Locus 2022 Recommended Reading List

Feb 132023
 

Congratulations to all our authors included in the Locus 2022 Recommended Reading List!

NOVELS – SCIENCE FICTION

  • A Half-Built Garden, Ruthanna Emrys (Tordotcom)

NOVELS – FANTASY

  • The Grief of Stones, Katherine Addison (Tor; Solaris UK)
  • The Origin of Storms, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
  • The Embroidered Book, Kate Heartfield (Harper Voyager UK)
  • Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)

COLLECTIONS

  • Breakable Things, Cassandra Khaw (Undertow)

ILLUSTRATED AND ART BOOKS

  • The Keeper, Tananarive Due & Steven Barnes, art by Marco Finnegan (Megascope)

NOVELLAS

  • “Bishop’s Opening“, R.S.A Garcia (Clarkesworld 1/22)
  • Even Though I Knew the End, C.L. Polk (Tordotcom)

NOVELETTES

  • “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold“, S.B. Divya (Uncanny 5-6/22)
  • “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge”, Tananarive Due (Other Terrors)

SHORT STORIES

  • “12 Things a Trini Should Know Before Travelling to a Back in Times FeteTM”, R.S.A. Garcia (Strange Horizons 10/10/22)
  • “Have Mercy, My Love While We Wait for the Thaw”, Iori Kusano (Apex 7/22)
  • “Apolépisi: A De-Scaling”, Suzan Palumbo (Lightspeed 10/22)
  • “Douen”, Suzan Palumbo (The Dark 3/22)

Deal: Kate Heartfield

Dec 152022
 
Author photo of Kate Heartfield.

Photo courtesy of John W. MacDonald.

Author of THE EMBROIDERED BOOK Kate Heartfield’s THE VALKYRIE, pitched as retelling of the myth about the valkyrie Brynhild and her love for a Burgundian princess; THE CHATELAINE, a revised edition of the Aurora Award-winning ARMED IN HER FASHION; and THE SHARP SISTERS, about four sisters with the second sight during World War II, to Jane Johnson at Voyager UK, in a three-book deal, for publication in March 2023, May 2023, and 2025, by Jennie Goloboy.

Axle Bust Creek by John Shirley

Sep 272022
 

From the acclaimed author of Ralph Compton’s Prairie Fire, Kansas, the first in an action-packed new series starring Civil War veteran Cleveland Trewe, a master gunfighter, horseman, and lawman who’s looking to strike it rich in the gold fields of Axle Bust, Nevada…

From the battlefield of Shiloh to the prisoner camp at Slocum, former Union soldier Cleveland Trewe has seen more than enough carnage for one lifetime. Now that the war is over he’s found work as a peacekeeper and prospector—the perfect set of survival skills for a town like Axle Bust, Nevada, a place seething with danger.

Cleve’s uncle staked a claim in Axle Bust only to lose it to a murderous con-man partnered with Duncan Conroy, owner of the Golden Fleece Mine and a man determined to build an empire by means fair and foul. The only person keeping Conroy in check is his sister Berenice, a freethinker whose scientific education benefits the family interests—even while catching Cleve’s eye.

To reclaim his uncle’s mine, and bring justice to a town under tyranny, Cleve finds himself turning the streets into a bullet-riddled battlefield. Conroy is about to learn there just isn’t room for both men in a town like Axle Bust.

Priest of Crowns by Peter McLean

Aug 042022
 

‘Praise be to Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows, and blessed be the Ascended Martyr.’ Those were the words on lips of the faithful: Blessed be the Ascended Martyr, and woe betide you if you thought otherwise. The word Unbeliever had become a death sentence on the streets in those days.

Gangster, soldier, priest. Governor, knight, and above all, Queen’s Man.

Once, Tomas Piety looked after his men, body and soul, as best he could. Then those who ran his country decided his dark talents would better serve in the corridors of power.

Crushed by the power of the Queen’s Men and with the Skanian menace rising once more on the streets of Ellinburg, Tomas Piety is forced to turn to old friends, old debts and untrustworthy alliances.

Meanwhile in the capital city of Dannsburg, Dieter Vogel is beginning to wonder if the horror he has unleashed in the Martyr’s Disciples might be getting out of control.

With revolution brewing and tragedy and terrorism running rife in the cities, Piety and Vogel must each weigh the cost of a crown.

