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New Treasures: Gotham by Midnight by Ray Fawkes and Ben Templesmith

New Treasures: Gotham by Midnight by Ray Fawkes and Ben Templesmith

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gotham by midnight-small Gotham By Midnight-back-small

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I admit I haven’t paid much attention to DC Comics popular The New 52 line (though I probably should). But I have been playing the superb Batman: Arkham Knight on the Xbox, and it’s sharpened my interest in all things Gotham-related. The tortured city of Gotham, birthplace of so much madness and obsession, is one of the great fictional cities in all of literature, and the perfect locale for a creepy supernatural series.

DC seems to think so too. The new Gotham by Midnight comic, collected in trade paperback for the first time last week, features Detective Jim Corrigan (aka The Spectre) in his own series, tackling the unusual cases that land on the Gotham City PD desk during the night shift. Spinning out of Ray Fawkes’ Batman Eternal comic, Gotham By Midnight sees Corrigan prowling the streets of Gotham, solving the unsolvable supernatural crimes that arise when monsters, ghosts and worse things leave their mark on the city. When two kidnapped girls return home unable to speak English, and changed, Corrigan and his team of supernatural sleuths follow the clues to an ancient school with a very strange curriculum. Volume One: We Do Not Sleep collects the first six issues of the comic.

Gotham by Midnight, Volume One: We Do Not Sleep was written by Ray Fawkes and drawn by Ben Templesmith, and published by DC Comics on August 25, 2015. It is 144 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Ben Templesmith.

Like Osprey But Corsets and Khaki with a Whiff of Steampunk: Great War Fashion by Lucy Adlington

Like Osprey But Corsets and Khaki with a Whiff of Steampunk: Great War Fashion by Lucy Adlington

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In a warzone and yet she’s smiling. Why?

First, take a look at the young woman on the cover, “A despatch rider in the Women’s Royal Airforce enjoying a tea break while seated on her motorcycle, 1918.”

She’s most likely in a warzone. She’s probably not had a bath for a while. Might have lice. Any men in her life have a good chance of not making it to Christmas with all their body parts, or at all. She’s living under military discipline. And, as she rides around, she might herself get blown up or strafed.

And yet, she’s smiling.

You really have to read expert fashion historian Lucy Adlington’s Great War Fashion: Tales from the History Wardrobe to truly understand why she’s smiling.

And fashion in the book’s title is an understatement. This is more the kind of thing Osprey would publish — kit, context, consequences and case study. It’s certainly less about the minutiae of stitching and fabric, and more about the clothes women wore, why, how, and what the experience was.

As promised by the subtitle, “Tales from the History Wardrobe,” it’s packed with stories from women’s original letters, diaries and reminiscences, so it takes us beyond fashion and into the evolving role of women from about 1910 through to 1920.

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Future Treasures: Deadlands: Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry

Future Treasures: Deadlands: Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry

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Deadlands Ghostwalkers-smallI’m a big fan of weird westerns, and I think at least part of that stems from my early interest in Deadlands, the classic Weird Western RPG first published by Pinnacle in 1996. It’s one of the most original and inventive games of my acquaintance, and a terrific adventure setting.

So I was excited to see Pinnacle partner with bestselling author Jonathan Maberry (Rot & Ruin, Dead of Night), to launch a line of Deadlands novels. The first, Ghostwalkers, goes on sale later this month from Tor.

Welcome to the Deadlands, where steely-eyed gunfighters rub shoulders with mad scientists and dark, unnatural forces in the Weirdest West of all. Where the Great Quake of 1868 has shattered California into a lawless labyrinth of sea-flooded caverns… and a mysterious superfuel called “ghost rock” sparks as much greed and bloodshed as it does miraculous new machines and weapons of destruction.

Grey Torrance is a hired gun literally haunted by the bloody specters of his past. Heading west with no particular destination in mind, he joins forces with a brilliant Sioux scientist to defend the struggling town of Paradise Falls from a diabolical madman out to take over the entire territory… and build an army of the living dead!

It’s about time the market realized the potential of this great setting. Anything that gleefully mixes steampunk, zombies, RPGS, and the Weird West is A-OK in my book.

Deadlands: Ghostwalkers will be published by Tor Books on September 22, 2015. It is 480 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by Aaron Riley.

New Treasures: Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell

New Treasures: Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell

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Witches of Lychford-small Witches of Lychford back-small

Tor.com‘s brand new line of premium novellas continues to produce top-notch titles. Earlier this week saw the release of Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, and next Tuesday Paul Cornell’s Witches of Lychford, a modern fantasy set in the Cotswolds, arrives. Here’s the description:

Traveler, Cleric, Witch.

