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Category: Future Treasures

Future Treasures: Hide by Kiersten White

Future Treasures: Hide by Kiersten White

Hide by Kiersten White, coming May 24 from Del Rey

Kiersten White won a Bram Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel for The Dark Descendent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, which Goth Chick reviewed for us in 2018, calling the audio version “my Audible obsession for nearly eleven hours… I am completely hooked.” White is the New York Times bestselling author of the Paranormalcy series and the Conqueror’s Trilogy, which began with And I Darken (2016).

Hide is her first adult offering, and I’ve been hearing good things. It’s a supernatural thriller about a homeless woman with a dark past who takes part in a high-stakes competition to spend a week in an abandoned amusement park without getting caught. Booklist says it “combines elements of Thomas Tryon’s classic Harvest Home, Netflix’s Squid Game, and Jordan Peele’s film oeuvre… with revelatory pacing reminiscent of Spielberg’s Jaws.”

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Return to the Middle Sea in All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay

Return to the Middle Sea in All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay

All the Seas of the World (Berkley, May 17, 2022)

What does it mean to be an exile? How does that meaning bend across lines of nationality, of gender, of religion? How many different ways can being exiled shape, define, ruin, or even save a life?

This is just one set of questions raised by All the Seas of the World, the newest novel from master fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay. The novel, Kay’s fifteenth, comes from Berkley and will be released on May 17, 2022.

All the Seas of the World is the third in a sequence of novels set in the lands around the Middle Sea, Kay’s reimagining of the Mediterranean region of Europe and North Africa, in a time period akin to the early Renaissance. The first novel set in this time and place, Children of Earth and Sky, actually takes place after the second installment, A Brightness Long Ago. This third novel is placed chronologically between the two. Kay prefers not to refer to the books as a trilogy, and with reason. Though related, and featuring recurring characters, each book stands alone. Taken together, the stories here fit into a world history Kay began to build with The Lions of Al-Rassan (1995), and built upon in Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors (1998 and 2000), and The Last Light of the Sun (2004).

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Future Treasures: Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror edited by John F.D. Taff

Future Treasures: Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror edited by John F.D. Taff


Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror, UK edition (Titan Books, March 22, 2022)
and US edition (Tor Nightfire, May 10, 2022). Covers uncredited.

Forty years ago Kirby McCauley packed up and moved to New York to try his hand at being a literary agent. His friend Richard L. Tierney helped him drive to the city; before long he was representing a host of young writers, including Roger Zelazny, Stephen King, and George R. R. Martin, who credits McCauley with helping launch his writing career. In 1980 Kirby drew on his contacts to assemble a massive original anthology: Dark Forces, a landmark of modern horror and one of the most important fantasy anthologies of the 20th Century, with new stories by Robert Aickman, Karl Edward Wagner, T. E. D. Klein, Gene Wolfe, Clifford D. Simak, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury — and the first appearance of a horror masterpiece by Stephen King, The Mist.

Next month John F.D. Taff presents Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror, a new anthology that pays homage to the legacy of Dark Forces — and includes brand new stories by a Who’s Who of modern horror, including Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Graham Jones, Josh Malerman, Gemma Files, Usman T. Malik, Priya Sharma, John Langan, and many others.

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Keeping Faith With the Rules of Writing: An Interview with K.D. Edwards

Keeping Faith With the Rules of Writing: An Interview with K.D. Edwards


The Tarot Sequence: The Last Sun, The Hanged Man, and The Hourglass Throne
(Pyr, 2018, 2019, and 2022). Covers by Micah Epstein

The last two years were pretty lousy for the world, but fairly good for reading! It was time to read some newer authors, and KD Edwards’ Tarot Sequence had been on my list for quite some time. Urban fantasy with a male protagonist, Tarot, and LGBTQ+ friendly? Published through Pyr — one of the more interesting mainstream publishers? Definitely a must-read for me. Plus, have you seen those gorgeous evocative covers?

I started reading book 1, The Last Sun, in mid-2020. Did I say reading? A more accurate statement would be devouring. Book 2, The Hanged Man swiftly followed, and then I felt bereft. The story clearly wasn’t over, but there wasn’t another book?

I reached out to KD on Twitter to inquire, and he let me know that not only was there a third book on the way — The Hourglass Throne, due out May 17th, 2022 from Pyr — but that there was free extra content (novellas!) available on his website.

I caught up with KD at Worldcon 2021 in DC, and he graciously agreed to answer a few questions.

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New Treasures: Frolic on the Amaranthyn by Chase A. Folmar

New Treasures: Frolic on the Amaranthyn by Chase A. Folmar

Frolic on the Amaranthyn (Sable Star Press,4/6/2022). Cover art by Goran Gligović

Frolic on the Amaranthyn will be published by Sable Star Press on April 6th, 2022. It is 130 pages, priced at$7.99 paperback and $2.99 in digital formats (available soon from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others).  Cover art by Goran Gligović. This post announces the release and previews excerpts.

Chase A. Folmar has been demonstrating his command of Weird Fiction, Sword & Sorcery (S&S), and the English language in various short fiction entries (primarily via Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Sword & Sorcery & Witchhouse: Amateur Magazine of Cosmic Horror online magazines). This novella, Frolic on the Amaranthyn, seems to be his print debut. If you are not familiar with his previous work, you may misconstrue the contents from the title as being a fantasy romance (which it is not; and, you can check out his stories in Whetstone #1 #2 #4 or Witchhouse #1).

