This page is updated as books are received throughout the month.
Timeless Moon by C.T. Adams & Cathy Clamp
(a tale of the Sazi), Tor, $6.99, 422pp, pb, 9780765356659. Paranormal romance.
The paranormal romance duo of Cathy Clamp and C.T. Adams has left many fans waiting for the next book in their USA Today bestselling Sazi series. Now, with Timeless Moon, Clamp and Adams return to satisfy both longtime readers and anyone who may be on the lookout for exciting and sexy paranormal romance. As Romantic Times BOOKReviews has said of them, “Like few others, Adams and Clamp’s writing style successfully blends romance, adventure and the magical. As their latest confirms, this outstanding duo is unbeatable!”
Josette Monier is a legend among the Sazi…
One of the most powerful, beautiful, and oldest Sazi in existence, she lives in self-imposed exile. Her gift of sight is so strong that to be around other living creatures is to be in pain. What Josette has experienced lies beyond the scope of the Sazi, for her mate is in love with someone else. But when her gift of sight reveals trouble for her community, she knows that she has no choice. She must set aside her personal pain and save her people. And perhaps save herself and find love again.
Touch of Darkness by C.T. Adams & Cathy Clamp
Tor, $6.99, 418pp, pb, 9780765359629. Paranormal romance. On-sale date: August 2008.
Katie and Tom are finally getting married.
Or they would be—but things just keep going wrong. Tom’s werewolf ex-girlfriend is stalking Katie. Both Katie’s brothers are giving her the cold shoulder. The Thrall is gearing up for something, but Katie can’t figure out what it is because they are blocking her psychic powers. A freak blizzard has destroyed Katie’s apartment building. And, almost worst of all, everyone around Katie is having babies—just rubbing it in that Katie herself is barren.
But there’s a light in the darkness: Tom himself. Though the punishment for it almost killed him, Tom chose to stay with Katie instead of mating with someone from his werewolf pack. They’ve got true love, devotion, and incredibly hot sex. What more can a girl ask for?
How about fopr her dead ex-fiancé to stay dead instead of rallying the Thrall to kill all the werewolves and to take over the world?
Oh, and a wedding.
Worldweavers: Gift of the Unmage by Alma Alexander
Eos, $7.99, 401pp, pb, 9780060839574. Fantasy.
As the seventh child of two seventh parents, Thea is expected to be a magical prodigy—which makes her inability to perform the simplest magic a severe disappointment. A visit with Cheveyo, a southwestern Native American mage, reveals that it’s not that Thea doesn’t have the power to perform magic, it’s that her subconscious won’t let her. Now, at the Wandless Academy, the last-ditch school for those who can’t or won’t perform magic, Thea finds a critical role for her worldweaving in the face of a deadly threat.
Alma Alexander has woven a richly inventive fantasy out of elements from many cultures, both real and imagined, and a memorable cast of characters. Laced with lush sensory details and highly inventive creation mythology, Gift of the Unmage is a coming-of-age novel—the first of a trilogy—a classic school story, and a debut from an author with a taste and a talent for epic fantasy.
Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction: Classic Stories that Inspired C.S. Lewis edited by Douglas A. Anderson
Del Rey, $15.00, 339pp, tp, 9780345498908.
In his acclaimed collection Tales Before Tolkien, Douglas A. Anderson illuminated the sources, inspirations, and influences that fired J.R.R. Tolkien’s genius. Now in Tales Before Narnia, Anderson turns his attention to beloved Oxford author C.S. Lewis, whose influence on modern fantasy is second only to Tolkien’s own.
While Lewis is widely known for his series The Chronicles of Narnia, he also wrote groundbreaking works of science fiction and urban fantasy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), and came to be regarded as among the most important Christian writers of the twentieth century. A contemporary and close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis read voraciously all of his life and counted among his many influences fairy tales, Norse myth, and early science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells.
