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Stormland by John Shirley

Apr 132021
 

They call it Stormland: a sprawling, largely abandoned region of the southeastern coast of the USA, where climate change’s extreme weather conditions have brought about a “perfect storm” of perpetual tempests; where hurricane-strength storms return day after day, 365 days a year.

The heart of Stormland is Charleston, South Carolina, a flooded ruin where hundreds of people remain for their own peculiar reasons; where thugs prey on the weak, and a strangely benevolent cult tries to keep everyone insanely sane. Here, plutocratic evil takes advantage of Stormland’s lawlessness to cultivate a weirdly puppeted theater of cruelty.

Swept into the turbulent vortex of Stormland is an unlikely duo—a former serial killer and a former US Marshal—who must work together to bring light to America’s late twenty-first century heart of darkness.

A cyberpunk detective thriller set in a maelstrom of climatic upheaval, classism, and corrupt power, Stormland paradoxically dramatizes the resilience of the human spirit.

The Difficult Loves of Maria Makiling by Wayne Santos

Mar 262021
 

Maria is, in no particular order: a concept artist at a videogame studio, the goddess of Mount Makiling in the Philippines, and in love. And when Maria falls in love, tragedy and death follow. It’s going to take everything a goddess, her newly-befriended demon-horse, and Canadian national treasure Margaret Atwood have to break the cycle.

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

Mar 022021
 

“A seamless blending of magic, mystery, and history…Glover’s worldbuilding, characters, and attention to historical detail create a delightfully genre-bending debut!”
—Tananarive Due, American Book Award winner, author of Ghost Summer: Stories

From a bold new voice in speculative fiction comes a vibrant historical fantasy of magic and murder set in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Hetty Rhodes and her husband, Benjy, were Conductors on the Underground Railroad, ferrying dozens of slaves to freedom with daring, cunning, and magic that draws its power from the constellations. With the war over, those skills find new purpose as they solve mysteries and murders that white authorities would otherwise ignore.

In the heart of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward, everyone knows that when there’s a strange death or magical curses causing trouble, Hetty and Benjy are the only ones that can solve the case. But when an old friend is murdered, their investigation stirs up a wasp nest of intrigue, lies, and long-buried secrets- and a mystery unlike anything they handled before. With a clever, cold-blooded killer on the prowl testing their magic and placing their lives at risk, Hetty and Benjy will discover how little they really know about their neighbors . . . and themselves.

“An unforgettable debut … Wholly original and thoroughly riveting.”
—Deanna Raybourn, New York Times best-selling author of A Murderous Relation

Review: Immunity Index by Sue Burke

Feb 042021
 

Publishers Weekly: Burke (Semiosis) uses a futuristic world to comment on the present in this politically charged dystopian novel. In a near-future America where human clones are stigmatized as second-class citizens and an authoritarian “Prez” titillates his patriot cult with sloganeering straight out of the Big Brother playbook, a nationwide mutiny is brewing. When the government releases a vaccine against the rampaging Sino cold—purportedly to induce herd immunity nationally, but secretly to sicken the mutineers—the narrative refracts the ensuing chaos through the experiences of four characters: Avril, Irene, and Berenike, young Wisconsin women from various walks of life who discover they are clones of one another; and Peng, the scientist who cloned them and who has a hand in the virus’s release. Burke endows her characters with distinct personalities and conjures a frighteningly real sense of national destabilization as events spiral out of their control. Though the ending is somewhat anticlimactic, references to coronaviruses and a nation wracked by social unrest are sure to resonate. This hits close to home.

Review: Stormland by John Shirley

Jan 252021
 

Publishers Weekly: With this gripping dystopian novel, Shirley (Eclipse) extrapolates a grim vision of a late-21st-century U.S. wracked by climate change. Former U.S. Marshal Darryl Webb is now a world-weary freelance tracker hired to find a missing serial killer believed to be in Stormland, a 400-mile stretch of devastated southeast U.S. coastline. Some 2,000 squatters live in the ruins of Charleston, inhabiting lawless, flooded enclaves—among them an eerie pseudo-religious cult, a gang of drug dealers, scavenger-refugees, and Gerald Fogle, Webb’s quarry. But Gerald, who’s been medically mind-altered with “Neuro-Cellular Behavioral Modification,” is a new man. No longer the killer he was, he now devotes his time to altruistically helping Stormland’s suffering people. Threads involving “experiencers” who install mind-control implants to drive their doomed victims for their own heinous entertainment and a pharmaceutical executive who finds redemption from his destructive greed propel the intricate, action-filled plot as Webb comes to find meaning in his life. Howling super-hurricanes, grisly torture scenes, and the horrors of scientific experimentation on human brains make for harrowing reading. This is a sober warning about the seductive dangers of power.

