New Books, 11 June 2024
Bowles, David & McCall, Guadalupe García: Hearts of Fire and Snow
(Bloomsbury USA 9781547610044, $19.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 06/11/2024)
Young-adult fantasy romance about two people linked by a magic conch: a woman in modern day Mexico fleeing gang violence and a man in 1521 Tenochtitlan under siege by Spanish invaders. The authors provide a long note on working together and their inspirations.
Cashore, Kristin: There Is a Door in This Darkness
(Penguin Random House/Dutton 9780803739994, $19.99, 382pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Young-adult contemporary novel with fantasy elements. Wilhelmina, grieving an aunt and dealing with the COVID lockdowns, starts seeing otherworldly things around town, and is relieved when her friend James sees them, too.
Felker-Martin, Gretchen: Cuckoo
(Tor/Nightfire 9781250794666, $18.99, 352pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Horror novel. In 1995 seven queer kids are stuck in a conversion camp from hell. Sixteen years later the fate of the world depends on the survivors of that summer camp, who are the only ones who can put an end to the horror.
Ghosh, Puloma: Mouth
(Astra House 9781662602474, $26, 224pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/11/2024)
Collection of 11 uncanny and surreal stories. A first collection.
Hamilton, Emily: The Stars Too Fondly
(Harper Voyager US 9780063320819, $18.99, 327pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Queer space opera SF novel set in 2061. Four young professionals break into a failed spaceship, accidentally trigger takeoff, and acquire superpowers. A first novel.
Kitasei, Yume: The Stardust Grail
(Macmillan/Flatiron 9781250875372, $28.99, 313pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
SF novel. An art thief dedicated to returning stolen artifacts to alien civilizations goes after a powerful object that could save an entire alien species — but it hasn’t been seen in living memory, and she’s not the only one hunting for it.
Lloyd, Ellery: The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby
(Harper 9780063323001, $29.99, 335pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Mystery novel with a fantasy element, interweaving the stories of three suspicious deaths over a century. An art history student researches a Surrealist painter and her lost masterpiece, uncovers a mystery involving murder, an aristocratic family with a rumored curse, and a possible message hidden in the painting.
Mohamed, Premee: We Speak Through the Mountain
(ECW Press 9781770417335, $15.95, 152pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/16/2024)
Post-climate-apocalypse SF novella, sequel to The Annual Migration of Clouds. 19-year-old Reid Graham battles the elements and her lifelong chronic illness to reach the utopia of Howse University. But life in one of the storied “domes” ― the last remnants of pre-collapse society ― isn’t what she expected.
Nye, Maggie: The Curators
(Northwestern University Press/Curbstone 9780810147324, $24, 296pp, formats: trade paperback, 06/15/2024)
Dark fantasy novel set in 1910s Atlanta. After the lynching of a Jewish factory superintendent, 13-year-old Ana Wulf and her friends create a golem in the slain man’s image. A first novel.
Overmyer, Beth: Tempered Glass
(Flame Tree Press UK 9781787588752, $16.95, 272pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/11/2024)
Portal fantasy novel, second in the Blade and Bone series. Verve survived her transformation into the Fire Queen, but she can’t control her magic. When tragedy strikes, she’s forced to return to a land she never wanted to see again.
Perez, Nadi Reed: The Afterlife of Mal Caldera
(Titan Books 9781803367767, $17.99, 448pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Contemporary fantasy novel. Former rockstar Mal Caldera is dead, and while her fellow ghosts party their afterlives away at an abandoned mansion they call the Haunt, Mal is determined to make contact from beyond the grave. A first novel.
Pratt, Tim: The Knife and the Serpent
(Angry Robot 9781915202802, $18.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
SF novel involving parallel worlds, the first in the Night-Space series. Two otherworldly women compete in a race for love and conquest, one disguised as a UC Berkeley grad student, the other the granddaughter of a deposed ruler of a parallel Earth.
Pratt has a gift for embracing the ridiculous and turning it into entertainment: playing the emotional field with seriousness while rolling around in weird and wacky SFFnal propositions.
