When Byron Dunn woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into The SFF Book Releases This Week! (And he was very grateful that he hadn’t been turned into a bug because we all know how that works out.) If you are an indie or small press author and would like your book included in this list, email us at adventuresinscifipublishing [at] gmail [dot] com. If you love free books, reviews, cheap references to Eastern European literature of the early 20th century, and podcasts, sign up to our AISFP Wormhole newsletter. (Note that the newsletter is not about actual worms.)
Bohemian Gospel
by Dana Chamblee Carpenter
Thirteenth-century Bohemia is a dangerous place for a girl, especially one as odd as Mouse, born with unnatural senses and an uncanny intellect. Some call her a witch. Others call her an angel. Even Mouse doesn’t know who―or what―she is. But she means to find out.
When young King Ottakar shows up at the Abbey wounded by a traitor’s arrow, Mouse breaks church law to save him and then agrees to accompany him back to Prague as his personal healer. Caught in the undertow of court politics at the castle, Ottakar and Mouse find themselves drawn to each other as they work to uncover the threat against him and to unravel the mystery of her past. But when Mouse’s unusual gifts give rise to a violence and strength that surprise everyone―especially herself―she is forced to ask herself: Will she be prepared for the future that awaits her?
Domnall and the Borrowed Child
by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
The best and bravest faeries fell in the war against the Sluagh, and now the Council is packed with idiots and cowards. Domnall is old, aching, and as cranky as they come, but as much as he’d like to retire, he’s the best scout the Sithein court has left.
When a fae child falls deathly ill, Domnall knows he’s the only one who can get her the medicine she needs: Mother’s milk. The old scout will face cunning humans, hungry wolves, and uncooperative sheep, to say nothing of his fellow fae!
Fools of Time
by Thomas Schmid
Associate Professor Gale Ruthven, a vampire with nearly four hundred years of service at eighty-three colleges and universities, teaches British Romantic poetry at an obscure commuter college somewhere in far West Texas, enjoying an existence of literary research, student papers, and the bare amount of blood-sucking necessary to survive. His chief aggravation is the Regency Romantic poet, Lord Byron, on whom he fed in 1816 and who refuses to play the role of submissive underling.
When a powerful and seductive vampire named Tempest joins the faculty, Ruthven becomes entangled in a dark mystery involving ancient vampire cults in Mexico and the American Southwest, a hippie vampire named Via Medea, grave robbers in Byron’s Gothic ancestral estate in Nottinghamshire, and a shadowy vampire associate from Ruthven’s early nineteenth-century past—all of which lead him on a wild chase across two continents and to a final showdown in the New Mexico badlands.
The Great Forgetting
by James Renner
Jack Felter, a history teacher, returns home to bucolic Franklin Mills, Ohio, to care for his father, a retired pilot who suffers from dementia and is quickly losing his memory. Jack would love to forget about Franklin Mills, and about Sam, the girl he fell in love with, who ran off with his best friend, Tony. Except Tony has gone missing.
Soon Jack is pulled into the search for Tony, but the only one who seems to know anything is Tony’s last patient, a paranoid boy named Cole. Jack must team up with Cole to follow Tony’s trail-and maybe save the world. Their journey will lead them to Manhattan and secret facilities buried under the Catskills, and eventually to a forgotten island in the Pacific-the final destination of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
When Jack learns the details about the program known as the Great Forgetting, he’s faced with the timeless question: Is it better to forget our greatest mistake or to remember, so it’s never repeated?
Legends and Liars
by Julia Knight
Vocho and Kacha are brother and sister, and between them they’ve got quite a reputation. They were once know for the finest swordplay in the city of Reyes. The only problem is, ever since they were thrown out of the Duelist’s Guild for accidentally killing a man they were sworn to protect, it seems everyone wants them dead. Including a dark magician whose plans they recently thwarted…
Now Vocho and Kacha are in the midst of an uneasy truce, not sure whether to trust each other, or anyone else for that matter. What’s more, the sinister magician is rumored to have returned. Now he knows who was behind the failure of his last plan, he’s determined to put a stop to Vocho and Kacha permanently.
And this time, the flash of steel may not be enough to save them.
Pathfinder
by Gun Brooke
Following the Advance team, the Exodus ship heads toward a new homeworld. Here they will build a future without the threat of mutated changers. Chief Engineer Adina Vantressa, responsible for keeping the Exodus vessel operational, stays far away from her vast family. She doesn’t trust them. Nurse Briar Lindemay shares a secret with her younger sister Caya, an unregistered changer whom Briar has unlawfully brought with her aboard Exodus.
Adina and Briar meet, and their attraction grows despite their attempts to stay apart. Briar fears that acting on her feelings will take her focus from Caya. Adina’s emotional scars hinder her, but she can’t ignore how Briar makes her feel.
When disaster strikes and the only way to save the Exodus is to trust what the people aboard fear most, will the authorities listen? Or is the journey over and everything lost?
Book two of the Exodus series
Six-Gun Snow White
by Catherynne M. Valente
A New York Times bestselling author offers a brilliant reinvention of one of the best-known fairy tales of all time with Snow White as a gunslinger in the mythical Wild West.
Forget the dark, enchanted forest. Picture instead a masterfully evoked Old West where you are more likely to find coyotes as the seven dwarves. Insert into this scene a plain-spoken, appealing narrator who relates the history of our heroine’s parents—a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. Although her mother’s life ended as hers began, so begins a remarkable tale: equal parts heartbreak and strength. This girl has been born into a world with no place for a half-native, half-white child. After being hidden for years, a very wicked stepmother finally gifts her with the name Snow White, referring to the pale skin she will never have. Filled with fascinating glimpses through the fabled looking glass and a close-up look at hard living in the gritty gun-slinging West, this is an utterly enchanting story…at once familiar and entirely new.
The Stone Circle
by Anthony Tuck
Professor Winslop’s lessons on mythology are the worst. But are his stories really just myths? When Maisie and her twin brother Jasper discover a Stonehenge-like monument in the woods of New Hampshire, they find themselves caught in the middle of something much darker and more dangerous than they ever imagined. Shamans, intent on bringing about a world-wide apocalypse, are planning to break through the veil between reality and myth, and the twins are the only ones capable of finding the weapon to stop them. With only days before the Winter Solstice, will Maisie and Jasper be able to stop the rising tide of evil? Reminiscent of Escape to Witch Mountain, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Wizard of Oz, The Stone Circle will entrance and bewitch readers through to its final climax.
Byron Dunn is an AISFP Contributor, a friend to werewolves, and was extremely proud of himself for reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in it’s entirety in second grade!
Then he found out it was the simplified version for kids.
He still wants his money back. (It’s only been 27 years. It’s not too late, right?)
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