Published to tie in with the 16 May 2008 release of the second Chronicles of Narnia film, Prince Caspian, Tales Before Narnia is a collection of more than twenty classic fantasy and science fiction stories including the direct inspiration for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: the never-before-published story “The Wood That Time Forgot” by Roger Lancelyn Green, who later became Lewis’s biographer.
[Contents: “Tegnér’s Drapa” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; “The Aunt and Amabel” by E. Nesbit; “The Snow Queen: A Tale in Seven Stories” by Hans Christian Andersen; “The Magic Mirror” by George MacDonald; “Undine” by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué; “Letters from Hell: Letter III” by Valdemar Thisted; “Fastosus and Avaro” by John Macgowan; “The Tapestried Chamber; or, The Lady in the Sacque” by Sir Walter Scott; “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” by Charles Dickens; “The Child and the Giant” by Owen Barfield; “A King’s Lesson” by William Morris; “The Waif Woman: A Cue—From a Saga” by Robert Louis Stevenson; “First Whisper of The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame; “The Wish House” by Rudyard Kipling; “Et in Sempiternum Pereant” by Charles Williams; “The Dragon’s Visit” by J.R.R. Tolkien; “The Coloured Lands” by G.K. Chesterton; “The Man Who Lived Backwards” by Charles F. Hall; “The Wood That Time Forgot: The Enchanted Wood” by Roger Lancelyn Green; and “The Dream Dust Factory” by William Lindsay Gresham.]
Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews
(Book Two of the Kate Daniels Series), Ace, $6.99, 260pp, pb, 9780441015832. Fantasy.
Bestselling author Ilona Andrews continues her unique and edgy urban fantasy series with Magic Burns: Kate Daniels Series, Book Two. Featuring tough chick mercenary Kate Daniels, the shape-shifting lord of the beasts, and some really disturbing vampires, Magic Burns hits the right chords among urban fantasy fans. This distinctive tale will appeal to the devoted fans of Patty Briggs and Yasmine Galenorn.
Kate Daniels is a mercenary who makes her living cleaning up problems of the magical kind, and those problems are about to heat up. A flare is coming, a magical wildfire that will consume the world. During a flare, the amount of magic in the world increases to unbelievable levels, enough that gods and goddesses can manifest and battle for power.
Now Kate, Curran, the lord of the beasts, Atlanta’s witches, shape-shifters, necromancers, and vampires all find themselves pulled into the divine conflict. And if they can’t stop the cataclysmic showdown, the city may not survive.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2008: The Year’s Best SF and Fantasy Selected by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America edited by Ben Bova
Roc, $16.00, 375pp, tp, 9780451461889. Science fiction anthology. On-sale date: 1 April 2008.
This annual tradition from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) collects the best of the year’s stories, as well as essays and commentary on the current state of the genre and predictions for future science fiction and fantasy films, art, and more.
This year’s award-winning authors include Jack McDevitt, James Patrick Kelly, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Hand, and more. The anthology also features essays from celebrated science fiction authors Orson Scott Card and Mike Resnick.
[Contributors: Elizabeth Hand, James Patrick Kelly, Bud Webster, Peter S. Beagle, Joe Haldeman, Mike Allen, Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Ruth Berman, Orson Scott Card, Eugene Mirabelli, John Kessel, James Gunn, Diana Wynne Jones, Jack McDevitt, Mike Resnick, and Justine Larbalestier.]
Dark Wraith of Shannara by Terry Brooks, adapted by Robert Place Napton, illustrated by Edwin David
Del Rey, $13.95, 200pp, tp, 9780345494627. Fantasy graphic novel.
With more than 21 million copies in print of his US editions alone, Terry Brooks, “the godfather of American fantasy,” is in the top tier of all fantasy writers. The graphic novel form has taken off in recent years, becoming an extremely popular literary medium. This spring, Del Rey is proud to publish the first-ever graphic novel set in Terry Brooks’s bestselling world of Shannara: Dark Wraith of Shannara, written by Terry Brooks, with illustrations by Edwin David, adapted by Robert Place Napton.
