New Books, 3 September 2024

Aiello, K.J.: The Monster and the Mirror: Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell
(ECW Press 9781770417083, $18.95, 272pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Non-fiction, a memoir mixed with research and cultural criticism showing ways popular fantasy can serve as a framework for understanding mental illness and notions of what is good or evil, sane or mad.

 

Buffini, Moira: Songlight
(HarperCollins 9780063358218, $19.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Young-adult dystopian SF novel, the first in the Torch trilogy. Elsa hides her gift of songlight to avoid being categorized as an abhorrent Unhuman, but when her world begins to fall apart, her songlight power causes a girl to manifest before her.

 

Campbell, Tara: City of Dancing Gargoyles
(Santa Fe Writers Project 9781951631390, $16.95, 280pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Post-apocalyptic dark fantasy novel set in the American Southwest. Two sentient stone gargoyles leave the rubble of their church and join two climate refugees who hear of a possible refuge: the mysterious city of dancing gargoyles.

 

Coats, J. Anderson: Loss of the Burying Ground
(Candlewick Press 9781536232387, $18.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Young-adult historical fantasy novel. A ship carrying delegations from two warring nations sinks in neutral waters before a peace treaty can be signed. The only survivors are a pair of teen girls, from rival nations. They wash up on a remote island where they must overcome ingrained prejudices and trust each other to survive.

 

Cole, Geoffrey W.: Zebra Meridian and Other Stories
(Stelliform Press 9781778092695, $21.99, 306pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/05/2024)

Collection of twelve science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories.

 

Cordova, Jason: Mountain of Fire
(Baen 9781982193614, $28, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/03/2024)

SF zombie novel in the Black Tide Rising series about survivors sheltering at St. Dominic’s Preparatory School for Girls. As more refugees find asylum at the isolated school, Sister Ann and the survivors begin to rebuild and consider how to reforge humanity.

 

Dvojack, Sarah: Welcome to Fear City
(Sterling/Union Square & Co. 9781454953906, $19.99, 464pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Young-adult horror novel set in NYC in the summer of 1977. Sylvie Stroud can see the past of any building just by touching it. But one day she sees the memory of a teenage girl’s murder without touching anything at all, and awakens a dark magic in a city already on edge over a serial killer.

 

Gilmore, Olesya Salnikova: The Haunting of Moscow House
(Penguin Random House/Berkley 9780593547007, $29, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Haunted house horror novel set in post-revolutionary Russia. A group of Bolsheviks move into the decaying stately manor home occupied by two sisters, all that remain of a once-noble family. But the newcomers’ presence awakens ancestral spirits, and an official living in the house is found dead.

 

Girma, Tigest: Immortal Dark
(Little, Brown 9780316570381, $19.99, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Young-adult dark academia fantasy novel. A lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the handsome vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister. A first novel.

 

Golden, E.B.: Behind the Crimson Curtain
(Amazon/47North 9781662523243, $16.99, 445pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/01/2024)

Epic romantic fantasy novel. Firin, a face-changing con artist moves between fake lives to escape punishment for her crimes, until the tyrannical government is toppled, opening up the possibility of rejoining a past love, and taking her talents to the theater instead.

 

Gregovic, Lydia: The Monstrous Kind
(Penguin Random House/Delacorte 9780593572375, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Historical fantasy novel inspired by Sense and Sensibility. Merrick Darling is safe in her father’s manor, where fires burn to hold back the toxic fog that turns people into phantoms, at least until her father dies, a string of attacks occur, the fog begins to close in, and her sister goes missing. A first novel.

 

Isaacs, Cheryl: The Unfinished
(HarperCollins/Heartdrum 9780063287389, $19.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Young-adult indigenous horror novel. Avery accidentally awakens the dark horror of the black water, and it haunts her — and then people in her small town go missing. A first novel.

 

Joseph, Sheri T.: Edge of the Known World
(SparkPoint Studio/SparkPress 9781684632626, $18.99, 328pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Near-future SF novel about genetic privacy and surveillance technology. A young-woman grows up on a Texas ranch, unaware she was smuggled in to the US illegally with a tiny but detectable bit of viral DNA from a flu vaccine. If discovered, she will be returned to the Federation and likely death.

 

Knútsdóttir, Hildur: The Night Guest
(Tor/Nightfire 9781250322043, $19.99, 208pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Horror novel, translated from the Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal. Iðunn seeks out doctors and nutritional solutions to her constant fatigue and gets no answers. But when she wears a health tracking watch, it reveals she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night. A first novel.

 

Major, Tim: Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives
(Titan Books 9781803366418, $25.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Supernatural mystery/horror novel. Muriel wants to help Mr. Jekyll, her ex-fiance, investigate a series of missing persons in London, but that means she has to work with the monstrous and uncouth Mr. Hyde too.

 

Rountree, Josh: Death Aesthetic
(Underland Press 9781630230951, $16.99, 154pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Collection of ten stories inspired by death, one new. The author’s third collection.

