Welcome to another edition of SF Book Releases This Week. As a bonus this week, every one of these titles goes into the ebook giveaway pool for two of our Coffin Hop Blog Tour winners to choose from. We have a bunch in the pool already. Go check out our Coffin Hop posts for more details on how to enter.
Today’s big news is the release of Amazon’s Kindle MatchBook
If I missed any books or kickstarters going on right now, let me know. I’m looking forward to Planet Oz on Kickstarter, starting Thursday.
Angry Robot Books
Heartwood
A dying tree, a desperate quest, a love story, a last stand.
Chonrad, Lord of Barle, comes to the fortified temple of Heartwood for the Congressus peace talks, which Heartwood’s holy knights have called in an attempt to stave off war in Anguis. But the Arbor, Heartwood’s holy tree, is failing, and because the land and its people are one, it is imperative the nations try to make peace.
After the Veriditas, or annual Greening Ceremony, the Congressus takes place. The talks do not go well and tempers are rising when an army of warriors emerges from the river. After a fierce battle, the Heartwood knights discover that the water warriors have stolen the Arbor’s heart. For the first time in history, its leaves begin to fall…
The knights divide into seven groups and begin an epic quest to retrieve the Arbor, and save the land.
File Under: Fantasy [ Heart of Wood | An Epic Quest | Fields of Blood | Knights Abroad ]
Indie
Yea though we perish, yea though we die, we’ll all be together in the sweet by and by…
“ALL TOGETHER NOW: A ZOMBIE STORY is by turns disgusting, terrifying, funny, and heartbreaking. Fans of THE WALKING DEAD will eat it up like, well, zombies munching fresh brains. A stellar debut from a novelist to watch!”
—Mike Mullin, award-winning author of ASHFALL and ASHEN WINTER.
Fifteen-year-old Ricky Genero is writing a journal of the zombie apocalypse. His high school has burned to the ground, his friends are all either dead or shambling corpses roaming the earth in search of human flesh, and his best friend died saving his six-year-old brother Chuck from a zombie horde. When Chuck is bitten and infected with the zombie virus, Ricky must travel among the walking dead in search of a cure.
Tor
In Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone, shadow demons plague the city reservoir, and Red King Consolidated has sent in Caleb Altemoc—casual gambler and professional risk manager—to cleanse the water for the sixteen million people of Dresediel Lex. At the scene of the crime, Caleb finds an alluring and clever cliff runner, Crazy Mal, who easily outpaces him.
But Caleb has more than the demon infestation, Mal, or job security to worry about when he discovers that his father—the last priest of the old gods and leader of the True Quechal terrorists—has broken into his home and is wanted in connection to the attacks on the water supply.
From the beginning, Caleb and Mal are bound by lust, Craft, and chance, as both play a dangerous game where gods and people are pawns. They sleep on water, they dance in fire…and all the while the Twin Serpents slumbering beneath the earth are stirring, and they are hungry.
At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
The sequel to Fred Chao’s graphic novel, Johnny Hiro: Half-Asian, All Hero!
After a couple of years as an underpaid sushi chef for his incredibly stingy and negative boss, Mr. Masago, Johnny Hiro doubts his abilities to provide his girlfriend Mayumi with the kind of life he thinks she deserves. Though their relationship is happy, he wonders if he can create something more stable for the long term: a partnership she can find a lasting happiness in.
Throw in the aftereffects of Johnny’s past relationships and Mr. Masago’s prior business ventures with his current rival Shinto Pete, and it’s all a big case study in how each decision influences the next and can create vast differences in the way life develops. Figuring all of this out is even harder in New York City, with its giant gorillas, sumo wrestlers, Japanese gangsters, and rogue catering companies.
And within this crazy day-to-day existence, Hiro must find a way to look beyond the fact that he can barely make rent…and figure out how to have faith in his future.
King Leos of Károví, the tyrannical despot whose magic made him near immortal and who controlled a tattered empire for centuries through fear and intimidation, is finally dead. Ilse Zhalina watched as the magical jewels that gave him such power reunited into a single essence, a manifestly God-like creature who then disappeared into the cosmic void. Ilse is now free to fulfill her promise to Valara Baussay, the rogue Queen of Morennioù, who wants to return to her kingdom and claim her throne.
