[[[Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Revolution, and Evolution]]] edited by Victoria Blake. Underland, $15.95, 448pp, tp, 9781937163082. Science fiction anthology.

High Tech and Low Life

Before email, before “the web,” before hackers and GPS and sexting, before titanium implants, before Google Goggles, before Siri, and before each and every one of us carried a computer in our pockets, there was cyberpunk, and science fiction was never the same.

Cyberpunk writers — serious, smart, and courageous in the face of change — exposed the naivete of a society rushing headlong into technological unknowns. Technology could not save us, they argued, and it might in fact ruin us. Now, thirty years after The movement party-crashed the science fiction scene, the cyberpunk reality has largely come to be. The future they imagined is here.

With an introduction by Victoria Blake and stories by: William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Jonathan Lethem, Benjamin Parzybok, Kim Stanley Robinson, David Marusek, Paul Tremblay, Cat Rambo, Pat Cadigan, Gwyneth Jones, Mark Teppo, Greg Bear, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker, James Patrick Kelly, John Shirley, Daniel H. Wilson, Paul Di Filippo, and Cory Doctorow.

 

[[[Dust Devil on a Quiet Street]]] by Richard Bowes. Lethe, $18.00, 318pp, tp, 9781590212974. Fantasy. On-sale date: 5 July 2013.

Dust Devil on a Quiet Street chronicles the remarkable life of Boston-born, New York City-reared author Richard Bowes. Bowes’s childhood and adolescent brushes with dramatic spirits and hustlers, large and small, paved the way for his adult encounters with the remarkable, the numinous, the supernatural. Deftly orchestrated, this “memoir” is part impassioned homage to Manhattan — decades before and up to its recent wound on September 11th, which creates a hole in the city and allows the ghosts of the dead to return — and part tell-all of the uncanny secrets behind a group of Greenwich Village writers and life as a university librarian.

 

[[[London Falling]]] by Paul Cornell.Tor, $24.99, 416pp, hc, 9780765330277. Urban fantasy.

Paul Cornell is a British writer best known for his work on the television show Doctor Who, for which he penned three Hugo Award-nominated episodes. Tor is proud to announce the release of Cornell’s first urban fantasy novel, London Falling, which has already received rave reviews from critics and fans alike. A fantastical twist on the classic police procedural, with London undercover cops versus creatures of the night, London Falling is a modern fantasy novel that is dark and wildly imaginative.

Police officers Quill, Costain, Sefton, and Ross know the worst of London — or they think they do. While investigating a mobster’s death, they come into contact with a strange artifact and accidentally develop the Sight. Suddenly they can see the true evil haunting London’s streets.

Armed with police instincts and procedures, the four officers take on the otherworldly creatures secretly prowling London. Football lore and the tragic history of a Tudor queen become entwined in their pursuit of an age-old witch with a penchant for child sacrifice. But when London’s monsters become aware of their meddling, the officers must decide what they are willing to sacrifice to clean up their city.

Wildly entertaining and filled with intrigue and adventure, London Falling will captivate and delight readers.

 

[[[Star Carrier, Book Four: Deep Space]]] by Ian Douglas. Harper Voyager, $7.99, 356pp, pb, 9780062183804. Science fiction.

Ian Douglas is back with Deep Space, the fourth novel in his New York Times best-selling series, Star Carrier! The action is at an all-time high in Deep Space as humanity struggles for survival against the Sh’Daar, a mysterious alien race — and against themselves. Douglas’ inimitable style is a perfect showcase for the intergalactic exploits in his book, and ties in perfectly to the ever-expanding Battlestar Galactica fandom — not to mention the upcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness movie release. For sci-fi fans, Douglas’ books are the pinnacle of the space-exploration genre, and Deep Space raises the bar that Douglas himself set.

Humankind is in a power struggle that could potentially bring a universe-spanning evil empire to its knees — or destroy them all.

It is 20 years after humans have forged a fragile truce with the shadowy alien race know as the Sh’daar, and Koenig is now President of the USNA. Meanwhile, Gray is skipper of the CVS America, and is poised to be promoted — Koenig’s old position: commander of the entire battle group. Gray’s readiness for the position is in doubt, but there are greater issues at stake — like the rapidly unraveling truce with the Sh’daar. With the peace between alien and humankind shattering, as many predicted it would, everything is at stake — and the humans still know almost nothing about the greatest enemy they’ve faced yet!

 

[[[Magician’s End]]] by Raymond E. Feist. (Book Three of The Chaoswar Saga), HarperVoyager, $29.99, 576pp, hc, 9780061468438. Fantasy. On-sale date: 14 May 2013.

