Katherine Arden, The Warm Hands of Ghosts (Del Rey 2/24) A combat nurse in WWI searches for her brother, believed dead, but rumors of haunted trenches keep her looking In this historical fantasy novel of supernatural events during the war. This ‘‘hits hard as a novel of survival, horror, and the melancholia of fleeting hope…. a stunner.’’ [Colleen Mondor]
Robert Jackson Bennett, The ...Read More
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Carpenter, Daniel: Hunting by the River (Black Shuck Books UK 9781913038885, $15.99, 172pp, formats: trade paperback, 04/25/2024)
Collection of urban weird stories set in England. A first collection.
Cathrall, Sylvie: A Letter to the Luminous Deep (Orbit US 9780316565530, $18.99, 400pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 04/23/2024)
Fantasy novel of magical academia in an underwater world. Two people piece together the letter, sketches and field notes left behind to ...Read More
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Leigh Bardugo’s standalone fantasy novel The Familiar (Flatiron) debuts strongly, ranking #1 or #2 on all four print lists compiled here. Further down the lists is one other debut: Hannah Whitten’s The Hemlock Queen (Orbit), second in her Nightshade Crown series, ranking as high as #14 on the NYT list.
Castro, V.: Immortal Pleasures (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593499726, $17.99, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 04/16/2024)
Dark fantasy novel about Malinalli, once the infamous Malinche who aided Cortés in his destruction of the Aztec empire, now an immortal vampire avenging conquered peoples by regaining their plundered artifacts, but also looking for love and intrigued by a horror novelist who finds her strange condition fascinating.
Chang, Molly X.: To ...Read More
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Three titles debut on lists this week. Kelly Andrew’s Your Blood, My Bones (Scholastic) ranks #9 on the New York Times‘ Young Adult Hardcover list; F.T. Lukens’s Otherworldly (McElderry) is #10 on the same list; and Jennifer Thorne’s Diavola (Tor Nightfire) is #114 on the USA Today list.
Lawrence, Mark: The Book That Broke the World (Ace 9780593437940, $29, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 04/09/2024)
Fantasy novel, second in the Library trilogy. Evar has been forced to flee the library, driven before an implacable foe. Livira, trapped in a ghost world, has to recover the book she wrote—one which is the only true threat to the library’s existence—if she’s to return to her life. While Evar’s journey leads ...Read More
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Stephen Graham Jones’s The Angel of Indian Lake (Saga), third in his Indian Lake Trilogy, debuts on two lists this week.
Wiswell, John: Someone You Can Build a Nest In (Astra House/DAW 9780756418854, $28, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 04/02/2024)
Fantasy novel, a “creepy, charming monster-slaying sapphic fantasy romance from the monster’s POV.” Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals. ...Read More
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The third book in Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series, Onyx Storm (Entangled: Red Tower Books), is now available on the Amazon sites for pre-publication sales — it will be published Jan. 21, 2025. This morning it ranks #1 on Amazon.com and Amazon Canada, #10 on Amazon UK.
Asimov’s Science Fiction
Jones, Stephen Graham: The Angel of Indian Lake (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 9781668011669, $28.99, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 03/26/2024)
Supernatural thriller/horror novel, third in the Indian Lake trilogy featuring slasher film buff Jade (now Jennifer) Daniels. Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to build a life after the years of sacrifice—only to find the Lake Witch is waiting for her. Ebook also available. Simultaneous with the Titan Books UK ...Read More
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Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Damned (St. Martin’s), sequel to his Empire of the Vampire (2021), debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #4 on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly lists.
Meanwhile, just as editions of Frank Herbert’s Dune have returned to bestseller lists in recent weeks, the trade paperback of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem ranks on several lists today, as high as #7 on the
Kelley Armstrong, Cocktails & Chloroform (Subterranean 12/23) The latest volume in the A Rip Through Time Series (“Outlander meets The Alienist”) sees contemporary homicide detective Mallory Atkinson stuck in Victorian Edinburgh, where she investigates a sex-trafficking scheme. “A quick read… with reliable companions tackling all sorts of villains while also engaging in the sort of banter at which Armstrong excels.” [Colleen Mondor]
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Medlock, Noah: A Botanical Daughter (Titan Books UK 9781803365909, $16.99, 384pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 03/19/2024)
Horror novel. A tale of two Victorian gentlemen hiding their relationship away in a botanical garden who embark on a Frankenstein-style experiment with unexpected consequences.
