New Books: 9 January 2023
Ascher, Aurora: Sanctuary of the Shadow
(Entangled/Red Tower 9781649374110, $29.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Fantasy romance novel about a woman hiding in a circus where she disguises her gift of prophecy as part of her act until an alluring monster turns up.
Berwah, Tanvi: Somewhere in the Deep
(Sourcebooks Fire 9781728247656, $18.99, 359pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel inspired by South Asia, The Lord of the Rings, and Dante’s Inferno. Seventeen-year-old Krescent Dune is buried under the weight of her dead parents’ debt and ruinous legacy. To earn enough money to escape her unforgiving island she battles monstrous creatures in an underground fighting pit, until a fight goes terribly wrong and she’s banned. Now hopeless, she is offered a deal: in exchange for the erasure of her debts, she must join and protect a hunting party for a rescue mission deep within the mining caves beneath the island.
Blake, Olivie: The Atlas Complex
(Tor 9781250855138, $28.99, 496pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Fantasy novel, third in the Atlas series about a magical school run by a secret society. The six Alexandrians return to the library, vulnerable to the lethal terms of their recruitment. It’s a race to survive as the Society recruits are faced with the question of what they’re willing to betray for limitless power ― and who will be destroyed along the way.
Campbell, Bonnie Jo: The Waters
(Norton 9780393248432, $30, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Fantasy novel. Eccentric herbalist Hermine “Herself” Zook lives on a Michigan island in the Great Massasauga Swamp, where she makes herbal medicines with help from her mother’s ghost, and raises three daughters and a granddaughter.
Cato, Beth: A Feast for Starving Stone
(Amazon/47North 9781662510311, $16.99, 378pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Swashbuckling fantasy adventure, the second in the Chefs of the Five Gods series. Ada Garland, a magically talented rogue Chef, seeks her daughter, Princess Solenn, in the middle of war between their countries.
Dalglish, David: The Slain Divine
(Orbit US 9780759557161, $19.99, 528pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Fantasy novel, the third and final in the Vagrant Gods trilogy. The Everlorn Empire’s grip on Thanet is tighter than ever. The God-Incarnate himself has arrived on its shores to crush the struggling rebellion and carry out his final, sinister plan: he will sacrifice the entire island in order to rise, reincarnated from its ashes.
DeStefano, Lauren: The Lost Ones
(Disney Press 9781368067157, $18.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 01/09/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel about the origins of Captain Hook, second book in the Disney Villans-focused Dark Ascension series. Twins James and Marlene are transported from their humdrum fishing village to Never Land, where they fall in with Peter and his Lost Boys and discover the island’s violent secrets.
Grumley, Michael C.: Deep Freeze
(Tor/Forge 9781250898685, $26.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Near-future thriller novel, the first in the Revival series. Army veteran John Reiff wakes in a hospital, unaware the doctors are hiding the fact he’s the first person successfully revived from cryonic sleep.
Hansen, Sophia: Water’s Break
(Enclave Escape 9798886050868, $24.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel. Nica’s water-dwelling people struggle to deal with the sudden appearance of land dividing their community, only to discover that this disaster is part of a terraforming project by landwalkers.
Linden, Rachel: Recipe for a Charmed Life
(Penguin Random House/Berkley 9780593440216, $16.99, 352pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Fantasy novel. A promising young chef finds every bite of food suddenly tastes bitter. To save her career, she travels to the Pacific Northwest to reconnect with her estranged mom, and discovers a family legacy she never suspected.
McGuire, Seanan: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known
(Tordotcom 9781250848505, $20.69, 160pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Fantasy novel, ninth in the Wayward Children series. New girl Antsy has a gift for finding portals and danger, and uses both to help some friends search other worlds for the Shop Where the Lost Things Go.
Oshetsky, Claire: Poor Deer
(HarperCollins/Ecco 9780063327665, $26.99, 240pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
Literary fantasy novel. A children’s game goes wrong and one girl dies and the other, Margaret, gets haunted by a monster (maybe a figment of her imagination) called Poor Deer, determined to make her face her crime and atone.
Straczynski, J. Michael: The Glass Box
(Blackstone Publishing 9798212007795, $25.99, 294pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/09/2024)
SF novel, a dystopian One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Riley Diaz is incarcerated in a new system of American Renewal Centers (ARCs) — institutions modeled after psychiatric facilities — for mandatory reeducation, where she faces forced therapy, involuntary medication, solitary confinement, restricted rations, and more. Instead of giving in and going free, Riley declares a one-woman war against the ARC program.
Woolf, Maud: Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock
(Angry Robot UK 9781915202901, $18.99, 240pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 01/09/2024)
SF novel. A clone created to assassinate the other 12 clones of their progenitor, a washed-up celebrity, starts to develop an inconvenient conscience and then falls for one of her targets. A first novel.
