Upcoming

Upcoming: AFTERWAR by Lilith Saintcrow (Orbit)

Civilian Reader Upcoming , , , ,

SaintcrowL-AfterwarUSIn May 2018, Orbit is due to publish Lilith Saintcrow’s latest novel, Afterwar. I stumbled across it in a catalogue, and I think it looks rather interesting. Here’s the synopsis:

They say the war’s over when the surrender is signed. It’s a lie.

America’s bloody Second Civil War lasted for years. When the surrender is signed, it’s supposed to be over; refugees flood the highways, trying to get back home. For Swann’s Riders — especially their newest addition Lara Nelson, snatched from certain death in the Firster kamp system-there’s no such thing as a home to return to.

Swann and his crew of partisans work for the Federal Army now, hunting through the wreckage for war criminals and kamp officials. Their next quarry is carrying something explosive, something that can level the nascent Federal government and turn the entire continent into a hellscape — well, more than it already is.

Across America, working against time and chaos, Swann’s Riders are back in the fight. And Lara, whose secrets may well end up consuming her too, has a vengeance of her own to deliver…

Afterwar will be published by Orbit in the US and UK.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Upcoming: RED WATERS RISING by Laura Anne Gilman (Saga Press)

Civilian Reader Upcoming , , , , ,

GilmanLA-DW3-RedWatersRisingUSNext year, Saga Press is due to publish the final novel in Laura Anne Gilman’s Devil’s West trilogy, Red Waters Rising. This is a trilogy that has been on my radar for some time, and I really should get around to reading it soon.

In the last novel of The Devil’s West trilogy, Isobel, the Devil’s Left Hand, and Gabriel ride through the magical land of the Territory to root out evil by the way of mad magicians, ghosts, and twisted animal spirits.

As Isobel and Gabriel travel to the southern edge of the Territory, they arrive in the free city of Red Stick. Tensions are running high as the homesteading population grows, crowding the native lands, and suspicions rise across the river from an American fort.

But there is a sickness running through Red Stick and Isobel begins to find her authority challenged. She’ll be abandoned, betrayed, and forced to stand her ground as the Devil’s left hand in this thrilling conclusion to The Devil’s West Trilogy.

The first two novels of the trilogy are available now: Silver on the Road and The Cold Eye. (Books 1 and 2 are also available in the UK.)

GilmanLA-DevilsWestUS2017

Also on CR: Interview with Laura Anne Gilman (2013)

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Upcoming: THE TESTAMENT OF LOKI by Joanne M. Harris (Gollancz)

Civilian Reader Upcoming , , , , , ,

HarrisJM-L2-TestamentOfLokiUKHCIn May 2018, Gollancz is due to publish Joanne M. Harris‘s next novel: The Testament of Loki. To the right you can see the stunning cover, which is what first caught my eye. There aren’t many details available about the novel, save the jacket and release date, but here’s the sparse synopsis from the publisher’s website:

The second adult epic fantasy novel from multi-million-copy bestselling author Joanne Harris.

Using her life-long passion for the Norse myths, Joanne Harris has created a vibrant and powerful fantasy novel.

See? Very sparse… According to Goodreads, it is the second prequel in Harris’s Runemarks series, following The Gospel of Loki, and set before Runemarks. The author’s website has a dedicated page for the novel, with a few more details (including a mini-Q&A):

THE GOSPEL OF LOKI ended at Ragnarok, the End of the Worlds, with Asgard fallen, the gods defeated and most of them either dead, or consigned to eternal torment in Netherworld. However, Loki manages to escape into another World through Dream, and finds himself, to his surprise, incarnate in  a human host – a 17-year-old girl called Jumps, and living in our own World. But, as he starts to come to terms with the challenges of being in a human host, Loki realizes that  there may be a way to escape the chains of mortality and return to the World of the gods.

I’m really looking forward to reading it.

