Looking for a great place to have a date this Valentine’s Day? How about your local library? Imagine taking your special someone to a quiet, intimate place filled with the most wonderful thing in the world: Books! Imagine how excited your love will be when they see all the incredible selections around them and proceed to ignore you in favor of the SFF BOOK RELEASES THIS WEEK!
Oddly enough, we have no romance titles this week, of all weeks! However, this seems to be prime time for literary and magical realism titles, though there are plenty of more traditional titles available as well. And remember:
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, chimichangas, and podcasts, sign up to our AISFP Wormhole newsletter.
Okay, readers, let’s get in formation (‘Cause we slay!)
Angelus (The Books of Raziel 3)
by Sabrina Benulis
The war started by three powerful angel siblings—Raziel, Lucifel, and Israfel—has divided the kingdoms of both Heaven and Hell for ages. Now, that destruction is spilling over into the human world, and only the Archon can stop it.
She is Angela Mathers, a human who sits on the Devil’s vacant throne, seemingly fulfilling a prophecy of ruin. As the Archon, Angela alone can oppose Lucifel and open Raziel’s Book to use its power for good. But to do so would mean murdering her best friend, Sophia, and that’s a sacrifice Angela refuses to contemplate.
But ruin does not always mean destruction—sometimes it means revolution. Echoes of the past have resurrected the Angelus, the Song of Creation, and its notes are somehow linked to the Book. Now Angela must discover the truth behind the song and her own origins, but time is running out. There are dark forces who believe Angela’s success will not end tragedy but continue it, and they’re determined to stop the Archon’s destiny once and for all.
Arcadia
by Iain Pears
Three interlocking worlds. Four people looking for answers. But who controls the future—or the past?
In 1960s Oxford, Professor Henry Lytten is attempting to write a fantasy novel that forgoes the magic of his predecessors, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. He finds an unlikely confidante in his quick-witted, inquisitive young neighbor Rosie. One day, while chasing Lytten’s cat, Rosie encounters a doorway in his cellar. She steps through and finds herself in an idyllic, pastoral land where Storytellers are revered above all others. There she meets a young man who is about to embark on a quest of his own—and may be the one chance Rosie has of returning home. These breathtaking adventures ultimately intertwine with the story of an eccentric psychomathematician whose breakthrough discovery will affect all of these different lives and worlds.
Beacon 23
by Hugh Howey
NOTE: This novel was serialized as an e-book prior to it’s physical publication. -Byron
For centuries, men and women have manned lighthouses to ensure the safe passage of ships. It is a lonely job, and a thankless one for the most part. Until something goes wrong. Until a ship is in distress. In the twenty-third century, this job has moved into outer space. A network of beacons allows ships to travel across the Milky Way at many times the speed of light. These beacons are built to be robust. They never break down. They never fail. At least, they aren’t supposed to.
Dragon Hunters (The Chronicles of the Exile 2)
by Marc Turner
Once a year on Dragon Day the fabled Dragon Gate is raised to let a sea dragon pass from the Southern Wastes into the Sabian Sea. There, it will be hunted by the Storm Lords, a fellowship of powerful water-mages who rule an empire called the Storm Isles. Alas, this year someone forgot to tell the dragon which is the hunter and which the hunted.
Emira Imerle Polivar is coming to the end of her tenure as leader of the Storm Lords. She has no intention of standing down graciously. She instructs an order of priests called the Chameleons to infiltrate a citadel housing the mechanism that controls the Dragon Gate to prevent the gate from being lowered after it has been raised on Dragon Day. Imerle hopes the dozens of dragons thus unleashed on the Sabian Sea will eliminate her rivals while she launches an attack on the Storm Lord capital, Olaire, to secure her grip on power.
But Imerle is not the only one intent on destroying the Storm Lord dynasty. As the Storm Lords assemble in Olaire in answer to a mysterious summons, they become the targets of assassins working for an unknown enemy. When Imerle initiates her coup, that enemy makes use of the chaos created to show its hand.
Earth’s End (Air Awakens Series Book 3)
by Elise Kova
A woman awoken in air, a soldier forged by fire, a weapon risen from blood.
