Tuesday means new books! New books means new ideas and new sources of joy! (Among many other emotions.) Let’s see what’s new for our SFF BOOK RELEASES THIS WEEK!
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, and podcasts, sign up to our AISFP Wormhole newsletter.
Almost Infamous
by Matt Carter
Eighteen-year-old Aidan Salt isn’t a superhero. With his powerful (and unpredictable) telekinetic abilities he could be one if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He’s unambitious, selfish, and cowardly, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with all the paperwork required to become a professional superhero. But since the money, fame, and women that come with wearing the cape are appealing, he decides to become the first supervillain the world has seen in more than twenty years: Apex Strike.
However, he soon finds villainy in a world where the heroes have long since defeated all the supervillains. While half the world’s heroes seem to want him dead, the other half want to hire him as their own personal villain to keep them relevant. Choosing the latter course, Aidan enters a world of fame, fortune, and staged superhero fights that is seemingly everything he ever dreamed of, at least until he sees what truly hides behind the cape-and-mask lifestyle.
Chains of Command (Frontlines 4)
by Marko Kloos
The assault on Earth was thwarted by the destruction of the aliens’ seed ship, but with Mars still under Lanky control, survivors work frantically to rebuild fighting capacity and shore up planetary defenses. Platoon sergeant Andrew Grayson must crash-course train new volunteers—all while dulling his searing memories of battle with alcohol and meds.
Knowing Earth’s uneasy respite won’t last, the North American Commonwealth and its Sino-Russian allies hurtle toward two dangerous options: hit the Lanky forces on Mars or go after deserters who stole a fleet of invaluable warships critical to winning the war. Assigned to a small special ops recon mission to scout out the renegades’ stronghold on a distant moon, Grayson and his wife, dropship pilot Halley, again find themselves headed for the crucible of combat—and a shattering new campaign in the war for humanity’s future.
Cthulhu’s Daughters: Stories of Lovecraftian Horror
edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles
Women from around the world delve into Lovecraftian depths, penning and illustrating a variety of weird horrors. The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods, Asenath is a precocious teenager with an attitude, and the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Nitocris has found a new body in distant America. And do you have time to hear a word from our beloved mother Shub-Niggurath?
Defiant, destructive, terrifying, and harrowing, the women in She Walks in Shadows are monsters and mothers, heroes and devourers. Observe them in all their glory. Iä! Iä!
- “Bitter Perfume” by Laura Blackwell
- “Violet is the Color of Your Energy” by Nadia Bulkin
- “Body to Body to Body” by Selena Chambers
- “Magna Mater” by Arinn Dembo
- “De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” by Jilly Dreadful
- “Hairwork” by Gemma Files
- “The Head of T’la-yub” by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
- “Bring the Moon to Me” by Amelia Gorman
- “Chosen” by Lyndsey Holder
- “Eight Seconds” by Pandora Hope
- “Cthulhu of the Dead Sea” by Inkeri Kontro
- “Turn out the Light” by Penelope Love
- “The Adventurer’s Wife” by Premee Mohamed
- “Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961” by Sharon Mock
- “The Eye of Juno” by Eugenie Mora
- “Ammutseba Rising” by Ann K. Schwader
- “Cypress God” by Rodopi Sisamis
- “Lavinia’s Wood” by Angela Slatter
- “The Opera Singer” by Priya Sridhar
- “Provenance” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
- “The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad” by Molly Tanzer
- “Lockbox” by E. Catherine Tobler
- “When She Quickens” by Mary Turzillo
- “Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses” by Valerie Valdes
- “Queen of a New America” by Wendy N. Wagner
Daughter of Albion
by Ilka Tampke
Set in Ancient Britain on the cusp of Roman invasion, Daughter of Albion is a mesmerizing novel about the collision of two worlds and a young woman torn between two men.
Daughter of Albion transports the reader to the village of Caer Cad in southwest Britain, AD 43, where the dark cloud of the Roman Empire is gathering on the horizon.