Thirty years ago Raymond E. Feist wrote his first novel, Magician, a story about an orphan boy named Pug who is thrust by a war into captivity on an alien world, only to rise from slavery to become a Master Magician. Magician introduced us to Midkemia and the Riftwar, an epic series of battles between Good and Evil that have scarred this imaginative world for generations. Now, after twenty-nine books (authored and coauthored), Feist delivers the crowning achievement of his renowned bestselling career: Magician’s End, the final chapter in the Chaoswar Saga and the climax of his extraordinary Riftwar Cycle.

Pug — who has assumed the mantle of the greatest magician of all time — must risk everything he has fought for and everything he cherishes in the hope of destroying an evil enemy once and for all. But to achieve peace and save untold millions of lives, he will have to pay the ultimate price….

 

[[[NOS4A2]]] by Joe Hill. William Morrow, $28.99, 692pp, hc, 9780062200570. Horror.

From Joe Hill, the new master of modern supernatural suspense and New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns, comes the publication of NOS4A2. Without reservation, this is Hill’s magnum opus, a tour-de-force of heart-stopping horror and nightmarish terror that is also powerful, wrenching, and redemptive. Undeniably brilliant, one might find it difficult to decide whether or not Hill’s mind is more deeply disturbed or exquisitely sensitive.

Victoria McQueen is a very special girl. On her blue Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she can travel anywhere she likes and retrieve anything lost by simply crossing a rickety, bat-filled covered bridge that magically appears whenever she needs it. But every journey takes its toll.

Charlie Manx is a very evil man. Ageless, creepy, and just a little bit charming, in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith — with the vanity license plate NOS4A2 — he takes kidnapped children for rides from which they never return. Slipping out of the everyday world, Manx’s destination for these children is a place he calls “Christmasland,” an astonishing playground of amusements (think Candy Land on acid) where every morning is Christmas morning and you never grow up and you never die. But you are transformed into something absolutely terrifying. Once again, every journey takes its toll.

One day Victoria goes on one of her journeys looking for trouble… and finds it. Charlie Manx. But young Vic (as she is called) is the only child ever to escape his grasp.

But that was a lifetime ago. And now the only kid to ever escape Charlie’s unmitigated evil is all grown up and desperate to forget the time she spent with him. But the end of one nightmare is just the beginning of another because Charlie Manx (although believed to have died in a maximum security prison) hasn’t stopped thinking about the exceptional Victoria McQueen, and he hasn’t stopped abducting children and taking them to “Christmasland” in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son Wayne.

In a life-and-death battle of wills — her magic pitted against his — Vic McQueen is going to get her son back and destroy Manx once and for all. Or she’ll die trying.

NOS4A2 cements Joe Hill as one of the masters, regardless of genre. After reading this book, it will be difficult to ever look at Christmas… or children quite the same way again. Brilliant, suspenseful, disturbing and terrifying in equal measure, this devilishly playful masterpiece is a terrifying high-octane ride.

 

[[[Pathfinder Tales: Pirate’s Honor]]] by Chris A. Jackson. Paizo, $9.99, 453pp, pb, 9781601255235. Fantasy.

Rough Seas

A pirate captain of the Inner Sea, Torius Vin makes a living raiding wealthy merchant ships with his crew of loyal buccaneers. Few things matter more to Captain Torius than ill-gotten gold — but one of those is Celeste, his beautiful snake-bodied navigator. When a crafty courtesan offers the pirate crew a chance at the heist of a lifetime, it’s time for both man and naga to hoist the black flag and lead the Stargazer‘s crew to fame and fortune. But will stealing the legendary STar of Thuman chart the corsairs a course to untold riches — or send them all to a watery grave?

From award-winning author Chris A. Jackson comes a fantastical new adventure of high-seas combat and romance set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

 

[[[Heiresses of Russ, 2013: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction]]] edited by Tenea D. Johnson & Steve Berman. Lethe, $18.00, 322pp, tp, 9781590211700. SF anthology. On-sale date: 17 August 2013.

One of the most compelling aspects of speculative fiction is its ability to fulfill otherwise unattainable desires — whether one wants to create a magical society or travel through time, visit an alien civilization or remake history. It also satisfies more mundane reader desires, the ones it would not seem so hard to fulfill. To call a few of these out, I’ll willingly step on this mine: the explosion of ‘should’.

It should not be easier to find a zombie apocalypse than it is to find a lesbian protagonist in the aisles of your local bookstore. Falling for werewolves and shape shifters should not be more accepted than a transgendered love affair; marginalized people really will still exist in the future; more folks should know that, and more so create like they know it. Someone then must step into the gap, or to be more accurate the gaping holes in the collective visions of our possibilities as human beings. In these pages, someone has. Seventeen someones to be exact.