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Future Treasures: Time Troopers edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio

Future Treasures: Time Troopers edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio

Time Troopers (Baen, April 5, 2022). Cover by Kieran Yanner

It’s a delight to see a brand new anthology from the dynamic duo of Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio. Their previous collaborations (Space Pioneers, Overruled, and Cosmic Corsairs) were a lot of fun — and they even gave a shout out to the readers of Black Gate in the acknowledgments of Cosmic Corsairs for their help selecting the stories.

Their newest, Time Troopers, contains new and classic tales of Time Travel for military purposes, and it comes packed with stories by Robert A. Heinlein, Keith Laumer, Poul Anderson, A.E. Van Vogt, Fritz Leiber, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe, Edmond Hamilton, H. Beam Piper, and many more. It arrives in two weeks from Baen, and looks like another solid addition to the fast-growing Davis-Ruocchio library.

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Future Treasures: Azura Ghost, Volume II of The Graven by Essa Hansen

Future Treasures: Azura Ghost, Volume II of The Graven by Essa Hansen


Nophek Gloss
and Azura Ghost (Orbit, 2020 and 2021). Covers by Mike Heath

I seem to have increased the amount of space opera in my diet. I think it’s because there happen to be so many good series on the go — from Becky Chambers Wayfarers books to Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, from Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space to James S.A. Corey’s Expanse, Derek Künsken’s Quantum Evolution to Megan E. O’Keefe’s Protectorate trilogy.

But the one I’m excited about at the moment is Essa Hansen’s The Graven, the tale of one man and his sentient starship. Mostly because the second book, Azura Ghost, arrives next week. We covered the first volume, Nophek Gloss, last year. Not only has Hansen created an exciting space opera series, but she’s also mixed in the other hot SF theme de jour — the concept of the multiverse — spreading her tale across a rich canvas of parallel universes.

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Goth Chick News: Traveling the Road of Bones

Goth Chick News: Traveling the Road of Bones


Road of Bones by Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s Press, January 25, 2022). Cover artist unknown

I have recently been entertained by a Facebook group called View from My Window. People from around the world post pictures of just that; the view they see outside their windows. The fascinating bit is seeing postings from people in the farthest-flung corners of the globe, including Siberia. I didn’t know much about Siberia before, other than Russian dissidents being banished there, but seeing the pictures made me do a little research. I now know that Siberia is home to 33.7 million people, but that number is a little rough since there is no single precise definition of Siberia’s territorial borders. That population occupies 5 million square miles, so my concept of “sparsely populated” is mostly true. And boy is it cold. The average temperature in January −13 °F (no wind chill factored in) and warmest temps averaging around 50 °F.

So why am I telling you this and what does it have to do with horror?

Because my recent fascination with Siberia coincides nicely with a recent horror release from St. Martin’s Press, titled Road of Bones by Christopher Golden.

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Future Treasures: Gunfight on Europa Station edited by David Boop

Future Treasures: Gunfight on Europa Station edited by David Boop

Gunfight on Europa Station (Baen Books, January 25, 2022). Cover Art by Dominic Harman

I’ve been enjoying David Boop’s weird western anthologies for Baen (Straight Outta Tombstone, Straight Outta Deadwood, and Straight Outta Dodge City). His newest takes the series in a different direction — deep space! — but keeps the six shooters and saddle spurs. That’s different. But what the hell — I’m on board.

Gunfight on Europa Station arrives on January 25, and comes packed with new fiction by an impressive list of contributors: Alan Dean Foster, Jane Lindskold, Wil McCarthy, Gini Koch, Martin Shoemaker, Cat Rambo with J.R. Martin, Alastair Mayer, Alex Shvartsman, Patrick Swenson, Elizabeth Moon, and Michael L. Haspil. These books are a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to the newest with anticipation.

I’m especially excited to see Alex Shvartsman’s contribution. I was at his reading at Worldcon last month (from his upcoming novel The Middling Affliction), and it was easily the most entertaining of the dozen or so I attended, a raucous and funny tale of an exorcist/con man who winds up over his head in a tangled supernatural mystery. It’s always a pleasure to discover a new writer, and it’s doubly so when you have the chance to hear a skilled entertainer perform their own work.

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Future Treasures: Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore

Future Treasures: Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore

Battle of the Linguist Mages (Tor.com, January 11, 2022)

If there’s a more exciting publisher in SF and fantasy at the moment than Tor.com, I don’t know what it is. They’ve dominated both award lists and bestseller lists with their recent powerhouse releases, including Martha Wells’ hugely popular Murderbot chronicles, Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series, and Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth. Just in the last few months they’ve released brand new books by Tochi Onyebuchi, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Catherynne M. Valente, Alix E. Harrow, Charlie Jane Anders, Becky Chambers, and Peter F. Hamilton & Gareth L. Powell.

They’ve got a stellar line-up in place for next year as well, and we’re looking forward to sharing all the details. But the one I’ve got my eye on next month is Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore, author of Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You (Tor.com, February 2019). Charles Stross says, “It reads like Snow Crash had a dance-off with Gideon the Ninth, in a world where language isn’t a virus from outer space, it’s a goddamn alien invasion,” and that sounds like something worth canceling a few meetings for.

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