 

Owen, Abigail: The Games Gods Play
(Entangled/Red Tower 9781649376565, $32.99, 592pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Romantic fantasy novel. A cursed office clerk for the Order of Thieves tries to stay out of trouble in Zeus’s city of San Francisco, but gets chosen by Hades to be his champion.

 

Pinsker, Sarah: Haunt Sweet Home
(Tordotcom 9781250330260, $20.99, 176pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Horror novella. Mara gets a job as the night-shift production assistant on a ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show, where she prepares special effects to look like hauntings. But a series of unnerving incidents and a creepy new coworker show that maybe she’s not the one doing the deceiving.

While there may not be actual haunted houses in Haunt Sweet Home (though there’s a fillip at the end that leaves the door open a crack), there’s certainly a haunted character in Mara, and her sometimes-bumpy quest to discover herself as having both value and purpose, whether or not aided by uninvited supernatural forces, is consistently compelling.

–Gary K. Wolfe, Locus, August 2024

 

Robb, J.D.: Passions in Death
(St. Martin’s 9781250289568, $30, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

SF romance/mystery novel, 59th in the series featuring cop Eve Dallas. Eve and her husband investigate a club where a pre-wedding girls’ night out has turned into a murder scene — in a room where Eve herself once suffered an assault.

 

Romero, George A. & Kraus, Daniel: Pay the Piper
(Sterling/Union Square & Co. 9781454950899, $18.99, 328pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Horror novel set in the small bayou town of Alligator Point, Louisiana, where children are being gruesomely murdered, making old legends of the Piper, a murderous swamp entity, seem horribly real to one young woman.

 

Sell, Cindy L.: Remnants of a Scarlet Flame
(Aether and Ash 9781963768022, $16.99, 372pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Fantasy novel, the first book in The Last Draegion series set in a world where dragons are believed extinct and sorcerers rule. Alar, one of the hunted Syljians, uses his psionic powers to infiltrate the Sorcerers’ Guild as a student of magic. A first novel.

 

Smith, Kaylie: Phantasma
(Grand Central/Forever 9781538769256, $18.99, 512pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Dark fantasy/romance novel. To save her missing sister, Ophelia enters a deadly contest inside the haunted mansion Phantasma, a huge maze offering demons, temptations, and dangerous challenges, and the one prize for the winner/survivor: a wish.

 

Soria, D.L.: The Cottage Around the Corner
(Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593358108, $18.99, 416pp, formats: trade paperback, audio, 09/03/2024)

Fantasy romance novel. A feisty witch and a handsome mage join forces, despite their business rivalry, to save their little town of Owl’s Hollow from supernatural forces.

 

Stewart, Andrea: The Gods Below
(Orbit US 9780316564892, $30, 528pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Fantasy novel, the first in the trilogy The Gods Below. After a divine war shatters the world, the remnants of humanity strike a deal with a devious god which keeps them indebted to him for eternity, and transforms both the land and people in strange new ways.

 

Sulaiman, Sonia, ed.: Thyme Travellers: Palestinian Speculative Fiction
(Fernwood Publishing/Roseway 9781773636948, $24, 160pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/05/2024)

Original anthology of 14 stories of Palestinian speculative fiction featuring “a departure from consensus reality.” Preface by Sonia Sulaiman. Authors include Nadia Afifi, Karl El-Koura, J.D. Harlock, and Elise Stephens. Includes a glossary and discussion questions.

 

Tirado, Vincent: We Came to Welcome You
(HarperCollins/Morrow 9780063383180, $28, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Suburban horror novel. After a rough year, Sol and her wife buy a house in a beautiful, gated community, where the neighbors are a little too friendly, the contract has bizarre details, and strange occurrences begin to happen, like stairs and doors disappearing, and roots growing inside the house.

 

Weber, David & Fox, Richard: Rebel
(Baen 9781982193607, $28, 496pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Military SF novel, second in the Ascent to Empire series, set in the world of Weber’s In Fury Born. The elite families who rule the Terran Federation wage war against the Terran League, enriching themselves in the process, but in the Fringe Worlds, where the soldiers come from, resentment is rising.

 

White, Andrew Joseph: Compound Fracture
(Peachtree Teen 9781682636121, $19.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 09/03/2024)

Young-adult queer Appalachian thriller novel with supernatural elements. West Virginia autistic trans teen Miles Abernathy tries to stop a feud involving his family and the cruel local sheriff, and winds up beaten, and visited by a ghost in the hospital.

 

Wise, A.C.: Out of the Drowning Deep
(Titan Books 9781803369822, $19.99, 176pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 09/03/2024)

Science-fantasy novel. An obsolete automaton living in a secluded monastery in an abandoned corner of the galaxy finds the Pope murdered, and must find out what happened before the Sisters of the Drowned Deep rise up and punish all the residents for their supposed crime.