A baby girl is abandoned on the doorstep of the Tribequeen’s kitchen. Cookmother takes her in and names her Ailia. Without family, Ailia is an outsider in her village, forbidden from marriage and excluded from learning. Despite this, she grows up an intelligent and brave young woman, serving the Tribequeen of her township until the day when an encounter with an enigmatic man named Taliesin leads Ailia to the Mothers, the tribal ancestors, who have chosen her for another path.
Ailia’s growing awareness of her future role as the tribal protector and her relationships with the two very different men she loves will be utterly tested by the imminent threat of Emperor Claudius preparing to take the island.
The Emperor’s Railroad (The Dreaming Cities 1)
by Guy Haley
Global war devastated the environment, a zombie-like plague wiped out much of humanity, and civilization as we once understood it came to a standstill. But that was a thousand years ago, and the world is now a very different place.
Conflict between city states is constant, superstition is rife, and machine relics, mutant creatures and resurrected prehistoric beasts trouble the land. Watching over all are the silent Dreaming Cities. Homes of the angels, bastion outposts of heaven on Earth. Or so the church claims. Very few go in, and nobody ever comes out. Until now.
The Everything Box
by Richard Kadrey
22000 B.C. A beautiful, ambitious angel stands on a mountaintop, surveying the world and its little inhabitants below. He smiles because soon, the last of humanity who survived the great flood will meet its end, too. And he should know. He’s going to play a big part in it. Our angel usually doesn’t get to do field work, and if he does well, he’s certain he’ll get a big promotion.
And now it’s time . . . .
The angel reaches into his pocket for the instrument of humanity’s doom. Must be in the other pocket. Then he frantically begins to pat himself down. Dejected, he realizes he has lost the object. Looking over the Earth at all that could have been, the majestic angel utters a single word.
“Crap.”
2015. A thief named Coop—a specialist in purloining magic objects—steals and delivers a small box to the mysterious client who engaged his services. Coop doesn’t know that his latest job could be the end of him—and the rest of the world. Suddenly he finds himself in the company of The Department of Peculiar Science, a fearsome enforcement agency that polices the odd and strange. The box isn’t just a supernatural heirloom with quaint powers, they tell him.
It’s a doomsday device. They think . . .
And suddenly, everyone is out to get it.
Grim Tidings (Hellhound Chronicles 2)
by Caitlin Kittredge
In this thrilling sequel to Black Dog—the first volume of award-winning Caitlin Kittredge’s dark urban fantasy series, Hellhound Chronicles—a soul catcher must stop demonic monsters from her past from infecting the world.
After winning her freedom from a reaper and facing off against a fearsome demon boss, Ava is now a masterless hellhound. Her friend, Leo, has found a new life after death: He’s returned as the Grim Reaper—the first in centuries. As both try to adjust to their new circumstances, Ava’s dark past comes back to wreak havoc on her . . . and the entire world.
A breed of monsters as smart as vampires—but who behave like zombies—has been sighted in Kansas. Ava can’t believe these “zompires” are back. She thought she’d kicked their asses for good when she first battled them in a Nazi death camp. Now, they’re spreading their infection across America’s heartland thanks to a nasty piece of business named Cain.
Free at last after being locked up in Hell for millennia, Cain has some scores to settle. To stop him, Ava must form an unholy alliance with some old foes . . . a bargain that will lead her to uncover deeply buried truths about her past—and Leo’s future.
The House of Daniel
by Harry Turtledove
Since the Big Bubble popped in 1929, life in the United States hasn’t been the same. Hotshot wizards will tell you nothing’s really changed, but then again, hotshot wizards aren’t looking for honest work in Enid, Oklahoma. No paying jobs at the mill, because zombies will work for nothing. The diner on Main Street is seeing hard times as well, because a lot fewer folks can afford to fly carpets in from miles away.
Jack Spivey’s just another down-and-out trying to stay alive, doing a little of this and a little of that. Sometimes that means making a few bucks playing ball with the Enid Eagles, against teams from as many as two counties away. And sometimes it means roughing up rival thugs for Big Stu, the guy who calls the shots in Enid.
But one day Jack knocks on the door of the person he’s supposed to “deal with”–and realizes that he’s not going to do any such thing to the young lady who answers. This means he needs to get out of the reach of Big Stu, who didn’t get to where he is by letting defiance go unpunished.
