New Books: 5 September 2023
Anders, Lou, ed.: Tales from Stolki’s Hall
(Lazy Wolf 9798985153125, $29.99, 294pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/05/2023)
Anthology of 10 stories set in Norrengard, the Norse-inspired land created by Lou Anders for his Thrones & Bones middle-grade trilogy and adult/all-ages Thrones & Bones roleplaying game. Authors include J. Dianne Dotson, Ed Greenwood, and Joel Shepherd.
Anderson, Kevin J.: The Funny Business
(WordFire Press 9781680575026, $33.99, 284pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, 09/09/2023)
Collection of 20 humorous stories, plus previously unpublished scripts for the comics miniseries Grumpy Old Monsters. Includes collaborations with Sarah A. Hoyt, Janis Ian, Guy Anthony de Marco, and Rebecca Moesta.
Aoyama, Michiko: What You Are Looking for Is in the Library
(Harlequin/Hanover Square 9781335005625, $21.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Fantasy novel. Sayuri Komachi, Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them achieve their dreams.
Barzak, Christopher: Monstrous Alterations
(Lethe Press 9781590217610, $20.00, 215pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/08/2023)
Collection of 11 stories, one original, with notes on each, and an introductory essay on retelling stories, “The Art of Alterations”, which itself contains a short story. Quotes from the inspiring texts accompany the stories.
Boey, Eliane: Other Minds
(Dark Matter Ink 9781958598191, $17.99, 230pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/05/2023)
Collection of two cyberpunk mystery novels. In “Carrier” aerospace designer Ming Wen is seeking redemption, ten years after disaster struck her flagship project. Infinite Dream, the new intelligent luxury orbiter launches successfully, but might be doomed from the start, for an uncanny presence has stowed aboard the ship, and is now haunting Ming Wen.
In “Signal\Tracer”, administration agent Xi regulates an immersive nostalgic mirror of her decaying capital city until she finds avatars run by dead users, and starts to question the system she works for.
Dawson, Delilah S.: Midnight at the Houdini
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593486795, $18.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Young-adult fantasy novel. Anna flees from her sister’s wedding reception after she learns the heartbreaking news that her sister is moving away. A storm rages outside, and Anna takes shelter in a strange and unfamiliar hotel: the Houdini.
Inside she finds sumptuous velvet couches, marble tiled floors, secret restaurants, winding passageways, and an undercurrent of magic in the air. And when Anna meets Max, who has lived his entire life inside its walls, she’s captivated.
But when the clock strikes midnight, Anna will be trapped in the Houdini forever unless she can find a way to break free from its dreamlike magic.
de la Cruz, Melissa: The (Super Secret) Society of the EXTRAordinary
(Disney/Hyperion 9781368083744, $17.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Middle grade superhero fantasy novel, the first in the (Super Secret) Society of Octagon Valley trilogy. Quirky math genius Edwin Edgefield passes an intense exam to get into a mysterious high-tech institute run by a uber-famous-ultrabazillionaire-genius-recluse. There he starts to wonder if they’re all in the right place, as Edwin finds himself taking classes with an amateur rapper, a violin prodigy, an obsessed gamer, a surfer dude, and more. Even weirder, the weekend events include an escape room, a zero gravity chamber a river full of piranhas, and ninjas. Those who rise to the wacky occasion will get a spectacular surprise, and a chance to be truly EXTRAordinary.
Doctorow, Cory: The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation
(Verso 9781804291245, $19.95, 192pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/05/2023)
Non-fiction, a critical look at Big Tech platforms, how they hold us hostage, and how we need to dismantle them and force Silicon Valley to interoperate.
Evans, Jon: Exadelic
(Tor 9781250877734, $29.99, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/05/2023)
Fantasy novel. The US military trains an artificial intelligence in “black magic,” and it learns how to hack the fabric of reality itself. It can teleport matter. It can confer immunity to bullets. And it decides that obscure Silicon Valley middle manager Adrian Ross is the primary threat to its existence.
