New Books, 6 August 2024
Anderson, Leslie J.: The Unmothers
(Quirk Books 9781683694298, $18.99, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Folk horror novel. After the death of her husband, and involvement in her own terrible accident, a journalist is sent to a small, backwards town to investigate the rumor that a horse has given birth to a human baby boy. Thinking the story is clearly ridiculous, she goes to investigate and finds two horribly mangled bodies — one horse, one human, and realizes there might be a real story here. A first novel.
Busse, Morgan L.: Winter’s Maiden
(Enclave Escape 9798886051384, $26.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Young-adult Nordic fantasy novel, first in the Nordic Wars duology. Brighid, born clanless, enters a trial to join the Nordic warriors and becomes one of their fiercest warriors in the war against the south. There she is captured by a healer with magical powers, who starts to unravel secrets about the dark forces manipulating the course of the war.
Cameron, Rob: Daydreamer
(Penguin Random House/Labyrinth Road 9780593572450, $17.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Middle-grade fantasy novel. Charles, an undiagnosed dyslexic, has an imaginary sanctuary where he draws himself friends and magical creatures described by his building’s superintendent, who claims he’s a dragon — and that the new neighbors are dangerous trolls. To protect everyone he cares about, Charles must harness his imagination in ways he never dreamed.
Chance, Maia: The Body Next Door
(Harlequin/Mira 9780778310419, $30, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Speculative thriller/mystery novel. A woman’s secret past with an apocalyptic cult could be exposed when a body is found near her vacation home, and a man with a magical gift is somehow involved.
Chow, Keshe: The Girl With No Reflection
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593707500, $19.99, 496pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Young-adult fairy tale fantasy. A young woman chosen as the crown prince’s bride must travel to the royal palace to meet her new husband — but her world is shaken when she discovers the dark truth the royal family has been hiding for centuries.
Clark, P. Djèlí: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins
(Tordotcom 9781250767042, $20.99, 224pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Fantasy novel about dead assassins (neither cats nor tailed). One of the Matron of Assassin’s resurrected guildmembers must carry out a job, but the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, and her mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget.
Corey, James S.A.: The Mercy of Gods
(Orbit US 9780316525572, $30, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
SF space opera novel, the first book in the Captive’s War series. Humans are captured by the alien Carryx hive-empire to help battle a deathless enemy, alongside many other alien species captured for the same purpose, whom they also must compete against.
Crowley, Codie: Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch
(Disney/Hyperion 9781368099905, $18.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Young-adult horror novel. “Unlikeable” girl Annie Lane is back from being murdered after a lifetime of being left behind. She’s bent on revenge, but first she has to figure out who killed her. First novel.
Davis, Hank & Afsharirad, David, eds.: Tomorrow’s Troopers
(Baen 9781982193553, $18, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Anthology of classic stories of science fiction. Tales from the Golden Age through the current era featuring military, police, and civilians utilizing powered armor. Stories by Joe Haldeman, Christopher Ruocchio, Jason Cordova, and more.
Dennings, Hayley: This Ravenous Fate
(Sourcebooks Fire 9781728297866, $18.99, 480pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Young-adult historical sapphic vampire fantasy romance novel, the first in a series set in Jazz-Age Harlem. In a world where once-human vampires with a terrible affliction are hunted and killed, two young women, a reaper and a reaper hunter, investigate murders and rumors of a reaper cure.
Donovan, Dahlia: A Curse for Samhain
(Hot Tree Publishing 9781923252004, $14.99, 194pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Fantasy romantic mystery novel, the first in the Skeleton Crew series. Gender-fluid, autistic vampire Hyde runs a cozy village book store that also hosts a weekly knitting group called the Skeleton Crew, but when one member fails to show up, Hyde finds themself investigating a murder with their long-term crush Teresa.
Duncan, Dave: Corridor to Nightmare
(Shadowpaw Press 9781989398937, $19.99, 366pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Posthumously published portal fantasy novel. Village school teacher Agatha, retiring after 40 years, gets dragged into another world with a rigid culture based on magic and violence.
Dyer, Alli: Strange Folk
(Simon & Schuster/Atria 9781668045770, $27.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Fantasy novel. A woman returns to her estranged, magical family in Appalachia. There, she gets roped into helping investigate when a family spell appears to go wrong, and summons something sinister, leading her into a rabbit hole of strange phenomena and family secrets. A first novel.
