When Commander Monk of the Thames River Police is called to investigate the drowning of an escaped prisoner, he’s forced to contend with customs officer McNab, who clearly bears a bitter grudge against him. But the reason is a mystery in itself. Monk’s memory loss—a secret he guards closely—leaves him vulnerable to repercussions from his missing past, especially his exploits overseas in the tumultuous Gold Rush days of San Francisco. And now McNab, as icy and unfathomable as the steel-gray Thames itself, appears intent on using whatever damning facts he can find to his advantage to ruin Monk’s future as an officer of the law.
As Monk explores the possibility of a conspiracy, McNab’s game of cat and mouse escalates, with veiled threats and cryptic insinuations. Snared in an unforeseen trap, a desperate Monk must turn to his wife, Hester, and friend and attorney Oliver Rathbone for help, as his life literally hangs in the balance.
Publishers Weekly: Horror author Khaw (Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef) brilliantly combines the self-aware, on-point tone of her gumshoe narrator with the invasive rhythm of the language of pulsing terrors. The drearily everyday is infused with Lovecraftian dread in a marvelously horrifying, tightly built novella that spins a satisfying tale while doing honor to both of its core sources. London PI John Persons, whose “stubbornly human” form disguises his horrifying true nature, reluctantly takes a job for 11-year-old Abel—killing the boy’s abusive stepfather—after hearing Abel’s rationale for choosing him: “You’re a monster too.” Persons’s name is apt: he is desperate to hold on to his humanity and his compassion, and he refuses to give in entirely to his inner urges, which want to “rip tear bite cut” in response to his target’s testosterone-fueled insults. His struggle hooks the reader, cutting deeply without losing the characteristic emotional distance of the noir style. 
German rights to David Gerrold’s THE MAN WHO FOOLED HIMSELF plus 5 backlist titles for e-book rights only, to Heyne, by Sarah Knofius at Thomas Schlueck Agency in association with Katie Shea Boutillier.
Hugo Award-winning editor and writer for Pitchfork, NPR, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker Jason Heller’s STRANGE STARS, about the massive influence that science fiction has had on popular music, particularly during the 1970s boom of both, to Ryan Harrington at Melville House, by Jennifer Jackson.
New York Times: It’s easy to get lost in the kaleidoscopic world-building of NINEFOX GAMBIT (Solaris, paper, $9.99), the first novel by the well-regarded story writer Yoon Ha Lee. Lee submerges readers without explanation into the hexarchate – a star-spanning far-future society whose culture relies on advanced mathematics to produce “exotic effects” that are nigh magical. …. The story is dense, the pace intense, and the delicate East Asian flavoring of the math-rich setting might make it seem utterly alien to many readers yet metaphors for our own world abound. Mathematics is often lauded as a universal language, but this is blatantly untrue; for universality to work, adherents must believe in the same basic truths, or principles, to the same degree. Lee’s quasi-religious treatment of mathematics, and Cheris’s need to simultaneously exploit and rely on Jedao, both serve as metaphors for colonialism. (As does the quiet, oblique rebellion taking place in the background amid the hexarchate’s artificially intelligent servitors.) And the lesson of colonialism applies as well: Brute-force domination gets you only so far. For stability, trust is key.