Ilse will do all in her power to help Valara if only as a means to get to her home. Home to her lover, Raul Kosenmark, who is gathering forces in their homeland of Veraene now that Leos is dead in order to save them from an ill-advised war. Pulled by duty and honor, Ilse makes this long journey back to where her story began, to complete the journey she attempted lives and centuries before and bring peace between the kingdoms. Along the way she learns some hard truths and finally comes to a crossroads of power and magic. She must decide if duty is stronger than a love that she has sought through countless lifetimes.
Will Ilse give up her heart’s desire so that her nation can finally know lasting peace?
At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
Orbit
Halloween in New Orleans is usually a treat. But for Sabina Kane and the rest of Team Awesome, this year’s celebration has its share of nasty tricks. When Brooks’s new waitress goes missing, the Changeling asks Sabina to help him find her.
The problem? The missing mage is one of Adam Lazarus’s old flames, and having her show up in their lives is giving Sabina heartburn. Plus saving her may also threaten the fragile peace Sabina’s achieved for the Dark Races. Luckily for Adam’s ex — but unlucky for her kidnappers — Sabina Kane isn’t easily spooked.
Word count: ~19,300
A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.
We owe our good health to a humble parasite – a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the Intestinal Bodyguard worm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system – even secretes designer drugs. It’s been successful beyond the scientists’ wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.
But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives . . . and will do anything to get them.
Crystal Lake Publishing
WARNING:
THIS IS NOT JUST A BOOKThis is a journey into the life of Death; a journey through this world and the next on the words of twenty one of the best horror writers around.
Will you follow them to stare into the eyes of the Grim Reaper? Can you handle the true story of the birth of Death, or the minute details behind catching or escaping Death, becoming Death? Dying? These are not just stories but horrific experiences of pain and death: the deaths of lonely people, famous people, entire worlds, and the death of innocence and the pain of those left behind as they wait their turn, wondering what it will be like – no one is safe from the Reaper!
FEAR THE REAPER includes stories by: Taylor Grant, Joe McKinney, Rick Hautala, Gary Fry, Ross Warren, Marty Young, Stephen Bacon, Dean M Drinkel, Richard Thomas, Sam Stone, Eric S Brown, Mark Sheldon, Steve Lockley, Robert S. Wilson, Jeremy C Shipp, Jeff Strand, Lawrence Santoro, E.C. McMullen Jr., Rena Mason, John Kenny and Gary A. Braunbeck. Includes a poem by Adam Lowe.
Introduction by Gary McMahon.
Artwork by Ben Baldwin and Will Jacques.
Edited by Joe Mynhardt.
Penguin
As a former Agent of Death, Madeline Black is no stranger to witnessing violent ends. But being the one to cause them is an entirely different story…
Despite her having saved Chicago from a vampire invasion, the Agency wants to get Maddy off their payroll—permanently. With the deadly Retrievers hot on her trail, she has no choice but to trust Nathaniel to port her to safety. But even the exotic and dangerous world that she winds up in is not as peaceful as she would have hoped. Caught in a turf war between a group of fae and a disturbingly familiar foe, Maddy soon discovers that the twisted plots of her grandfather, Lucifer, and his brothers extend even into this unknown realm.
Now, with enemies gathering on all sides, Maddy’s fate is looking darker than ever. And to protect her unborn son from her adversaries, she may have to tap into a power she hoped never to access…
Earth, A.D. 2519. The clone soldiers of the Enlisted Man’s Empire, formerly members of the Unified Authority’s powerful military, maintain a tenuous grasp on the power they fought so hard to gain. But the U.A. will not be so easy to suppress as they had hoped…
A provocateur attacks the Pentagon. Gunships converge on the penitentiary where Unified Authority war criminals are held. And a clone assassin murders Admiral Don Cutter, commander in chief of the Enlisted Man’s Empire…
It all happens at once—and five minutes later, more assassins attack Wayson Harris as he prepares for a summit with delegates of Olympus Kri. With Harris missing and their most deadly enemies on the loose, the remaining officers of the Empire must uncover a plot to overthrow their government while preparing for war…
Kickstarters:
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