The Qwillery

Happy penultimate Monday in May! There are 3 debuts this week and we will have interview with each of these debut authors! Resetby Sarina Dahlan; The Lights of Pragueby Nicole Jarvis; and Annaby Sammy H.K. Smith.

From formerly featured DAC Authors: The Unwillingby Kelly Braffet is out in Trade Paperback; The Blacktongue Thief(Blacktongue 1) by Christopher Buehlman; Revelations(Netherspace 3) by Nigel Foster; Dawnrise(Chaos Queen 5) by Christopher Husberg; A Murder in Time(A Kendra Donovan Mystery 1) by Julie McElwain is out in Mass Market Paperback; See Something(A Witch City Mystery 11) by Carol J. Perry; and A Chain Across the Dawn (The Universe After 2) by Drew Williams is out in Mass Market Paperback.

Debut novels are highlighted in blue. Novels, etc. by formerly featured DAC Authors are highlighted in green. May 25, 2021

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
MEG: Generations (tp2mm)	Steve Alten	SupTh/SF - Meg 6
From Blood and Ash	Jennifer L. Armentrout	FR/PNR - Blood and Ash 1
The Damnation Game (ri)	Clive Barker	H/SupTh/Sus
Power Challenges	Ben Bova	Power 5
The Unwilling (h2tp)	Kelly Braffet	F/HistF
The Uplift War (e)(ri)	David Brin	SF - Uplift Saga 3
Heaven's Reach (e)(ri)	David Brin	SF - Uplift Saga 6
Infinity's Shore (e)(ri)	David Brin	SF - Uplift Saga 5
Brightness Reef (e)(ri)	David Brin	SF - Uplift Saga 4
Startide Rising (e)(ri)	David Brin	SF - Uplift Saga 2
The Uplift Storm Trilogy: Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, Heaven's Reach (e)(ri)	David Brin	SF - The Uplift Saga
The Last Druid (h2mm)	Terry Brooks	F - Fall of Shannara 4
The Blacktongue Thief	Christopher Buehlman	F/H/HU - Blacktongue 1
Scorpion	Christian Cantrell	SF/TT/TechTh
Reset (D)	Sarina Dahlan	SF
New Welsh Reader 126: Speculative Fiction from Wales (e)	Jo Dahn Gee Williams	SpecFic - Anthology
Chance of a Lifetime	Jude Deveraux Tara Sheets	Women/TT/MR/HistR - Providence Falls 1
The Apocalypse Seven	Gene Doucette	SF/AP/PA
Claws on the Plain	James Dunbar	F - Kings of War
How to Mars	David Ebenbach	SF/AC/MHU
Revelations	Nigel Foster	SF/AC/SO - Netherspace 3
1636: The Atlantic Encounter (h2mm)	Eric Flint Walter H. Hunt	SF/TT - Ring of Fire 25
Richards & Klein	Guy Haley	SF/CyP/PI
Honeycomb	Joanne M. Harris	DF
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires (h2tp)	Grady Hendrix	H/SupTh/Southern
Chaos Queen - Dawnrise	Christopher Husberg	DF/F - Chaos Queen 5
The Lights of Prague (D)	Nicole Jarvis	F/Gaslamp/HistF/FR
The Promised Queen	Jeffe Kennedy	FR - Forgotten Empires 3
On the Origin of Species and Other Stories	Bo-Young Kim Sora Kim-Russell (Tr)	SF - Collection
The House of Styx	Derek Künsken	SF - Venus Ascendant 1
Déjà Doomed	Edward M. Lerner	SF/HSF/AC
A Murder in Time (ri)	Julie McElwain	Women/HistM - Kendra Donovan Mystery 1
Shakespeare for Squirrels (h2tp)	Christopher Moore	F/HU
Witness X	SE Moorhead	SF/Cr
The Legacy of Heorot	Larry Niven Jerry Pournelle Steven Barnes	SF - Heorot Series 1
See Something	Carol J. Perry	PCM - A Witch City Mystery 11
The Lost Future of Pepperharrow (h2tp)	Natasha Pulley	HistF/Gay/MR/Hist
The Kingdoms	Natasha Pulley	F/AH/HistF/MR
Burn-In (h2tp)	P. W. Singer August Cole	TechTh - A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution
Anna (D)	Sammy H.K. Smith	Women/Dys
Battle Luna (h2tp)	Travis S. Taylor Timothy Zahn et al.
The Chalk Man (ri)	C. J. Tudor	PsyTh/Sus/H
Hard Reboot	Django Wexler	SF/SE
A Chain Across the Dawn (ri)	Drew Williams	SF/SO/HU - The Universe After 2
Version Zero	David Yoon	TechTh/Sus/SF