Dark Wraith of Shannara is a new, never-before-published story adapted in graphic form. As Terry Brooks decribes the creative process, “the approach to creating the graphic novel was simple. I was to come up with a new story set in the Shannara world centered around the characters from Wishsong of Shannara, and Jair Ohmsford in particular. My concerns about having to write and draw the story were quickly resolved. Stick figures and dialogue consisting of exclamations were the limit of my very rudimentary skills, and we all knew that wasn’t going to cut it. So writer Robert Napton and artist Edwin David were brought aboard to do the heavy lifting.”
If you’ve never ventured into the world of Shannara, consider this an ideal opportunity. Prepare to enter the breathtaking realm of the Four Lands, where beings both noble and sinister have quested and clashed, crossed swords in the names of darkness and light, and engaged in adventures rich with mystery and majesty.
Small Favor: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
Ace, $23.95, 423pp, hc, 9780451461896. Fantasy. On-sale date: 1 April 2008.
Last year was an extraordinary year for Jim Butcher, author of the mega-popular series The Dresden Files. Not only did White Night, the ninth book in the series, skyrocket onto the New York Times bestseller list, but so did Captain’s Fury, the fourth in Butcher’s traditional fantasy series, The Codex Alera. Much of Butcher’s success last year can be attributed to the Sci Fi Channel’s popular series based on the The Dresden Files which aired in early 2007.
So, what’s in store for Jim Butcher and Harry Dresden in 2008? The highly anticipated 10th installment in the bestselling series, Small Favor: A Novel of The Dresden Files hits stores this April. Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard (and private investigator!), is back, and his life is finally calminig down. Except that he owes a few “small” favors that he can’t turn down—one that will trap Dresden between a nightmarish foe and an equally deadly ally, and one that will strain his skills to their very limits.
Blackness Tower by Lillian Stewart Carl
Juno, $6.99, 384pp, pb, 9780809572021. Fantasy/mystery/romance.
Blackness Tower: an enigma at the edge of this world, looking over the sea to the next. Drawing lonely, haunted souls to its ancient riddles, all seeking their own answers among its stones.
Ewan Calder is anm archeologist looking for a galleon from the Spanish Armada, one rumored to have wrecked on the rugged Scottish coast.
Magnus Anderson is a television presenter looking for proof of the paranormal.
David Sutherland is an ex-soldier looking for restoration not only of Blackness Tower, but of his own life.
Lauren Reay is looking for answers about her family’s mysterious past—and about her own compelling dreams. Dreams can’t hurt you, she thinks. Neither can her ancestors. The past is past.
Or is it? It is Lauren’s past, her presence, the shape of her face, the depths of her spirit, that will open the secret at the heart of Blackness Tower.
Embrace the Night by Karen Chance
Roc, $7.99, 392pp, pb, 9780451461995. Fantasy. On-sale date: 1 April 2008.
USA Today bestselling author Karen Chance is the author of the highly acclaimed paranormal series starring clairvoyant Cassie Palmer. The first two books—Touch the Dark and Claimed by Shadow—received rave reviews from romance and fantasy reviewers alike. Now, Karen Chance returns with the third book inthe series: Embrace the Night.
Recently named the world’s chief clairvoyant, Cassandra Palmer still has a thorn in her side: she’s magically bound to a certain master vampire (the sizzling-hot Mircea) and until she can break that bond, her life will never be her own. Cassie realizes that the spell that binds them can only be broken with an incantation found in an ancient book—and accessible only by traveling through time into the past. But she learns that the book also contains some very dangerous spells, which could endanger the world if brought into the present day. How will Cassie ever break the bond that ties her to Mircea?
The Fall of Rome by Beth Ciotta
Medallion, $7.95, 351pp, pb, 9781933836041. Historical Romance.
They gamble their lives with reckless abandon, but are they brave enough to bet on love?
Famous for bending the law to get his man, former Wells Fargo detective, Rome Garrett signs on with the Peacemaker Alliance, a covert government agency intent on taming the west. Unfortunately, his first assignment involves teaming up with the only woman who ever broke his heart in order to entrap a cold-blooded killer. Bringing down Bulls-eye Brady would restore Rome’s tarnished career. As a personal bonus he vows to show his old flame how it feels to love and lose, vanquishing the beautiful hellcat from his dreams once and for all.
