Trade paperback rights to three of Robert McCammon’s backlist titles: THEY THIRST, BLUE WORLD, and THE HUNTER FROM THE WOODS, to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press, to be published simultaneously in mid 2015.
Washington Post: Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs is a delightful urban fantasy that travels through a city full of Escher-like staircases and alternate realities.
To read the Washington Post‘s full review of City of Stairs, go here.
NPR: Bennett is plainly a writer in love with the world he has built — and with good cause. It’s a great world, original and unique, with a scent and a texture, a sense of deep, bloody history, and a naturally-blended magic living in the stones.
The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions—until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world’s new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself—first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it—stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy.
Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov’s oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country’s most accomplished spies, dispatched to catch a murderer. But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem—and that Bulikov’s cruel reign may not yet be over.
In 1968 two boys are born into a large family, both named for their grandfather, Peter Henry Hightower. One boy—Peter—grows up in Africa and ends up a journalist in Granada. The other—Petey—becomes a minor criminal, first in Cleveland and then in Kiev. In 1995, Petey runs afoul of his associates and disappears. But the criminals, bent on revenge, track down the wrong cousin, and the Peter in Granada finds himself on the run. He bounces from one family member to the next, piecing together his cousin’s involvement in international crime while learning the truth about his family’s complicated history. Along the way the original Peter Henry Hightower’s story is revealed, until it catches up with that of his children, revealing how Peter and Petey have been living in their grandfather’s shadow all along.
Complex Chinese rights to Robert McCammon’s THE BORDER to Nautilus by Gray Tan at the Grayhawk Agency, on behalf of Cameron McClure.
Russian rights to editors Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger’s anthology IN THE COMPANY OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, to AST, by Alexander Korzhenevski Agency in association with Cameron McClure.
German rights to Adam Christopher’s THE AGE ATOMIC, to Papierverzierer Verlag, by Franka Zastrow at Thomas Schlueck Agency, in association with Cameron McClure on behalf of Stacia Decker.
Turkish rights to Margaret Anne Doody’s ARISTOTLE AND POETIC JUSTICE, ARISTOTLE AND THE SECRETS OF LIFE, POISON IN ATHENS, and MYSTERIES OF ELEUSIS, to Alfa by Nazlı Çökdü at ONK Agency, in a four-book deal, in association with Katie Shea Boutillier.
Audio rights to RITA Award winner Carolyn Crane’s AGAINST THE DARK, OFF THE EDGE, and INTO THE SHADOWS, the first three books in the self-published Undercover Associates series, to Vanessa Willoughby at Tantor, by Cameron McClure.
Kirkus: Smart and sardonic, with wry echoes from classic tales (a little “Telltale Heart,” anyone?) mixed up in an inventive, winning narrative. Another dark fantasy by master of the genre Bennett (American Elsewhere, 2013, etc.), a literate swirl of religion, politics, finance and other sources of misery. “You know you are my foremost Continental operative.” Thus a suit to our protagonist, a divinologist who just happens to know her way around a conspiracy theory. Continue reading »
Library Journal: The personalities of Shara and her hulking assistant Sigurd leap off the page, as do supporting characters such as Shara’s former lover Vohannes Votrov and the gruff local Saypuri governor Mulaghesh. The world Bennett (The Troupe; American Elsewhere) has constructed is a complex political landscape of a subjugated people holding onto the memories of their glory days and protective gods and the conquerors reaping revenge for their own previous subjugation. An excellent spy story wrapped in a vivid imaginary world.
Literary Review: “Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon …disrupts the standard alien arrival cliches in numerous ways. …Okorafor brings science fiction back to its Utopian ideals. …Writing a novel in which optimism is not naivety is a challenge, and it is accomplished here with panache. …Patriotic and ambiguous, all-embracing and proudly independent, with a sense that any single viewpoint might be as fictional as aliens turning up: Lagoon offers a clever swerve from science fiction’s usual tracks.”