[Contributors: Tenea D. Johnson, Malinda Lo, Jewelle Gomez, Jamie Killen, Brit Mandelo, Richard Bowes, Julia Rios, Nisi Shawl, Megan Arkenberg, Sarah Diemer, Wendy N. Wagner, Claire Humphrey, Andrea Kneeland, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Kate Harrad, JL Merrow, Banjanun Sriduangkaew, and Carrie Vaughn.]

 

[[[Wolf in Shadow]]] by John Lambshead. Baen, $15.00, 368pp, tp, 9781451639100. Fantasy. On-sale date: 2 July 2013.

Contemporary fantasy adventure.  An ordinary young woman finds a haunting and dangerous world of demons and shapeshifters on the streets of modern day London.

Urban fantasy in one of the world’s greatest cities.

Rhian, a girl from the Welsh valleys on the run from tragedy and herself, finds a new home in the modern East End of London, where the world’s largest financial center spins a web of money and power from glistening towers of chrome and glass. Beneath the digital façade lurks the old East End where the layers of two thousand years of dramatic and violent history slide over one another like glaciers, spilling out in avalanches that warp the real world.

As bodies begin to litter the East End streets, The Commission dispatches its best enforcers to deal with the situation: Karla is not human, and Jameson left his humanity behind in pieces in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan. Rhian makes new friends, dangerous friends; and where Rhian goes, the wolf is always in her shadow, just a heartbeat away.

Among the bankers and traders of the East End walk demons in human form and who is to say which are the monsters? London is a magical bomb waiting to explode and somewhere a fuse is hissing.

 

[[[Reaper’s Legacy]]] by Tim Lebbon. (Toxic City, Book Two), Pyr, $17.95, 235pp, hc, 9781616147679. YA fantasy.

Two years after London is struck by a devastating terrorist attack, it is cut off from the world, protected by a large force of soldiers (known as Choppers), while those in the rest of Britain believe that their ex-capital is now a toxic, uninhabited wasteland.

Jack and his friends know that the truth is very different. The handful of survivors in London are developing strange, fantastic powers. Evolving. Meanwhile, the Choppers treat the ruined city as their own experimental playground.

Jack’s own developing powers are startling and frightening, though he is determined to save his father, the brutal man with a horrific power who calls himself Reaper. Jack must also find their friend Lucy-Anne, who went north to find her brother.

What Lucy-Anne discovers is terrifying — people evolving into monstrous things and the knowledge that a nuclear bomb has been set to destroy what’s left of London. And the clock is ticking.

 

[[[Cobweb Bride]]] by Vera Nazarian. (Cobweb Bride Trilogy, Book One), Norilana, $24.95, 342pp, tp, 9781607621126. Fantasy. On-sale date: 15 July 2013.

Cobweb Bride (Cobweb Bride Trilogy, Book One) is a history-flavored fantasy novel with romantic elements of the Persephone myth, about Death’s ultimatum to the world.

What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?

In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary “pocket” of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill….

Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness… Her skin is cold as snow… Her eyes frozen… Her gaze, fiercely alive…

While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war… A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father… Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court…. Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living…

Look closer — through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars…

And one small village girl, Percy — an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter — is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.

As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death’s own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North…

And everyone is trying to stop her.

 

[[[Necessary Evil]]] by Ian Tregillis. Tor, $25.99, 384pp, hc, 9780765321527. Supernatural alternate history.

In the first book of the Milkweed series, Bitter Seeds, Ian Tregillis crafted a stunning new version of World War II. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man, Raybould Marsh, was caught in between. In the second book, The Coldest War, Marsh strived to defend Queen and country, and by doing so he had to confront his nation’s darkest secrets from World War II. Now in the climatic stand-alone novel, Necessary Evil, one man travels to an alternate Earth in order to save at least one of humanity’s timelines.

12 May 1940. Westminster, London, England: the early days of World War II.

Again.

Raybould Marsh, one of “our” Britain’s best spies, has travelled to another Earth in a desperate attempt to save at least one timeline from the Cthulhu-like monsters who have been observing our species from space and have already destroyed Marsh’s timeline. In order to accomplish this, he must remove all traces of the supermen that were created by the Nazi war machine and caused the specters from outer space to notice our planet in the first place.

His biggest challenge is the mad seer Greta, one of the most powerful of the Nazi creations, who has sent a version of herself to this timeline to thwart Marsh. Why would she stand in his way? Because she has seen that in all the timelines she dies and she is determined to stop that from happening, even if it means destroying most of humanity in the process. And marsh is the only man who can stop her.