Vhalla Yarl has made it to the warfront in the North. Forged by blood and fire, she has steeled her heart for the final battle of the Solaris Empire’s conquest. The choices before Vhalla are no longer servitude or freedom, they are servitude or death. The stakes have never been higher as the Emperor maintains his iron grip on her fate, holding everything Vhalla still has left to lose in the balance.
Every Anxious Wave
by Mo Daviau
Good guy Karl Bender is a thirty-something bar owner whose life lacks love and meaning. When he stumbles upon a time-travelling worm hole in his closet, Karl and his best friend Wayne develop a side business selling access to people who want to travel back in time to listen to their favorite bands. It’s a pretty ingenious plan, until Karl, intending to send Wayne to 1980, transports him back to 980 instead. Though Wayne sends texts extolling the quality of life in tenth century “Mannahatta,” Karl is distraught that he can’t bring his friend back.
Enter brilliant, prickly, overweight astrophysicist, Lena Geduldig. Karl and Lena’s connection is immediate. While they work on getting Wayne back, Karl and Lena fall in love — with time travel, and each other. Unable to resist meddling with the past, Karl and Lena bounce around time. When Lena ultimately prevents her own long-ago rape, she alters the course of her life and threatens her future with Karl.
The Guns of Ivrea (Valdur 1)
by Clifford Beal
Acquel Galenus, former thief and now monk of no particular skill, indifferent scribe and even worse chorister, uncovers a terrible secret under the Great Temple at Livorna that could shiver the one faith to its core. A secret that could get him killed. A secret that could enable an older, more sinister form of worship to be reborn…Pirate princeling Nicolo Danamis, mercenary to the King and captain of the largest fleet in the island kingdom of Valdur, has made one deal too many, and enemies are now closing in to destroy him. And Citala, fair-haired and grey-skinned, the daughter of the chieftain of the Merfolk who inhabit the waters of Valdur, finds herself implacably drawn to the affairs of men. She puts events in motion that will end her people’s years of isolation but that could imperil their very existence…All their fates will intertwine as they journey through duchies and free cities riven by political intrigue, religious fervour, and ancient hatreds. Alliances are being forged anew and after decades of wary peace, war is on the wind once again…
Homefront (Portal Wars 3)
by Jay Allan
Jake Taylor and his cyborg soldiers have fought their way from one Portal planet to another, moving steadily homeward with one goal in mind – the utter destruction of the corrupt rulers who sent them to hell to fight and die as pawns in a dishonest war, one started not by the alien enemy, but by Earth’s own government, as a tool in its plot to seize total power.
And now, after the fighting, the suffering, the bitter losses…finally, it is time. Time for the final invasion of Earth. Time to liberate their homeland from the totalitarian government that controls it utterly, to find those responsible for all that has happened…and to kill them all.
Jake and his warriors are hopelessly outnumbered, but they are determined to battle to the last, to sacrifice all for any hope of victory, however small. But Taylor and his soldiers are not alone in their fight, for in Earth’s shadows, in the rotting slums and the remote countryside, in dark corners and crumbling cellars, a spark of defiance has survived and grown, men and women who remember liberty, and are willing to die for the chance to regain what they lost a generation before. They are preparing…and waiting. Waiting for the chance to strike a blow for freedom.
But those who cling to power will not give it up easily. Indeed, the politicians who run UNGov will see Earth a charred ruin, the dead lying in unburied heaps before they will yield their positions. The battle is about to begin…and it will not end until only one side remains.
Is Jake Taylor willing to go all the way, to fight to the end, do whatever he must…to accept nothing less than death or total victory, whatever the cost?
The Lost Time Accidents
by John Wray
Haunted by a failed love affair and the darkest of family secrets, Waldemar ‘Waldy’ Tolliver wakes one morning to discover that he has been exiled from the flow of time. The world continues to turn, and Waldy is desperate to find his way back-a journey that forces him to reckon not only with the betrayal at the heart of his doomed romance but also the legacy of his great-grandfather’s fatal pursuit of the hidden nature of time itself.
