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New Treasures: The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman

New Treasures: The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman

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The Lesser Dead-smallChristopher Buehlman’s debut novel Those Across the River (2011) was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and Charlaine Harris called it “one of the best first novels I’ve ever read.” He followed up with Between Two Fires (2012), the tale of a disgraced knight coming face-to-face with apocalyptic horror in 1348, and The Necromancer’s House (2013), the story of a modern sorcerer on the run from a monster straight out of Russian folklore.

His newest novel, The Lesser Dead, was published in hardcover in 2014, and released in trade paperback late last year. It was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award for best novel, and won the American Library Association’s Best Horror Novel of the Year award. It’s the story of a secret colony of vampires in New York City who find themselves being preyed on by something far darker than themselves….

New York City in 1978 is a dirty, dangerous place to live. And die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody — he has spent the last forty years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys: womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the city’s sidewalks.

The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. It’s almost too easy.

Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him…or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.

And neither are the rest of us.

The Lesser Dead was published by Berkley on October 6, 2015. It is 368 pages, priced at $16, or $11.99 for the digital edition.

Feast Or Famine?

Feast Or Famine?

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Tom Jones1Typically my characters don’t spend a lot of their time eating. It’s not because I’m not interested in food, quite the contrary (see my previous BG posts on the subject, here, here, and here.) No, it’s usually because, if I can paraphrase my agent for a moment, I’ve found my characters something more interesting to do. Having your characters sit down and eat is a useful device, however, in that it does give them something to do – even if it doesn’t forward the plot – while they’re talking, which usually does forward the plot. As a general rule, characters need to be doing something while they talk to each other, and if they eat, you can also use the details of the food to help with world-building and setting.

Joyce RedmanStill, even when my characters are eating, they’re not usually attending a banquet. Indeed, banquets and eating scenes in general are usually something we encounter visually, rather than on the page. Who can forget the scene in the Errol Flynn version of The Adventures of Robin Hood, where he walks into Prince John’s supper banquet with a stag on his shoulders?

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Open Road Returns Cherry Wilder’s A Princess of the Chameln to Print

Open Road Returns Cherry Wilder’s A Princess of the Chameln to Print

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A Princess of the Chameln-smallCherry Wilder was the pseudonym of New Zealand SF and fantasy writer Cherry Barbara Grimm, who died in 2002. She produced many popular fantasy novels in the late 70s and early 80s, starting with the Torin trilogy (which we discussed back in July), and the four novels in the Rulers of Hylor series (A Princess of the Chameln, Yorath the Wolf, The Summer’s King, and The Wanderer; the last co-written with Katya Reimann). Sadly, all have been out of print in the US for thirty years.

Fortunately, Open Road is taking steps to rectify that. They published a digital version of A Princess of the Chameln on November 17, and next month they will offer a print-on-demand edition. Here’s the new description.

When her royal parents are killed during a coup, Princess Aidris Am Firn of the Chameln flees for her life. Constantly on the run from unseen enemies of the crown, she poses as a commoner and joins a cadre of women warriors so she can fight those who assassinated her parents and continue to hunt her. While cultivating allies, Aidris learns that two pretenders have ascended to the dual thrones of Chameln. Having discovered their true queen is still alive, counselors from Chameln rally to her side and convince the queen that the time has come for her to reclaim her birthright. But before she can do this, she must discover who her enemy really is, lest the unknown assassins strike her down too.

The other books in the series will follow shortly: Yorath the Wolf (ebook February 16, POD April 12) and The Summer’s King (ebook May 17, POD July 12). Open Road is also responsible for the fabulous Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, the 14-volume series we examined here.

A Princess of the Chameln will be published on February 2, 2016. It is 288 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback, and $5.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

Future Treasures: The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

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Mistborn novels Brandon Sanderson-small

The first three novels in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy — The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages — were published between 2006-08 by Tor Books. In 2011, Sanderson returned to the world of Mistborn with The Alloy of Law. Set after the trilogy, in a period corresponding to late 19th-century America, the spinoff books became New York Times bestsellers. Now, hot on the heels of last year’s Shadows of Self, (which we covered here), he continues the tale with The Bands of Mourning.