Retired cardsharp, Kat Simmons, has been in hiding for six years. Now she’s being asked to risk her hard won obscurity by baiting the very man she fears. Not only that, the plan involves spending intimate time with Rome, the only man she ever truly loved. Readopting her flamboyant persona, Kat joins Rome on a whirlwind poker tournament tour, gaining notoriety as they clean up at the tables. When word gets out that Kat Simmons is back on the circuit, with any luck, Bulls-eye Brady will show up to reclaim the woman who “got away”. Meanwhile Kat and Rome grapple with rekindled passion, past betrayals, and a secret that could prove their doom.
Lamplighter by D.M. Cornish
(Monster Blood Tattoo, Book Two), Putnam, $19.99, 736pp, hc, 9770399246395. Fantasy. On-sale date: April 2008.
One thrill that goes along with discovering a talented new writer or exploring a startlingly new fantasy world is waiting with bated breath for the next installment in an epic saga—and you can feel by the heft of this book that the adventures of Rosamünd Bookchild are truly developing into an epic.
For established fans, herein lies more breathtaking action, more mystery, more fascinating characters and creatures, more incredible world-building. And for new readers picking up D.M. Cornish’s work for the first time… you get all of this as well. It is a rare privilege as an editor to participate in a work that you feel is one of the best of its genre to come out in a decade—Monster Blood Tattoo is just such a work.
D.M. Cornish is a mad genius, high praise I reserve for a select few. And we can ask for no better guide through his captivating world of the Half-Continent, where fearsome monster-hunters clash with terrifying bogles; and where the machinations of men, secret, behind the scenes, can prove to be more deadly than any bogle. And where one small lad must find his way safely in a dangerous land.
——Timothy Travaglini, Senior Editor
Misspelled edited by Julie E. Czerneda
DAW, $7.99, 306pp, pb, 9780756404758. Fantasy anthology. On-sale date: 8 April 2008.
There is a right way and a wrong way to do practically anything. And when it comes to magic, skipping some directions, changing the ingredients, garbling the words of a spell—all of these can lead to unusual, sometimes dire, sometimes comical consequences.
Veteran writer and editor Julia Czerneda has offered seventeen authors the challenge of creating spell-driven situation that get out of control. Here are just a few of the results: a cybermancer—a spell caster working in the realm known as Hel to some, and the Internet to others&#;8212;has her spell disk corrupted by unexpected input… two students out to brew up some spells completely outside the curriculum forgo a most important ingredient… a has-been golf pro finds an old family spell that should improve his game, but at what cost? A young woman orders a fairy-tale life, but she forgets to read the fine print and ends up with the worst parts of two fairy tales. Can Customer Service break the spell?
[Contributors: Lesley D. Livingston, Kristine Smith, Kevin G. Maclean, Janet Elizabeth Chase, Marc Mackay, Kristen Britain, Kent Pollard, Kell Brown, John Zakour, Rob St. Martin, S.W. Mayse, Doranna Durgin, Morgan S. Brilliant, Kate Paulk, Nathan Azinger, Jim C. Hines, and Shannan Palma.]
Ibby’s Magic Weekend written by Heather Dyer, illustrated by Peter Bailey
Chicken House/Scholastic, $16.99, 142pp, hc, 9780545032094. Children’s fantasy.
While visiting her two trouble making cousins in their chaotic country house, straight-arrow Ibby learns of an old box of tricks the boys found in the attic. Ibby doesn’t believe in magic—until her cousin Francis shrinks to the size of her thumb! As they search for a way to undo the trick, they stumble upon the story of Uncle Godfrey, a professional magician who disappeared years ago. Will Ibby be the magician and find him?
Love’s Magic by Traci E. Hall
Medallion, $7.95, 461pp, pb, 9781933836270. Paranormal Romance. On-sale date: June 2008.
