New Books: 10 October 2023
Adams, Seth C.: The Rift
(Flame Tree Press 9781787588783, $16.95, 208pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 10/10/2023)
Fantasy horror novel. Joe Jimenez, grieving father and estranged husband, on the eve of the anniversary of his son’s death is on the brink of complete despair when he witnesses the arrival of a strange atmospheric anomaly. The rift – a curious tear in the very air of his backyard – appears nightly, and after some experimentation, Joe discovers that for everything that’s sent through the rift, something similar, but horribly wrong, comes back. And when something on the other side claims to be in possession of his son, Joe has to make the most important decision of his life: should he go through and find out?
Arnold, David: I Loved You in Another Life
Penguin Random House/Viking 9780593524787, $19.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Evan and Shosh, two teens struggling with tragedy begin to hear the soft voice of a mysterious singer. The celestial bird singing to them transcends time and space, and brings souls together, including an escaped murderer in 19th century Paris, and a Norwegian kosmonaut in low-earth orbit, along with Evan and Shosh. Includes lyrical prose and original songs, written and recorded by the author.
Biller, Anna: Bluebeard’s Castle
Verso Fiction 9781804291856, $19.95, 370pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Gothic horror novel, a feminist makeover of Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard with added inspiration from various gothic novels. Judith, a successful novelist, yearns for romance and gets visions from the saints, falls for and marries a handsome baron, and finds herself trapped in a nightmare. A first novel from a filmmaker.
Burt, Andrew: Termination of Species
ReAnimus Press 9780967298481, $18.99, 383pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 10/15/2023)
Near-future SF novel. Terrorists who hate modern civilization get hold of powerful military AI software — forcing life altering decisions in a race to save humanity. A championship chess player, an author, and a genius software developer are all recruited to disarm the terrorists’ software.
Butcher, James J.: Long Past Dues
Ace 9780593440438, $27, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Urban fantasy novel, the second book in the Unorthodox Chronicles series. Against all odds, Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby has become an Auditor, enforcing laws about magic for Boston’s Department of Unorthodox Affairs. Realizing he’s being overlooked for every exciting case, Grimsby appropriates a case file intended for a friend.
Grimsby aims to discover the origin of a strange, unfinished ritual, and stop it, all while dealing with escaped werewolves, a cursed artifact, and a perilous journey to the mysterious subterranean city below Boston.
Clare, Cassandra: Sword Catcher
Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780525619994, $30, 624pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Epic fantasy novel, the first book in the Sword Catcher series. Kel, an orphan raised as body-double to a prince, and Lin, a physician who chafes at the limits put on her magical abilities are brought together by a failed assassination attempt, and drawn into the web of the Ragpicker King, the criminal ruler of the city-state’s underworld. This is the author’s first adult novel.
de Bodard, Aliette: A Fire Born of Exile
JAB Books 9781625676528, $9.99, 428pp, formats: ebook, 10/12/2023)
Romantic SF space opera novel. A scholar once left for dead seeks revenge but finds love in the decadent society of the Scattered Pearls Belt of habitats on the edge of a huge galatic empire.
Duplessie, Andrew: Too Scared to Sleep
HarperCollins/Clarion 9780063266483, $19.99, 224pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Debut collection of teen short horror stories, with accompanying videos that can be accessed through a QR code.
Helgadottir, Margret, ed.: Nordic Visions: The Best of Nordic Speculative Fiction
Rebellion/Solaris UK 9781837860296, $16.99, 352pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/10/2023)
Anthology of 15 stories from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands, including John Ajvide Lindqvist, Hannu Rajaniemi, Tor Åge Bringsværd and more, many of which are appearing in English for the first time.
Holt, Tom: The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse
Orbit US 9780316566964, $18.99, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Humorous fantasy novel in the J.W. Wells series begun in The Portable Door. The team of commercial sorcerers at Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson have the clever idea to recruit Santa Claus to help them save the world from Tiamat the Destroyer, who has literally gone ballistic.
Houston, Gabriela: The Bone Roots
Angry Robot 9781915202581, $17.99, 376pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/10/2023)
Fantasy novel. The Fox took Kada’s brother 40 years ago. The Fox took Sladyna’s daughter 15 years ago. The Fox is now stalking Kada and her daughter, the child that the bone roots — the child-bearing tree — gave her. Meanwhile, Sladyna has heard word of her daughters fate. Both mothers are desperate to save their children, but only one of them can succeed.
Jacka, Benedict: An Inheritance of Magic
Ace 9780593549841, $17, 384pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Contemporary fantasy novel. The super-rich control everything—including magic. Stephen Oakwood is a young man on the edge of this hidden world. He has talent and potential, but turning that potential into magical power takes money, opportunity, and training. All Stephen has is a minimum wage job and a cat. A chance encounter with a wealthy House member gets Stephen noticed by the wrong people, but if he can build his talent into something greater, maybe he can he beat them at their own game.