Starred Review: The Conductors by Nicole Glover

Nov 162020
 

Publishers Weekly: Inventively mixing mystery, magic, and alternate history, Glover’s nail-biting debut takes readers to Reconstruction era Philadelphia. Henrietta “Hetty” and Benjamin “Benjy” Rhodes—both adept at sigil magic that draws on the constellations—are famed conductors for the Vigilance Society, which shepherded enslaved Black people to freedom along the Underground Railroad. Stories of their trips into the South are legendary in their Philadelphia community even a decade after the Civil War. Now, Hetty and Benjy use their magical and analytical skills as detectives, dealing with missing person cases, murders, and other crimes the white police force chooses to overlook. But when one of their friends turns up dead and their suspicions fall close to home, they’ll need to work out who in their community is not who they say they are. The pace is relaxed but the tension steadily builds as Glover weaves each detail into a satisfying mystery. Frequent flashbacks to Hetty and Benjy’s thrilling exploits as conductors on the Underground Railroad reveal how Hetty’s tough choices during the Civil War led to her life today. Readers will be surprised but gratified by an ending that shows just how past actions inform the present in unexpected ways. Glover is a writer to watch.

Goddess of the North by Georgina Kamsika

Aug 042020
 

Detective Inspector Sara Nayar is a goddess. Literally. A Hindu goddess accidentally brought to England during Queen Victoria’s reign. Working now as a police detective, Sara survives on humanity’s innate faith in law and order.

Sheffield is a city of many gods, however, and when Sara witnesses a murder, she knows the perpetrator is divine. As a goddess of order, she must solve the crime before the god can kill again, but thousands of years living as a human has left her spiritually weak.

Vulnerable in ways she hasn’t felt since leaving India, Sara fights to balance her mortal and immortal lives as the murders around her escalate. And with tensions amongst her fellow divinity on the rise, Sara is running out of time. If she can’t restore order, find balance in the chaos, the city itself might pay the price.

Set in a vividly realized Northern city, where gods coexist with a balance of faith, Goddess of the North is a page-turning urban fantasy steeped in multicultural mythology. A murder mystery at heart, it’s an exploration of identity, love, faith, and the transformative powers of self-acceptance.

July Translation Rights Deals

Jul 312020
 

German rights to Ada Palmer’s TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING, SEVEN SURRENDERS, and THE WILL TO BATTLE, Books 1-3 of the Terra Ignota series, to Panini Germany, by Sarah Knofius at Thomas Schlueck Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier, for Cameron McClure.

Italian rights to Molly Tanzer’s VERMILLION, to Moscabianca, by Stefania Fietta at Donzelli Fietta, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier, for Cameron McClure.

Japanese rights to Martha Wells’ NETWORK EFFECT, the first full-length novel in the New York Times bestselling Murderbot Diaries series, plus FUGITIVE TELEMETRY and “Compulsory,” to Tokyo Sogen, by Kohei Hattori at the English Agency (Japan) Ltd. in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Korean rights to John Shirley’s GURDJIEFF, to Inner World Publishing, by Jackie Yang at Eric Yang Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Jennie Goloboy.

Russian rights to USA Today bestselling author Tamsyn Muir’s HARROW THE NINTH, the second book in the Locked Tomb trilogy, to Eksmo, by Igor Korzhenevski at Alexander Korzhenevski Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Turkish rights to Robert McCammon’s SWAN SONG and BOY’S LIFE, to Ithaki by Merve Ongen at ONK Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier, for Cameron McClure.

Turkish rights to Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka’s IF I’M BEING HONEST, to Yabanci, by Merve Ongen at ONK Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier.

2020 Sunburst Award Shortlists

Jul 302020
 

Congratulations to Kate Heartfield! “The Inland Beacon”  has been selected for the 2020 Sunburst Award Shortlist in the Short Story Category.

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