Also on CR: Review of The Gospel of Loki

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

HarrisJM-RunemarksSeries2017

Upcoming: A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING by Raymond A. Villareal (Mulholland)

Civilian Reader Upcoming , , , , , , , , , , ,

VillarealRA-APeoplesHistoryOfTheVampireUprisingUSStumbled across this on Hachette’s website the other day, and thought it sounded really interesting. A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising will be published by Mulholland Books in North America and in the UK, in June 2018. It looks like something rather unusual for Mulholland, venturing as it does into the horror/urban fantasy sandbox. Here’s the synopsis:

A virus that turns people into something somehow more than human quickly sweeps the world, upending society as we know it.

This panoramic thriller begins with one small mystery. The body of a young woman found in an Arizona border town, presumed to be an illegal immigrant, walks out of the town morgue. To the young CDC investigator called in to consult the local police, it’s a bizarre medical mystery.

More bodies, dead of a mysterious disease that solidifies their blood, are brought to the morgue, and disappear. In a futile game of catch-up, the CDC, the FBI, and the US government must come to terms with what they’re too late to stop: an epidemic of vampirism that will sweep first the United States, and then the world.

Impossibly strong, smart, poised, beautiful, and commanding, these vampires reject the term as derogatory, preferring the euphemistic “gloamings.” They quickly rise to prominence in all aspects of modern society: sports, entertainment, and business. Soon people are begging to be ‘re-created,’ willing to accept the risk of death if their bodies can’t handle the transformation. The stakes change yet again when a charismatic and wealthy businessman, recently turned, decides to do what none of his kind has done before: run for political office.

This sweeping yet deeply intimate fictional oral history — told from the perspectives of several players on all sides of the titular vampire uprising — is a genre-bending, shocking, immersive and subversive debut that is as addictive as the power it describes.

The novel has already been optioned by Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen of 21 Laps, the production company Arrival and Stranger Things.

Follow the Author: Goodreads

Upcoming: 84K by Claire North (Orbit)

Civilian Reader Upcoming , , , ,

NorthC-84KUSA new Claire North book is always something to cheer. The only problem is that we have to wait until next year… 84K, the author’s fifth novel, sounds fantastic:

What if your life were defined by a number?

What if any crime could be committed without punishment, so long as you could afford to pay the fee assigned to that crime?

Theo works in the Criminal Audit Office. He assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full.

But when Theo’s ex-lover Dani is killed, it’s different. This is one death he can’t let become merely an entry on a balance sheet.

Because when the richest in the world are getting away with murder, sometimes the numbers just don’t add up.

84K is due to be published by Orbit Books in the UK and US, in May 2018.

Also on CR: Reviews of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Touch, the Gamehouse Trilogy, The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Upcoming: THE WARMASTER by Dan Abnett (Black Library)

Civilian Reader Upcoming , , , , , ,

AbnettD-GG-WarmasterThe Warmaster, the long-awaited fourteenth novel in Dan Abnett‘s Gaunt’s Ghosts series will soon be available! The series that did a hell of a lot to kickstart Black Library’s WH40k fiction range, not to mention establish so many norms and elements of the WH40k fictional universe. I’ve read all of the novels so far, and I’m interested to see what it will be like returning to the characters after so long. (It feels like an age since the last novel, 2011’s Salvation’s Reach.) Anyway, here’s the synopsis:

The Tanith First dispatched to defend the forge world of Urdesh against the armies of Anarch Sek.

After the success of their desperate mission to Salvation’s Reach, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt and the Tanith First race to the strategically vital forge world of Urdesh, besieged by the brutal armies of Anarch Sek. However, there may be more at stake than just a planet. The Imperial forces have made an attempt to divide and conquer their enemy, but with Warmaster Macaroth himself commanding the Urdesh campaign, it is possible that the Archenemy assault has a different purpose – to decapitate the Imperial command structure with a single blow. Has the Warmaster allowed himself to become an unwitting target? And can Gaunt’s Ghosts possibly defend him against the assembled killers and war machines of Chaos?