It is 1192. Celestia Montehue is the odd-eyed misfit in a family of flame-haired goddesses descended from notorious Queen Boadicea. While her sisters are tall and beautiful, she, the eldest, is blond and petite, with one green and one blue eye. The only thing she has in common with the family legend is her magical healing ability. Constantly fighting for her place among her siblings, she refuses to settle for less than her due. Coming to accept no one will ever be able to love her for who she is, she vows never to marry.
Nicholas Le Blanc is a haunted man. Though trained as a knight under the Baron Peregrine’s name, his childhood in a monastery has convinced him he is a bastard. Then, on crusade, his caravan is ambushed; all men are lost and the sacred relic they carried is stolen. Nicholas is captured and suffers a year of torture, ultimately escaping… but only after being forced to kill a woman to win his freedom. Guilt poisons him as surely as the hidden wounds in his soul.
An arranged marriage does not bode happiness for the two tortured souls. Nor does Celestia’s new home, a broken down keep—haunted by the ghost of Nicholas’ mother, a suicide—and a stagnant green moat. Then a maid is murdered and a curse revealed. Worse, Celestia has fallen in love with her tormented husband. Will they both be doomed? Or is there healing, indeed, in Love’s Magic?
The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton
Del Rey, $27.00, 633pp, hc, 9780345496539. Science fiction.
Peter F. Hamilton’s complex and engaging novels, which span thousands of years—and light-years—are as intellectually stimulating as they are emotionally fulfilling. Now, with The Dreaming Void, the eagerly awaited first volume in a new trilogy set in the same far-future as his acclaimed Commonwealth saga, Hamilton has created his most ambitious and gripping space epic yet.
The year is 3589, fifteen hundred years after Commonwealth forces barely staved off human extinction in a war against the alien Prime. Now an even greater danger has surfaced: a threat to the existence of the universe itself. At the very heart of the galaxy is the Void, a self-contained microuniverse that cannot be breached, cannot be destroyed, and cannot be stopped as it steadily expands in all directions, consuming everything in its path: planets, stars, civilizations. The Void has existed for untold millions of years. Even the oldest and most technologically advanced of the galaxy’s sentient races, the Raiel, do not know its origin, its makers, or its purpose.
But then Inigo, an astrophysicist studying the Void, begins dreaming of human beings who live within it. Inside the Void, Inigo sees paradise. Thanks to the gaiafield, a neural entanglement wired into most humans, Inigo’s dreams are shared by hundreds of millions—and a religion, the Living Dream, is born, with Inigo as its prophet. But then he vanishes. Suddenly there is a new wave of dreams. Dreams broadcast by an unknown Second Dreamer serve as the inspiration for a massive Pilgrimage into the Void. But there is a chance that by attempting to enter the Void, the pilgrims will trigger catastrophic expansion, an acelerated devourment phase that will swallow up thousands of worlds. And thus begins a desperate race to find Inigo and the mysterious Second Dreamer. Some seek to prevent the Pilgrimage; others to speed its progress—while within the Void, a supreme entity has turned its gaze, for the first time, outward…
Peter F. Hamilton’s The Dreaming Void is a superbly imagined, cunningly plotted interstellar adventure filled with fully realized human and alien characters as complex as they are engaging.
Hidden by Eve Kenin
Shomi, $6.99, 352pp, pb, 9780505527615. Action romance. On-sale date: July 2008.
Eve Kenin wowed readers and critics alike with her explosive, cutting-edge action romance novel Driven, and proved that Dorchester’s ground-breaking Shomi line was unlike any romance that came before. Kenin kicks off the Summer 2008 run of Shomi novels with the highly anticipated sequel to Driven. In this exploration of a woman raised on pain, isolation and injustice, Kenin combines fast-paced action with complex characters and dry humor to make one thrillingly addictive read.