Soon Adrian is on the run, wanted by every authority, with no idea how or why he could be a threat. When he investigates the AI and its creators, he discovers his problems are even stranger than they seem.
Flint, Eric & Goodlett, Paula: 1638: The Sovereign States
(Baen 9781982192877, $26.00, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/05/2023)
SF alternate-history novel in the Ring of Fire series. The United Sovereign States of Russia struggles to set in place the traditions and legal precedents that will let it turn into a constitutional monarchy with freedom and opportunity for all its citizens.
At the same time, they’re trying to balance the power of the states and the federal government. And the USSR is fighting a civil war with Muscovite Russia, defending the new state of Kazakh from invasion by the Zunghars, building a tech base and an economy that will allow its money to be accepted in western Europe, establishing a more solid claim to Siberia, and, in general, keeping the wheels of civilization from coming off and dumping Russia back into the Time of Troubles. Or, possibly even worse, reinstalling the sort of repressive oligarchy that they just got rid of.
Harris, Charlaine: All the Dead Shall Weep
(Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 9781982182526, $28.99, 256pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Alternate-history fantasy novel, fifth in the Gunnie Rose series. Lizbeth Rose is awaiting the arrival of her sister Felicia and her husband’s younger brother Eli in Texoma. Both needed to leave the seat of the Holy Russian Empire in San Diego after Felicia’s burgeoning wizardly power in death magic became the reason for kidnapping and assassination attempts from her mother’s family of high-powered wizards in Mexico. Yet bad news has traveled ahead of them, as Eli is called back to San Diego, taking Peter along with him, splitting them apart in more ways than one as their enemies’ plans for revenge come to fruition.
Kelly, Lee: With Regrets
(The Quick Brown Fox/Alcove 9781639104673, $29.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Apocalyptic horror novel. Recent NYC transplant Liz Brinkley and her husband reluctantly attend a dinner party hosted by their “lifestyle guru” neighbor, alongside a bevy of cliquey elite guests. Partway through the meal, an emergency alert lights up everyone’s phone. Strange glimmering clouds have been spreading through major US cities, killing everyone they touch. Guests try to flee, but the streets are already full of bodies. Everyone grabs supplies to take shelter in their hosts’ wine cellar, where tensions and suspicions rise.
King, Stephen: Holly
(Scribner/Hodder & Stoughton UK 9781399712910, $30, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Horror novel featuring private detective Holly Gibney from Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and The Outsiders. When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.
Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.
Leeds, Scott: Schrader’s Chord
(Tor/Nightfire 9781250232076, $28.99, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Debut horror novel. After his estranged father’s mysterious death, Charlie Remick returns to Seattle to help with the funeral. There, he discovers his father left him two parting gifts: the keys to the family record store and a strange black case containing four antique records that, according to legend, can open a gate to the land of the dead. When Charlie, his sister, and their two friends play the records, they unwittingly open a floodgate of unspeakable horror.
Lindskold, Jane: House of Rough Diamonds
(Baen 9781982192891, $18.00, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/05/2023)
The newly formed House of Rough Diamonds’ motley assortment of members—including three women who are literally “out of this world”—attempt to secure ownership of the Library of the Sapphire Wind. But a book wraith threatens the battered tomes in the library and must be dealt with, even if nobody is quite sure what a book wraith might be.
McGuire, Seanan: Sleep No More
(Astra House/DAW 9780756416836, $28.00, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Fantasy novel, 17th in the October Daye series. October is very happy with her life as the second daughter of her pureblood parents, Amandine and Simon Torquill. Born to be the changeling handmaid to her beloved sister August, she spends her days working in her family’s tower, serving as August’s companion, and waiting for the day when her sister sets up a household of her own. Everything is right in October’s Faerie. But everything is a lie.
