Kirkus: Urgently written with forthright prose, the memoir’s serpentine suspense elements resemble the plot points seen in the kind of crime fiction the author writes herself….A potently rendered chronicle of rape and the clarity and closure achieved even when justice is only partially served.
Publishers Weekly: McCammon’s rousing sixth yarn featuring Matthew Corbett (after 2014’s The River of Souls) transports the early 18th-century American problem solver across the Atlantic to London, where he’s clapped into hellish Newgate Prison on murder charges. Matthew quickly becomes embroiled in mysteries involving fellow inmate Daniel Defoe; a gin-running street gang, the Black-Eyed Broodies; a kidnapped Italian opera singer; and a masked avenger named Albion, whose exploits are sensationalized (along with Matthew’s) in a penny dreadful broadsheet, the Pin—all the while with Matthew’s patron, Hudson Greathouse, and Matthew’s sweetheart, Berry Grigsby, in hot pursuit. McCammon’s intricate and intersecting subplots keep the story twisting unpredictably, and he adds menace to the mayhem with hellish descriptions of London straight out of a Hogarth engraving: all bawds and brutes a-wallow in the squalor of the city’s seamy street life. Fans of the series will race through this hefty page-turner to see where Matthew’s latest adventure leads him.
Emily Winslow’s STILL LIFE, her fourth crime novel set in Cambridge England, in which new evidence comes to light on the cold case of Annalise Wood, a teenage girl who went missing 40 years ago, and the three present day women whose lives are thrown together because of it: one who claims to be Annalise’s secret daughter, another who has adopted her imagined suffering, and the psychologist who treats them both and knows more about the case than she can share with the police, plus the author’s three previous crime novels, to Deb Brody at William Morrow, by Cameron McClure.
German rights to Robert McCammon’s SPEAKS THE NIGHTBIRD, Book 1 of the Matthew Corbett series, to Luzifer, by Franka Zastrow at Thomas Schlueck Agency in association with Katie Shea Boutillier, on behalf of Cameron McClure.
Japanese rights for Elizabeth Bear’s KAREN MEMORY to Tokyo Sogensha by Kohei Hattori at The English Agency (Japan) in association with Jennifer Jackson and Michael Curry.
Italian rights to Marieke Nijkamp’s THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS, to Newton Compton, by Stefania Fietta atSilvia Donzelli Agency in association with Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Jennifer Udden.
French rights to Emma Newman’s PLANETFALL, to J’ai Lu, by David Camus at Anna Jarota Agency, in association with Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Jennifer Udden.
Spanish rights to Marieke Nijkamp’s THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS, to Libros de seda, by Jennifer Hoge at International Editors’ in association with Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Jennifer Udden.
German rights to Adam Christopher’s MADE TO KILL, to Papierverzierer, by Julia Aumuller at Thomas Schlueck Agency, in association with Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Stacia Decker.
Holly Messinger’s CURIOUS WEATHER, Book 2 in the Jacob Tracy series, to Steve Feldberg at Audible, by Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Amy Boggs.
Jane Haddam’s ACT OF DARKNESS and QUOTH THE RAVEN, to Michael Olah at Dreamscape, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Ronald Malfi’s THE NIGHT PARADE, to Haila Williams at Blackstone, by Katie Shea Boutillier, on behalf of Cameron McClure.
Molly Tanzer’s QUICKSILVER, sequel to VERMILION, named one of the best SFF books of 2015 by io9 and NPR, in which psychopomp Lou Merriwether returns to San Francisco’s Chinatown where someone or something is slowly draining the population’s souls, and the only person who can help is already dead, to Ross Lockhart at Word Horde, by Cameron McClure.
In this sequel to Randy Henderson’s acclaimed debut novel, Finn Fancy Necromancy, Finn Gramaraye is settling back into the real world after his twenty-five-year-long imprisonment in the otherworld of the Fey. He’s fallen in love with a woman from his past, though he worries she may love a version of him that no longer exists. He’s proved his innocence of the original crime of Dark Necromancy, and he’s finding a place in the family business–operating a mortuary for the Arcane, managing the magical energies left behind when an Arcane being dies to prevent it from harming the mundane world.
But Finn wants more. Or different. Or something. He’s figured out how to use the Kinfinder device created by his half-mad father to find people’s True Love, and he’d like to convert that into an Arcane Dating Service. It’s a great idea. Everyone wants True Love! Unfortunately, trouble always seems to find Finn, and when he agrees to help his friend, the Bigfoot named Sal, they walk right into a Feyblood rebellion against the Arcane Ruling Council, a rebellion being fomented by unknown forces and fueled by the drug created by Finn’s own grandfather.
Shelf Awareness: Robert Jackson Bennett’s sequel to 2014’s City of Stairs is thrilling, deeply thoughtful about the nature of war, and just odd enough, while still offering analogues to our own world to remain familiar.
Discover: This excellently plotted sequel to City of Stairs mixes science and the divine and meditations on the nature of war, and has a satisfying, exciting conclusion.
Tor.com: On the back of a fantastic central character, City of Blades does everything a really good sequel should. If anything, it’s a better book than its predecessor, but without it, it wouldn’t be. It isn’t merely moreof what came before; it takes what was as a basis and builds on it brilliantly, adding additional layers to City of Stairs such that it too is enriched.
Congratulations to the DMLA clients who made the 2015 Locus Recommended Reading List!
Novels – Science Fiction
* The Book of Phoenix, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW; Hodder & Stoughton)
Novels – Fantasy
* Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
First Novels
* The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson (Tor)
* Vermilion, Molly Tanzer (Word Horde)
Collections
* Ghost Summer: Stories, Tananarive Due (Prime)
* Falling in Love with Hominids, Nalo Hopkinson (Tachyon)
Novellas
* Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
Novelettes
* “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”, Elizabeth Bear (Old Venus)
* “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead”, Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed 2/15)
* “Jamaica Ginger”, Nalo Hopkinson & Nisi Shawl (Stories for Chip)
Short Stories
* “Please Undo This Hurt”, Seth Dickinson (Tor.com 9/16/15)
* “The Graphology of Hemorrhage”, Yoon Ha Lee (Operation Arcana)
* “Variations on an Apple”, Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com 10/14/15)