Raised in a dungeon as TTN081 by the sadistic and cruel Duncan Bane, Tatiana is struggling to make her way in the Northern Waste. When she is accidentally exposed to a dangerous plague, a handsome and mysterious physician, Tristan, a man unaware of her identity and her special gifts, brings her to his underground lab and into the small community he protects. Both Tatiana and Tristan have learned that trust only invites betrayal and hope only invites despair, but together the unlikely allies must put the past behind them to save the future of the Waste and the world.
A World Too Near by Kay Kenyon
(Book Two of The Entire and The Rose), Pyr, $25, 425pp, hc, 9781591026426. Science fiction.
In Bright of the Sky, Kay Kenyon introduced a milieu unique in science fiction and fantasy: The Entire, a five-armed radial universe that exists in a dimension without stars and planets and is parallel to our own universe. Stretched over The Entire is a lid of plasma, called the bright, which ebbs and flows, bringing day and twilight. Under the vast canopy of the bright live many galactic species, copied from our own universe.
Former star pilot Titus Quinn loves The Entire, but now he must risk annihilating it by destroying the fortress of Ahnenhoon. To sustain a faltering Entire, Ahnenhoon’s great engine will soon reach through the brane separating the universes and consume our own universe in a concentrated ball of fire.
Quinn sets off on a journey across The Entire armed with the nan, a small ankle bracelet containing nanoscale military technology that can reduce Ahnenhoon and its deadly engine to chaos. He must pursue his mission even though his wife is held prisoner in Ahnenhoon and his own daughter has sent the assassin Mo Ti to hunt him down.
As he traverses the galactic distances of The Entire, he learns more of the secrets of its geography, its fragile storm walls, its eons-long history, and the factions that contend for dominance. One of these factions is led by his daughter, who though young and a slave, has at her command a transforming and revolutionary power.
As Quinn wrestles with looking disaster and approaches the fabled concentric rings of Ahnenhoon’s defenses, he learns that in the Entire, nothing is what it appears. Its denizens are all harboring secrets, and the greatest of these is the nature of the Entire itself.
Moon and Sun: The Ruby Key by Holly Lisle
Orchard/Scholastic, $16.99, 368pp, hc, 9780545000122. Teen fiction. On-sale date: May 2008.
This May, acclaimed adult writer Holly Lisle makes her children’s book debut with the Moon and Sun series. Written in haunting, lyrical prose, Lisle transports readers to the twilit realms of the night worlds in the first book of the series, The Ruby Key.
Humans and nightlings are never to meet, but when Genna and her brother Dan venture into the old forest at night, they encounter a nightling who reveals a terrible secret: Genna and Dan’s village chieftain has made a deadly deal with Letrin, ruler of the nightlings, and offered up the lives of his villagers. To save their people, Genna and Dan strike their own bargain with the nightling lord, but the stakes climb even higher. Now the siblings must embark upon a journey along the moonroads, and bring back the key to Letrin’s downfall.
Run Among Thorns by Anna Louise Lucia
Medallion, $7.95, 384pp, pb, 9781933836331. Romantic Suspense. On-sale date: June 2008.
In a crisis moment of her life, Jenny Waring did something exceptional.
Now the authorities want to know how and why she killed three armed men.
Kier McAllister’s job is to break Jenny Waring. He’s asking a lot of questions, and he isn’t asking nicely. But it’s his job to find out why she could take out the bad guys like a seasoned agent.
McAllister thinks he’s in control. The balance of power is shifting, however. It isn’t his job to care about how he achieves his goal. Yet Jenny’s accusing eyes are starting to hold the whole world for him, and that isn’t good at all. Not when the people he works for aren’t about to leave her alone.
She started out being his job. Will she wind up being his redemption?
The Elysium Commission by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Tor, $7.99, 368pp, pb, 9780765356543.
A brilliant scientist on the planet Devanta has created a small universe contiguous to ours, and a utopian city on one of the planets. But does this new universe require the destruction of our universe in order to grow and stabilize?
Blaine Donne is a retired military special operative now devoted to problem-solving for hire. He investigates a series of seemingly unrelated mysteries, and the more he investigates, the more questions arise, including the role of the two heiresses who are more—and less—than they seem and the more Donne is pushed inexorable toward finding himself a pawn in an explosive solution and a regional interstellar war.
