Upcoming: MOTHER OF EDEN by Chris Beckett (Corvus)

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BeckettC-E2-MotherOfEdenUKNext year, Corvus Books will publish Chris Beckett‘s follow-up to his 2013 Arthur C. Clarke award-winning sci-fi novel Dark Eden. I was actually at the awards event (it was fun), and I picked up the novel that night — as, I’m sure, did many others. However, like so very many books I buy, I have yet to get around to it. With the sequel’s release approaching, however, I have extra impetus to get it read in time to enjoy the sequel. Here’s the synopsis:

“We speak of a mother’s love, but we forget her power. Power over life. Power to give and to withhold.”

Generations after the breakup of the human family of Eden, the Johnfolk emphasise knowledge and innovation, the Davidfolk tradition and cohesion. But both have built hierarchical societies sustained by violence and dominated by men — and both claim to be the favoured children of a long-dead woman from Earth that all Eden knows as Gela, the mother of them all.

When Starlight Brooking meets a handsome and powerful man from across Worldpool, she believes he will offer an outlet for her ambition and energy. But she has no idea that she will be a stand-in for Gela herself, and wear Gela’s ring on her own finger.

And she has no idea of the enemies she will make, no inkling that a time will come when she, like John Redlantern, will choose to kill…

Chris Beckett‘s Mother of Eden is due to be published on June 4th, 2015 in the UK by Corvus.

Upcoming: FISHBOWL by Matthew Glass (Corvus)

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GlassM-FishbowlUKMatthew Glass is an author I’m very interested in reading. I have his first two novels, Ultimatum and End Game, but haven’t managed to get around to them yet. I spotted Fishbowl while browsing Atlantic Books’ latest catalogue, and I think it sounded very interesting. There are obvious connections with the story behind Facebook (see Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires or the superb film adaptation, The Social Network), while Glass’s other works have brought to mind Kim Stanley-Robinson’s Science in the Capitol trilogy. Here’s the synopsis for the upcoming novel:

When you’re the next big thing in Silicon Valley, the whole world is watching.

As a gifted Ivy League student, Andrei Koss hit upon an idea that would revolutionise social networking and move it on by a generation. Enlisting the help of his best friends, Ben and Kevin, he turned their dorm room into an operations base, where fl ashes of creative brilliance and all-night-coding sessions led to the creation of Fishbowl. He is now the 21-year-old CEO of a multi-billion-dollar empire. His creation reaches into every corner of the planet. But its immense power has many uses, and some will stop at nothing to get a piece of it.

Matthew Glass (a pseudonym) Fishbowl is due to be published on February 5th, 2015 by Corvus in the UK.

Cover Reveal: SECRET HISTORIES Series by Simon R Green (Jo Fletcher Books)

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I haven’t read much of Simon R. Green‘s work. This is partly because they haven’t always been as widely available in the UK as one might have thought (the author is British, after all). Jo Fletcher Books is attending to this oversight, however: this year, they have published the author’s Nightside series (twelve novels) in eBook, and on December 11th they will publish the seven novels (so far) in Green’s Secret Histories urban fantasy series. The covers are above. Here’s the synopsis for the first novel, The Man With the Golden Torc:

For ages, Eddie Drood and his family have kept humanity safe from the things that go bump in the night. But now one of his own has convinced the rest of the family that Eddie’s become a menace, and that humanity needs to be protected from him. So he’s on the run, using every trick in the book, magical and otherwise, hoping he lives long enough to prove his innocence…

The Secret Histories: The Man With the Golden Torc, Daemons Are Forever, The Spy Who Haunted Me, From Hell With Love, For Heaven’s Eyes Only, Live and Let Drood, Casion Infernale

One I didn’t know before: Green also wrote the movie novelisation for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

The first two novels in the series were originally available in the UK, published by Gollancz.

Audio Review: YES PLEASE by Amy Poehler (Harper Collins/Audible)

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PoehlerA-YesPleaseAn amusing, interesting idiosyncratic memoir

Do you want to get to know the woman we first came to love on Comedy Central’s Upright Citizens Brigade? Do you want to spend some time with the lady who made you howl with laughter on Saturday Night Live, and in movies like Baby Mama, Blades of Glory, and They Came Together? Do you find yourself daydreaming about hanging out with the actor behind the brilliant Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation? Did you wish you were in the audience at the last two Golden Globes ceremonies, so you could bask in the hilarity of Amy’s one-liners?

If your answer to these questions is “Yes Please!” then you are in luck. In her first book, one of our most beloved funny folk delivers a smart, pointed, and ultimately inspirational read. Full of the comedic skill that makes us all love Amy, Yes Please is a rich and varied collection of stories, lists, poetry (Plastic Surgery Haiku, to be specific), photographs, mantras and advice. With chapters like “Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend,” “Plain Girl Versus the Demon” and “The Robots Will Kill Us All” Yes Please will make you think as much as it will make you laugh. Honest, personal, real, and righteous,Yes Please is full of words to live by.

I’m not actually too familiar with Poehler’s most famous work — save for a few SNL skits (mostly those with Tina Fey), Undeclared, and a couple of episodes of Parks & Recreation, I haven’t really seen much of what she’s done and been in. Nevertheless, I’ve enjoyed what I have seen, so I was interested in listening to Yes Please. I was not disappointed: this is a fun, lively and welcoming memoir. It’s not linear, and Poehler jumps about a bit in her narrative, but it is always interesting and entertaining. Continue reading →

Cover: WHERE THE TRAINS TURN by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Tor.com)

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Spotted this on Tor’s website, and thought the cover (above) was stunning. Here’s the synopsis:

I don’t like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.

Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she’s willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert’s fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. “The train tried to kill us,” he tells her.

Rupert’s terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?

Published in English for the first time, Where The Trains Turn won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti’s annual short story competition and also the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story.

 

Upcoming: THE DEAD LANDS by Benjamin Percy (Hodder)

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I shared the US cover and synopsis for Benjamin Percy’s upcoming new novel a little while ago. This morning, Hodder unveiled the UK cover. As it is one of my most-anticipated novels of 2015, I had to share it here, too. Here’s the synopsis:

The world we know is gone, destroyed by a virus that wiped out nearly every human on the planet. Some few survivors built walled cities, fortresses to keep themselves safe from those the virus didn’t kill… but did change.

Sanctuary. A citadel in the heart of the former United States of  America. Hundreds of miles in every direction beyond its walls lies nothing but death and devastation. Everyone who lives in the safety Sanctuary provides knows that.

Until the day a stranger appears. He speaks of a green and fertile land far to the west, a land of promise and plenty, safe from the ruin the virus has wreaked. He has come to lead the survivors away from Sanctuary, to the promise of a new life without walls.

But those who follow him will discover that not everything he says is true.

Benjamin Percy‘s The Dead Lands is published in the UK on April 9th 2015, by Hodder Books. It will be published in the US by Grand Central, also in April 2015.

Review: SHE WHO WAITS by Daniel Polansky (Hodder)

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Polansky-LT3-SheWhoWaitsUKA superb finale

Low Town: the worst ghetto in the worst city in the Thirteen Lands.

Good only for depravity and death. And Warden, long ago a respected agent in the formidable Black House, is now the most depraved Low Town denizen of them all.

As a younger man, Warden carried out more than his fair share of terrible deeds, and never as many as when he worked for the Black House. But Warden’s growing older, and the vultures are circling. Low Town is changing, faster than even he can control, and Warden knows that if he doesn’t get out soon, he may never get out at all.

But Warden must finally reckon with his terrible past if he can ever hope to escape it. A hospital full of lunatics, a conspiracy against the corrupt new king and a ghetto full of thieves and murderers stand between him and his slim hope for the future. And behind them all waits the one person whose betrayal Warden never expected. The one person who left him, broken and bitter, to become the man he is today.

The one woman he ever loved.

She who waits behind all things.

This really is a superb finale to a great trilogy: surprising, heart-wrenching, twisty, and utterly engrossing. If you haven’t read this series yet, then I strongly urge you to do so. Polansky is one of the best authors writing today. The Low Town series is a dark fantasy masterpiece. Continue reading →

Upcoming: BITE by Nick Louth (Sphere)

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LouthN-BiteOriginally self-published, Nick Louth‘s BITE will be published in paperback by Sphere in the UK next year (it is available now in eBook).

Tomorrow should be the greatest day of Erica Stroud-Jones’s life. In just 24 hours this brilliant young scientist will present her secret work to a conference in Amsterdam – research that promises to revolutionise the battle against a deadly tropical disease. Millions of lives could be saved; a Nobel Prize beckons.

Arriving to watch her are sceptics and rivals, admirers and enemies. Erica’s own eyes will be on sculptor Max Carver, her American new love to whom she will dedicate her achievement.

Tomorrow never comes.

Erica vanishes during the night. Max, desperate, terrified, sets out to find her, descending into an underworld full of malice and cunning. But even he is shocked by the dark terror he finds in the heart of the woman he loves.

This sounds intriguing. The synopsis doesn’t give much away at all, but that could be a good thing.

New Books (November #1)

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A quieter month — I don’t know if that’s just because there’s less coming out, or because I’ve somehow missed a bunch of new releases that never made it on to my radar. Feel free to add suggestions and recommendations in the comments, if you think I’ve missed something I shouldn’t have.

Featuring: Ben Aaronovitch, Stephen Blackmoore, Myke Cole, Francesca Haig, Stephen King, E.C. Myers, Ben Okri, Matthew Reilly Continue reading →

Upcoming: TOUCH by Claire North (Orbit)

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NorthC-TouchIf you caught my review a couple weeks ago for The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, you’ll have noticed that I am a big fan of Claire North‘s work. It was on the strength of that novel that I picked up Kate Griffin’s six novels (Claire North and Kate Griffin are both pseudonyms for Catherine Webb). I have also been very much looking forward to North’s next novel, Touch, for which today Orbit released the cover (right). Here’s the synopsis:

Your violent death usually triggers the first switch.

Just before your life ebbs away, your skin happens to touch another human being – and in an instant, your consciousness transfers completely to the person you touched.

From that moment on, you can leap from body to body with a touch of the skin. You can remain for a minute, an hour, a lifetime, and after you leave, the host has no memory of the time you were there.

My name is Kepler. I could be you.

For me, the carefree life of jumping between bodies has become a terrifying nightmare. I am being hunted. I don’t know who. I don’t know why. If you’ve read this far, our lives have already touched. Now you are part of the conspiracy too.

Get ready to run.

Touch is due to arrive in February 2015, and is published by Orbit in the UK, US and ANZ. In the meantime, do yourself a favour and read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (if you’ve already read it, check out Griffin’s novels and, maybe, re-read Harry August?). You can follow North on Twitter for more news, etc.