New Books, 30 July 2024
Bracken, Alexandra: The Mirror of Beasts
(Penguin Random House/Knopf 9780593481691, $20.99, 496pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
Young-adult dark fantasy novel, second in the Silver in the Bone duology. With the dream of Avalon in ruins, Tamsin and her friends are all that stands in the way of Lord Death’s plans to unleash the horrors of Anwnn on the world of the living. Legend tells of a “Mirror of Beasts” powerful enough to stop Lord Death, but the mirror is not all that it seems.
Cameron, Miles: Deep Black
(Orion UK/Gollancz 9781399615037, $28, 510pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/01/2024)
SF space thriller novel, sequel to Artifact Space. Marca Nbaro had always dreamed of serving aboard the Greatships, with their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, as they travel from City to Tradepoint to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species. Now something is targeting the Greatships, and Nbaro and her friends are running out of time to find who is doing it.
Chapman, Clay McLeod: Stay on the Line
(Shortwave 9781959565321, $11.99, 47pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 07/30/2024)
Horror novelette. After a devastating hurricane, survivors in a small town start answering calls at a long-out-of-service phone booth, hoping to say goodbye to loved ones — but some of those believed lost start trying to find a way back home. Illustrated by Trevor Henderson.
de Bodard, Aliette: Navigational Entanglements
(Tordotcom 9781250324887, $20.99, 168pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 07/30/2024)
Xianxia martial arts SF space opera novel. Four young people from different navigator clans are sent to deal with a Tangler, a dangerous beast that lives in the void where ships travel faster than light.
DeLuca, Michael J.: The Jaguar Mask
(Stelliform Press 9781778092602, $21.99, 348pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 08/01/2024)
Surreal fantasy novel set in Guatemala City. Amid increasing civil unrest, a corrupt ex-cop commandeers the cab of a driver with strange powers and drags him into a murder conspiracy, while the bereaved daughter of the murder victim has a vision of the true killer. A first novel.
Garber, Romina: Castle of the Cursed
(St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 9781250863898, $21, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
Young-adult gothic romance novel. Suffering from survivor’s guilt after the mysterious death of her parents, Estela moves to live with her aunt at their ancestral Spanish castle. There she meets a silver-eyed boy that only she can see, and begins to suspect that her parents’ deaths may be linked to family secrets.
Goldsmith, Amy: Our Wicked Histories
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593703953, $19.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
Young-adult horror novel. After being suspended from her scholarship to an exclusive British art school, Meg has to accept an invitation to a weekend Halloween retreat at Wren Hall, if she wants to get her spot at school back. Wren Hall turns out to be damp and drafty and potentially haunted, and locals say some creature lives in the estate’s lake.
Green, Ian: Extremophile
(Bloomsbury UK/Head of Zeus/Ad Astra 9781804545843, $7.99, 320pp, formats: ebook, hardcover, 08/01/2024)
SF novel. In near-future climate-collapse London, biohacker punks Charlie and Parker are hired by a group of extremist environmental activists for a series of jobs ranging from robbery to murder, but they struggle to believe that the world can still be saved.
Guggenheim, Marc: In Any Lifetime
(Amazon/Lake Union 9781662518034, $16.99, 347pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 08/01/2024)
SF novel. A physicist loses his wife and unborn baby in a car accident, and tries to find a parallel universe where they are still alive, but the universe favors certain outcomes, and her death is one of them.
Livingston, Michael: Seaborn
(Bloomsbury UK/Head of Zeus/Ad Astra 9781035905744, $7.99, 302pp, formats: ebook, trade paperback, audio, 08/01/2024)
SF novel, first in the Seaborn Cycle. The matriarchal Seaborne team up with their enemy, the Bone Pirates, to fight off invading airships, and learn a dark secret about their world’s history.
Reyes, Anamely Salgado: My Mother Cursed My Name
(Simon & Schuster/Atria 9781668038000, $28.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
Magical realism/fantasy novel. Three generations of Mexican American women try to control and help each other, even though the eldest is already dead, and the youngest can speak to ghosts. A first novel.
Russell, Ally: It Came From the Trees
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593646977, $17.99, 240pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
Middle-grade horror novel. A creature in the woods takes Jenna’s friend and nobody believes her description of what happened. Determined to save her friend, she joins a local scout troop and they head out into the woods and start tracking the beast.
Ryan, Lexi: Beneath These Cursed Stars
(HarperTeen 9780063311909, $19.99, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
Young-adult fantasy romance novel, the first book in a series set in the world of These Hollow Vows. A human princess with death’s kiss and a fae shifter trying to evade a fatal a prophecy, work together on a mission to assassinate an evil queen.
Skye, Evelyn: One Year Ago In Spain
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593499276, $18, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
Fantasy romance novel. A woman must woo her love’s soul back into his comatose body, but his soul has no memories of their relationship. To save his life, she must convince him to fall in love with her all over again.
Tchaikovsky, Adrian: Saturation Point
(Rebellion/Solaris UK 9781837861743, $29.99, 176pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
SF climate thriller novel. A growing band of rain forest around the equator, too hot for humans to survive in without protection, is the site of a plane crash, and a rescue mission must get in and find any survivors before it’s too late.
Wellington, Joelle: The Blonde Dies First
(Simon & Schuster 9781665922456, $19.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 07/30/2024)
Young-adult horror novel. In the summer before college, a pair of twins and their friends use a Ouija board and wind up hunted by a demon, who then goes after them in typical slasher movie kill order.
