Books Received, September 28 — October 4
5 Oct, 2024
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Usurpation by Sue Burke (October 2024)
After her rollicking standalone Dual Memory, Sue Burke returns to her Semiosis series and the world of Pax in Usurpation, which combines the thrill of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening with the eco-empowerment of VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts.
Stevland, the dominant sentient lifeform of Pax, has clandestinely sent some of its progeny to Earth. To explore, to spread, to report back.
Since their germination, Earth has been a powder keg. Human rebellion, robot uprisings, and global pandemics have created chaos, distrust, and deaths.
As more and more conflicts break out across Earth, Stevland’s children work in the background, in an attempt to control human behavior and perhaps, bring peace to the planet. Stevland took control of Pax. Earth shouldn’t be too difficult…
The Stones of Landane by Catherine Cavendish (January 2025)
A mysterious, psychological thriller from the ever-enthralling Cat Cavendish
‘Fear her now, fear the queen,
As in her stone she reigns supreme…’
When Jonathan agrees to accompany his girlfriend, Nadia, on a trip to Landane, he imagines a short relaxing break in the countryside. But he quickly discovers that Nadia isn’t just drawn to the ancient Neolithic stone circle, she is obsessed by the megaliths. One in particular holds a fascination for her. Within hours, her personality begins to change, and it isn’t long before Jonathan starts to fear for her sanity.
Reaching far back into the past and up to the present day, those same stones have demonstrated powers beyond reason and, as Jonathan’s girlfriend becomes increasingly distant from reality, some of the ghosts of the past begin to reappear.
Now it isn’t only Nadia who is in danger.
In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard (October 2024)
Nightjar, sentient ship and family matriarch, looms large in Khuyên’s past. Disappearances drove teenage Khuyên from it, but death will steer her back.
Now an adult and a magistrate, Khuyên came for her maternal grandmother’s funeral but finds herself unwittingly reliving her past on the decaying Nightjar. Children are still disappearing as her childhood friends once did; and worse, her beloved Cousin Anh vanishes after pleading for her help.
Khuyên sets out to save Anh alongside Thảo, a beautiful and mysterious woman who seems to know more than she should about Khuyên and the ship. But saving Anh requires doing what Khuyên couldn’t do before: face her family, face the ship, face her own hopes and fears for the future — a future that might well include Thảo, but only if Khuyên can stop listening to the critical voice in her head.
A voice that sounds an awful lot like Nightjar’s…
Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman (April 2025)
Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.
When your parents die, you find out who they really were.
Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.
Griffon’s best clue to his parents’ lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.
In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.
FIYAH No. 32: Spacefaring Aunties published by FIYAH Literary Magazine (October 2024)
Fabula Ultima Core Rules 1.02 by Emanuele Galletto (October 2022)
This is your world,
this is your story.
Make a choice
and fight for what you believe in.
FABULA ULTIMA is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game inspired by Japanese-style console RPGs, or JRPGs. In Fabula Ultima, you and your friends will tell epic stories of would-be heroes and fearsome villains, set in fantasy worlds brimming with magic, wondrous locations, and uniquely bizarre monsters!
[Not a duplication of an earlier Books Received. This is the trade paperback and the previous entry was the PDF]
Carnal Urges by J.T. Geissinger (December (2024)
From BookTok sensation J. T. Geissinger comes Carnal Urges, a sexy-as-sin dark romance about a powerful mafia king who kidnaps the one woman who will threaten to bring him to his knees.
Carnal (adjective):
1) Relating to the pleasures of the body
2) Given to sensual indulgence
3) The man who kidnapped me
The devil has blue eyes, an Irish accent, and a hatred for me that runs deep.
He blames me for starting a war. Consorting with his enemies. Getting his men killed. Though I’m innocent on all charges, he wants his pound of flesh. With an eye on revenge, he makes me his captive.
But as we’ll both soon discover, there are more powerful urges than that for revenge.
When the devil meets his match but she’s his sworn enemy, that’s when the real war begins.
Locus, October 2024 published by Locus Publications (October 2024)
Dance of Shadows by Gourav Mohanty (February 2025)
The seeds of war are best sown in the season of peace.
A pirate-queen discovers the only gold around is in the bars of her cage…
A temple-courtesan’s heart dances for the archer she was tasked to destroy…
A librarian-princess learns how to steal to save the world from an ancient plague…
While the battle for Mathura rages in the West, the great powers gather in distant Kamrup — the lush and mysterious Tree City of the East — to thrash out the political future of the realm. Their aim: to secure prosperity and a lasting peace. But at this magnificent conclave, deaf swordswomen and exiled snakelings, spoilt heroes and lovesick princes, immortal assassins and their apprentices will find no sun to light their way.
For the Son of Darkness rises, boiling over with a wrath that all the oracles in the world cannot hope to forestall.
After all, seeing the future is one thing, changing it is quite another…
The Perfect Stranger by Brian Pinkerton (February 2025)
Meet your new coworker. She’s brilliant. She’s beautiful. She’s unreal.
Everyone loves Alison, the new remote employee at a major energy company. She’s a rising star in the virtual workspace, displaying incredible intelligence and efficiency with digital technology. But Linda, her manager, has growing suspicions that Alison is not the person she claims to be. As Linda probes Alison’s background, Alison fights back through cyber-attacks, ravaging Linda’s work, her family and her safety. Linda must uncover the truth to save herself and discovers Alison’s past history is a lie – in fact, she has none. Is it possible Alison isn’t human at all?
A New Dawn by Akira Varma (November 2024)
Mission Commander Nancy Phillips had always dreamt of going into space. Now, she got to realize her dream by being the first human to set foot on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. Without realizing the danger she and her team were in, that was.
Kai Morrison always thought his sister was a pain. Completely unbearable and utterly insufferable. That was until he was told his sister was being held captive.
How far would he go to save the family he’d always considered a brat?
Irana Morrison had just graduated from High School. And what better way to destress from a hectic year than by going on a camping trip? A nice long, weekend getaway with her two best friends, her brother, and his friends. She just didn’t realize how much a simple trip would change her life.
How much she would have to endure.
How much she’d have to suffer.
How much she’d forget.
How does one fateful mission change the course of history, intermingling their lives forever?