Priest, Cherie: Cinderwich
(Apex Book Company 9781955765206, $21.95, 184pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Southern Gothic/”cozy horror” novella. A journalist and her college mentor go to a dying Tennessee town to investigate family secrets and a decades-old mysterious death. But the people of Cinderwich are staunchly resistant to questions. The deeper the women dig, the closer they come to exhuming the evil at the roots of the town.
Rempel, Benjamin: Infect
(Scholastic/Chicken House , $6.99, pp, format: ebook, 06/15/2024)
Young-adult zombie horror novel, first in the Feral Winter series. As their community unravels, estranged half-brothers Andrew and Xavier must uncover the terrifying truth about a virus ravaging their town if they are to survive one more night from the things that hunt them.
Riccioni, Jo: The Branded
(Angry Robot UK 9781915998552, $18.99, 408pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Romantic fantasy novel, the first in The Branded Season series. Orphaned twin sisters are part of the privileged unbranded, but are kept as breeding stock. When one rebels she discovers they’re part of a prophecy and she has unexpected powers.
Rolfe, Glenn: When the Night Falls
(Flame Tree Press 9781787588097, $16.95, 240pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/11/2024)
Horror novel about two young people separated by a dark past, but a new documentary about the Beach Night Killer is bringing crowds and stirring things up.
Rowland, Alexandra: Running Close to the Wind
(Tordotcom 9781250802538, $29.99, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Fantasy novel. A spy on the run with the world’s most expensive secret heads for an isolated pirate republic to sell it, but trouble and hijinks follow.
Saintcrow, Lilith: The Fall of Waterstone
(Orbit US 9780316440530, $19.99, 416pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Fantasy novel about an elemental witch and her shieldmaiden, second in the Norse-inspired Black Land’s Bane series. Solveig and her shieldmaid have finally reached the fabled Elder sanctuary of Waterstone, where there is a great weapon, one that only Solveig’s kind may wield.
Sloan, Robin: Moonbound
(Macmillan/Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD 9780374610609, $29, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Post-apocalyptic SF novel set 11,000 years after humanity lost a war to genetically engineered “dragons” developed for space exploration. The boy Ariel is tasked by the Wizard Malory with pulling Excalibur from its stone, but comes back with the wrong sword, and has to flee.
Taylor, Jodi: Killing Time
(Headline 9781035404964, $28.99, 464pp, formats: ebook, audio, 06/06/2024)
Time travel SF novel, fifth in the Time Police series. Two members of Team 236 are trapped on a train, lost in Time, hurtling through the night. Lt. Grint and his team are in pursuit an must find a way to catch up before the train disappears for good.
Topping, Zac: Rogue Sequence
(Tor 9781250322432, $28.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
SF/thriller of genetically modified super-soldiers in the late 21st century. Ander Rade, a dutiful super-soldier, undergoes violent captivity. Years later, after modified people have all been declared a threat to society, government agents offer to get him out if he will help track down a former teammate.
Tremblay, Paul: Horror Movie
(HarperCollins/Morrow 9780063070011, $30, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Psychological horror novel. The only surviving cast member of a cult horror movie with tragic secrets helps with a big budget Hollywood remake three decades later.
Ward, Matthew: Fire Within Them
(Orbit 9780316476805, $21.99, 592pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Fantasy novel, second book in The Soulfire Saga. Searching for a cure for the omen rot that Kat came down with after channeling the Deadwinds, she goes on a journey that will uncover secrets concerning her past, her family, and the kingdom itself.
Worrell, Dwain: Alliance
(Amazon/47North 9781662511981, $16.99, 331pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Near-future military SF novel, the second in the Androne duology about a remotely fought war against an unknown enemy. Survivor of a strange war with the Quondam, Harmony is allied with a cult of zealots who worship time itself, seeking to obliterate the power of the Quondam and prevent a war that has already ended.
Yoon, Nicola: One of Our Kind
(Penguin Random House/Knopf 9780593470671, $28, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 06/11/2024)
Psychological horror novel about a family that moves to an all-Black utopian community near Los Angeles that’s a little too insulated from racial injustice, and has a wellness center hiding a horrifying secret.
