Featuring: Matthew Blake, Ray Bradbury & Jonathan R. Eller, Charles Cumming, John French, Josh Haven, Taylor Lorenz, Ray Nayler, K. J. Parker, Adam Plantinga, Adam Sisman, Stuart Stevens, Halley Sutton

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Matthew Blake, ANNA O (Harper)

THE WORLD WILL KNOW HER NAME

What if your nightmares weren’t really nightmares at all?

We spend an average of 33 years of our lives asleep. But what really happens, and what are we capable of, when we sleep?

Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive — and hasn’t woken up since. Dubbed “Sleeping Beauty” by the tabloids, Anna’s condition is a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.”

Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of sleep-related homicides. His methods are the last hope of solving the infamous “Anna O’”case and waking Anna up so she can stand trial. But he must be careful treating such a high-profile suspect — he’s got career secrets and a complicated personal life of his own.

As Anna shows the first signs of stirring, Benedict must determine what really happened and whether Anna should be held responsible for her crimes.

Only Anna knows the truth about that night, but only Benedict knows how to discover it. And they’re both in danger from what they find out.

This novel has been getting some early buzz — in the UK even before it had a published synopsis, which I’ll admit often leaves me a little suspicious. When it became available for review for North America, though, there was the synopsis above; and I’m intrigued. Hopefully I’ll read this very soon. Anna O is due to be published by Harper in North America (January 2nd) and in the UK (February 1st).

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Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Ray Bradbury & Jonathan R. Eller (ed.), REMEMBRANCE (Simon & Schuster)

Iconic author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury believed that, someday, a collection of his letters could illuminate the story of his life in new ways. That story emerges across time and memory from the pages of Remembrance.

Ray Bradbury was one of the best-known writers and creative dreamers of our time. The many honors he received, which included an Emmy and an Academy Award nomination for adaptations of his work, culminated in the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a 2004 National Medal of Arts, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. For many years NASA and the Disney Studio felt the impact of Ray Bradbury’s creativity, and his fiction has found its way into hundreds of anthologies, textbooks, and the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program. His enduring legacy as a storyteller, novelist, and space-age visionary radiated out into popular adaptations for stage, film, and television, and now the fascinating narratives and insights of his personal and professional correspondence are revealed for the first time.

Remembrance offers the first sustained look at his life in letters from his late teens to his ninth decade. Bradbury’s correspondence was far-reaching — he interacted with a rich cross section of 20th-century cultural figures, writers, film directors, editors, and others who simply wanted insights or encouragement from a writer who had enriched their lives through his stories and novels.

Bradbury scholar and biographer, Jonathan R. Eller, organized this volume into categories of correspondents, showing Bradbury’s progression through life as he knew it, and not necessarily as the public perceived him. Letters to and from mentors and other writers are followed by correspondence with such film directors as John Huston, François Truffaut, and Federico Fellini. Letters with publishers and agents are followed by letters that capture moments of national and international recognition, the shadows of war and intolerance that motivated some of his best writing, and the friends and family members who shared the memories of his life. Among the writers whose letters illuminate Remembrance are Theodore Sturgeon, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Twilight Zone writers Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, Dan Chaon, Bernard Berenson, Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell, Graham Greene, Anaîs Nin, Gore Vidal, Carl Sandburg, and Jessamyn West.

Remembrance illuminates the most elusive aspect of Ray Bradbury’s wide-ranging writing passions — the correspondence he sent and received throughout his long life, each letter originally intended for an audience of one.

As someone who has always been fascinated by behind-the-scenes content, I’ve often found author and other creator correspondence to be particularly illuminating and engaging. Despite not reading much of Bradbury’s work, I nevertheless am very much looking forward in reading this collection of his letters. Remembrance is due to be published by Simon & Schuster in North America and in the UK, on November 7th.

Follow the Author (Bradbury): Website, Goodreads
Follow the Author (Eller): Website, Goodreads
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Charles Cumming, KENNEDY 35 (Harper)

1995: In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, 24-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices which will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha.

