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New Treasures: Graphic Classics Volume 26: Vampire Classics

New Treasures: Graphic Classics Volume 26: Vampire Classics

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Gothic Classics Graphic Classics Volume 14-small Graphic Classics Volume 23 Halloween Classics-small Graphic Classics Volume 26 Vampire Classics

I’ve been a huge fan of Tom Pomplun’s Graphic Classics comic anthologies for years, ever since I received a copy of the first one, Volume 1: Edgar Allan Poe, in 2001 (back when they were Rosebud Graphic Classics, a spin-off of Rosebud magazine). Some of my favorites are Volume 4: H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 14: Gothic Classics, and Volume 23: Halloween Classics (back cover here). But I hadn’t seen a new release in over three years, ever since Volume 25: Canine Feline Classics back in 2014. So imagine my surprise when I accidentally stumbled on a copy of Graphic Classics Volume 26: Vampire Classics, which snuck into bookstores on June 28. Here’s the description.

Vampire Classics features a unique adaptation of the 1922 silent film, Nosferatu. Plus a horror-western by “Conan” creator Robert E. Howard and Ray Bradbury’s “The Man Upstairs.” With “The Strange Orchid” by H.G. Wells, “Olalla” by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a short story by famed horror writer and co-editor Mort Castle.

Our previous coverage of Graphic Classics includes:

Graphic Classics Half-Price Sale
It’s Halloween Already with Graphic Classic’s Halloween Classics
Get Graphic Classics Volume 23: Halloween Classics for only $10 in October

Graphic Classics Volume 26: Vampire Classics was published by Eureka Productions on June 28, 2017. It is 144 pages, priced at $19.95. See all our recent Comics coverage here.

New Treasures: Devil’s Call by J. Danielle Dorn

New Treasures: Devil’s Call by J. Danielle Dorn

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Devil's Call J Danielle Dorn-smallI like to mix things up in the New Treasures pipeline, offering titles from a range of different publishers. I’ve featured several novels from Inkshares in just the past few weeks — including teleportation thriller The Punch Escrow, and Quebec horror novel The God in the Shed — so when a new Inkshares novel, J. Danielle Dorn’s debut fantasy Devil’s Call, landed on my desk last week, I figured it was a long shot.

But that was before I read the description. The Bibliosanctum calls it “One of the best novels I’ve read this year,” and James Demonaco, creator of The Purge movie trilogy, calls it “The Revenant with witches.” Devil’s Call leapfrogged several titles that have been waiting patiently in the queue, and I think you’ll thank me.

On a dark night in the summer of 1859, three men enter the home of Dr. Matthew Callahan and shoot him dead in front of his pregnant wife. Unbeknownst to them, Li Lian, his wife, hails from a long line of women gifted in ways that scare most folks ― the witches of the MacPherson clan — and her need for vengeance is as vast and unforgiving as the Great Plains themselves.

Written to the child she carries, Devil’s Call traces Li Lian’s quest, from the Nebraska Territory, to Louisiana, to the frozen Badlands, to bring to justice the monster responsible for shooting her husband in the back. This long-rifled witch will stop at nothing ​― ​and risk everything​―​in her showdown with evil.

Devil’s Call will be published by Inkshares on August 8, 2017. It is 275 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by David Drummond.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Urban Fantasies and Robot Westerns: The Novels of C. Robert Cargill

Urban Fantasies and Robot Westerns: The Novels of C. Robert Cargill

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Dreams and Shadows Robert Cargill-small Queen of the Dark Things-small Sea of Rust-small

In the wider world, C. Robert Cargill is probably best known for his Nebula-nominated script for the movie version of Doctor Strange, and for the uber-creepy Sinister (brrrr). But around these parts, he’s known for his pair of novels about the Austin wizard Colby: his debut Dreams and Shadows (2013) and the sequel Queen of the Dark Things (2014). In her Tor.com review, Emily Nordling said, “Dark, comedic, and unsettling, Dreams and Shadows is everything an urban fantasy sets out to be.” I bought both books last year and put them near the top of my to-be-read pile.

But now along comes his third novel, Sea of Rust, a robot western set in a post-apocalyptic landscape in which humans have been wiped out in a machine uprising. This doesn’t just one threaten to replace his previous two in my TBR pile; it’s likely it will move right to the top. It arrives in hardcover from Harper Voyager on September 5.

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New Treasures: The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein

New Treasures: The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein

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The Punch Escrow-smallThe Punch Escrow is Tal M. Klein’s debut novel, but it’s getting a lot more attention than most first novels get. It won the reader-voted Geek & Sundry Hard Science Contest last year, and the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog called it “the smartest sci-fi thriller of the summer.” And Kirkus says “It’s hard to say enough good things about this hard-science future thriller with humor and heart ― an excellent debut.”

It arrived last week in trade paperback from Inkshares. Here’s the description.

It’s the year 2147. Advancements in nanotechnology have enabled us to control aging. We’ve genetically engineered mosquitoes to feast on carbon fumes instead of blood, ending air pollution. And teleportation has become the ideal mode of transportation, offered exclusively by International Transport ― the world’s most powerful corporation, in a world controlled by corporations.