Then the House of Daniel comes to town–a brash band of barnstormers who’ll take on any team, and whose antics never fail to entertain. Against the odds Jack secures a berth with them. Now they’re off to tour an America that’s as shot through with magic as it is dead broke. Jack will never be the same–nor will baseball.
Join
by Steve Toutonghi
What if you could live multiple lives simultaneously, have constant, perfect companionship, and never die? That’s the promise of Join, a revolutionary technology that allows small groups of minds to unite, forming a single consciousness that experiences the world through multiple bodies. But as two best friends discover, the light of that miracle may be blinding the world to its horrors.
Chance and Leap are jolted out of their professional routines by a terrifying stranger—a remorseless killer who freely manipulates the networks that regulate life in the post-Join world. Their quest for answers—and survival—brings them from the networks and spire communities they’ve known to the scarred heart of an environmentally ravaged North American continent and an underground community of the “ferals” left behind by the rush of technology.
Warhammer 40,000: The Last Wall (The Beast Arises 4)
by David Annandale
Despite the Imperium’s best attempts to forestall the ork plague that is wrecking havoc in human space, an ork attack moon now hangs over Terra.
Despite the Imperium’s best attempts to forestall the ork plague that is wrecking havoc in human space, an ork attack moon now hangs over Terra. As its malevolent presence gazes down at the Imperial Palace, terrified citizens run riot in the streets. In a last-ditch attempt to destroy the attack moon, a proletarian crusade is launched. Thousands of ships large and small head to the moon carrying billions of citizens, all eager to take the fight to the enemy. It seems the attack has a chance of success as the invasion force lands safely, but the orks have yet to spring their trap.
Nazi Moonbase (Dark Osprey 10)
by Graeme Davis
In the dying days of World War II, Nazi Germany spent increasingly large amounts of its dwindling manufacturing capability on the construction of a small fleet of flying saucers capable of travel beyond the atmosphere. While these saucers were too few in number to affect the eventual outcome of the war, they did allow for a small, but fanatical Nazi group to escape Germany, first to Antarctica, and then on to the moon!
For the first time, the history of the Nazi space program has been revealed–with a focus on the design, construction, and layout of the moonbase. Using detailed maps, the entire moonbase is reconstructed, noting the locations of various important features, such as weapon emplacements, the Vril generator, the air recyclers, and water extractors. The book also covers the various attempts by the allies to overcome this last Nazi stronghold through both subterfuge and outright battle.
Nettle King (Night and Nothing 3)
by Katherine Harbour
When her beloved Jack disappears, Finn vows to find him—even if it means a daring odyssey into the land of the dead. But saving Jack comes at a terrible price: a dangerous fissure has opened, giving the dead access to the true world.
The lines between worlds are more blurred than ever. Finn’s sister, Lily, recently returned from the Ghostlands, seems to bear no scars from her time there. But then their friend Moth returns from Sombrus, the magical house once owned by Seth Lot, bearing shocking news. Something evil—a fearsome creature bearing a striking resemblance to Jack—has escaped Sombrus and is now stalking Fair Hollow, killing everyone it encounters, transforming them into terrifying Jacks and Jills and recruiting the Unseelie.
It will not stop until it gets what it wants: Finn.
Practical Applications for Multiverse Theory
by Nick Scott and Noa Gavin
Carson High School seniors Scott and Davey don’t have much common ground―that is, until all universes begin collapsing into their school. Soon, the avowed loner and the mean-girl cheerleader realize that something is very wrong, and they’re the only two who are aware of what’s happening. Demon versions of their teachers roam the halls, a cowboy sloth appears sporadically, and some students randomly burst into flames, while angry interdimensional counterparts of other students destroy everything in sight.
Now it’s up to two seniors from opposite sides of the social spectrum to defeat this scourge and save not only their high school but also the world. Armed with little more than school supplies and Scott’s trusty copy of The NEW Multiverse Theory, can these unlikely heroes put their differences aside and stop the total chaos? If they can’t, the end of the world may just be beginning.
Byron is an AISFP contributor, a friend to werewolves, and a professional grokker.
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