The villagers in the sleepy hamlet of Lychford are divided. A supermarket wants to build a major branch on their border. Some welcome the employment opportunities, while some object to the modernization of the local environment.

Judith Mawson (local crank) knows the truth — that Lychford lies on the boundary between two worlds, and that the destruction of the border will open wide the gateways to malevolent beings beyond imagination.

But if she is to have her voice heard, she’s going to need the assistance of some unlikely allies…

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Vintage Treasures: The Blessing Trilogy by William Barnwell

Vintage Treasures: The Blessing Trilogy by William Barnwell

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The Blessing Papers-small Imram-small The Sigma Curve-small

William Barnwell isn’t a name well remembered today. He published only three novels, a postapocalyptic fantasy trilogy set in Ireland called The Blessing Trilogy, and a short prequel, before he vanished.

The Blessing Papers (1980)
Imram (1981)
The Sigma Curve (1981)

All three books in the trilogy were published by Pocket/Timescape.

The 80s, the decade of The Road Warrior and The Terminator, was a popular time for these nuclear postapocalytpic epics. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, they seemed to fall out of style. Today, the future is a grim young adult dystopia. I don’t know about you, but I preferred the future in the 80s.

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Future Treasures: The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen by Katherine Howe

Future Treasures: The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen by Katherine Howe

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The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen-smallKatherine Howe’s first novel, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, inspired by her family’s connection to the Salem Witch trials, became a New York Times bestseller. Her first YA novel, the bestselling Conversion, was released last year; she was also the editor of The Penguin Book of Witches.

Her latest YA novel, The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen, is a haunted love story set in present day New York, the tale of a young filmmaker who falls in love with a ghost who’s been searching to discover exactly what happened to her one dark night in 1825…

It’s July in New York City, and aspiring filmmaker Wes Auckerman has just arrived to start his summer term at NYU. While shooting a séance at a psychic’s in the East Village, he meets a mysterious, intoxicatingly beautiful girl named Annie.

As they start spending time together, Wes finds himself falling for her, drawn to her rose-petal lips and her entrancing glow. There’s just something about her that he can’t put his finger on, something faraway and otherworldly that compels him to fall even deeper. Annie’s from the city, and yet she seems just as out of place as Wes feels. Lost in the chaos of the busy city streets, she’s been searching for something — a missing ring. And now Annie is running out of time and needs Wes’s help. As they search together, Annie and Wes uncover secrets lurking around every corner, secrets that will reveal the truth of Annie’s dark past.

The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen will be published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on September 15, 2015. It is 384 pages, priced at $18.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Theresa M. Evangelista.

New Treasures: Angels & Exiles by Yves Meynard

New Treasures: Angels & Exiles by Yves Meynard

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Angels and Exiles-smallI first met Yves Meynard at the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal in 2001. He was already a rising star, and since then he’s had a stellar career — his novel The Book of Knights was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, and when Tor published his fantasy novel Chrysanthe in 2012, Locus called him “[David] Hartwell’s major discovery this year.” This is his first collection.

In these twelve sombre tales, ranging from baroque science fiction to bleak fantasy, Yves Meynard brings to life wonders and horrors. From space travellers who must rid themselves of the sins their souls accumulate in transit, to a young man whose love transcends time; from refugees in a frozen hold at the end of space, to a city drowning under the weight of its architectural prayer; from an alien Jerusalem that has corrupted the Earth, to a land still bleeding from the scars of a supernatural war; here are windows opened onto astonishing vistas, stories written with a scientist’s laser focus alloyed with a poet’s sensibilities.

At Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Yves offered this marvelous comment about how own search for wonder in fiction:

The natural world is an endless source of amazement; human culture all across the planet ceaselessly produces works of stunning beauty. You shouldn’t need anything else to satisfy your need for wonderment… And yet it still twitches inside me, that urge for the miraculous. I read stories of the fantastic and write them myself, to assuage it. And I tell myself it’s better to have it only inside of stories. Because if such a miraculous world were real, loaded with revelations and terrible marvels, a world in whose oceans swam hybrids and monsters, a world where everything was charged with transcendent meaning, and all our human conceits were true — that world would devour us.

