Books Received, April 27 — May 3
4 May, 2024
The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry (September 2024)
When the words went away, the world changed.
All meaning was lost, and every border fell. Monsters slipped from dreams to haunt the waking while ghosts wandered the land in futile reveries. Only with the rise of the committees of the named — Maps, Ghosts, Dreams, and Names — could the people stand against the terrors of the nameless wilds. They built borders around their world and within their minds, shackled ghosts and hunted monsters, and went to war against the unknown.
For one unnamed courier of the Names Committee, the task of delivering new words preserves her place in a world that fears her. But after a series of monstrous attacks on the named, she is forced to flee her committee and seek her long-lost sister. Accompanied by a patchwork ghost, a fretful monster, and a nameless animal who prowls the shadows, her search for the truth of her past opens the door to a revolutionary future — for the words she carries will reshape the world.
The Naming Song is a book of deep secrets and marvelous discoveries, strange adventures and dangerous truths. It’s the story of a world locked in a battle over meaning. Most of all, it’s the perfect fantasy for anyone who’s ever dreamed of a stranger, freer, more magical world.
Evil in Me by Brom (September 2024)
Evil in Me is bestselling author Brom’s newest novel of possession, damnation, and rock ‘n’ roll where one woman must get the world singing in order to save her soul.
This devilish tale includes nearly two dozen of Brom’s immersive paintings and brilliant endpapersAspiring musician Ruby Tucker has had enough of her small rural town and dysfunctional family. But a falling out with her best friend and bandmate has killed her dreams of escaping and making it big in the Atlanta punk scene.
While helping her eccentric neighbor organize his religious artifacts, an ancient ring clamps down on her finger — possessing her with the spirit of a blood-thirsty demon. There’s no exorcizing it unless hundreds of people chant a spell to set Ruby free. And what’s worse, the ring is a beacon for evil, drawing an unimaginably wicked mob straight to Ruby, hungry for her flesh. If Ruby can get her band back together, she has a shot at salvation. It’s time for her to face the music and put her whole soul into a song — one powerful enough to raise some Hell.
Keeper of Sorrows by Rachel Fikes (September 2024)
Whoever rules the bees, rules the world. A dark fantasy adventure with a twist of Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
On a planet stripped of wind, entire ecosystems lie in ashes, leaving humans to the mercy of a sole surviving bee species on a remote isle. Whoever wins the Praxis to rule them as Keeper, rules the world. When the next Keeper goes missing, her little sister must not only face her debilitating fear of bees, but compete in the Praxis to find her. As she braves the eerie fortress with sprawling wings of hives, murmuring murals, deceptive hedge mazes, and a host of leering gargoyles, she must also face the reigning Keeper, who’s guarding the darkest secret of all.
The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 10 by Natsu Hyuuga (January 2024)
Maomao finds herself once more in the western capital. She tries to focus on her work — which isn’t made any easier when she’s paired with not just the quack doctor but the smart-mouthed young physician Tianyu. Meanwhile, Jinshi might be the Imperial younger brother, but the western capital has its own hierarchies, both obvious and hidden. He and the other visitors from the court will have to navigate these halls of power even more carefully than usual, lest they run afoul of enemies they don’t even know they have. Over it all looms the threat of the insect plague, which seems insurmountable — until one man claims to know how to counter the menace. His method is intimately connected to secrets buried deep in the region’s past.
In the Mad Mountains: Stories Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft by Joe R. Lansdale (October 2024)
Eleven-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-tep) returns with this wicked short story collection of his irreverent Lovecraftian tributes. Lansdale is terrifyingly down-home while merging his classic gonzo stylings with the eldritch horrors of H. P. Lovecraft. Knowingly skewering Lovecraft’s paranoid mythos, Lansdale embarks upon haunting yet sly explorations of the unknown, capturing the essence of cosmic dread.
A sinister blues recording pressed on vinyl in blood conjures lethal shadows with its unearthly wails. In order to rescue Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn traverses the shifting horrors of the aptly named Dread Island. In the weird Wild West, Reverend Jebidiah Mercer rides into a possessed town to confront the unspeakable in the crawling sky. Legendary detective C. Auguste Dupin uncovers the gruesome secrets of both the blue lightning bug and the Necronomicon.
