M. H. Boroson, The Girl with Ghost Eyes (Talos Press Nov 2015)
A young widow in San Francisco’s Chinatown of 1898 has the ability to see the spirit world, which shames her family, but accompanied by her knowledge of martial arts, her vision allows her to battle a sorcerer bent on summoning an ancient evil. A colorful tale, and a striking first novel.
Harlan Ellison, Can & Can’tankerous (Subterranean Press
James Bradley, Clade (Penguin Australia Jan 2015)
Three generations of a family face the effects of global warming in this near-future literary SF novel that follows the family through severe storms, political unrest, a pandemic, and more, enduring with unexpected moments of hope.
Paula Guran, ed., Warrior Women (Prime Books Dec 2015)
Guran’s latest anthology brings us 24 stories about powerful woman, ranging from sword & sorcery to outer space.
Leah Bobet, An Inheritance of Ashes (Clarion Oct 2015)
This strange and compelling YA fantasy takes place in the aftermath of a war against a dark god, with sisters Hallie and Marthe trying to keep their farm alive following the devastation. When they hire a veteran to help work the land, he brings with him the ghosts of the past conflict… and the revelation of family secrets better left hidden.
John Joseph Adams, ed., Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press Sep 2015)
Adams selects stories from an impressive roster of authors for this anthology of 26 stories about climate change. Authors include Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Seanan McGuire, and Robert Silverberg.
Margaret Atwood, The Heart Goes Last (Doubleday/Talese Sep 2015)
Noted author Atwood presents this near-future dystopian SF fix-up novel, revised
Stephen Baxter, Ultima (Roc Aug 2015)
The second half of a two-part novel begun in Proxima, this grand space opera continues the story with some alternate histories, with characters finding themselves in a universe where Rome never fell, some taken to join a spaceship full of legionaries, slaves, and Roman functionaries headed back to an alternate Terra. And then there are Incas in space, and the End of Time,
Wesley Chu, Time Salvager (Tor Jul 2015)
The author of the popular Tao trilogy launches a new time-travel series with this intense tale of ‘‘chronmen,’’ operatives sent back to the moments before historical disasters to steal valuable resources without altering the timeline. When chronman James Griffin-Mars breaks the rules by rescuing a scientist from the prior century, they go on the run to escape justice.
Max Gladstone, Last First
Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels (St. Martin’s May 2015)
The much-anticipated new novel from Barker combines two of his popular characters, Pinhead and psychic detective Harry D’Amour – and sends them on a spectacular tour of Hell.
Quan Barry, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born (Pantheon Feb 2015)
This mystical and poetic literary fantasy novel follows a girl born during the Vietnam War who can hear the dead, painting
John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey, eds., The End Is Nigh (CreateSpace 3/14); The End Is Now (CreateSpace 9/14); The End Has Come (CreateSpace May 2015)
Noted editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey teamed up to create this original anthology series, the Apocalypse Triptych, with its varied kinds of apocalypses seen in three views – before, during, and after. It begins with The End Is Nigh,
Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife (Knopf May 2015)
Bacigalupi’s first adult novel since his Hugo and Nebula Award-winning debut The Windup Girl combines his signature grim extrapolations about environmental devastation with a compelling and fast-moving thriller, set in a drought-stricken American Southwest where water is worth killing and dying for. ‘‘Bacigalupi’s most crucial and important novel to date…. The classic thriller elements are in place… but The Water Knife is
Dale Bailey, The End of the End of Everything (Arche Press Apr 2015)
Collection of nine dark fantasy and horror stories with a literary touch, from an author whose work deserves more attention.
Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory (Tor Feb 2015)
Bear brings her own touch to Steampunk in this Western novel set in a 19th-century city with a strong resemblance to Seattle during the Alaska gold rush, seen through
Joe Abercrombie, Half the World (Ballantine Del Rey Feb 2015)
This second book in the Shattered Sea series begun in Half a King finds Yarvi minister to the king, while the book’s focus shifts to two teens, a boy and a girl, trained as warriors, in a ‘‘tantalizing world of medieval rivalries and suggestively high-tech ruins of a lost, and oddly familiar, elven civilization.’’ [Gary K. Wolfe]
Neal Asher,
Kelley Armstrong, Forsaken (Subterranean Feb 2015)
A lavish, limited-edition novella of supernatural suspense, set in the author’s popular urban fantasy Otherworld series, features gorgeous full-color illustrations by French artist Xaviére Daumarie.