Kadrey, Richard: The Pale House Devil
Titan Books 9781803363899, $17.99, 128pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/10/2023)
Horror novel. On behalf of wealthy landowner, a young woman hires paranormal mercenaries Ford and Neuland—one living, one undead—to track and kill a demon haunting a mansion in remote northern California. As they investigate the creature they uncover a legacy of blood, sacrifice and slavery in the house, and are forced to confront a powerful creature unlike anything they’ve faced before.
Maguire, Gregory: The Witch of Maracoor
HarperCollins/Morrow 9780063094062, $30, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Literary fantasy Oz novel, the third and final in the Another Day trilogy spun off from The Wicked Years series. Illustrated by Scott McKowan. Rainary Ko—the green-skinned granddaughter of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West—has a mission to settle a few scores and right a wrong or two back in her native Oz.
Mosley, Walter: Touched
Grove/Atlantic/Atlantic Monthly Press 9780802161840, $26, 176pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/10/2023)
Dystopian SF novella, the first in a planned series of almost 70. Martin Just wakes up one day knowing humans are a virus that will destroy existence, and he is the Cure, and he begins to change, determined to violently defend his family, the only Black family in their LA neighborhood.
Pearsall, Kate: Bittersweet in the Hollow
Penguin Random House/Putnam 9780593531020, $18.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Young-adult fantasy novel. Like her sisters, Linden was born with an unusual ability. She can taste what others are feeling. One fateful night a year ago Linden vanished into the depths of the Forest and returned with no memories of what happened, just a haze of nightmares that suggest that more happened than simply getting lost. Now another girl in town is gone, and the similarities to last year’s events are striking. Except, this time the missing girl doesn’t make it home, and when her body is discovered, the scene unmistakably spells murder. Linden enlists the help of her sisters to find what’s hiding in the forest before it finds her.
Piper, Hailey: A Light Most Hateful
Titan Books 9781803364209, $16.95, 288pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Horror novel. Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania with her best friend, Sunflower. When a summer night storm crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow, Olivia must dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers to find and rescue Sunflower.
Polydoros, Aden: Wrath Becomes Her
Harlequin/Inkyard Press 9781335915825, $19.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Young-adult historical fantasy novel. In 1942 Lithuania a father grieves for his daughter killed by the Nazis. He can’t bring Chaya back from the dead, but he can use kishuf — an ancient and profane magic — to create a golem in her image. A Nazi killer, to avenge her death. Vera the golem awakens ready to fulfill her violent purpose, but also with some of the memories of the girl in whose image she was made, including feelings for the boy that Chaya was in love with.
Pratchett, Terry: A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories
Harper 9780063376199, $26.99, 240pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Collection of 20 stories originally published in a regional paper in the 1970s and ’80s under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns. Foreword by Neil Gaiman.
Romero, Sofia T.: We Have Always Been Who We Are
Blackstone Publishing 9798200884100, $26.99, 195pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Debut collection of 21 stories, eight previously published in slightly different form. Many stories have magical realist elements.
Rowland, Rebecca: White Trash & Recycled Nightmares
Dead Sky 9781639511204, $19.99, 291pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/10/2023)
Collection of 20 horror and dark fiction stories, six new, including cosmic, creature, and quiet horror.
Rumfitt, Alison: Brainwyrms
Tor/Nightfire 9781250866257, $17.99, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Body horror novel. A transphobic woman bombs Frankie’s workplace, blowing up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, sleeping with strangers, pushing away her friends. Then, she meets mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya. But Vanya is hiding something. Frankie starts digging, and unearths a sinister, depraved conspiracy.
Ryan, A.J.: Red River Seven
Orbit US 9780316518147, $18.99, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Postapocalyptic SF thriller novel. A man awakes on a boat at sea with no memory of who or where he is. He’s not alone – there are six others, each with a unique set of skills. None of them can remember their names. All of them possess a gun. A message appears on the onboard computer – Proceeding to Point A – and the group agrees to work together to survive whatever is coming. But as the boat moves through the mist shrouded waters, divisions begin to form. Who is directing them and to what purpose? Why can’t they remember anything? And what are the screams they can hear beyond the mist?
Starling, Caitlin: Last to Leave the Room
St. Martin’s 9781250282613, $29, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/10/2023)
Technothriller/gothic horror novel. Tasmin Rivers, already stressed as she works to find a way to stop the city of San Siroco from sinking, starts to fall apart when a doppelgänger of her appears.
Tidhar, Lavie, ed.: The Best of World SF Volume 3
Bloomsbury UK/Head of Zeus/Ad Astra 9781804548035, $39.99, 624pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, 10/12/2023)
Anthology of 28 new short stories from around the world, representing the state of the art in international science fiction, each with an introduction by Tidhar.