Joel Byram spends his days training artificial-intelligence engines to act more human and trying to salvage his deteriorating marriage. He’s pretty much an everyday twenty-second century guy with everyday problems ― until he’s accidentally duplicated while teleporting.

Now Joel must outsmart the shadowy organization that controls teleportation, outrun the religious sect out to destroy it, and find a way to get back to the woman he loves in a world that now has two of him.

Read an excerpt at Tor.com.

The Punch Escrow was published by Inkshares on July 25, 2017. It is 356 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $7.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by M.S. Corley.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

The Hilarity of the Strange: The Man Underneath: The Collected Short Fiction of R. A. Lafferty, Volume 3

The Hilarity of the Strange: The Man Underneath: The Collected Short Fiction of R. A. Lafferty, Volume 3

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The Man Underneath The Collected Short Fiction of R. A. Lafferty Volume 3-smallThe Man Underneath: The Collected Short Fiction, Volume Three
Centipede Press (368 pages, $100 deluxe hardcover, April 5, 2016)

He laid down a road paved with bright, deadpan madness for us to walk, mouths agape and eyes wide with wonder and trepidation.
– from the introduction by Bud Webster

Let’s talk about R. A. Lafferty. You may have heard of him before: a wild, raggedy old man from Tulsa, Oklahoma, whose work showed up in magazines and the pulps from the sixties to the eighties, who ranged through conventions for a while (according to legends always polite and often drunk), and whose writings rode the New Wave through its crest and recession.

Lafferty had a style that was utterly unique and impossible to imitate. (People have tried.) His short stories were difficult to categorize, and his novels were nearly impossible to read. Nowadays his work is largely out of print and hard to find. His short fiction is scattered across a hundred shores of old magazines, obscure chap-books, and out of print collections. A few of the more well-known ones, like “Narrow Valley,” turn up now and again in anthologies, but the majority are lost, and so one of the strangest, strongest, most distinctive voices from speculative American fiction comes through, if at all, garbled and faint and haunting.

All of this has changed with the publication by Centipede Press of the Collected Short Fiction of R. A. Lafferty, an ongoing series of gorgeous small press books of which the third volume is out and the fourth is on the way. When I say gorgeous, I mean well-designed hardcovers with cloth ribbon and a price point for serious collectors or for library purchase. (Making friends with librarians is my strategy for getting ahold of books like these.) But each volume succeeds in capturing and displaying the varied short stories of Lafferty, splaying them out on the page like a bizarre and beautiful Lepidoptera collection. Lafferty is most alive in his stories, and the random structure of each collection, which are not organized by chronological or any other logical arrangement, means you can step into a good representation of his work with any volume.

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The Intolerable Sorrow of the Absence of Faith: The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

The Intolerable Sorrow of the Absence of Faith: The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

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The-Loney-smallerFaith damages even its most ardent adherents. In no other work of literature have I learned about this more than The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley. Critics have hailed it as a masterpiece of Gothic literature. For those who balk at the categorization of modern books as “classics, I guarantee that once you read The Loney, your first thought will be, “Why wasn’t this written earlier?” It would have likely had a similar reception in the 1970s, the decade in which the story begins.

Smith, who never reveals his true name to the reader, comes from a troubled family. His brother Hanny has been mute for most of his life. Despite his shortcomings, Hanny gets through the day with help from his dearest companion, his brother, and the language they share with various inanimate objects.

However well Hanny goes about the business of living, their mother seeks to cure him of his muteness. Every Easter the family, accompanied by their faithful congregation, takes a pilgrimage to the unbearably bleak coast of Lancashire where there exists a holy shrine. When the family decides once again to visit the desolate coastline in order to elicit a cure, they descend into a waking nightmare so haunting, it may stay with you your whole life.

Hurley has a masterful way of introducing his readers to the superstitions that have governed the lives of believers for generations. He instills them into the flesh and bones of the inhabitants of the Loney. Readers with a keen eye for foreshadowing may glean the intentions of the villagers that the family first encounters with the ease of seasoned detectives. But even so, their machinations and the way in which they go about fulfilling their sacred duties has the power to gut you.

So, too, does the story of Father Wilfred, the former head of the family’s congregation. Hurley renders the man’s dissolution of faith after bearing witness to the effects of a traumatic ordeal with breathtaking clarity. It becomes a stark commentary on the silence of the divine.

Silence acts as the novel’s principle theme: the silence of the mysterious house in which the family stays, shrouded in unspeakable horrors distilled in their purest form; the silence of Hanny, forced to participate in the degrading ritual meant to cleanse him of his muteness; the silence of Father Bernard, the new head of the the congregation, on the death of his predecessor and his own past. That he calls Smith ‘Tonto,’ faithful companion of the Lone Ranger, acts as its own form of silence. Though he acts as the devoted companion of his brother, Smith can never rid himself of feeling helplessly alone in his conviction of the Loney’s unholy power.