Holly Black, The Darkest Part of the Forest (Little, Brown Jan 2015)
The acclaimed YA author returns to her fairytale roots with this dark and compelling story about a pair of siblings who live in a town where
Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer (DAW Jan 2015)
In this fifth volume in the delightful Rivers of London series, about a London policeman assigned to a special detail that investigates supernatural crimes, Peter Grant is forced to leave the city (and his comfort zone) to investigate the disappearances of several children in a small Herefordshire village.
William Alexander, Ambassador (McElderry Sep 2014)
Alexander’s debut novel Goblin Secrets (2012) won a
Mike Allen, Unseaming (Antimatter Oct 2014)
Allen’s first prose collection gathers 14 fascinatingly dark stories, three new, demonstrating the author’s range and skill developed over 16 years as author, poet, and journalist.
Jennifer Marie Brissett, Elysium (Aqueduct Press Dec 2014)
A computer chronicles the lives of two people – always the same people, but always different – surviving in a broken, post-apocalyptic city in this unusual literary SF novel,
Greg Bear, War Dogs (Orbit Oct 2014)
This first book in a new series presents a future Earth transformed by the technology and insights of seemingly benevolent advanced aliens called the Gurus… but 13 years after their arrival, the bill for all that help comes due: the Gurus are being pursued by an ancient enemy, and they need the people of Earth to fight them on the battlefields of Mars.
Joe Abercrombie, Half a King (Ballantine Del Rey Jul 2014)
A reluctant king vows to avenge his father’s death and regain the throne despite the deformed hand that makes him half a man in the eyes of his war- like people. This first novel in the Shattered Sea young-adult fantasy series is a powerful coming- of-age story of Viking adventure, treachery, and revenge.
Paolo Bacigalupi, The Doubt Factory (Little,
Daniel Abraham, The Widow’s House (Orbit Aug 2014)
The fourth volume in the Dagger and the Coin fantasy series continues to deftly weave a compelling tapestry of characters and plots, including a Lord Regent whose ambition outstrips his competence, a cult of priests devoted to a spider goddess, a mercenary captain and a banker trying to save the world from disaster… and new revelations about the nearly extinct dragons who
Poul Anderson, The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 6: A Bicycle Built for Brew (NESFA Press Aug 2014)
The ongoing series of the SF Grand Master’s short fiction continues with this collection of five short novels and three novellas, including the original magazine version of Three Hearts and Three Lions (unavailable since its original 1953 publication), along with stories featuring Nicholas van Rijn, Dominic Flandry, and David Falklyn.
Tobias S. Buckell, Hurricane Fever (Tor Jul 2014)
The author’s signature blend of ecological SF and thriller elements shines in this sequel to Arctic Rising. Former spy Prudence ‘‘Roo’’ Jones, a supporting character in the first volume, takes center stage here when he’s forced to come out of retirement to investigate the murder of an old colleague against a background of catastrophic climate change in the Caribbean, with Buckell’s
John Joseph Adams, ed., Dead Man’s Hand (Titan May 2014)
The Wild West gets weird in this anthology of 23 weird Western stories by some of the biggest guns in the field, including Joe R. Lansdale, Seanan McGuire, Charles Yu, Hugh Howey, Orson Scott Card, and Tad Williams.
Greg Bear & Gardner Dozois, eds., Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson’s Worlds (Subterranean Press Apr 2014)
The many worlds of Anderson’s fiction
Elizabeth Bear, Steles of the Sky (Tor Apr 2014)
Bear delivers the thematic complexity, deft worldbuilding, and compelling storytelling we’ve come to expect in this concluding volume of the Eternal Sky trilogy, set in a world inspired by 13th-century Asia and The Arabian Nights.
Gregory Benford & Larry Niven, Shipstar (Tor Apr 2014)
Two masters of hard SF once more join forces to conclude the duology they began
Marie Brennan, The Tropic of Serpents (Tor Mar 2014)
The second book in the Memoirs of Lady Trent finds the intrepid lady naturalist on a dragon-hunting expedition into her world’s version of Africa, where adventure mixes with a scientific attitude about the fantastic beasts encountered. ‘‘These chronicles have the power of fabulous and historic voyages, along with a wry wit that refuses to accept the standard notions of any era.’’
