New Books: 2 January 2024
Avery, Annaliese The Immortal Games
(Scholastic 9781338754520, $12.99, 336pp trade paperback, ebook, audio 01/02/2024)
Young-adult fantasy romance novel. 16-year-old Ara is seeking revenge on the Gods for allowing her sister to die in the games. She’s determined to be selected as a token, but when she is, she realizes that it isn’t just her life at stake, but also her heart.
Butler, D.J.: Among the Gray Lords
(Baen 9781982193133, $28, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 01/02/2024)
Fantasy novel, the third book in the Indrajit and Fix series about two would-be heroes in the great city of Kish. An encounter with an old friend becomes tragically fatal, and Indrajit and Fix set out on a high-stakes, high-adrenaline quest across the ancient city of Kish to bring their friend back to life. At each step, the complications and the enemies alike pile up. The mysterious necromancers, the Vin Dalu priests, bind the heroes on an errand that sends them shuttling from one thieves’ guild to the next, pitting Indrajit and Fix against the deadly House of Knives and embroiling them in a plot by the giant, wasplike Kattak to take dire revenge on Kish and all its great houses.
Deaver, Mason: Okay, Cupid
(Scholastic/PUSH 9781338777697, $19.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/02/2024)
Young-adult fantasy comedy-romance novel. Agender teen Jude is a Cupid on probation assigned to unite two estranged best friends, but falls for one of the two.
Goldsmith, RW: The Serpents of Eden
(Running Wild 9781955062763, $19.99, 422pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 01/08/2024)
Fantasy novel. Wilderness artist Clay Middleton goes across alternate post apocalyptic Earths, chasing after the three supernatural beings that kidnapped his ten-year-old grandson, aided by a magic stone and a young paranormal investigator.
Gregson, Marc J: Sky’s End
(Peachtree Teen 9781682635766, $18.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/02/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel, the first in the Above the Black trilogy set in the Skylands, where islands float in the sky — but so do sky serpents. Conrad seeks status to placate the uncle who exiled him to poverty. A first novel.
Hazlett, Sean Patrick, ed.: Weird World War: China
(Baen 9781982193140, $17.99, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 01/02/2024)
Original anthology of 23 speculative stories of a future war in China. Stories by: Larry Correia, Steve Diamond, David Drake, Nick Mamatas, Brian Trent, Martin L. Shoemaker, Blaine L. Pardoe, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Julian Michael Carver, D.J. Butler, David J. West, Sean Patrick Hazlett, Deborah A. Wolf, Stephen Lawson, Erica L. Satifka, Rob McMonigal, Brenda Clough, Kevin Ikenberry, Brad R. Torgersen, T.C. McCarthy, Nadia Bulkin, Freddy Costello, and Michael Z. Williamson.
Lowd, Mary E., ed.: Zooscape, Volume 3
(Deep Sky Anchor 9781088241776, $14.99, 253pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 01/08/2024)
Anthology of 27 fantastic furry stories published in Zooscape magazine’s issues #8-10. Authors include Nina Kiriki Hoffman.
Lucia, Kevin, ed.: The Terror at Miskatonic Falls
(Cemetery Dance Publications 9781587679179, $25, 154pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 01/08/2024)
McCormack, Mike: This Plague of Souls
(Soho Press 9781641295789, $27, 192pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/02/2024)
Metaphysical noir thriller, a follow-up to the experimental stream-of-consciousness novel Solar Bones. Nealon returns from prison to find his west Ireland home empty, and his search for his family leads to international crimes.
Roberts, Tara Karr: Wild and Distant Seas
(Norton 9781324064886, $27.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 01/02/2024)
Historical novel with elements of magical realism, about a minor character from Moby-Dick. Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket in 1849 as the once-thriving whaling industry declines. Her husband, Hosea, is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those who would cast her out. One night, a sailor appears asking her to call him Ishmael. Suddenly, her careful illusion begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a new life from the pieces that remain. Her choices ripple through generations in a narrative that follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho.
Saft, Allison: A Fragile Enchantment
(St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 9781250892836, $17.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/02/2024)
Young-adult fantasy-of-manners romance novel. Niamh Ó Conchobhair’s magic lets her stitch emotions and memories into fabric. She jumps at the chance to design the wardrobe for a royal wedding in the neighboring kingdom of Avaland. But Avaland is far from the fairytale that she imagined. While young nobles attend candlelit balls and elegant garden parties, unrest brews amid the working class. The groom himself, Kit Carmine, is prickly, abrasive, and begrudgingly being dragged to the altar as a political pawn. But when Niamh and Kit grow closer, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more ― until an anonymous gossip columnist starts buzzing about their chemistry, promising to leave them alone only if Niamh helps to uncover the royal family’s secrets.
Steiger, A.J.: Eye of a Little God
(Canongate UK/Severn House 9781448312146, $29.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 01/02/2024)
Mystery/horror novel. After losing his job, a drifter is desperate and alone and ready to end his life, until a mysterious voice leads him to a cryptic journal and a strange otherworld under Devil’s Fork, Nebraska.
Wehm, M. Darusha: Terraforming Mars: Shores of a New Horizon
(Aconyte 9781839082757, $16.95, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/02/2024)
Gaming tie-in novel based on the board game. On Mars, terraforming breakthroughs leave citizens dreaming of a transformed planet. However, when a contaminated ice asteroid puts water supplies in peril, the dream quickly shatters. Professor Zambrotta “Zammi” Kaspar is tasked to investigate a fatal crash on a remote ice asteroid, but he never expects to discover his missing sister there as an indentured worker for the Mining Guild. As the siblings reconnect and dig deeper into the mystery of the contaminated water, they both discover a personal legacy of secrets and loss over competing visions for the future of humanity.
Zhao, Amélie Wen: Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593487549, $19.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/02/2024)
Young-adult xianxia fantasy novel based on Chinese traditions, second in the Song of the Last Kingdom series. The Demon Gods have risen. Skies’ End has fallen to the colonizers. And Lan and Zen have chosen sides. But they will not fight together. The battle for the Last Kingdom rages on. But to win the war, Lan will have to decide: Can she face the boy she loves again? And when she does, can she kill him to free her people?