2023: Eric Appiah, an old friend from Kite’s days at school and an off-the-record BOX 88 asset, makes contact with explosive information about what happened all those years ago in West Africa. When tragedy strikes, Kite must use all his resources to bring down a criminal network with links to international terror … and protect Martha from possible assassination.

The third novel in Cumming’s excellent Box 88/Lachlan Kite series. Very much enjoyed the first two books (Box 88 and Judas 62), and I’ve been eagerly anticipating this one ever since it was announced. Kennedy 35 is due to be published by Harper in the UK (October 26th) and Mysterious Press in North America (November 7th).

Also on CR: Interview/Guest Post “A Colder War Mole Hunt”; Reviews of Typhoon, The Trinity Six, A Foreign Country, A Colder War, The Man Between, Box 88, and Judas 62

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Review copy received via

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John French, CYPHER: LORD OF THE FALLEN (Black Library)

As the Great Rift unfolds in the night sky above Terra and daemons walk upon the birth world of mankind, the Primarch Roboute Guilliman returns, heralding a dark new age.

During the breaking storm, Cypher and his band of Fallen escape from the most secure prison in the Imperium. Now loose in the Imperial Palace, they are hunted by warriors of the Dark Angels, forces of the Adeptus Custodes, and Imperial Assassins. But what are Cypher’s intentions? Can anything or anyone be trusted?

Told from Cypher’s own, unreliable point of view, this tale of truth, lies and secrets sees one of the Imperium’s most mysterious figures make war at its very heart. But what are the true motivations of the Lord of the Fallen?

Ah, the Fallen. One of the mysteries of the WH40k setting that breeds endless speculation and conspiracy theories about the actual loyalty of the Dark Angels. Often, the BL fiction that focuses on this faction has been a little underwhelming, but I had high hopes for French’s novel — he’s done great things with a number of prominent characters (e.g., Ahriman), and I’m happy to say he’s done an excellent job — I ended up starting Cypher the day after I got it, and zipped through in two sittings. The author’s done a great job of expanding our understanding of the character, the ongoing hunt for the Fallen, who the Fallen are and how they operate, and the lengths to which the loyal Dark Angels will go to keep their shame hidden. Cypher: Lord of the Fallen is out now, published by Black Library in North America and in the UK.

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Josh Haven, THE SIBERIA JOB (Aries/Head of Zeus)

A thrilling adventure inspired by true events, The Siberia Job charts a course through one of the most dramatic periods in recent Russian history, the impact of which continues to be felt to the present day.

After the demise of the Soviet Union, the newly established Russian government privatises its industry by issuing vouchers to all of its citizens, allowing them the chance to be shareholders in the country’s burgeoning businesses. The slips are distributed among the population and auctions are arranged where they can be exchanged for actual shares.

For those living in abject poverty, the vouchers appear to be little more than pieces of paper, totally separated from the far-off concept of potential future fortunes. But for Texas businessman John Mills and his Czech companion, Petr Kovac, the seemingly valueless chits suggest a lucrative potential, worth much more than what the current owners are willing to sell them for. They travel to the furthest, coldest reaches of the country to acquire vouchers for the country’s national oil company, Gazneft, roving from town to town with suitcases full of cash.

The two men quickly learn that the plan has complications – for example, the fact that the auctions at which these vouchers are traded for actual shares have been planned at the most remote, inaccessible locations possible to deter outsiders from buying in. And when the Russian mafia and the oligarchs in charge of Gazneft catch wind of their successes, the stakes become suddenly more deadly…

This novel has been getting a fair bit of good pre-publication buzz (and also post-publication, as it’s out already in North America). As I’m still on my extended espionage fiction kick, I jumped at the chance to read this — which I will hopefully do very soon. The Siberia Job is due to be published by Aries/Head of Zeus in the UK on August 28th; it is out now in North America, published by Mysterious Press.