Exploring the darkest corners of the human psyche, here is a lethally entertaining journey through Joe Lansdale’s twisted landscape, where ancient evils lurk and sanity hangs by a rapidly fraying thread.
American Rapture by CJ Leede (October 2024)
A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust. Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin… The end times are coming.
Locus, May 2024 published by Locus Publications (May 2024)
Between Dragons and Their Wrath by Devin Madson (August 2024)
From Aurealis Award‑nominated author Devin Madson comes a sweeping epic fantasy full of dragons, alchemical magic and forbidden romance that unfolds as three people in a shattered empire become entangled in a looming revolution.
When dragons rage, chaos reigns.
Conquest built the Celes Basin. But when enemies once more threaten its borders, the Lord Reacher declares himself supreme ruler to enforce unity. Old angers erupt, threatening to tear the basin apart from within.
Tesha, a glassblower’s apprentice, becomes a tribute bride as part of a desperate political plot. In the Reacher’s court, she’s perfectly placed to sabotage him, but her heart has other plans.
Naili is laundress to an eccentric alchemist, a job that has left her with strange new abilities that are slowly consuming her-and attracting the notice of the city’s underground rulers. With time running out, she’ll have to gain power by any means if she wants to survive, let alone change the world.
And in the desolate Shield Mountains, sharp-shooting dragon rider Ashadi protects the basin from the monsters of the Sands beyond, but when an impossible shot pierces his dragon’s glass scales, he becomes the hunted one.
As chaos sweeps across the land, Tesha, Naili, and Ashadi must fight to survive political enemies, long-buried secrets, and monsters both within and without.
Tempered Glass by Beth Overmyer (June 2024)
Readers of Carissa Broadbent will love this thrilling series weaving an intriguing world of fantasy and folklore.
This is the second book in the Blade and Bone series. Verve survived her transformation into the Fire Queen, but can she survive the power that was given to her? Magic out of control, she seeks to tame and hide it. But when tragedy strikes, she’s forced to return to a land she never wanted to see again and confront – or evade – a darkness she hoped had died. With her secret husband at odds with her way of breaking the curse put on her, Verve finds that love can make an unreliable ally, and that anger is a potent weapon.
Countess by Suzan Palumbo (September 2024)
A queer Caribbean anti-colonial Count of Monte Cristo set in space in which a betrayed captain seeks revenge on the interplanetary empire that subjugated her people for generations
Virika Sameroo lives in colonized space under the Æerbot Empire, much like her ancestors before her in the British West Indies. After years of working hard to rise through the ranks of the empire’s merchant marine, she’s finally become first lieutenant on an interstellar cargo vessel.
When her captain dies under suspicious circumstances, Virika is arrested for murder and charged with treason despite her lifelong loyalty to the empire. Her conviction and subsequent imprisonment set her on a path of revenge, determined to take down the evil empire that wronged her, all while the fate of her people hangs in the balance.
Vigilance by Allen Stroud (September 2024)
The stirring finale of The Fractal series which began with the much lauded Fearless and Resilient hard-sf masterpieces.
“Stroud raises fascinating questions about the politics of space exploration.”– Publisher’s WeeklyIn the aftermath of Phobos Station’s destruction, sinister forces fight to control humanity’s fragile first steps in colonizing other worlds. There are competing agendas at work. Some seek to overthrow the Corporations and Governments, others just want to see everything burn. In the midst of it all, Captain Ellisa Shann and her crew are fighting to survive and to unlock the secrets of a mysterious and ancient alien ship.
Vigilance is the conclusion to the epic science fiction story that began with Fearless and continued with Resilient. What new revelations await in the ongoing Fractal Series
The City in Glass by Nghi Vo (October 2024)
In this new standalone novel, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.
A demon. An angel. A city.
The demon Vitrine — immortal, powerful, and capricious — loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot.
And then the angels come, and the city falls.
Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost — and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned.
She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever.
Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.
The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to reduce a world to ashes and remake it anew.