Fulton, Victoria & McLaren, Faith: Cursed Cruise (Underlined 9780593649381, $11.99, 288pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 03/19/2024)
Young-adult supernatural mystery novel about four teen ghost hunters, one able ...Read More
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Holly Black’s The Prisoner’s Throne (Little, Brown), second book in her Elfhame series following The Stolen Heir, debuts on three lists, ranking #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover list. All ten books on that list, this week, are genre titles.
COVER REVEAL: Check out this chilling cover for Haven by Mia Dalia, a new title out from CamCat books this October.
From the publisher:
What if revenge ripples and echoes through time?
You can’t choose your family or your destiny or your legacy. But once upon a time, a woman named Ava St. James had tried to build happiness upon the remains of her broken heart. For better or ...Read More
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A fantasy novel by Danielle L. Jensen, A Fate Inked in Blood (Del Rey), debuts at #3 on both the USA Today and Publishers Weekly lists.
COVER REVEAL: Check out the drama in this cover reveal for Madison Lawson’s new title: The Registration Rewritten, out from CamCat Books this fall!
From the publisher:
When your greatest enemy is your best chance of survival. Still bearing wounds from her fourteen days of running for her life, Lynell struggles to fill her new role as the heir and leader of the very system that aimed to ...Read More
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Baptiste, Bethany: The Poisons We Drink (Sourcebooks Fire 9781728251950, $18.99, 480pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 03/05/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel. Teen witcher Venus Stoneheart makes illegal potions to support her family, but a corrupt coven forces her to make potions to enslave politicians.
Black, Holly: The Prisoner’s Throne (Little, Brown 9780316592710, $20.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 03/05/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel, second in the Stolen Heir duology in the ...Read More
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Several titles and sets of Frank Herbert’s series that begins with Dune (Ace), including a three-book boxed set and a six-book boxed set, are selling on the Amazon sites today. Two of them rank as high as #3.
Dreams & Nightmares
Kelly Link’s The Book of Love (Random House) debuts on two lists this week, ranking as high as #2 at the L.A. Times. And T. Kingfisher’s What Feasts at Night (Tor Nightfire) debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #9 at Publishers Weekly.
Bakis, Kirsten: King Nyx (Norton/Liveright 9781324093534, $28.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/27/2024)
Feminist gothic novel with possible fantasy elements, about Charles Fort’s wife in 1918, who investigates the disappearance of three girls, but can’t tell if she’s seen ghosts or her mind is unraveling.
Bishop, Anne: The Lady in Glass and Other Stories (Ace 9780593639054, $28, 480pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/27/2024)
Collection of short stories. All of ...Read More
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Josiah Bancroft, An Empyreal Retinue (Subterranean 10/23) Collection of eight stories, four new, all expanding upon the author’s popular Books of Babel series, plus an author’s note, with lavish illustrations throughout by Tom Kidd.
Mike Carey, The Ghost in Bone (Subterranean 10/23) This dark urban fantasy novella heralds the return of Carey’s series character, the exorcist Felix Castor, who answers a help wanted ...Read More
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Albert, Melissa: The Bad Ones (Macmillan/Flatiron 9781250894892, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/20/2024)
Young-adult contemporary thriller/dark fantasy novel. Nora looks into the disappearance of four people who vanished in a single night, one her estranged best friend, in a town with a sinister magical history.
Armentrout, Jennifer L. & Salvador, Rayvn: Visions of Flesh and Blood (Evil Eye Concepts/Blue Box Press 9781957568324, $31.99, 578pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ...Read More
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Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow slips out of first place on the four print lists compiled here, but remains in the top 10 on all of them, and ahead of the two Rebecca Yarros novels.
Arden, Katherine: The Warm Hands of Ghosts (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9780593128251, $28.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/13/2024)
Historical fantasy novel. During WWI, Laura Iven, a retired field nurse hears word that her brother has been killed in combat, but something doesn’t make sense. She returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital, where she hears whispers about haunted trenches and a strange hotelier whose wine gives ...Read More
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As anticipated, Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow (Bloomsbury), third in the Crescent City series, debuts strongly — ranking at #1 — on all four print lists compiled here.
Here’s a highlight from our 2023 Recommended Reading List: I AM AI by Ai Jiang, out from Shortwave Media.
“Moving, brilliant, and certified 100% human.” –Samit Basu, author of Turbulence
If you have the opportunity to give up humanity for efficiency, mechanical invincibility, and to surpass human limitations. . . would you?
Ai is a cyborg, under the guise of an AI writing program, who struggles to keep up with ...Read More
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