Iglesias, Gabino: House of Bone and Rain
(Little, Brown/Mulholland Books 9780316427012, $29.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Horror novel about teens in Puerto Rico. As a hurricane approaches, a group of teens seek vengeance against an untouchable drug kingpin who murdered one of the group’s mother. And hurricanes bring evil spirits, who have their own ideas of order.
Jae-Jones, S.: Guardians of Dawn: Ami
(St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 9781250191458, $20, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel inspired by the story of Cinderella, the second in the Guardians of Dawn series inspired by fairy tales and East Asian elements. Li Ami is exiled to the outermost West to care for her mentally ill father, whose rantings might actually be dire prophecies.
Kingfisher, T.: A Sorceress Comes to Call
(Tor 9781250244079, $27.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Fantasy novel, a dark reimagining of The Goose Girl. Cordelia lives a silent, friendless life, oppressed by her evil sorcerer mother, until they unexpectedly move into the manor home of a wealthy older Squire and his sister. Cordelia welcomes their hospitality and friendship, but knows that they are her mother’s next victims.
A Sorceress Comes to Call is a standalone novel, not linked to any of Kingfisher’s other long-form works. It’s something of a departure from the concerns of her more recent fantasy novels, blending a Regency-esque setting with the tone and sensibilities of the Gothic novel, flirting right up to the line of horror before pulling back to offer eucatastrophe in its ending.
–Liz Bourke, Locus, August 2024
Krystle, Kiana: Dance of the Starlit Sea
(Peachtree Teen 9781682634653, $19.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel. A failed ballerina tries to rebuild her life on Luna Island, but becomes suspicious of the island lore about angels’ blessing, and enters a competition to become High Priestess to find out what’s really going on. A first novel.
Lyons, Matthew: A Mask of Flies
(Tor/Nightfire 9781250889812, $28.99, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Horror crime novel. After botching a bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller hides out in the cabin full of strange relics, where her mother died. She brings along her friend and a police officer she’s taken hostage. Then her friend vanishes and turns up dead, only to come back not-quite-alive.
MacAllister, Greer: The Thirteenth Husband
(Sourcebooks Landmark 9781728294070, $16.99, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Historical novel with fantasy elements about real-life heiress, adventurer, and mystic Aimée Crocker, who sees a Woman in White just before her father dies, and continues to see her before every tragedy in her life, as she tears through millions of dollars, four continents, and a hearty collection of husbands.
Maehrer, Hannah Nicole: Apprentice to the Villain
(Entangled/Red Tower 9781649377173, $19.99, 368pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Humorous romantic fantasy novel, second in the Assistant to the Villain series about a grumpy Dark Lord and his sunny assistant, based on the author’s viral TikTok series. Something peculiar is happening with the kingdom’s magic and it’s made The Villain’s manor vulnerable, so Evie must step up from being assistant to the Villain, to his apprentice.
Neville, Stuart: Blood Like Mine
(Soho Press/Hell’s Hundred 9781641295413, $29.95, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Horror/crime thriller novel. A mother tries to protect her adolescent daughter Moonflower, on the run from a grisly secret, while an FBI agent hunts a serial killer who has left a trail of bodies throughout the country over the last two years, and his investigation brings him to where mother and daughter are hiding.
Nussbaum, Abigail: Track Changes: Selected Reviews
(Briardene Books UK 9781738561704, $6.36, 502pp, formats: ebook, 08/08/2024)
Non-fiction collection of 57 reviews and essays on SF and fantasy books, films, and TV, organized by theme, covering the last two decades. Includes index.
Nussbaum’s measured criticism had me reflecting on the novel’s limitations. That’s what the best critics do: they bring a new perspective to a work you may already have a firm opinion on. Nussbaum isn’t just an excellent practitioner of this; she’s one of the best within the genre and beyond. That leads me to Track Changes: Selected Reviews, Nussbaum’s first (and I hope not last) collection of criticism.
O’Bryan, Abigail: Iron Rose
(Quill & Flame Publishing House 9781957899725, $18.99, 380pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Young-adult fairy tale fantasy novel inspired by “Beauty and the Beast”. Lydia seeks a royal heir who can unite her country; the Beast watches the destruction of his homeland while shut away in a ruined fortress. Interior illustrations by Tara Marler. A first novel.
Ogundiran, Tobi: In the Shadow of the Fall
(Tordotcom 9781250907967, $20.99, 160pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Fantasy novella, first in the Guardians of the Gods duology. Ashâke is an acolyte eager to serve the orisha, but the orisha refuse to speak to her. Desperate, as all her peers graduate past her, she attempts to summon and trap an orisha. Instead, she experiences a terrible vision, comes to the attention of a powerful enemy sect, and is thrust into the center of a centuries-old war.