D - Debut
e - eBook
Ed - Editor
h2mm - Hardcover to Mass Market Paperback
h2tp - Hardcover to Trade Paperback
Ke - Kindle eBook
ri - reissue or reprint
tp2mm - Trade Paperback to Mass Market Paperback
Tr - Translator



AB - Absurdist
AC - Alien Contact
AH - Alternative History
AP - Apocalyptic
BHU - Black Humor
CF - Contemporary Fantasy
CM - Crime & Mystery
CoA - Coming of Age
Cr - Crime
CW - Contemporary Women
CyP - CyberPunk
DF - Dark Fantasy
Dys - Dystopian
F - Fantasy
FairyT - Fairy Tales
FL - Family Life
FolkT - Folk Tales
FR - Fantasy Romance
GenEng - Genetic Engineering
GH - Ghost(s)
GothicR - Gothic Romance
GW&CC - Global Warming and Climate Change
H - Horror
HC - History and Criticism
Hist - Historical
HistF - Historical Fantasy
HistM - Historical Mystery
HistR - Historical Romance
HistTh - Historical Thriller
HSF - Hard Science Fiction
HU - Humorous
LC - Literary Criticism
LF - Literary Fiction
LM - Legend and Mythology
M - Mystery
Med - Medical
MR - Magical Realism
MTI - Media Tie-In
MU - Mash-Up
NF - Near Future
Occ - Occult
P - Paranormal
PA - Post Apocalyptic
PCM - Paranormal Cozy Mystery
PF - Paranormal Fantasy
PNR - Paranormal Romance
Pol - Political
PolTh - Political Thriller
PopCul - Popular Culture
PP - Police Porcedural
Psy - Psychological
R - Romance
RF - Romantic Fantasy
ScF - Science Fantasy
SE - Space Exploration
SF - Science Fiction
SFR - Science Fiction Romance
SFTh - Science Fiction Thriller
SH - Superheroes
SO - Space Opera
SP - Steampunk
SpecFic - Speculative Fiction
SS - Short Stories
STR - Small Town and Rural
Sup - Supernatural
SupM - Supernatural Mystery
SupTh - Supernatural Thriller
Sus - Suspense
TechTh - Technological Thriller
Th - Thriller
TT - Time Travel
TTR - Time Travel Romance
UF - Urban Fantasy
VM - Visionary and Metaphysical
WS - Women Sleuths

Note: Not all genres and formats are found in the books, etc. listed above.

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. What is the first fiction piece you remember writing?

Kelly:  The very first short story I ever wrote was called “The Blue Giraffe.” A terrifying tale of conformity, it was about an idiosyncratically pigmented giraffe who was advised to eat an orange to correct his coloring, and did so. Was the orange in season? Was it organic? What was the orange’s carbon footprint? We’ll never know, mostly because I was in preschool and didn’t know what any of those things meant yet.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Kelly:  I’ve written five novels, and it seems as if every time I have to figure out a new way to do it all over again. I’ve done outlines, I’ve done no-outlines, I’ve done partial outlines. Whatever yanks the thing out of my brain. Since we’re talking about The Unwilling: I spent 20 years thinking about it, so it was pretty fully formed before I started to write it down. There were a few plot knots that I had to figure out a few chapters ahead of time, but it was fairly well behaved in the allowing-itself-to-be-written department.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Kelly:  Honestly, the most challenging part of being a writer for me is this part: the promotion. If I could just sit in my pajamas and write the books and send them off into the world via vacuum tube, I would do so delightedly. And that’s not because I don’t love my literary people, or my readers – it’s just because it’s a whole other toolbox, and not one I dig into regularly. It’s like when the guy who was installing our new dryer asked if we had a socket set. We did, but I had to find it, and then I had to make sure it had the right parts, and even then I wasn’t totally sure it was what the guy needed. But if he’d had asked me for, say, a knife sharpener – I know exactly where that is, and I use it all the time. Promoting is the socket set. Writing is the knife sharpener.

If we’re talking about writing, the hardest part is winnowing out the distractions. Life has so many demands – like for instance, sometimes the dryer breaks, and the repair guy has to come and declare it dead, and then all of this other stuff happens and there’s your week gone, just with calling people and scheduling things and letting people into the house. Sometimes I cheat and go to hotels to work, just to minimize the distractions. But that’s incredibly lonely.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Kelly:  Everything. I just said in an interview the other day that I wasn’t sure I “got” ideas as much as they accumulated slowly in the corners of my mind, like mental dust bunnies. But instead of cat and bunny hair – we just adopted a rabbit, so some of our dust bunnies are made of actual angora – they’re made of things I notice in books and movies, or read on the internet, or see out of the corner of my eye as I’m driving. I try to stay curious about everything, which I realize is kind of at odds with my desire to sit at home in my pajamas all the time. Internal conflict! Keeps life interesting.