Meet Me in the Middle of the Air
by Eric Schaller
Dark Miracles. Black Comedies. In an astonishing debut collection of short stories, Eric Schaller invites you to unlock the gates of horn, to ascend the bridge of sighs, and to meet him in the middle of the air. There you’ll encounter Edgar Allan Poe cavorting with Marilyn Monroe; intimate insects and blood red roses; apes and automata; and urban witches, parasites, and zombies. Explore the secret nightlife of the Oscar Wildes. Join the Sparrow Mumbler onstage. March in the menagerie of madness and mayhem. Just don’t look down because all that’s holding you aloft is…air.
A Song for No Man’s Land (No Man’s Land 1)
by Andy Remic
He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.
But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.
He’ll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn’t exist.
Square Wave
by Mark de Silva
Carl Stagg, a writer researching imperial power struggles in 17th century Sri Lanka, ekes out a living as a watchman in a factionalized America where confidence in democracy has eroded. Along his nightly patrol, Stagg finds a beaten prostitute, one in a series of monstrous attacks. Suspicious of his supervisor’s intentions, Stagg partners with a fellow part-time watchman, Ravan, to seek the truth. Ravan hails from a family developing storm-dispersal technologies, whose research is jointly funded by the Indian and American governments.
The watchmen’s discoveries put a troubling complexion on Stagg’s research, giving it new shape and impetus, just as the weather modification project begins to appear less about dispersing storms than weaponizing them.
Ways to Disappear
by Idra Novey
In snowy Pittsburgh, her American translator Emma hears the news and, against the wishes of her boyfriend and Beatriz’s two grown children, flies immediately to Brazil. There, in the sticky, sugary heat of Rio, Emma and her author’s children conspire to solve the mystery of Yagoda’s curious disappearance and staunch the colorful demands of her various outstanding affairs: the rapacious loan shark with a zeal for severing body parts, and the washed-up and disillusioned editor who launched Yagoda’s career years earlier.
What the Waves Know
by Tamara Valentine
The tiny state of Rhode Island is home to even tinier Tillings Island—which witnessed the biggest event of Izabella Rae Haywood’s life. For it was there, on Iz’s sixth birthday, that her father left…and took her voice with him.
Eight years later in the summer of 1974, Iz’s mother is through with social workers, psychiatrists and her daughter’s silence. In one last attempt to return Iz’s voice, the motley pair board the ferry to Tillings in hopes that the journey will help Izabella heal herself by piecing together splintered memories of the day her words fled.
But heartbreak is a difficult puzzle to solve, and everyone in Tillings seems to know something Iz does not. Worse, each has an opinion about Izabella’s dreamer of a father, the undercurrents of whose actions have spun so many lives off course.
Now, as the island’s annual Yemayá festival prepares to celebrate the ties that bind mothers to children, lovers to each other, and humankind to the sea, Izabella must unravel the tangled threads of her own history and reclaim a voice gone silent…or risk losing herself—and any chance she may have for a future—to the past.
The Witches of Cambridge
by Menna van Praag
Amandine Bisset has always had the power to feel the emotions of those around her. It’s a secret she can share only with her friends—all professors, all witches—when they gather for the Cambridge University Society of Literature and Witchcraft. Amandine treasures these meetings but lately senses the ties among her colleagues beginning to unravel. If only she had her student Noa’s power to hear the innermost thoughts of others, she might know how to patch things up. Unfortunately, Noa regards her gift as a curse. So when a seductive artist claims he can cure her, Noa jumps at the chance, no matter the cost.
Noa’s not the only witch who’s in over her head. Mathematics professor Kat has a serious case of unrequited love but refuses to cast spells to win anyone’s heart. Kat’s sister, Cosima, is not above using magic to get what she wants, sprinkling pastries in her bakery with equal parts sugar and enchantment. But when Cosima sets her sights on Kat’s crush, she conjures up a dangerous love triangle.
Byron Dunn is an AISFP contributor, a friend to werewolves, and yes, he did reference both Deadpool and Beyonce up there because he is just that cool and hip.
You will never see him do the Dab. Ever.
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