Assassin’s Creed: The Magus Conspiracy by Kate Heartfield

Aug 022022
 

The war between Assassins and Templars wreaks havoc in the Victorian era, in this breakneck thriller which opens up a whole new chapter of the Assassin’s Creed universe

London, 1851 – When Pierrette, a daring acrobat performing at the Great Exhibition, rescues the mathematician Ada Lovelace from a gang of thugs, she becomes immersed in an ancient feud between Assassins and Templars. But Lovelace is gravely ill, and shares her secrets with Pierrette, sending the acrobat in search of a terrible weapon which she’d been developing for a shadowy figure known as “the Magus”. Pierrette’s only ally is Simeon Price, Lovelace’s childhood friend, who belongs to a Brotherhood devoted to free will. With Simeon’s aid, they uncover a startling web of political assassinations destabilizing Europe. As they race to foil the Templars’ deadly plot, murders and bombs are everywhere they look, but hope is nowhere in sight.

Review: Ion Curtain by Anya Ow

Jul 282022
 

Publishers Weekly: This addictive space opera from Ow (Cradle and Grave) posits a far-future, intergalactic cold war between Russia and the UN. Cocky scavenger Solitaire Yeung goes against his crew’s wishes to investigate a distress signal from a Russian military spaceship and steal (“salvage”) an unidentifiable piece of tech. Unknown to Solitaire, the stolen pod is a prototype for a new artificial intelligence, and the Russian Federation orders Cdr. Viktor Kulagin, captain of a destroyer fitted with an AI he deeply distrusts, to hunt Yeung down. This plot paves the way for a rarely seen thematic quandary centering on early AI use in spaceships. The cultural microcosms aboard space stations like New Tesla and cleverly interwoven history make for deeply plausible worldbuilding as Yeung finds himself at the center of a political conflict that could fracture the hostile peace between galactic superpowers. And when a new faction enters the fray, Solitaire and Viktor are forced to ally against a power that threatens all of humanity. Unexpected humor and thrilling action punctuate this space opera adventure while empathetic characters and a tenderly explored theme add a lot of heart. Fans of artificial intelligence and daring spy stories will find much to love.

Review: The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield

Jul 262022
 

BookPage: Thoroughly engrossing…. Her main historical characters – as well as many fascinating secondary figures, such as the portraitist Vigée Le Brun – are so persuasively drawn, given Heartfield’s apparently meticulous attention to historical research…, that her feminist revisioning of a crucial period in European history is genuinely provocative…. a fabulously immersive novel.

Ion Curtain by Anya Ow

Jul 192022
 

For decades the UN and the Russian military have navigated a tense interstellar Cold War.

Lieutenant Kalina Sokolova is aide to Counter-Admiral Kasparov, the major strategist for the Russian Navy. She is also an elite spy working for the UN. She is tasked with watching the Counter-Admiral, and assassination is not out of the question.

Solitaire Yeung is a corsair, a scavenger, a pirate. In the heart of a destroyed Russian battleship, his salvage crew makes an explosive discovery: the brain of the ship’s top secret artificial intelligence. And against their better judgment, they take it and run.

The UN wants it, and the Russians want it back, but they’re not the only ones hunting it. An even more powerful foe grows in the darkness of space. Now all of humanity has to fight to survive…

Deal: Nicole Glover

Jun 152022
 

Author of THE CONDUCTORS and THE UNDERTAKERS Nicole Glover’s next two books in the Murder and Magic series, THE IMPROVISERS, set in the 1930s, featuring a pilot (and former bootlegger) whose investigation into cursed enchanted objects finds a murderous tie to her family’s inn, and THE STARSEEKERS, set in the 1960s, about a magic researcher at NASA whose work goes into jeopardy following a workplace accident that is likely a cover for murder, to Jaime Levine at William Morrow for publication under Harper Voyager, by Jennie Goloboy.

Sharkey: When Sea Lions Were Stars of Show Business by Gary Bohan

Apr 012022
 

“Sharkey is the natural artist, performing his magic for nothing but love.” – Wolcott Gibbs, the New Yorker

Sharkey tells the compelling story of an unusually gifted, trained sea lion who shared the stage with practically every important performer of the first half of the twentieth century-from Bob Hope to Ella Fitzgerald, from Broadway to Hollywood and beyond. Readers follow Sharkey and his flippered colleagues as they travel the world with stops at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, vaudeville houses, Manhattan during the Harlem Renaissance, burlesque nightclubs, movie palaces, Radio City Music Hall, and the legendary studios of early radio, movies, and television, meeting a who’s who of showbiz entertainers, sports superstars, and even a US president. Meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated, Sharkey is a quirky slice of New York and entertainment history sure to delight fans of vintage pop culture and Americana, as well as animal lovers.

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