New Books: 31 October 2023

Armentrout, Jennifer L.: A Fire in the Flesh
(Evil Eye Concepts/Blue Box Press 9781957568553, $31.99, 560pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

Fantasy romance novel, third in the Flesh and Fire series. In order to prevent the forces of the Shadowlands from invading and igniting a War of Primals, Sera must convince Kolis to relent. But nothing could have prepared her for the cruelty of Kolis’s Court and the shocking truths revealed there.

 

Cassidy, Nat: Nestlings
(Tor/Nightfire 9781250265258, $18.99, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

Horror novel. A couple, struggling after their first child’s complicated birth, win an affordable housing lottery in Manhattan, but things get strange.

 

Due, Tananarive: The Reformatory
(Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 9781982188344, $27.99, 576pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

Horror novel. In 1950s Jim Crow Florida, Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his sister. There, Robbie’s talent for seeing ghosts becomes a window to the horrible truth of what really happens at the reformatory.

 

Dumas, Luke: The Paleontologist
(Simon & Schuster/Atria 9781668018262, $17.99, 368pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

Horror novel. A paleontologist goes back to his hometown, where he sees and hears things he can’t explain, suggesting a prehistoric killer is hiding in the local museum, or maybe something supernatural, or maybe he’s just losing his mind.

 

Gaiman, Neil: What You Need to Be Warm
(HarperCollins/Quill Tree 9780063358089, $18.99, 32pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/31/2023)

Associational picture book of Gaiman’s poem made from Twitter responses to the title question, with new illustrations by 13 artists including Chris Riddell, Pam Smy, and Bagram Ibatouilline.

 

Ibañez, Isabel: What the River Knows
(St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 9781250803375, $20, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/31/2023)

YA fantasy novel, the first in the Secrets of the Nile duology. When Bolivian-Argentinian Inez Olivera receives word of her globetrotting parents’ tragic deaths, she inherits both their massive fortune and a mysterious guardian, an archeologist in partnership with his Egyptian brother-in-law. Seeking answers, Inez sails to Cairo, but upon her arrival, the magic tethered to her father’s old ring pulls her down a path where she discovers there’s more to her parent’s disappearance than what her guardian led her to believe.

 

Montoya, Angela: Sinner’s Isle
(Penguin Random House/Joy Revolution 9780593643334, $18.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

YA fantasy romance. Rosalinda is trapped on Sinner’s Isle, the place where young witches are kept trapped until they turn 18, where they are given as prizes in the annual Offering. She must flee before that happens, and someone forces the vicious phantoms within her to destroy everything she touches. Her only help comes from Marino, a shipwrecked pirate whose enchanted chain was supposed to lead him to his heart’s desire, not the headache Rosa presents. A first novel.

 

Pargin, Jason: Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia
(St. Martin’s 9781250285935, $30, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

Darkly humorous horror novel, third In the Zoey Ashe series. Zoey Ashe, twenty-three-year-old heiress to a criminal empire, in a futuristic world of high-tech liars and cutthroats, must learn the rules of a devious game she never asked to play. The gleaming new city of Tabula Ra$a is hosting its massive annual music festival, which every year precedes the equally massive annual drunken riot. This is all organized by Zoey’s people, including the riot. As her advisors explain, the citizens need a little controlled chaos now and then. Zoey, however, fears the chaos will not stay controlled for long. When a horrific crime is broadcast live on an all-seeing social network. Zoey and her team suspect a carefully-staged hoax—but the truth is even more complex.

 

Paxinos, George: A River Divided
(Amazonas Press 9798218269913, $17.99, 384pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 11/03/2023)

Eco-fiction novel with SF elements, involving a mysterious text and a race to save the Amazon rain forest. A geneticist/amateur archeologist believes she has found the DNA of Christ and tries cloning him, resulting in identical twins raised apart.

 

Rather, Lina: A Season of Monstrous Conceptions
(Tordotcom 9781250884015, $20.99, 160pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/31/2023)

Fantasy novella. In 17th-century London, as a rash of unnatural babies are being born, with eyes made for the dark and webbed digits suited to the sea, midwife Sarah Davis gets caught in a web of magic and intrigue created by those who want to use Sarah’s own uncanny powers.

 

Reynolds, Eric T.: The Lost Town of Garrison
(Hadley Rille 9781735093888, $29.5, 326pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 11/01/2023)

Time-travel historical novel about a battle over damming a valley in 1937 Kansas, and a woman from the present pulled into the past as both sides try to use time travel in their fight.

 

Slayton, David R.: Dark Moon, Shallow Sea
(Blackstone Publishing 9798200977307, $15.99, 394pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

Fantasy novel, the first book in the Gods of Night and Day series. Phoebe, goddess of the moon, is killed by the knights of the sun god and her followers are cast out. Without Phoebe to guide the souls of the dead to the underworld, they linger, feeding on the blood of the living. In this dying world, a child thief steals a box from the sun god’s temple and a knight follows in pursuit. When the two meet, their destinies intertwine.

 

Strahan, Jonathan, ed.: Communications Breakdown: Science Fiction Stories About the Future of Connection
(MIT Press 9780262546461, $22.95, 224pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/31/2023)

Original anthology of ten SF stories about the future of connection. Includes an interview by Tim Maughan with digital privacy activist Chris Gilliard. Authors include Elizabeth Bear, S.B. Divya, Cory Doctorow, Ian McDonald, Premee Mohamed. Part of MIT’s Twelve Tomorrows series published in partnership with MIT Technology Review.

 

Suk, Sarah: The Space Between Here and Now
(HarperCollins/Quill Tree 9780063255135, $19.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

YA time-slip fantasy novel. Seventeen-year-old Aimee Roh has Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, a rare condition that causes her to time travel to a moment in her life when she smells something linked to that memory. Unexpectedly, Aimee disappears into a memory of her estranged mom—a moment Aimee has never remembered before. And the memory doesn’t match up with the story she heard from her dad. Desperate for answers, Aimee travels to Korea to unravel the mystery of her memories, the truth about her mother, and the reason she keeps returning to certain moments in her life.

 

Takaoka, Shannon: The Totally True Story of Gracie Byrne
(Candlewick Press 9781536228786, $19.99, 375pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/31/2023)

YA fantasy/magical realism novel. In 1987, sixteen-year-old Gracie Byrne finds a blank journal in her grandmother’s vanity, and uses it to write stories about a more popular version of herself, which then start to come true. Gracie realizes that she can create any reality she wants, from acing tests to winning the attention of her previously indifferent classmates. As her ability to change reality into what she wishes it to be grows stronger, Gracie starts to second-guess what’s real.

 

Wolfe, Gene: The Wolfe at the Door
(Tor 9781250846204, $29.99, 480pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/31/2023)

Collection of stories, poems, essays, and ephemera, including some material never seen before.