TQ:  Describe The Unwilling using only 5 words.

Kelly:  This is the kind of thing I’m terrible at. My good friend Anthony Breznican called it “an adventure story about empathy” – can I steal that?



TQ:  Tell us something about The Unwilling that is not found in the book description.

Kelly:  It’s a story about chosen family. When your birth family is absent, or a mess, you find other people to fill in those gaps. Judah, Gavin, Elly and Theron love each other, and that love is the source of all of their power. (And a not-insignificant amount of their trouble, but they’re not to blame for that.)



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Unwilling, your first Fantasy novel? What appeals to you about writing Fantasy?

Kelly:  I’ve always loved fantasy. Many years ago, when I was in college, I read a fantasy novel by a non-fantasy writer and didn’t like it. I thought, “I can write a better fantasy novel than that! It’ll be about four people who live in a deserted castle after civilization falls.” Fast forward twenty years, and those four people eventually became Judah, Gavin, Theron and Elly, the main characters in The Unwilling. The story evolved a lot over time, obviously. As to why now, the short answer is that I was trying to write another crime novel and it wasn’t behaving itself, so I turned to the only other story kicking around my head, which was this one.

Part of what I love about fantasy is the worldbuilding. I love that feeling of “Why can’t I live there?” that comes with a really original setting. But more than that, I like the sense that (within the bounds of whatever magical system exists) anything can happen. The Unwilling has all the human drama of my crime novels, but the magic is an extra level of possibility to play with.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Unwilling?

Kelly:  Honestly, most of it revolved around food. I took a cheesemaking workshop, tried my hand at harvesting the wild yeast in my kitchen (turns out there’s not much of it, which is why I haven’t ditched writing and started up a sourdough bakery), and cooked all sorts of random things, just to see if they worked. Other than that, most of the research was of the “what kind of carriages exist,” internet-search variety. I do keep notes files for all of my works-in-progress, with random ideas that occur to me and things that I want to include. Since this particular work was in progress for twenty years, the notes file is . . . lengthy. If you read it start to finish, I doubt it would bear any resemblance at all to the book as published.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for The Unwilling.

Kelly:  The cover was designed by Micaela Alcaino, and I love it. Normally, the art department of a publisher sends a few different initial concepts, and then everyone discusses. This time they only sent one, and it was pretty much there out of the gate. We asked for a few tweaks, but nothing dramatic. It was important to me that the cover for The Unwilling capture the dark and knotted feel of the story, and I think it does.



TQ:  In The Unwilling who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Kelly:  Normally, there is a character that really gives me trouble, in one way or another, but I’d had these people in my head for so long that they were pretty fully formed. I suppose that the Seneschal was probably the most difficult, because he’s key to the plot but also extremely interior. We don’t ever see what he’s thinking. Even in those few moments when he talks about his own motivations, there’s a pretty good chance that he’s lying. I also didn’t want to make him a cartoonish monster; the book has one of those already, and I saw the Seneschal as much more subtle. And much more dangerous.



TQ:  Does The Unwilling touch on any social issues?

Kelly:  I think it would be difficult to find a novel that doesn’t at least touch on social issues, because what we think of as “social issues” are actually just humans trying to interact with each other despite their differences. But I will say that The Unwilling is a very intentionally feminist novel. The women in the book are, in some ways, those who suffer the most, but they’re also the ones who really come into their own power over the course of the story. The book also deals a lot with economic inequality, and life at the bottom of the tier in Highfall; one of my two narrators, Nate, is a healer who works with the poorest people in the city. So many fantasy novels are about the ruling classes. The Unwilling is no exception, but I also thought it was important to include the lives of ordinary people.



TQ:  Which question about The Unwilling do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Kelly:  If my grandmother was still alive, she would probably glare at me and ask why I didn’t write nicer stories. But these are the stories that grow in my head, and they grow out of everything that I see in the world around me. Human beings are not particularly kind to each other, and they never have been. I absolutely see why my gran preferred “nicer” stories, and don’t blame her or anyone else for gravitating to more pleasant depictions of the world, but the stories that I write tend to be about people who feel powerless and at the mercy of the world around them, and that’s not a nice feeling. I feel like it would be dishonest to tell the stories any other way.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Unwilling.