The Warmaster is due to be published by Black Library in December.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Upcoming: FIND YOU IN THE DARK by Nathan Ripley (Simon & Schuster)

Civilian Reader Upcoming , , , , , ,

RipleyN-FindYouInTheDarkCAIn Find You In the Dark, Nathan Ripley‘s debut thriller, “a family man obsessed with digging up the undiscovered remains of serial killer victims catches the attention of a murderer prowling the streets of Seattle.” I first heard of this novel via a Tweet from the Atria Mystery Bus. I’m really looking forward to reading it. Pitched as “in the vein of Dexter and The Talented Mr. Ripley“, here’s the synopsis:

Martin Reese is obsessed with murder.

For years, he has been illegally buying police files on serial killers and studying them in depth, using them as guides to find missing bodies. He doesn’t take any souvenirs, just photos that he stores in an old laptop, and then he turns in the results to the police anonymously. Martin sees his work as a public service, a righting of wrongs that cops have continuously failed to do.

Detective Sandra Whittal sees it differently. On a meteoric rise in police ranks due to her case-closing efficiency, Whittal is suspicious of the mysterious caller — the Finder, she names him — leading the police to the bodies. Even if the Finder isn’t the one leaving bodies behind, who’s to say that he won’t start soon?

On his latest dig, Martin searches for the first kill of Jason Shurn, the early 1990s murderer who may have been responsible for the disappearance of his sister-in-law, whom he never met. But when he arrives at the site, he finds a freshly killed body — a young and recently disappeared Seattle woman — lying among remains that were left there decades ago. Someone else knew where Jason Shurn buried his victims… and that someone isn’t happy that Martin has been going around digging up his work.

When a crooked cop with a tenuous tie to Martin vanishes, Whittal begins to zero in on the Finder. Hunted by a real killer and by Whittal, Martin realizes that in order to escape the killer’s trap, he may have to go deeper into the world of murder than he ever thought.

Find You In the Dark is due to be published by Simon & Schuster, in March 2018.

Follow the Author: Goodreads, Twitter

Upcoming: TOMB RAIDER

Civilian Reader Upcoming, Video , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I missed the trailer for the new Tomb Raider movie when it was first release in September, but I think it looks great. The re-booted game series was a real step up from the originals. Looking forward to its release in March 2018! Joining the excellent, Academy Award-winning Alicia Vikander, are Nick Frost, Dominic West, Walton Goggins and Daniel Wu (and others). The movie is directed by Roar Uthaug, and the screenplay was written by Geneva Robertson-Dworet (who is also working on the upcoming Captain Marvel movie, to star Brie Larson) and Alastair Siddons.

Warner Bros. has also released a behind-the-scenes clip of an interview with Vikander about becoming Lara Croft:

Books on Film: RED SPARROW by Jason Matthews

Civilian Reader Upcoming, Video , , , , , , , , , , ,

In March of next year, Jennifer Lawrence will star in Red Sparrow, the movie based on Jason Matthew‘s first Dominika Egorova series. The movie is directed by Francis Lawrence (no relation to the star, but also worked with her on Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Mockingjay I & II), and the screenplay is by Justin Haythe. Joel Edgerton and Mary-Louise Parker also star.

Here’s the book’s synopsis:

State intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence. Drafted against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress in the service, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the CIA’s most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers, trained in their respective spy schools, collide in a charged atmosphere of tradecraft, deception, and, inevitably, a forbidden spiral of carnal attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America’s most valuable mole in Moscow. Seeking revenge against her soulless masters, Dominika begins a fateful double life, recruited by the CIA to ferret out a high-level traitor in Washington; hunt down a Russian illegal buried deep in the US military and, against all odds, to return to Moscow as the new-generation penetration of Putin’s intelligence service. Dominika and Nathaniel’s impossible love affair and twisted spy game come to a deadly conclusion in the shocking climax of this electrifying, up-to-the minute spy thriller.

Red Sparrow is published by Scribner (North America) and Simon & Schuster (UK). At the time of writing, it is also on sale for Kindle in the US and UK. The second novel in the series, The Palace of Treason (US/UK), is also available. The third novel, The Kremlin’s Candidate, is due out in February 2018.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads

MatthewsJ-DE1-RedSparrow