some sacrificing everything to worship the ship.
Tokuda-Hall, Maggie: The Siren, the Song, and the Spy
(Candlewick Press 9781536218053, $19.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Young-adult fantasy novel, sequel to The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea. The Sea is losing more and more of herself as her daughters continue to be brutally hunted, and the Empire continues to expand through profits made from their blood. The threads of time, a web of schemes, shifting loyalties, and blossoming identities converge, as unlikely young allies work to forge a new and better world.
Wendig, Chuck: Black River Orchard
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593158746, $29.99, 640pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Horror novel. In the town of Harrow there is an orchard with seven trees that grow strange, beautiful apples, with skin so red it’s nearly black. After eating them, people transform, stronger and more vital, with peculiar dark gifts. Soon everyone in town is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples. But something else is buried in the orchard besides the seeds of these extraordinary trees: a bloody history whose roots reach back to the very origins of the town.
Zhang, C Pam: Land of Milk and Honey
(Penguin Random House/Riverhead 9780593538241, $28, 240pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/26/2023)
Near-future SF novel. After a spreading smog causes many food crops to disappear, a chef leaves the city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony well stocked with rare ingredients. Her enigmatic employer has built a lush new life here for the global elite. In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.