The Bands of Mourning are the mythical metalminds owned by the Lord Ruler, said to grant anyone who wears them the powers that the Lord Ruler had at his command. Hardly anyone thinks they really exist. A kandra researcher has returned to Elendel with images that seem to depict the Bands, as well as writings in a language that no one can read. Waxillium Ladrian is recruited to travel south to the city of New Seran to investigate. Along the way he discovers hints that point to the true goals of his uncle Edwarn and the shadowy organization known as The Set.

The Bands of Mourning will be published by Tor Books on January 26, 2016. It is 448 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover, or $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Chris McGrath.

The 2016 Philip K. Dick Nominees

The 2016 Philip K. Dick Nominees

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Archangel Marguerite Reed-smallThe nominees for the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award, given each year for distinguished science fiction originally published in paperback in the United States, have been announced, and it’s an interesting ballot. Over at Barnes&Noble.com, in an article titled This Year’s Philip K. Dick Award Nominees Take SF in Strange New Directions, Joel Cunningham writes:

Sorry Hugos, but for my money, there’s no more interesting award in sci-fi than the ones named for Philip K. Dick. In the tradition of everyone’s favorite gonzo pulpist, the “PKD Award” honors innovative genre works that debuted in paperback, offering a nice reminder that you don’t need the prestige of a hardcover release to write a mind-blowing book (just ask William Gibson, whose seminal cyberpunk classic Neuromancer claimed the title in 1984), and in fact, if past winners are any evidence, the format might be seem as a license to take greater risks. This year’s nominees are of a piece with PKD contenders of the past: they twist genre tropes in new ways, carving new toe-holds in well-worn tropes. Which brings us to another thing we love about this particular award: the winner is basically impossible to [predict].

This year the noninees are

Edge of Dark, Brenda Cooper (Pyr)
After the Saucers Landed, Douglas Lain (Night Shade)
(R)evolution, PJ Manney (47North)
Apex, Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)
Windswept, Adam Rakunas (Angry Robot)
Archangel, Marguerite Reed (Arche)

The winner will be announced on March 25, 2016 at Norwescon 39 in SeaTac, Washington. Congratulations to all the nominees!

New Treasures: The Library of America Publishes Elmore Leonard

New Treasures: The Library of America Publishes Elmore Leonard

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Elmore Leonard Four Novels of the 1970s-small Elmore Leonard Four Novels of the 1980s-small

The Library of America has made a fine business of publishing archival quality omnibus editions of the most important novels of the 20th Century. We’ve covered several here recently, including:

A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny, edited by Peter Straub

They’ve also published omnibus editions of Kurt Vonnegut, Dashiell Hammett, Philip K. Dick, Ross Macdonald, David Goodis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. I received several review copies in the mail from Library of America recently, including one of their Elmore Leonard collections. It’s been years since I’ve read anything by Leonard, but then again, it’s been a long time since I’ve held something as enticing as these collections. If you’re looking to put together an impressive genre library, this is the place to start.

Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970s was published on August 28, 2014. It contains Fifty-Two Pickup, Swag, Unknown Man, and The Switch; it is 809 pages, priced at $35 in hardcover. Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1980s was published on September 1, 2015. It contains City Primeval, LaBrava, Glitz, and Freaky Deaky; it is 1024 pages, priced at $37.50 in hardcover. There are no digital editions.

Future Treasures: Medusa’s Web by Tim Powers

Future Treasures: Medusa’s Web by Tim Powers

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Medusas Web-smallA new book by Tim Powers is a major event. Powers made a huge splash with his early novels, especially The Drawing of the Dark (1979), which Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed for us here, The Anubis Gates (1983), Dinner at Deviant’s Palace (1985), and On Stranger Tides (1987). His last novel was Hide Me Among the Graves (2012), a sequel of sorts to The Stress of Her Regard (1989). Medusa’s Web is a phantasmagoric tale of a man who must uncover occult secrets in 1920s Hollywood to save his family.