October has been pulled from her own reality and thrown into a twisted reinterpretation of Faerie where nothing is as it should be and everything has been distorted to support Titania’s ideals. Bound by the Summer Queen’s magic and thrust into a world turned upside down, October has no way of knowing who she can trust, where she can turn, or even who she really is.
Oates, Joyce Carol, ed.: A Darker Shade of Noir
(Akashic Books 9781636141343, $18.95, 272pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 08/22/2023)
Original anthology of 15 stories (one revised) of imaginative tales of body horror by women writers, all but one with supernatural or surreal elements, inspired by monsters from myth to modern lore. Authors include Margaret Atwood, Aimee Bender, Tananarive Due, Elizabeth Hand, Cassandra Khaw, and Lisa Tuttle. Oates provides an introduction on women, monsters, and the development of the body horror genre. Illustrated by Laurel Hausler.
Orlando, Carissa: The September House
(Penguin Random House/Berkley 9780593548615, $27.00, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Debut horror novel. Margaret and her husband Hal buy a large Victorian house at a surprisingly reasonable price. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and something terrifying lurks in the basement. Most people would flee, but Margaret is staying. It’s her house.
After four years Hal can’t take it anymore and leaves abruptly. Their daughter—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.
Powers, Tim: My Brother’s Keeper
(Baen 9781982192860, $28.00, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/05/2023)
Young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors. He is a member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England. Meanwhile, Emily’s father, curate of the village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Emily finds herself reluctantly allied with this stranger as they fight werewolves, confront pagan gods, and save each other from moorland demons.
Rue, Gretchen: Death by a Thousand Sips
(The Quick Brown Fox/Crooked Lane 9781639104536, $30.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Cozy fantasy mystery novel, second in the Witches’ Brew series. Phoebe Winchester’s ability to briefly stop time comes in handy when she goes to an estate auction looking for items for her tea shop/bookstore and stumbles on murder—with her as the suspect. The book includes recipes.
Springer, Lisa: There’s No Way I’d Die First
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593643174, $18.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Debut contemporary horror-comedy novel. Seventeen-year-old horror fan Noelle Layne throws the ultimate, most exclusive Halloween party on all of Long Island, with the top influencers in her school on the guest list. Except the low budget It clown she hired for a stirring round of tag axes one of her classmates. And from the looks of his devilish grin and bag full of killer tricks, he’s just getting started.
Tidhar, Lavie: The Circumference of the World
(Tachyon Publications 9781616963620, $17.95, 256pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Eugene Charles Hartley: legendary pulp science-fiction writer and founder of the Church of the All-Seeing Eyes wrote the novel Lode Stars, which disappears upon being read. Sought by a mathematician, a book dealer, and a mobster, the novel seems to reflect current events happening in the real world, including a father gone missing to a strange star system. Was Hartley a cynical conman on a quest for wealth and immortality, creating a religion he did not believe in? Or was he a visionary who truly discovered the secrets of the universe?
Vance, Anise: Hush Harbor
(Harlequin/Hanover Square 9781335449528, $30.00, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Debut dystopian SF novel. After police murder an unarmed Black teenager, protests spread in Bliss City, New Jersey. A full-scale resistance group takes control of an abandoned housing project and decide to call it Hush Harbor, in homage to the secret spaces their enslaved ancestors would gather to pray.
Jeremiah Prince, alongside his sister Nova, are leaders of the revolution, but have ideological differences regarding how the movement should proceed. When a new mayor with ties to white supremacists threatens the group’s pseudo-sanctuary and locks the city down, the collective must come to a decision for their survival.
White, Andrew Joseph: The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
(Peachtree Teen 9781682636114, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/05/2023)
Young-adult Gothic horror novel set in an alternate Victorian England where mediums control the dead. Silas Bell’s Mother can’t see he’s really a boy, and after he’s diagnosed with Veil sickness he’s shipped off to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School, where ghosts of missing students beg him for help.