The Elysium Commission is a space opera and a future detective novel, sure to please readers in this new paperback format.
Viewpoints Critical: Selected Stories by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Tor, $25.95, 350pp, hc, 9780765318572. Science fiction/fantasy collection.
Tor Books is proud to present the first-ever story collection from the bestselling fantasy and science fiction writer L.E. Modesitt, Jr., a man renowned ffor his compelling and beloved novels. Now Viewpoints Critical compiles stories from the entirety of his career, as well as three brand new tales!
Modesitt began publishing as a short story writer in the SF magazines in the seventies and continues to write them to this day. Viewpoints Critical includes selections that cover a wide range of Modesitt’s talents: some stories are kernels for his early SF novels, while others display the breadth of his talents and interests from satire to military adventure.
The book also contains three new, never-before-published stories: “Black Ordermage,” set in the world of Modesitt’s best-selling Recluce series; “Beyond the Obvious Wind,” set in his Corean Chronicles universe; and “Always Outside the Lines,” which is related to his Ghosts of Columbia books. Whether Modesitt writes pitch-perfect science fiction and fantasy in his established worlds or, as with “Understanding,” transcends generic definition, or whether he finds his inspiration in the lofty language of Yeats (“Ghost Mission”) or in the plight of dock workers (“The Swan Pilot”)—his stories are consistently surprising and original.
Modesitt may be best known for his novels, but his passion and talent for short fiction is superbly made evident in this collection. With plenty for fans of Modesitt and SF/Fantasy lovers alike, Viewpoint Critical is a revelatory view of a masterful writer!
[Contents: Introduction, “The Great American Economy,” “Second Coming,” “Rule of Law,” “Iron Man, Plastic Ships,” “Power to…?” “Precision Set,” “Fallen Angel,” “Black Ordermage,” “Understanding,” “News Clips Recovered from the NYC Ruins,” “Beyond the Obvious Wind,” “Always Outside the Lines: Four Battles,” “The Pilots,” “The Dock to Heaven,” “Ghost Mission,” “Spec-Ops,” “Sisters of Sarronnyn, Sisters of Westwind,” “The Difference,” and “The Swan Pilot.”]
Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti
Juno, $6.99, 400pp, pb, 9780809572564. Fantasy/Steampunk Romance. On-sale date: April 2008.
Taya soars over Ondinium on metal wings. She is an icarus—a courier privileged to travel freely across the city’s sectors and mingle indiscriminately—free from many of the restrictions of a castle-bound society. A daring mid-air rescue of Exalted Viera Octavus and her young son leads to involvement with the Forlore brothers: handsome, brilliant Alister, who sits on Ondinium’s governing council and writes programs for the Great Engine, and awkward, sharp-tongued Cristof, who has exiled himself from his caste and repairs clocks in the lowest sector of the city. Taya is entangled in a perilous web of terrorism, loyalty, murder, and secrets that threatens to forever alter the Great Engine that powers Ondinium and protects its people.
The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy: Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett
HarperCollins Children’s Books, $5.99, 245pp, tp, 9780060541934. Children’s fantasy.
New York Times best-selling author Terry Pratchett presents another exciting adventure in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy. It’s the year 1941 and Johnny Maxwell, twelve-year old star of Johnny and the Bomb and Only You Can Save Mankind, is faced with a nail-biting dilemma: if he uses his knowledge to save innocent lives by being in the right place at the right time, is he doing the right thing?
An accidental time traveler, Johnny Maxwell knows history. He knows England is at war, and he knows that on May 21, 1941 German bombs will fall on the town. It’s a historical fact. Tampering with history can have unpredictable—and drastic—effects on the future. But letting history take its course means letting people die. What will Johnny do?
Time-travel and paradoxes abound in Johnny and the Bomb, the final installment in the fast and funny middle grade Johnny Maxwell Trilogy about an ordinary boy with extraordinary adventures from bestselling author Terry Pratchett.