In the wake of their Aunt Amity’s suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline’s return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted “House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills” that is a conduit for the supernatural.

Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time — to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient “spiders” which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years — an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.

As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat’s spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family’s past and finally free them… or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?

Medusa’s Web will be published by William Morrow on January 19, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

When the Ghost is Unseen: Finding Fantasy in Mainstream Fiction

When the Ghost is Unseen: Finding Fantasy in Mainstream Fiction

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The Seance John Harwood-small The Vanishing Wendy Webb-small The Somnambulist Jonathan Barnes-small

When I browse the SF and Fantasy section at my local Barnes & Noble every Saturday, I usually return home with a handful of intriguing finds. There’s certainly no shortage of books to choose from, and more showing up every week.

One thing I miss in my book hunts, however, is the thrill of the unknown. When I settle into my big green chair with a new horror novel, I know there’s a monster hiding somewhere. That’s the one drawback of always shopping in the genre section: you know the ghost will pop out by chapter five.

That’s why I like to spice up my reading by browsing in the gothic mystery section (my wife Alice’s favorite section). Is there a spook, or isn’t there? Often you don’t know until the end of the book (and sometimes not even then), and that adds a delicious element of mystery. Here’s a quick rundown of three delightful gothic mysteries I recently added to my collection.

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Vintage Treasures: Assignment Nor’ Dyren by Sydney J. Van Scyoc

Vintage Treasures: Assignment Nor’ Dyren by Sydney J. Van Scyoc

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Assignment Nor Dyren-small Assignment Nor Dyren-back-small

Sydney J. Van Scyoc is an American science fiction writer. She was born in 1939, and published her first story, “Shatter the Wall,” in Galaxy magazine in 1962. She was very active for the next three decades, publishing eleven novels and around 30 stories between 1962 and 1991, including Saltflower (1971), Starmother (1976), Cloudcry (1977), Sunwaifs (1981), and the Daughters of the Sunstone trilogy. Most of her novels were published as paperback originals from Berkley or Avon. In 1992, she reportedly retired to make and sell jewelry, but in 2004 & 2005 she sold two new short stories to Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF.

Assignment Nor’ Dyren, her second novel, is one of her most well known. Compared by some to The Left Hand of Darkness, it’s the tale of two human agents to the planet Nor’ Dyren who discover the inhabitants have a social order that divides them into three specialized castes. But the world seems to be crumbling — broken machines are not being repaired, there’is no innovation, and society has been in decline for over two centuries. Tasked with saving the planet, the human agents find themselves up against strange and sinister opposition.

We last covered Sydney J. Van Scyoc with her 1989 fantasy novel Feather Stroke. Assignment Nor’ Dyren was published in October 1973 by Avon Books. It is 222 pages, priced at 75 cents. Believe it or not, the gorgeously baroque cover is uncredited, and no one seems to know for sure who painted it. It looks a lot like the work of Paul Lehr, but it’s hardly likely there’s an unidentified Lehr out there. Click the images above for bigger versions.

New Treasures: Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, edited by Christopher Golden

New Treasures: Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, edited by Christopher Golden

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Seize the Night-small Seize the Night-back-small

Do you remember when vampires were terrifying creatures of the night? Not moody boyfriends who sparkled in sunlight, or lovers who assisted their tough private investigator girlfriends in a series of encounters with deadly yet also strangely sexy werewolves and other paranormal beasts?

I sure do. And so does Christopher Golden, editor of the new anthology Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, which gathers tales of terror in which vampires are figures of overwhelming terror once more. It includes brand new stories from Charlaine Harris, Scott Smith, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Michael Kortya, Kelley Armstrong, Brian Keene, David Wellington, Seanan McGuire, and Tim Lebbon. This is old-school vampire fiction, for fans who wouldn’t have it any other way.

Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror was published by Gallery Books on October 6, 2015. It is 544 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $13.99 for the digital edition. Click on the images above for larger versions of the front and back covers.