Follow the Author: Goodreads
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Taylor Lorenz, EXTREMELY ONLINE (Simon & Schuster)

Acclaimed Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz presents a groundbreaking social history of the internet — revealing how online influence and the creators who amass it have reshaped our world, online and off.

For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online, she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism.

By tracing how the internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms’ power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It’s the real social history of the internet.

Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations created a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century.

Extremely Online is the inside, untold story of what we have done to the internet, and what it has done to us.

Always interested in reading about the history and development of technology and the internet, so when I saw this available for review, I jumped at the chance to read it. Very much enjoyed it, and I hope to get a review up on the site soon. Extremely Online is due to be published by Simon & Schuster in North America (October 3rd) and WH Allen in the UK (October 5th).

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Review copy received via

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Ray Nayler, THE TUSKS OF EXTINCTION (Tor.com)

When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA.

Moscow has resurrected the mammoth, but someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out, again.

The late Dr. Damira Khismatullina, the world’s foremost expert in elephant behavior, is called in to help. While she was murdered a year ago, her digitized consciousness is uploaded into the brain of a mammoth.

Can she help the magnificent creatures fend off poachers long enough for their species to take hold?

And will she ever discover the real reason they were brought back?

Nayler recently won a Locus Award (Best First Novel) for his latest novel, The Mountain in the Sea. So, when I saw this was on the way, I was certainly intrigued — the premise caught my attention, too. Looking forward to reading this very soon (though I’ll hold off on posting a review until closer to its release). The Tusks of Extinction is due to be published by Tor.com in North America and in the UK, on January 16th, 2024.

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Review copy received via

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K. J. Parker, SAEVUS CORAX DEALS WITH THE DEAD (Orbit)

A twisted tale of murder, betrayal, and battlefield salvage.

There’s no formal training for battlefield salvage. You just have to pick things up as you go along. Swords, armour, arrows – and the bodies, of course.

Over the years, Saevus Corax has picked up a lot of things. Some of them have made him decent money, others have brought nothing but trouble. But it’s a living, and somebody has to deal with the dead.

Something else that Saevus has buried is his past. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite succeed.

This is the first novel in a new fantasy trilogy from K. J. Parker, one of my favourite authors. I’ve mainly been a fan of his short fiction, but I think it’s definitely long past time when I read some of his full-length novels. Saevus Corax Deal with the Dead is due to be published by Orbit Books in North America and in the UK, on October 3rd.

Also on CR: Reviews of The Devil You Know, The Last Witness, Downfall of the Gods, My Beautiful Life, Prosper’s Demon, Academic Exercises, The Big Score, The Long Game, Pulling the Wings off Angels

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Review copy received via

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Adam Plantinga, THE ASCENT (Grand Central Publishing)

When a high security prison fails, a down-on-his luck cop and the governor’s daughter are going to have to team up if they’re going to escape…

Kurt Argento, an ex-Detroit street cop who can’t let injustice go — and who has the fighting skills to back up his idealism.

If he sees a young girl being dragged into an alley, he’s going to rescue her and cause some damage. 

When he does just that in a small corrupt Missouri town, he’s brutally beaten and thrown into a maximum-security prison.

Julie Wakefield, a grad student who happens to be the governor’s daughter, is about to take a tour of the prison. But when a malfunction in the security system releases a horde of prisoners, a fierce struggle for survival ensues. 

Argento must help a small band of staff and civilians, including Julie and her two state trooper handlers, make their way from the bottom floor to the roof to safety.

All that stands in their way are six floors of the most dangerous convicts in Missouri.

Thought the premise of this thriller sounded very promising. Hope to read it soon. The Ascent is due to be published by Grand Central Publishing in North America and in the UK, on January 2nd, 2024.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Adam Sisman, THE SECRET LIFE OF JOHN LE CARRÉ (Harper)

The extraordinary secret life of a great novelist, which his biographer could not publish while le Carré was alive.

Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Adam Sisman’s definitive biography, published in 2015, provided a revealing portrait of this fascinating man; yet some aspects of his subject remained hidden.

Nowhere was this more so than in his private life. Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over five decades. To these relationships he brought much of the tradecraft that he had learned as a spy — cover stories, cut-outs and dead letter boxes. These clandestine operations brought an element of danger to his life, but they also meant deceiving those closest to him. Small wonder that betrayal became a running theme in his work.

In trying to manage his biography, the novelist engaged in a succession of skirmishes with his biographer. While he could control what Sisman wrote about him in his lifetime, he accepted that the truth would eventually become known. Following his death in 2020, what had been withheld can now be revealed.

The Secret Life of John le Carré reveals a hitherto-hidden perspective on the life and work of the spy-turned-author and a fascinating meditation on the complex relationship between biographer and subject. “Now that he is dead,” Sisman writes, “we can know him better.”

This is Sisman’s second biography of John le Carré, albeit a briefer one. Covering certain aspects of le Carré’s life that were kept secret during his life, I’m looking forward to learning more about the author. (If you haven’t already, I’d also highly recommend you read le Carré’s memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, which is excellent.) I’ll be reading this very soon. The Secret Life of John le Carré is due to be published by Harper in North America (October 24th) and Profile Books in the UK (October 12th).

Follow the Author: Goodreads
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Stuart Stevens, THE CONSPIRACY TO END AMERICA (Twelve)

A former chief Republican strategist and bestselling author of It Was All a Lie offers an ominous warning that the G.O.P. is dragging our country towards autocracy, and if we don’t wake up to the crisis in our system, 2024 may well be our last free and fair election.

Today’s Republican party is not a “normal” political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in The Conspiracy to End America, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return.

Whenever a democracy slides into autocracy, there are five critical elements at work: financers, propagandists, party support, legal theories to legitimize, and shock troops. The Conspiracy to End America examines each of these driving forces on the Right and makes clear how they are working in concert to end our democracy as we know it.

In the tradition of It Can’t Happen Here and On Tyranny, The Conspiracy to End America is a blinking red distress call about the dark intentions lurking within Stevens’ old party and a rallying cry to beat back this perilous threat and save the Republic.

I’ve been a fan of Stevens’s writing for a while, now, and I think his books offer interesting and well-informed analysis and insight into the downward spiral of the Republican Party. Looking forward to reading this soon. The Conspiracy to End America is due to be published by Twelve in North America and in the UK, on October 10th.

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Review copy received via

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Halley Sutton, THE HURRICANE BLONDE (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

A former child starlet is plunged back into the dangerous glitter of Hollywood after discovering the body of a young actress.

Salma Lowe, progeny of Hollywood royalty and a once-promising child actor, now spends her days as a guide for the Stars Six Feet Under tour, leading tourists through Los Angeles’s star-studded avenues to haunting sites where actresses of the past met untimely ends. Salma knows better than anyone that a tragic death is the surest path to stardom. Her sister, Tawney, viciously dubbed the “Hurricane Blonde,” was murdered in the nineties, the case never solved and, to Salma’s ire, indefinitely closed . . . until she stumbles upon a dead body mid-tour, on the property where her sister once lived, at the precise scene of her sister’s demise. Even more uncanny: the deceased woman also looks like Tawney.

The police are convinced this woman’s death was an accident — but Salma is haunted by the investigation’s echoes of her own past. What if this woman’s murder points to Tawney’s killer? Desperate to track down the culprit once and for all, Salma launches her own investigation, plunging back into the salacious but seductive world of Hollywood. And what she’ll find is that old secrets may just be worth killing for.

The second novel from the author of The Lady Upstairs (which I enjoyed). Really looking forward to reading this, and hope to do so very soon. The Hurricane Blonde is due to be published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in North America and Allison & Busby in the UK, on August 8th.

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Review copy received via