Kelly:  This is from the perspective of Nate Clare, a travelling healer who comes from outside the city to find Judah for reasons of his own: “He could remember quite clearly what it had been like to be that little boy, lying under a quilt, knowing only the dusty ease of playing outdoors, the familiar excitement of setting up stage and footlights in a new town, the smoky campfire warmth of being loved by everyone around him. He’d had no notion, then, that he would ever cross the Barriers to the blue and gray spires of this strange, sad city, or that he would grow into a man who sat alone in a gloomy lab after midnight, figuring out how much poison per smallweight of tea.”



TQ:  What's next?

Kelly:  Right now I’m working pretty frantically on the sequel to The Unwilling, which will hopefully be out next year. After that, the crime novel that wasn’t behaving itself had a change of heart, and it’s currently sitting in a nice messy first-draft stack on my desk, waiting for further attention.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Kelly:  Thank you for having me!

The Unwilling
MIRA, February 11, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 576 pages
(Fantasy Debut)

A penetrating tale of magic, faith and pride…The Unwilling is the story of Judah, a foundling born with a special gift and raised inside Highfall castle along with Gavin, the son and heir to Lord Elban’s vast empire. Judah and Gavin share an unnatural bond that is both the key to Judah’s survival—and possibly her undoing.

As Gavin is groomed for his future role, Judah comes to realize that she has no real position within the kingdom and, in fact, no hope at all of ever traveling beyond its castle walls. Elban—a lord as mighty as he is cruel—has his own plans for her, and for all of them. She is a mere pawn to him, and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

But outside the walls, in the starving, desperate city, a magus, a healer with his own secret power unlike anything Highfall has seen in years, is newly arrived from the provinces. He, too, has plans for the empire, and at the heart of those plans lies Judah. The girl who started life with no name and no history will soon uncover more to her story than she ever imagined.

An epic tale of greed and ambition, cruelty and love, this deeply immersive novel is about bowing to traditions and burning them down.

About Kelly

Kelly Braffet is the author of the novels The Unwilling, Save Yourself, Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving. Her writing has been published in The Fairy Tale Review, Post Road, and several anthologies. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University and currently lives in upstate New York with her husband, the author Owen King.




Website  ~  Twitter @KellyBraffet

Each month you will be able to vote for your favorite cover from that month's debut novels. At the end of the year the 12 monthly winners will be pitted against each other to choose the 2020 Debut Novel Cover of the Year. Please note that a debut novel cover is eligible in the month in which the novel is published in the US. Cover artist/illustrator/designer information is provided when we have it.

I'm using PollCode for this vote. After you the check the circle next to your favorite, click "Vote" to record your vote. If you'd like to see the real-time results click "View". This will take you to the PollCode site where you may see the results. If you want to come back to The Qwillery click "Back" and you will return to this page. Voting will end sometime on February 29, 2020, unless the vote is extended. If the vote is extended the ending date will be updated.

Vote for your favorite February 2020 Debut Cover!

The Baudelaire Fractal

Black Leviathan

The Goblets Immortal

The Golden Key

Gravity's Heir

The Last Day

The Last Smile in Sunder City

The Light Years

Master of Sorrows

Mazes of Power

Oona Out of Order

The Regrets

The Town

The Unspoken Name

The Unwilling

A Witch in Time

Witness X

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro

 

pollcode.com free polls

Happy Monday!

There are 4 debuts this week!

The Unwilling by Kelly Braffet (Fantasy Debut);

The Light Years by R.W.W. Greene;

The Unspoken Name (The Serpent Gates 1) by A. K. Larkwood;

and

A Witch in Time by Constance Sayers.




From formerly featured DAC Authors:

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders is out in Trade Paperback;

Book of the Just (The Bohemian Trilogy 3) by Dana Chamblee Carpenter is out in Trade Paperback;

The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson;

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks is out in Trade Paperback;

Blood Tally (Valkyrie Collections 2) by Brian McClellan;

and

Stormsong (The Kingston Cycle 2) by C. L. Polk.

Debut novels are highlighted in blue. Novels, etc. by formerly featured DAC Authors are highlighted in green.

