New Books: 16 January 2023

Avery, Amy: The Longest Autumn
(Macmillan/Flatiron 9781250896490, $28.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Fantasy mystery romance novel. Seasons stop turning when the mortal Time and the god of Autumn are trapped in the mortal world, and the two are torn between the need to fix things and their forbidden attraction to each other. A first novel.

 

Bertino, Marie-Helene: Beautyland
(Macmillan/Farrar, Straus, Giroux 9780374109288, $28, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Quasi-SF first contact novel about an alien born on Earth to a human mother, but with knowledge of a faraway planet, and able to communicate by fax with her extraterrestrial relatives, sending reports on the oddities of earthlings, until as an adult she is tempted to share her messages with the people of Earth.

 

Caldecott, Andrew: Simul
(Quercus UK/Jo Fletcher 9781529415476, $28, 480pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/18/2024)

Dystopian/post-apocalyptic fantasy novel, second in the Momenticon series. ‘Remember Simul’ – the last words of a dying man, words which will take Morag, Fogg and their friends on a wild ride through caverns and over mountain tops, into old paintings, to a university unlike any other and up the lethal Tower of No Return. A ride where mythical beasts and legendary monster-hunters – and the forces of a corrupt establishment led by the murderous Cosmo Vane – lie in wait.

 

Capek, Karel, ed.: R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life
(MIT Press 9780262544504, $29.95, 312pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 01/16/2024)

Critical edition of Capek’s seminal 1920 play, R.U.R.: Rossums Universal Robots, along with 20 critical essays on the play selected from the 2020 Czech Robot 100, plus an afterword/defense by Capek. The play is newly translated by Stepan Simec, who provides a note. Essays have black-and-white illustrations done by children for a 2021 exhibition. Edited and with an introduction by Jitka Cejková. Includes notes and index.

 

Cole, Kamilah: So Let Them Burn
(Little, Brown 9780316534635, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Young-adult fantasy novel about Faron, a Jamaican girl chosen to be the host for the gods of her island nation, which freed them from dragon-riding colonizers, but the new peace becomes fraught when her sister soul-bonds with one of the empire’s dragons. A first novel.

 

Cristofari, Cécile: Elephants in Bloom
(NewCon Press UK 9781914953682, $16.99, 273pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 01/16/2024)

Collection of 18 SF and fantasy stories. This is the fifth volume in NewCon’s series of collections; the author’s first collection. A signed, limited edition hardcover also available.

 

Datlow, Ellen, ed.: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Fifteen
(Skyhorse/Night Shade Books 9781949102727, $19.99, 428pp, formats: trade paperback, 01/16/2024)

Year’s best anthology of short horror stories, with a summation of the year 2022 in horror by Datlow and a list of honorable mentions. Authors include Tananarive Due, Gemma Files, Jeffrey Ford, Margo Lanagan, John Langan, and many more.

 

Fawcett, Heather: Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593500194, $28, 339pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Fantasy novel, second in the Emily Wilde series. When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late.

 

Fraistat, Ann: A Place for Vanishing
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593382219, $19.99, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Young-adult contemporary gothic horror novel. Libby’s family returns to her mother’s childhood home, hoping for a new start after Libby’s bipolar diagnosis, but the place has a dark history of disappearances and masked séances.

 

Healy, Christy: Unbound
(Blackstone Publishing 9798212613835, $16.99, 453pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Fantasy novel inspired by Irish lore and the story of “Beauty and the Beast”. Rozlyn Ó Conchúir waits in her tower prison for the curse to be broken. So when she meets Jamie — a charming and compelling suitor — she allows herself to hope that her days of solitude and patience are over at long last. But as she finds her trust betrayed — and newer, more sinister threats arising — Rozlyn learns that some curses are better left unbroken. A first novel.

 

Kiefer, J.L.: This Wretched Valley
(Quirk Books 9781683693680, $18.99, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Horror novel about rock climbers in Kentucky beset by horrors both human and supernatural, inspired by the Dyatlov Pass incident. A first novel.

 

Long, H.M.: Pillar of Ash
(Titan Books UK 9781803360041, $15.99, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Fantasy novel, fourth in The Four Pillars series. Yske, daughter of the legendary warrior priestess Hessa, has dedicated her life to medicine and pacifism in service to Aita, the Great Healer. When her twin brother Berin, hungry for glory, gathers a party to investigate rumors of strange sightings in the Unmade – shadows in the darkness at the end of the world – Yske joins the mission, to keep him safe.

 

Nayler, Ray: The Tusks of Extinction
(Tordotcom 9781250855527, $26.99, 112pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 01/16/2024)

SF eco-thriller novella. Russia has resurrected the mammoth species, but poachers threaten their survival, so the digital consciousness of a late expert in elephant behavior is uploaded into a mammoth’s brain.

 

Patel, Sajni: A Drop of Venom
(Disney/Rick Riordan Presents 9781368092685, $18.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 01/16/2024)

Young-adult fantasy novel mixing the myth of Medusa and Indian lore. Manisha survived the destruction of the naga by posing as a priestess, but a sexual assault gives her a snake-like power and forces her to flee, only to be hunted by a monster hunter she has a bond with.

 

Pokwatka, Aimee: The Parliament
(Tordotcom 9781250820976, $28.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 01/16/2024)

Fantasy thriller novel of children and adults sheltering in place in a public library from a swarm of deadly owls, reading a children’s fantasy novel for distraction.

 

Reynolds, Alastair: Machine Vendetta
(Orbit US 9780316462846, $19.99, 416pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

SF novel, third in the Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies series. Prefect Dreyfus worries one of his cases was involved in the death of a Panoply operative.

 

Rupprecht, Christoph, ed.: Solarpunk Creatures
(World Weaver Press 9781734054576, $21.99, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 01/16/2024)

Original anthology of optimistic SF stories about creatures, from robots and AI to animals behaving in unusual ways. The editorial team also includes Deborah Cleland, Rajat Chaudhuri, Sarena Ulbarri, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, and Norie Tamura. Authors include N. R. M. Roshak, Tashan Mehta, Justine Norton Kertson, Lauren C. Teffeau, Rimi B. Chatterjee, and more.

 

Weber, David & Kennedy, Chris: To Challenge Heaven
(Tor 9781250907394, $26.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/16/2024)

Military SF novel, third and final in the in the Out of the Dark series. Earth, having driven off the alien Shongairi 40 years before, now needs their help against the evil aliens of the Hegemony.

 

Wijeyeratne, Subodhana: Triangulum
(Rosarium Publishing 9798986614601, $19.95, 300pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 01/16/2024)

Far-future bio-punk SF space adventure of the Nine Worlds of Surya. The godlike Dawn and her Triangulan allies rule humanity, but humans in a vast, living starship watch the old order fall when Dawn’s estranged sister Night comes to right an ancient wrong.