Blaze of Lightning, Roar of Thunder by Helen A. Rosburg
Medallion, $7.95, 321pp, pb, 9781932815641. Historical Romance. On-sale date: August 2008.
Louisa Rodriguez was out on the desert gathering fuel when the scalp hunters came, massacred her family and all the people of her village, shot her in the head and left her for dead. Regaining consciousness, she buried the people she had loved, and when she was done she stripped off her bloody clothes and walked naked into the mountains. Where she was reborn.
When horse wrangler Ring Crossman came across the half-wild woman in the western wilderness, she would not tell him her name. So he gave her one. Blaze, for the lightning-like streak of white in her long, black hair where a bullet had creased her skull. He gave her his heart, too, although he knew there was no room in her life for anything but revenge.
Vengeance consumed Bane as well. His life was devoted to finding the man who raped his Apache mother and fathered him. Then The Bringer of Thunder, as he was called by his people, crossed trrails with the only human being whose thirst for a man’s blood was as great as his own. And when they discovered they stalked the same prey, the destructive power of the storm they unleashed consumed all around them. Including themselves.
The Saga of the First King, Book One: The Ancient by R.A. Salvatore, read by Erik Singer
Macmillan Audio, $44.95, 10 CDs (12 hours), 9781427202789. Fantasy audiobook.
R.A. Salvatore is one of fantasy’s more prolific authors, renowned for his extensive New York Times bestselling Dark Elf series novels featuring his iconic antihero, Drizzt Do’Urden. He is also the acclaimed author of the DemonWars trilogy (The Demon Awakens, The Demon Spirit, and The Demon Apostle) as well as Mortalis of Darkness, Ascendance, and the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime. Now, Tor Books is thrilled to announce the start of an all-new epic fantasy series from Salvator—and his first published by Tor—The Saga of the First King.
Book one of the series, The Ancient takes readers back to the early days of Corona, the same world that the DemonWars novels are set in, and a time period that Salvatore has only written about once before in The Highwayman. Readers were introduced to Bransen Garibond in The Highwayman and now his story continues. Searching for his long-lost father, Bransen is tricked into journeying across the Gulf of Corona to the wild lands of Vanguard, where he is pressed into service in a desperate war against the brutal Samhaist, Ancient Badden.
Meanwhile, on an Alpinadoran lake, just below Ancient Badden’s magical ice castle, several societies, caught in the web of their own conflicts, are oblivious to Ancient Badden’s devastating plans to destroy them. Bransen becomes the link between the wars, and if he fails, all who live on the lake will perish, and all of northern Honce will fall under the shadow of the merciless and vengeful Samhaists.
The Ancient is just the beginning of this story. Salvatore has plans to continue The Saga of the First King through three books, one a year fofllowing the release of The Ancient.
Narrator Erik Singer, whose reading of Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven was an Audie Award finalist and was praised by AudioFile magazine as a “virutoso performance,” brings Salvatore’s new series to life with this audiobook of The Ancient.
Cry of Sorrow by Holly Taylor
Medallion, $15.95, 537pp, tp, 9781933836263. Fantasy. On-sale date: July 2008.
The Coranians have won the war, Kymru is defeated. For Havgan, however, the victory is not complete. Cadair Idris, the hall of the High Kings, remains closed to him. To gain entrance he must locate the Four Treasures—the Stone, the Spear, the Cauldron and the Sword—and bring them to the Guardian of the Doors. Only then can he proclaim himself High King of Kymru.
But the Treasures were hidden long ago, after the death of the last High King. To find them Gwydion the Dreamer must locate a long-forgotten song, and the clues it contains. Following the dictates of the song, he persuades Rhiannon, her daughter Gwenhwyvar, and his nephew Arthur to set out with him on the dangerous quest.
Dogged by Havgan’s soldiers they race against time to find the artifacts. But the difficult journey is made even harder by the distrust they have for each other, as well as the necessity to face their own worst fears in order to succeed and gain entrance into Cadair Idris—only to watch helplessly as Arthur risks his life, and his very own soul, on the next move in the deadly game.