Angels & Exiles was published by ChiZine Publications on February 26, 2015. It is 291 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version. The cover art is by Vince Haig, with a design by Samantha Beiko.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: An Apt Description of the Heroine in Beaulieu’s Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: An Apt Description of the Heroine in Beaulieu’s Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

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Twelve Kings in Sharakhai-smallTwelve Kings in Sharakhai: The Song of Shattered Sands: Book One
By Bradley P. Beaulieu
DAW Books (592 pages, $24.95 in hardcover, $9.99 digital, September 1, 2015)
Cover by Adam Paquette

Eleven years ago, Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala’s mother was killed by the immortal Twelve Kings that rule the desert city of Sharakhai. Çeda — as she’s known to a few close friends — doesn’t know why her mother was killed. She only has three clues: the Kings carved strange symbols into her mother’s skin before they killed her; a book of poems that belonged to her mother; and the fact that she can never reveal she was her mother’s daughter.

Along with her friend Emre — one of only a handful of people who know her true identity — Çeda earns money on the streets of Sharakhai by delivering messages and cutting the occasional purse. By the time she is a young adult, she earns money with a new identity: the White Wolf, one of the most feared and respected hand warriors in the fighting pits.

Only Emre knows the secret deep within her heart: she means to avenge her mother’s death by killing the immortal Kings that rule the city. But in order to do so, she has to face her fears, make allies out of enemies, and risk losing everything she cherishes.

The world building here is robust yet deft. There are several elements in play, such as the mythology that governs the Kings, the magic of the forbidden forest on the outskirts of the city, and the creatures called the asirim that roam Sharakhai every six weeks to prey upon the city’s inhabitants.

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Future Treasures: Dragons, Droids and Doom, Year One, edited by Iulian Ionescu and Frederick Doot

Future Treasures: Dragons, Droids and Doom, Year One, edited by Iulian Ionescu and Frederick Doot

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Dragons Droids and Doom-smallFantasy Scroll Magazine is one of the great success stories of genre crowdfunding. It was launched with a successful Kickstarter campaign in April 2014, in which it raised enough to fund itself for a full year (four issues). All four issues were released on time, as promised, and since then it’s been operating nicely under its own steam. This year it upgraded to bimonthly, attracting top talent like Robert Reed, Sarah Avery, Pauline J. Alama, Beth Cato, and many more, and the magazine continues to prosper.

Fantasy Scroll has supported itself by selling merchandise and launching a mobile app — and through a Starlight Patrol of enthusiastic backers and supporters at Patreon who help keep the magazine going. Best of all, they’ve announced a new line of anthologies, the first of which, Dragons, Droids and Doom, contains all 51 short stories published in their first year. Here’s editor Iulian Ionescu:

It’s with great pleasure that I introduce you to Dragons, Droids and Doom, Year One, the very first anthology from Fantasy Scroll Magazine. It contains all stories published in the year 2014, and what a cool bunch of stories! There are 51 stories from 49 authors, including names you’ll recognize, such as Mike Resnick, Ken Liu, Piers Anthony, and Cat Rambo. You will also find stories from up-and-coming authors and some from first-time published authors. All in all, I believe it’s a great mix of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and paranormal short stories that will appeal to a wide audience.

We last covered Fantasy Scroll Magazine with issue 7.

Dragons, Droids and Doom, Year One will be published in early November, 2015. It is $14.95 in trade paperback, and $5.99 for the ebook. The cover is by Mondolithic Studios. Read more — including the introduction by Mike Resnick, and two sample stories — at the website, and see the massive table of contents here.

New Treasures: Updraft by Fran Wilde

New Treasures: Updraft by Fran Wilde

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Updraft Fran Wilde-smallAs I mentioned in my post on The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Tor has really been on a tear recently with some top-notch debuts. They’ve always been willing to take a chance on new authors, but recently some of their most exciting releases have come from new authors. That continues with Updraft, the first novel from Fran Wilde, whose short fiction has been getting notice in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nature, and Asimov’s SF.

Welcome to a World of Wind and Bone, Songs and Silence, Betrayal and Courage

Kirit Densira cannot wait to pass her wingtest and begin flying as a trader by her mother’s side, being in service to her beloved home tower and exploring the skies beyond. When Kirit inadvertently breaks Tower Law, the city’s secretive governing body, the Singers, demand that she become one of them instead. In an attempt to save her family from greater censure, Kirit must give up her dreams to throw herself into the dangerous training at the Spire, the tallest, most forbidding tower, deep at the heart of the City.

As she grows in knowledge and power, she starts to uncover the depths of Spire secrets. Kirit begins to doubt her world and its unassailable Laws, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to a haunting choice, and may well change the city forever — if it isn’t destroyed outright.

Read an excerpt at Tor.com, and read Fran’s new short story set in the same world, “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” just released in the latest issue of online magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Updraft will be published by Tor Books on September 1, 2015. It is 364 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Stephan Martinere.