February 11, 2020

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The City in the Middle of the Night (h2tp)	Charlie Jane Anders	SF/AC
The Unwilling (D - Fantasy)	Kelly Braffet	F
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Martian Menace	Eric Brown	HistM - Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 30
Book of the Just (h2tp)	Dana Chamblee Carpenter	Fiction - The Bohemian Trilogy 3
The Chill	Scott Carson	SupTh
Wisteria Cottage	Robert M Coates	H/PsyTh - Valancourt 20th Century Classics
The Boatman's Daughter	Andy Davidson	Gothic
Daughter from the Dark	Sergey and Marina Dyachenko	DF
The Pandora Room (h2tp)	Christopher Golden	SupTh
The Light Years (D)	R.W.W. Greene	SF/SO
The Mercies	Kiran Millwood Hargrave	Hist
Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones (h2tp)	Micah Dean Hicks	CF
Tyll	Daniel Kehlmann Ross Benjamin (Tr)	LF
The Bear	Andrew Krivak	CoA/Dys
The Unspoken Name (D)	A. K. Larkwood	F - The Serpent Gates 1
In Accelerated Silence: Poems	Brooke Matson	Poetry - Jake Adam York Prize
Blood Tally (e)	Brian McClellan	UF - Valkyrie Collections 2
Star Trek: Picard: The Last Best Hope	Una McCormack	SF - Star Trek: Picard
Stormsong	C. L. Polk	F/Gaslamp - The Kingston Cycle 2
A Dangerous Collaboration	Deanna Raybourn	HistM - Veronica Speedwell Series 4
A Witch in Time (D)	Constance Sayers	Occ/Sup
And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges	Amber Sparks	SS
Age of Death	Michael J. Sullivan	F - Legends of the First Empire 5
The Siren Depths (ri)	Martha Wells	F - Books of the Raksura 3

February 12, 2020

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Snow Collectors	Tina May Hall	HistM/Gothic

February 14, 2020

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Loneliest Band in France: A Novella	Dylan Fisher	LF

February 15, 2020

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Neon Leviathan	T R Napper	SF/HSF - Collection

D - Debut
e - eBook
Ed - Editor
h2mm - Hardcover to Mass Market Paperback
h2tp - Hardcover to Trade Paperback
ri - reissue or reprint
tp2mm - Trade Paperback to Mass Market Paperback
Tr - Translator



AC - Alien Contact
AP - Apocalyptic
CF - Contemporary Fantasy
CoA - Coming of Age
CW - Contemporary Women
CyP - Cyperpunk
DF - Dark Fantasy
Dys - Dystopian
F - Fantasy
FR- Fantasy Romance
GothicM - Gothic Mystery
H - Horror
Hist - Historical
HistF - Historical Fantasy
HistM - Historical Mystery
HSF - Hard Science Fiction
LC - Literary Criticism
LF - Literary Fiction
MTI - Media Tie-In
Occ - Occult
PA - Post Apocalyptic
PerfArts - Performing Arts
PM - Paranormal Mystery
PNR - Paranormal Romance
PsyTh - Psychological Thriller
SE - Space Exploration
SF - Science Fiction
SO - Space Opera
SP - Steampunk
SS - Short Stories
Sup - Supernatural
SupTh - Supernatural Thriller
TechTh - Technological Thriller
Th - Thriller
UF - Urban Fantasy
W - Western
WW - Weird Western

Note: Not all genres and formats are found in the books, etc. listed above.

Luke Arnold

The Last Smile in Sunder City
The Fetch Phillips Archives 1
Orbit, February 25, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 368 pages

A former soldier turned PI tries to help the fantasy creatures whose lives he ruined in a world that’s lost its magic in a compelling debut fantasy by Black Sails actor Luke Arnold.

Welcome to Sunder City. The magic is gone but the monsters remain.

I’m Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are a few things you should know before you hire me:

1. Sobriety costs extra.
2. My services are confidential.
3. I don’t work for humans.

It’s nothing personal–I’m human myself. But after what happened, to the magic, it’s not the humans who need my help.

Walk the streets of Sunder City and meet Fetch, his magical clients, and a darkly imagined world perfect for readers of Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.

Sarah Bond

Gravity's Heir
Black Rose Writing, February 6, 2020
Trade Paperback, 320 pages

"Legacy is nothing but history, if it doesn't have a future.”

When her father threw her out, sacrificing his only living daughter for the good of his shipping conglomerate, Lena Lomasky swore she could make it on her own. But now she’s broke and desperate, and pride won’t fuel her spaceship. Her latest job is simple: carry a datastick of state secrets home to her father. The same man who cut her off without a cent. Whatever. She can do this. Pass the whiskey.

An ill-timed royal assassination ignites a war and Lena’s crew is blamed. When she thinks to use her cache of state secrets to save them, Lena discovers she’s actually smuggling the only known plans for her father’s invention: a gravity bomb that can vaporize entire cities.

Lena must decide: continue on and hope her father can design a defense to save millions of lives, or leverage the plans to save the only people who really matter.

Amy Bonnaffons

The Regrets
Little, Brown and Company, February 4, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 304 pages

Reality and dream collide in Amy Bonnaffons’s dazzling, darkly playful debut novel about a love affair between the living and the dead.