Phillips, Helen: Hum
(Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci 9781668008836, $27.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Dystopian thriller novel. A woman who loses her job to AI undergoes an experimental procedure that alters her face to make her undetectable to surveillance, in a city struggling with climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums.”
Revis, Beth: Full Speed to a Cras
h Landing
(Astra House/DAW 9780756419462, $23, 192pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
SF romance novella, first in a trilogy. Ada Lamarr nearly dies while investigating a wrecked space ship, but her rescuers are a government salvage crew on a classified mission and they are not happy to have an unexpected passenger.
Reyes, Ruben, Jr.: There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven
(HarperCollins/Mariner 9780063336278, $28, 240pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Literary collection of seven stories (one in Choose Your Own Adventure form), plus five stories titled “An Alternate History of El Salvador or Perhaps the World”, all looking at the Central American experience through a mix of SF, absurdism, and issues of migration and ethnic identity.
Robert, Katee: Dark Restraint
(Sourcebooks Casablanca 9781728262826, $16.99, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
SF romance novel, the sixth in the Dark Olympus series updating Greek myths in a futuristic, dystopian city, this time about Ariadne, facing a sham marriage with Dionysus, while the Minotaur wants to claim her for himself.
Rollins, James: Arkangel
(HarperCollins/Morrow 9780062893161, $32, 528pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Secret-history SF thriller, #18 in the Sigma Force series. Sigma Force is summoned to investigate the Kremlin’s execution of a Vatican archivist, who before his death sent a coded message warning about a dangerous secret buried in the Golden Library of Tsars.
Sagara, Michelle: Cast in Atonement
(Harlequin/Mira 9780778369721, $18.99, 480pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Fantasy novel, 19th in the Chronicles of Elantra series. Kaylin has taken in ghostly housemates of unknown species, and needs to figure out how to deal with them.
Singh, Nikhil: Dakini Atoll
(Luna Press Publishing 9781915556325, $17.99, 254pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Near-future cyberpunk SF novel, sequel to Club Ded. In a new era, haunted by doppelganger robots, where the Prion Eyes plague divides cities into zones of safety, Delilah attains messianic status in the trippy Good Morning Delilah!, a game-changing show/realm that spawns its own holographic industry.
Spencer, Wen: Storm Furies
(Baen 9781982193546, $28, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Fantasy novel, sixth in the Tinker series. Tinker and her allies fight the oni invasion of Pittsburgh on Elfhome, and so far it looks like the oni are winning, just like the prophecy said.
Stirling, S.M.: To Turn the Tide
(Baen 9781982193539, $28, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/06/2024)
Time travel military SF adventure novel. A scientist in Austria has a time-travel plan to save himself from the end of the world, but a team of American grad students and their professor, sent back to the Roman Empire to change history, realize with dismay that actual experience is a lot different from books.
Stronach, Sascha: The Sunforge
(Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 9781982187071, $18.99, 336pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Futuristic fantasy novel, the second in The Endsong trilogy, inspired by Maori lore. The steel city of Radovan is consumed by fire. There, a magic-wielding pirate crew uncovers an age-old fight between the gods that threatens their world.
Wassmer, MJ: Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend
(Sourcebooks Landmark 9781464218026, $16.99, 384pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Humorous apocalyptic SF novel. Dan Foster is vacationing at an island resort with his girlfriend when the sun explodes. With the resort suddenly plunged into darkness, elite guests commandeer all the supplies and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But he also finds a small plane, and could escape with his girlfriend instead of stepping up to become an unlikely hero. A first novel.
Williamson, Neil, ed.: Nova Scotia Vol. 2: New Speculative Fiction from Scotland
(Luna Press Publishing 9781915556431, $21.99, 246pp, formats: trade paperback, 08/06/2024)
Anthology celebrating the depth and breadth of Scotland’s science fiction and fantasy landscape from its haunted islands to its transformed cities. Includes stories from Ken MacLeod, Eliza Chan, Lorraine Wilson, Morag Edward, David Goodman, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Andrew J. Wilson, Pippa Goldschmidt, Dilys Rose, and Eris Young.
Wilson, Emily H.: Gilgamesh
(Titan Books 9781803364421, $17.99, 512pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 08/06/2024)
Fantasy novel, second in the series The Sumerians, retelling the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh, soon to be crowned King of Uruk, travels north to find his homelands in flames and his family on the run. A blood-red moon brings warnings of a new kind of war, and in the far north, the enemies of Sumer are massing.