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Andrew Liptak on 16 SF, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Read in July

Andrew Liptak on 16 SF, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Read in July

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The Harbors of the Sun Martha Wells-small Tomorrow's Kin Nancy Kress-small Bannerless Carrie Vaughn small

By my count, there are two days left in July. If I don’t sleep for the next two days, and ignore e-mail and the phone, I may be able salvage some of my July reading plan.

Of course, that assumes I don’t discover a new batch of enticing July titles. And with Andrew Liptak on the job, chances of that are slim. Over at The Verge, he’s compiled a list of 16 science fiction, fantasy, and horror books to read this July, featuring space operas, superheroes, and fantasies. It includes a new novel from one of the most popular authors to appear in Black Gate, the marvelous Martha Wells, a Nazi superhero thriller from Kay Kenyon, the opening novel in a new trilogy from Nancy Kress, a post-apocalyptic murder mystery from the brilliant Carrie Vaughn, and the saga of a San Francisco superheroine by Sarah Kuhn.

Let’s see what Andrew has for us.

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In 500 Words or Less: Flesh and Artifice by Jaleigh Johnson

In 500 Words or Less: Flesh and Artifice by Jaleigh Johnson

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Flesh and Artifice-smallFlesh and Artifice
By Jaleigh Johnson
The Ed Greenwood Group (86 pages, $5.99 eBook, January 2017)

Pro tip: magic is dangerous and unpredictable. You might want to be the next Gandalf, but every type of magic in every fictional world out there carries its share of risks, and even an experienced practitioner can stumble and find themselves blown up, trapped in a pocket dimension, or awakened on a wooden table with a raven’s wing for an arm and two other creatures sharing space in your brain. That last one might seem difficult to imagine, but it’s one of the core premises of Flesh and Artifice, a novella by fantasy writer Jaleigh Johnson in the world of Stormtalons, created by Ed Greenwood.

(Full disclosure: I have a Stormtalons short story published by TEGG, too, but one of my cardinal blogging rules is to be 100% honest and as unbiased as possible in my reviews – which I hope has come across in previous posts, and continues here.)

Being part of the shared Stormtalons universe, Flesh and Artifice has to play by certain rules. One of the best things about Johnson’s writing, though, is that she manages to make everything you need to know about this world clear without any “as you know, Bob” moments or info-dumps; instead, specific bits of information are woven into the narrative where required without breaking the flow.

What surprised me about so short a work is Johnson’s ability to keep the narrative moving and make the characters clear and relatable without missing many beats. If anything, I wish Flesh and Artifice had been longer… not because I feel like there are things missing, but because I wanted to see more of what these characters are capable of and where their journeys might take them next.

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io9 on the Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy of July

io9 on the Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy of July

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Afterlife Marcus Sakey-small In Evil Times Melinda Snodgrass-small The Best of Subterranean-small

Over at io9, Cheryl Eddy has been doing the hard work of cataloging the best new science fiction and fantasy month after month. Her July list — packed with brand new releases by Greg Egan, Charles Stross, Nancy Kress, Gardner Dozois, Harry Turtledove, Jay Posey, Nina Allan, Sam J. Miller, Rachel Caine, Kay Kenyon, Carrie Vaughn, Naomi Kritzer, Adam Christopher, and many others — is one of the best yet. Here’s a few of the highlights.

Marcus Sakey is the author of the million-copy bestselling Brilliance trilogy. His new novel Afterlife is set right here in Chicago, and has already been optioned by Imagine Entertainment and producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.

In this dystopian romance, a pair of FBI agents investigating a Chicago terrorist attack fall in love — a circumstance complicated by the fact that one is dead and one is still alive.

Afterlife was published by Thomas & Mercer on July 18, 2017. It is 318 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the digital edition.

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Future Treasures: Blackthorne, Volume Two of The Malorum Gates by Stina Leicht

Future Treasures: Blackthorne, Volume Two of The Malorum Gates by Stina Leicht

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Cold Iron Stina Leicht-small Black Thorne-small

Stina Leicht’s first two novels were Of Blood and Honey (2011), which Sean Stiennon reviewed for us here, and And Blue Skies From Pain (2012). In 2015 she released the first novel in her new flintlock epic fantasy series, Cold Iron.

Okay, I’m not an expert on flintlock epic fantasy. In fact, I kinda thought the publisher was pulling my leg. Flintlock fantasy? Come on, you just made that up so that you’d have a section to file this under. But I did a Google search and, holy cats, it’s a legit genre and everything. Examples include Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage trilogy, D.B. Jackson’s Thieftaker Chronicles, and Django Wexler’s Shadow Campaigns series. (Check out this list for more. Use it to amaze your friends at parties!)

Blackthorne, the sequel to Cold Iron, arrives in hardcover next month from Saga Press. I have an advance copy in house and, damn. This is a big book. The first two volumes total nearly 1,400 pages. If flintlock fantasy is your thing, this book is like five pounds of Christmas. (Also, if flintlock fantasy is your thing, you’re clearly a lot more hip than I am. Don’t get excited, that ain’t much of an accomplishment.)

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