For weeks, Rachel has been noticing the same golden-haired young man sitting at her Brooklyn bus stop, staring off with a melancholy air. When, one day, she finally musters the courage to introduce herself, the chemistry between them is undeniable: Thomas is wise, witty, handsome, mysterious, clearly a kindred spirit. There’s just one tiny problem: He’s dead.

Stuck in a surreal limbo governed by bureaucracy, Thomas is unable to “cross over” to the afterlife until he completes a 90-day stint on earth, during which time he is forbidden to get involved with a member of the living — lest he incur “regrets.” When Thomas and Rachel break this rule, they unleash a cascade of bizarre, troubling consequences.

Set in the hallucinatory borderland between life and death, The Regrets is a gloriously strange and breathtakingly sexy exploration of love, the cataclysmic power of fantasies, and the painful, exhilarating work of waking up to reality, told with uncommon grace and humor by a visionary artist at the height of her imaginative power.

Kelly Braffet

The Unwilling
MIRA, February 11, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 576 pages
(Fantasy Debut)

A penetrating tale of magic, faith and pride…The Unwilling is the story of Judah, a foundling born with a special gift and raised inside Highfall castle along with Gavin, the son and heir to Lord Elban’s vast empire. Judah and Gavin share an unnatural bond that is both the key to Judah’s survival—and possibly her undoing.

As Gavin is groomed for his future role, Judah comes to realize that she has no real position within the kingdom and, in fact, no hope at all of ever traveling beyond its castle walls. Elban—a lord as mighty as he is cruel—has his own plans for her, and for all of them. She is a mere pawn to him, and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

But outside the walls, in the starving, desperate city, a magus, a healer with his own secret power unlike anything Highfall has seen in years, is newly arrived from the provinces. He, too, has plans for the empire, and at the heart of those plans lies Judah. The girl who started life with no name and no history will soon uncover more to her story than she ever imagined.

An epic tale of greed and ambition, cruelty and love, this deeply immersive novel is about bowing to traditions and burning them down.

Justin T. Call

Master of Sorrows
Silent Gods 1
Blackstone Publishing, February 25, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 577 pages

You've heard the story before: an orphaned boy, raised by a wise old man, comes to a fuller knowledge of his magic and uses it to fight the great evil threatening his world.

But what if that hero were destined to become the new dark lord?

The Academy of Chaenbalu has stood against magic for centuries. Hidden from the world, acting from the shadows, it trains its students to detect and retrieve magic artifacts, which it jealously guards from the misuse of others. Because magic is dangerous: something that heals can also harm, and a power that aids one person may destroy another.

Of the academy's many students, only the most skilled can become Avatars -- warrior thieves, capable of infiltrating the most heavily guarded vaults -- and only the most determined can be trusted to resist the lure of magic. More than anything, Annev de Breth wants to become one of them.

But Annev carries a secret. Unlike his classmates who were stolen as infants from the capital city, Annev was born in the village of Chaenbalu, was believed to be executed, and then unknowingly raised by his parents killers. Seventeen years later, he struggles with the burdens of a forbidden magic, a forgotten heritage, and a secret deformity. When Annev is subsequently caught between the warring ideologies of his priestly mentor and the Academy's masters, he must finally decide whether to accept the truth of who he really is ... or embrace the darker truth of what he may one day become.

R.W.W. Greene

The Light Years
Angry Robot Books, February 11, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 400 pages

The captain of a family-owned starship arranges a marriage for her son in hopes of achieving faster-than-light travel and maybe, just maybe, marital bliss.

Before Hisako Saski is even born, her parents make a deal on her behalf. In exchange for a first-class education and a boost out of poverty, Hisako will marry Adem Sadiq, a maintenance engineer and self-styled musician who works the trade lanes aboard his family’s sub-light starship, the Hajj.

Hisako is not happy when she finds out about the plan. She has little interest in the broken branch of physics the deal requires her to study, and is not keen on the idea of giving up her home and everything she knows to marry a stranger.

Sparks fly when Adem and Hisako meet, but their personal issues are overshadowed by the discovery of long-held secrets and a chance at faster-than-light travel.

File Under: Science Fiction[ E=mc² | Happy wife, Happy life | Marital Bliss | Light Years Away ]

A. K. Larkwood

The Unspoken Name
The Serpent Gates 1
Tor Books, February 11, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 464 pages

A. K. Larkwood's The Unspoken Name is a stunning debut fantasy about an orc priestess turned wizard's assassin.

What if you knew how and when you will die?

Csorwe does—she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice.

But on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from her destiny and her god to become a thief, a spy, an assassin—the wizard's loyal sword. Topple an empire, and help him reclaim his seat of power.

But Csorwe will soon learn—gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.