An epic story of a supernatural alternate history, Necessary Evil is a wildly entertaining thriller filled with intrigue and adventure that will captivate and delight readers.

 

[[[Videssos Cycle, Volume One]]] by Harry Turtledove. Del Rey, $18.95, 656pp, tp, 9780345542588. Fantasy.

Harry Turtledove’s many New York Times bestsellers provide an intriguing take on history’s most crucial moments, but he honed his speculative fiction talents in a different genre: fantasy. The Videssos Cycle is the perfect fusion of the two. Collected here are the first two novels of Turtledove’s one-of-a-kind saga, in which a Roman legion is transported to a strange realm where magic rules.

Book 1, The Misplaced Legion: In a duel for survival, the Roman military tribune Marcus Aemilius Scaurus raises his sword, blessed by a Druid priest, against a Celtic chieftain, who brandishes a blade of his own. At the moment the weapons touch, Marcus and his legion find themselves under a strange night sky, full of unfamiliar stars, where Rome and Gaul are unknown. They are in an outpost of the embattled Empire of Videssos — a world that will test their skill and courage as no soldiers have ever been tested before.

Book 2, An Emperor for the Legion: In the capital of Videssos, a coward and betrayer has seized the throne. There, behind great walls that have always made the city impregnable to storm of siege, he rules with the aid of dark sorcery. Overthrowing him seems impossible and the imperial army has already fled in panic from the savage victors. But there is no panic in the legion. Now Marcus Scaurus leads his men through the chaos and enemy hordes in search of winter quarters, to regroup and do the unthinkable: take the untakeable city.

 

[[[Videssos Cycle, Volume Two]]] by Harry Turtledove. Del Rey, $18.95, 820pp, tp, 9780345542595. Fantasy.

Harry Turtledove’s brilliant reimaginings of major world events have thrilled fans for decades, but he first captured readers’ attention with the Videssos Cycle, a unique blend of fantasy and speculative history. In this two-book volume, a Roman legion, thrown into another world, fights its way through sorcery, intrigue, and epic conflict.

Book 3, The Legion of Videssos: Since the legion was mysteriously transported to this magical realm, Roman military tribune Marcus Aemilus Scaurus has valiantly served the rulers of the war-torn city of Videssos. However, Fortune is a fickle goddess. Returning in triumph after defeating a well-entrenched army of rebel mercenaries, Marcus is betrayed by a friend, seized as a traitor, and dragged before the Emperor. Only one person may be able to save him: the Emperor’s niece. But consorting with her could lead to exile… or worse.

Book 4, Swords of the Legion: A prisoner of the Emperor, Marcus Scaurus is in a desperate situation. He stands condemned for treason, unless he can reclaim a rebel province from a fanatic usurper — without the aid of his Romans. Now, with just one centurion by his side, Marcus set out to once again do the impossible. Soon the fates conspire against the men, driving them toward the torture chambers of an evil, deathless wizard-prince. But an audacious last hope rallies behind them — the soldiers of the legion are on the march.

 

[[[Beginnings]]] by David Weber, with Charles E. Gannon, Joelle Presby, and Timothy Zahn. (World of Honor #6), Baen, $27.00, 384pp, hc, 9781451639032. Science fiction. On-sale date: 2 July 2013.

The hottest military science fiction series of all time continues with a collection of tales by New York Times bestselling authors Timothy Zahn, Charles E. Gannon, David Weber and more.  Set in Weber’s Honor Harrington Series.

The hottest military science fiction series of all time continues. The mission: to boldly explore David Weber’s Honorverse; to deliver all the action, courage, derring-do, and pulse-pounding excitement of space naval adventure with tales set in a world touched by the greatness of one epic heroine: Honor Harrington. This sixth volume in the popular Worlds of Honor series includes stories by 1635: Papal Stakes coauthor and best seller Charles E. Gannon, New York Times bestseller and Star Wars phenomenon, Timothy Zahn and Joelle Presby. It’s rounded out with an all-new David-Weber-authored novella featuring a young Manticoran Royal Navy commander who goes by the name Harrington.

 

[[[The 5th Wave]]] by Rick Yancey. Putnam, $18.99, 460pp, hc, 9780399162411. YA thriller.

After the 1st Wave, only darkness remains.

After the 2d, only the lucky escape. After the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th Wave, just one rule applies: trust no one.

Now it’s the dawn of the 5th Wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother — or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

From award-winning author Rick Yancey comes a gripping epic of catastrophic loss, unthinkable odds, and unflinching courage.