Rae Carson, The Bitter Kingdom (HarperCollins/Greenwillow Sep 2013)
Young Queen Elisa deals with enemies inside and outside her country in this young-adult fantasy novel, third in the acclaimed trilogy begun in The Girl of Fire and Thorns. This is ‘‘feminist fantasy of the most epic variety… one of the best of its type.’’ [Gwenda Bond]
Adam-Troy Castro, Her Husband’s Hands and Other Stories (Prime Books Feb 2014)
The
James L. Cambias, A Darkling Sea (Tor Feb 2014)
In this impressive hard-SF debut about alien culture clash, Terran scientists study a race of blind, intelligent aliens living beneath a kilometer of ice on the planet Ilmatar, while trying to maintain strained diplomatic relations with their previous extraterrestrial contact, the Sholen.
Ursula Dubosarsky, The Golden Day (Candlewick Aug 2013)
In this evocative and sometimes chilling YA by the noted
Emily Croy Barker, The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic (Viking/Pamela Dorman Aug 2013)
In this enchanting debut novel, disenchanted PhD student Nora gets lost in the woods and finds herself in a strange new world of elegant balls and weird magic, where she becomes a magician’s apprentice. Barker ‘‘brings an unconventional outlook to elements of the fantastic.’’ [Faren Miller]
Ben Bova, Mars, Inc.: The Billionaire’s Club (Baen Dec
Kage Baker, In the Company of Thieves (Tachyon Publications Nov 2013)
A welcome posthumous collection of six stories, one an original tale co-authored by Baker’s sister Kathleen Bartholomew in the acclaimed Company series.
E. C. Blake, Masks (DAW Nov 2013)
A young woman’s masking is supposed to confirm her as a Gifted magic uses, but instead sends her to slave in the mines in this powerful fantasy novel, the
Richard Bowes, If Angels Fight (Fairwood Press Oct 2013)
The award-winning author’s collection includes 12 stories from the past quarter century, including International Horror Guild Award winner ‘‘There’s a Hole in the City’’ and the World Fantasy Award-winning title story.
Mira Grant, Parasite (Orbit Oct 2013)
Seanan McGuire’s alter-ego, best known for the Newsflesh zombie SF series, begins a new series of medical-thriller SF set in a near future
Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam (Random House/Doubleday/Talese Sep 2013)
Post-apocalyptic survival takes some odd twists in this third volume in Atwood’s acclaimed post-apocalyptic SF trilogy after Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. ‘‘As SF, the trilogy has what we might call issues with coherence. As a kind of posthuman foundation myth, however, it achieves some moments of genuinely haunting power.’’ [Gary K. Wolfe] Published 8/13 by McClelland &
Neal Asher, Zero Point (Night Shade Books Aug 2013)
The second novel in the Owner series continues the story of that powerful immortal in a grim 22nd century, a mix of ‘‘psychological-moral-political drama’’ and ‘‘highly kinetic action-movie stuff, with industrial quantities of death-dealing up and down the scale, from space battles to hand-to-hand single combat, laid out in parallel-plotted, cross-cut, near-Saturday-matinée cliffhanger mode.’’ [Russell Letson] First published by Tor UK
Ellen Datlow, ed., Telling Tales (Hydra House Jun 2013)
The ‘‘Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology’’ gathers 16 stories by graduates of the prestigious writing workshop, including Daniel Abraham, Andy Duncan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Kij Johnson, Margo Lanagan, and Rachel Swirsky, with afterwords by instructors including Samuel R. Delany, Connie Willis, and Ursula K. Le Guin, and a general introduction by Vonda N. McIntyre.
Gardner Dozois, ed., The Year’s Best
Eleanor Arnason, Big Mama Stories (Aqueduct Jul 2013)
Arnason pioneers (and possibly invents) the subgenre of ‘‘space-age tall tales’’ here, with five stories (two original) about ‘‘Big Mamas,’’ cosmic trickster figures capable of traveling in time and space and changing in size from bigger than galaxies all the way down to human scale, as they meddle in the affairs of people and aliens. ‘‘Wonderfully over-the-top.’’ [Gary K. Wolfe]
Alex
Daniel Abraham, The Tyrant’s Law (Orbit May 2013)
A tyrant’s quest for peace leads to ever greater was in this third book in the acclaimed fantasy series, The Dagger and the Coin. ‘‘This smart, absorbing, fascinating military fantasy, exciting and genuinely suspenseful, will keep readers on their toes.’’ [Publishers Weekly]
K. L. Armstrong & M. A. Marr, Loki’s Wolves (Little, Brown May 2013)
Norse myth and the end of