“In the vein of Le Guin's magnificent Tombs of Atuan—if Arha the Eaten One got to grow up to be a swordswoman mercenary in thrall to her dubious wizard mentor. I love this book so much."—Arkady Martine, author of A Memory Called Empire

“Hooked me in from the first page and never let go. Fabulous, in every meaning of the word."—Jenn Lyons, author of Ruin of Kings

Margarita Montimore

Oona Out of Order
Flatiron Books, February 25, 2020
Hardover and eBook, 352 pages

Oona Out of Order is a remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of sequence.

Just because life may be out of order, doesn’t mean it’s broken.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order...

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met?

Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.

"Reminiscent of Liane Moriarty’s What Alice Forgot and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Oona Out of Order is a delightfully freewheeling romp.” —Booklist (starred review)

S E Moorhead

Witness X
Trapeze, February 6, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 304 pages

Andrew Hunter Murray

The Last Day
Dutton, February 4, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 384 pages

A visionary and powerful debut thriller set in a terrifyingly plausible dystopian near-future—with clear parallels to today’s headlines—in which the future of humanity lies in the hands of one woman, a scientist who has stumbled upon a secret that the government will go to any lengths to keep hidden.

A world half in darkness. A secret she must bring to light.

It is 2059, and the world has crashed. Forty years ago, a solar catastrophe began to slow the planet’s rotation to a stop. Now, one half of the globe is permanently sunlit, the other half trapped in an endless night. The United States has colonized the southern half of Great Britain—lucky enough to find itself in the narrow habitable region left between frozen darkness and scorching sunlight—where both nations have managed to survive the ensuing chaos by isolating themselves from the rest of the world.

Ellen Hopper is a scientist living on a frostbitten rig in the cold Atlantic. She wants nothing more to do with her country after its slide into casual violence and brutal authoritarianism. Yet when two government officials arrive, demanding she return to London to see her dying college mentor, she accepts—and begins to unravel a secret that threatens not only the nation’s fragile balance, but the future of the whole human race.

Beth Overmyer

The Goblets Immortal
Flame Tree Press, February 20, 2020
Hardcover, Trade Paperback and eBook, 288 pages
(Fantasy Debut)

In a land where magic’s feared, a rare magical kind exists: the Blest, products of the Goblets Immortal. Aidan’s a Blest on the run, forced to return home. He made his family vanish decades ago, but believes there’s a way to bring them back.

Whispers of a new fear take shape in Meraude, a mage who hates all magic-kind. When she appears in Aidan’s dreams offering a bargain for the return of his family, Aidan’s desires battle with his self-preservation.

Is it wise for Aidan to seek the Goblets Immortal for Meraude’s unknown purposes? Friend and foe blur the magical lines, and Aidan must discern who will shake his hand or slit his throat.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Bernd Perplies

Black Leviathan
Tor Books, February 25, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 336 pages
(English Debut)

Melville’s Moby Dick unfolds in a world of dragon hunters in Black Leviathan, an epic revenge fantasy from German award-winning author Bernd Perplies.

Beware! A shadow will cover you, larger than that cast by any other dragon of this world. Black as the lightless chasm from whence it was born at the beginning of time.

In the coastal city Skargakar, residents make a living from hunting dragons and use them for everything from clothing to food, while airborne ships hunt them in the white expanse of a cloud sea, the Cloudmere.

Lian does his part carving the kyrillian crystals that power the ships through the Cloudmere, but when he makes an enemy of a dangerous man, Lian ships out on the next vessel available as a drachenjager, or dragon hunter.

He chooses the wrong ship. A fanatic captain, hunts more than just any dragon. His goal is the Firstborn Gargantuan—and Adaron is prepared to sacrifice everything for revenge.

Shaun Prescott

The Town
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 4,  2020
Hardcover and eBook, 256 pages
(US Debut)

"A powerfully doomy debut" (The Guardian), Shaun Prescott’s The Town is a novel of a rural Australian community besieged by modern day anxieties and threatened by a supernatural force seeking to consume the dying town.

This is Australia, an unnamed, dead-end town in the heart of the outback—a desolate place of gas stations, fast-food franchises, and labyrinthine streets: flat and nearly abandoned. When a young writer arrives to research just such depressing middles-of-nowhere as they are choked into oblivion, he finds something more sinister than economic depression: the ghost towns of Australia appear to be literally disappearing. An epidemic of mysterious holes is threatening his new home’s very existence, and this discovery plunges the researcher into an abyss of weirdness from which he may never escape.

Dark, slippery and unsettling, Shaun Prescott’s debut resurrects the existential novel for the age of sprawl and blight, excavates a nation’s buried history of colonial genocide, and tells a love story that asks if outsiders can ever truly belong anywhere. The result is a disquieting classic that vibrates with an occult power.

