New Books, 13 February 2024
Arden, Katherine: The Warm Hands of Ghosts
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593128251, $28.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Historical fantasy novel. During WWI, Laura Iven, a retired field nurse hears word that her brother has been killed in combat, but something doesn’t make sense. She returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital, where she hears whispers about haunted trenches and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion.
Asher, April: Not Your Crush’s Cauldron
(St. Martin’s Griffin 9781250808035, $18, 324pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Paranormal romance novel, the third in the Supernatural Singles series. Witch Olive Maxwell decides it’s time to get out of her comfort zone, and moves in with her long-time crush — who’s just been assigned to be her guardian angel.
Bond, Gwenda: The Frame-Up
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593597736, $18, 352pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Fantasy romance caper novel. Dani Poissant is a con artist and artist with magic talents, given the opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime heist but she needs the help of her estranged mother’s old crew, who aren’t too happy with her since she turned her mother over to the FBI.
Brown, Gareth: The Book of Doors
(HarperCollins/Morrow 9780063323988, $30, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Contemporary fantasy/adventure. Cassie Andrews has an ordinary life working in a New York City bookshop, until her favorite customer dies right in front of her. The last book he was reading is the Book of Doors, full of enigmatic words and mysterious drawings, and now the people who want it are hunting her.
Choo, Yangsze: The Fox Wife
(Macmillan/Holt 9781250266019, $27.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Fantasy mystery novel based on Japanese lore involving fox spirits. In 1908 Manchuria a fox spirit assumes human form to search for her child’s killer.
Gibson, S.T.: An Education in Malice
(Orbit US/Redhook 9780316501453, $29, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Fantasy romance novel of dark academia at Saint Perpetua’s College, an old, isolated campus in the hills of Massachusetts, where Laura Sheridan must deal with rivalries, ambitions, politics, bloodthirsty teachers, and magic.
Holmberg, Charlie N.: Boy of Chaotic Making
(Amazon/47North 9781662508738, $16.99, 317pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Fantasy novel, the third in the world of Keeper of Enchanted Rooms/the Whimbrel House series. Merrit Fernsby, inheritor of Whimbrel House, gets a letter from the Queen of England about his uncle Owein, who is presently inhabiting the body of a mixed-breed terrier. The Queen offers to find a human vessel for Owein and marry him into the royal family. It’s a dream come true, except once they get to London, something doesn’t feel right.
Kingfisher, T.: What Feasts at Night
(Tor/Nightfire 9781250830852, $19.99, 160pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Horror novel, second in the Sworn Soldier series begun in What Moves the Dead. After their terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if they just survived another war, and head to their family hunting lodge. When Easton arrives, they find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence.
Link, Kelly: The Book of Love
(Penguin Random House/Random House 9780812996586, $31, 640pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Fantasy novel. Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.
Meyer, Marissa: With a Little Luck
(Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends 9781250618931, $20.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Young-adult fantasy romance novel. A boy gifted with supernatural good luck discovers the gift might be curse when it comes to love.
Noon, Jeff & Beard, Steve: Gogmagog
(Angry Robot UK 9781915202826, $18.99, 368pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Fantasy novel. After two strangers seek her out, Cady Meade agrees to use her powers of spectral navigation to captain her rickety steam launch one last time down the river Lysis, where mysteries unfold at each port of call.
Older, Malka: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles
(Tordotcom 9781250906793, $20.99, 224pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 02/13/2024)
SF novel, book two in The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti. Mossa returns to Valdegeld to investigate after seventeen students and staff at the university go missing — yet no one has noticed.
Porter, S.E.: Projections
(Tor 9780765396778, $29.99, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 02/13/2024)
Dark fantasy/horror novel. Catherine rejects a fledgling sorcerer and ends up dead, her ghost stuck to her obsessed murderer, who starts targeting other women who remind him of her.
Quin, Eilish: Medea
(Simon & Schuster/Atria 9781668020760, $27.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Mythical fantasy novel of ancient Greece, a reimagining of the story of Medea, Circe’s niece, from her perspective and through a feminist lens. A first novel.
Rashad, Rae Giana: The Blueprint
(Harper 9780063330092, $30, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Speculative alternate world novel. A young Black woman in Texas in a world where an algorithm determines a Black woman’s job, spouse, and residence, finds her life paralleling that of an ancestor who’d been an enslaved concubine in 1800s Louisiana. A first novel.
Saintcrow, Lilith: A Flame in the North
(Orbit US 9780316440332, $19.99, 448pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Norse-inspired fantasy novel, first in the Black Land’s Bane series. Elemental witch Solveig’s brother accidentally kills a northern lord’s son, and she is sent north as weregild with a shieldmaiden for protection as they travel the mythic Black Land.
Slatter, A.G.: The Briar Book of the Dead
(Titan Books UK 9781803364544, $16.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 02/13/2024)
Gothic fantasy novel, set in the same universe as All the Murmuring Bones and The Path of Thorns. Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into the Briar family of witches, who are spared from burning because they protect the town from the much-feared Leech Lords.
Stanford, Stephen K.: Jubilee
(Flame Tree Press UK 9781787588844, $16.95, 288pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 02/13/2024)
Space opera SF novel. Detectives Col and Danee are sent to Jubilee, a lawless, artificial world in its own parallel universe, to recover the body of a leading conservative politician. A first novel.
Talabi, Wole: Convergence Problems
(Astra House/DAW 9780756418830, $27, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Collection of 16 stories, a mix of science, technology, and African folklore.
Wasley, Robin: Dead Things Are Closer than They Appear
(Simon & Schuster 9781665914604, $19.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Young-adult romantic dark fantasy/horror novel. When someone kills one of the Guardians that protects the fault line that seals magic away from the world, ordinary teen Sid Spencer’s life gets a lot more exciting. Monsters crawl from the ground, no one can enter or leave town, and a gang of violent vigilantes roam the streets.