Lisa Robertson

The Baudelaire Fractal
Coach House Books, February 4, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 160 pages

A debut novel by acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson, in which a poet realizes she has written the works of Baudelaire. One morning, the poet Hazel Brown wakes up in a strange hotel room to find that she's written the complete works of Charles Baudelaire. Surprising as this may be, it's no more surprising to Brown than the impossible journey she's taken to become the writer that she is. Animated by the spirit of the poète maudit, she shuttles between London, Vancouver, Paris, and the French countryside, moving fluidly between the early 1980s and the present, from rented room to rented room, all the while considering such Baudelairian obsessions as modernity, poverty, and the perfect jacket. .. Part memoir, part magical realism, part hilarious trash-talking take on contemporary art and the poet's life, The Baudelaire Fractal is the long-awaited debut novel by the inimitable Lisa Robertson.

Constance Sayers

A Witch in Time
Redhook, February 11, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 448 pages

A young witch is cursed to relive a doomed love affair through many lifetimes, as both troubled muse and frustrated artist, in this haunting debut novel.

In 1895, sixteen-year-old Juliet LaCompte has a passionate, doomed romance with the married Parisian painter Auguste Marchant. When her mother — a witch — attempts to cast a curse on Marchant, she unwittingly summons a demon, binding her daughter to both Auguste and this supernatural being for all time.

Born and re-born, Juliet is fated to live her affair and die tragically young across continents and lifetimes.

But finally, in present-day Washington D.C., something shifts. In this life, Juliet starts to remember her tragic past. And this time, she begins to develop powers of her own that might finally break the spell…

A Witch in Time is perfect for fans of A Secret History of Witches, Outlander, and The Time Traveler’s Wife.

K. S. Villoso

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro
Chronicles of the Bitch Queen 1
Orbit, February 18, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 496 pages

A queen of a divided land must unite her people, even if they hate her, even if it means stopping a ruin that she helped create. A debut epic fantasy from an exciting new voice.

“They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.”

Born under the crumbling towers of Oren-yaro, Queen Talyien was the shining jewel and legacy of the bloody War of the Wolves, which nearly tore her nation apart. But her arranged marriage with the son of a rival clan should herald peaceful days to come.

However, her husband’s sudden departure before their reign begins puts a quick end to those dreams, and the kingdom is fractured beyond repair.

Years later, Talyien receives a message, one that will send her across the sea. What’s meant to be an effort at reconciling the past becomes an assassination attempt. Stranded in a land she doesn’t know, with no idea whom she can trust, Talyien will have to embrace her namesake.

A wolf of Oren-yaro is not tamed.

Juliette Wade

Mazes of Power
The Broken Trust 1
DAW, February 4, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 416 pages

This debut work of sociological science fiction follows a deadly battle for succession, where brother is pitted against brother in a singular chance to win power and influence for their family.

The cavern city of Pelismara has stood for a thousand years. The Great Families of the nobility cling to the myths of their golden age while the city’s technology wanes.

When a fever strikes, and the Eminence dies, seventeen-year-old Tagaret is pushed to represent his Family in the competition for Heir to the Throne. To win would give him the power to rescue his mother from his abusive father, and marry the girl he loves.

But the struggle for power distorts everything in this highly stratified society, and the fever is still loose among the inbred, susceptible nobles. Tagaret’s sociopathic younger brother, Nekantor, is obsessed with their family’s success. Nekantor is willing to exploit Tagaret, his mother, and her new servant Aloran to defeat their opponents.

Can he be stopped? Should he be stopped? And will they recognize themselves after the struggle has changed them?

Marian Womack

The Golden Key
Titan Books, February 18, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 336 pages

“A fantastic new talent” HELEN MARSHALL

An extraordinary, page-turning Gothic mystery set in the wilds of the Norfolk Fens from the BSFA-shortlisted author.

London, 1901. After the death of Queen Victoria the city heaves with the uncanny and the eerie. Séances are held and the dead are called upon from darker realms.

Samuel Moncrieff, recovering from a recent tragedy of his own, meets Helena Walton-Cisneros, one of London’s most reputed mediums. But Helena is not what she seems and she’s enlisted by the elusive Lady Matthews to solve a twenty-year-old mystery: the disappearance of her three stepdaughters who vanished without a trace on the Norfolk Fens.

But the Fens are a liminal land, where folk tales and dark magic still linger. With locals that speak of devilmen and catatonic children found on the Broads, Helena finds the answer to the mystery leads back to where it started: Samuel Moncrieff.