In an eight book deal, Jo Ann Ferguson, writing as Jo Ann Brown, will finish her Green Mountain Blessings series which began with AN AMISH CHRISTMAS PROMISE, and launch a new series called Amish Cousins, acquired by Tina James at Harlequin Love Inspired via Jennifer Jackson.
Will she jeopardize her family secret for love?
Secrecy kept her family safe…Will she risk it all for a chance at love?
Carolyn Wiebe discarded her Amish roots to hide her niece and nephew from their violent father. Yet when a hurricane crashes into their isolated Mennonite life, she can no longer keep the world at bay. With Christmas approaching, Amish carpenter Michael Miller wants to help her rebuild her home. But can their burgeoning love withstand the rising storm of her secrets?
Ruoxi Chen has acquired World English rights to Star Eater and a second untitled novel from Kerstin Hall. Pitched as Robin McKinley meets The Handmaid’s Tale, Star Eater will be Hall’s novel-length debut. Jennifer Jackson brokered the deal.
Publishers Weekly: The 27 intimate, thought-provoking stories of this doorstopper collection span over a decade of Hugo Award–winner Bear’s illustrious career. Though many of these offer glimpses into vast, intricate worlds, all are grounded in deep human feeling and small, interpersonal dramas, as with “Two Dreams on Trains,” which is set in a complex, futuristic vision of New Orleans and focuses on the clash between a mother’s hopes for her son and the boy’s goals for himself. In the emotional standout “Tideline,” a sentient war machine named Chalcedony, who was not programmed to feel emotion, uses her last reserves of energy to scour a beach for sea glass to turn into mourning jewelry in honor of her fallen human platoon. Bear’s protagonists range from machines (the living spaceships of “Boojum”) to the human (the tired homicide cop in “Dolly”) to the monstrous (the discontented vampire of “Needles”), but she crafts them all with huge helpings of empathy and heart. This excellent collection offers readers the chance to immerse themselves in Bear’s singular imagination.
Audio rights to Kathryn Craft’s THE ART OF FALLING, to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Audio rights to a new novella in Martha Wells’ Hugo and Nebula Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series, to Brian Sweany at Recorded Books, by Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
Audio rights to Premee Mohamed’s novella THE APPLE-TREE THRONE, to Stefan Rudnicki at Skyboat Media, by Michael Curry.
Czech rights to USA Today bestselling author Tamsyn Muir’s GIDEON THE NINTH, the first book in the Locked Tomb trilogy, to Host, by Milena Kaplarević at Prava i prevodi in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
Turkish rights to the third and fourth books in Martha Wells’ Nebula and Hugo Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series, ROGUE PROTOCOL and EXIT STRATEGY, to Ithaki, by Merve Öngen at ONK Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
The New York Times: Tamsyn Muir’s GIDEON THE NINTH is a devastating debut that deserves every ounce of hype it’s received, despite the bafflingly misleading marketing around it
Everything I read about Gideon the Ninth before publication seemed to suggest it would be a lighthearted wacky adventure, with much made of the tagline “lesbian necromancers in space”—but I experienced the book as meticulous and moody, full of anguish, haunted by difficult and complex feelings in a wasted universe. Muir marshals a gorgeous cast of characters to delirious effect in a perfectly paced haunted house murder mystery, but it’s less gonzo than it is Agatha Christie writing Gormenghast. Muir is fantastic at both humor and horror, not to mention moving me to tears. I should also note that Gideon the Ninth is not a romance, though queer longing abounds; it’s deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original. It’s honestly perfect as both a satisfying stand-alone and the launch of a trilogy, and I can’t wait until the sequel lands next year.
B&N SFF: Nicky Drayden’s novels are weird—and I mean that as the highest of compliments.
Her genre-blending debut The Prey of Gods landed on the scene in 2017 with the self-same subtlety of a Roman candle stuck up your nose. Artificial intelligence and African folklore, mind control and murder, demigods and dik-diks, The Prey of Gods had has everything. Her sophomore effort, Temper, an Afrofuturist romp through a world in which your social identity is defined by your balance of vice and virtue, continued in the same audacious vein, plus twice the world-building.
Now comes Escaping Exodus, Drayden’s third novel, as pleasantly and characteristically bonkers as ever. Eschewing her established skill at tossing science fiction and fantasy together in a blender, she leans full into her Octavia Butler fineries and drops us aboard a city-size starship carved in the innards of a drifting space beast.
Seske and Adalla’s relationship is compelling and serves as the framework for all the plot to come (including a few wild tangents that complicate matters significantly), but it is this theme of environmental justice that is the novel’s central concern. As Seske learns to lead, she grapples with the devastating consequences of her people’s way of life to the beast that carries them. Adalla, on the other hand, becomes obsessed with the class inequality that fuels the system. These twin threads feel true enough to our own time, and thoroughly modern, while aligning with science fiction’s long history of climate-focused, socially conscious works.
Both threads are also entwined with one of Drayden’s recurring concerns: the construct of gender and the subversion of its norms. Gender fluidity and explorative sexuality are key components of The Prey of Gods. Here, Drayden likewise flips gender roles on their head by crafting a matriarchal society focused on containing the population: families are composed of multiple mothers and fathers but are limited to one child apiece, in a setup that feels reminiscent of Butler’s Xenogenesis series.
In opposition to contemporary daydreams of smashing the patriarchy, Drayden’s society is far from a utopia. It is cruel and rigid: gender norms haven’t vanished, they’ve reversed, with men treated as second-class citizens, considered disposable and deemed unfit for much more than housework and child-rearing. While the situation may sound cathartic to some readers, its reality is troublesome and counter-productive, an inequity sowing seeds of rebellion every bit as much as Adalla’s realizations galvanize the working class.
Life aboard this spacebeast is chaotic, the mess tolerated so long as it’s hidden beneath a certain set of creature comforts. The question before both Seske and Adalla is what to do when the mess finds it way to the light.
While that’s a pickle for the characters, it’s a playground for Drayden, whose specialty is narrative chaos. In a rather stuffed novel, her outsized sci-fi sensibilities enliven the worldbuilding while allowing her characters emotional room to grieve, to fight, and to love, believably and heart-achingly.
However you slice it, Escaping Exodus doesn’t follow the path you think it will, and neither does its author. And that’s the fun of it all.
“Don’t be alarmed – that dizzy pleasurable sensation you’re experiencing is just your brain slowly exploding from all the wild magnificent worldbuilding in Nicky Drayden’s Escaping Exodus. I loved these characters and this story, and so will you.”
– Sam J. Miller, Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving and Blackfish City
The Compton Crook award–winning author of The Prey of Gods and Temper returns with a dazzling stand-alone novel, set in deep space, in which the fate of humanity rests on the slender shoulders of an idealistic and untested young woman—a blend of science fiction, dark humor, and magical realism that will appeal to fans of Charlie Jane Anders, Jeff VanderMeer, and Nnedi Okorafor.
Earth is a distant memory. Habitable extrasolar planets are still out of reach. For generations, humanity has been clinging to survival by establishing colonies within enormous vacuum-breathing space beasts and mining their resources to the point of depletion.
Rash, dreamy, and unconventional, Seske Kaleigh should be preparing for her future role as clan leader, but her people have just culled their latest beast, and she’s eager to find the cause of the violent tremors plaguing their new home. Defying social barriers, Seske teams up with her best friend, a beast worker, and ventures into restricted areas for answers to end the mounting fear and rumors. Instead, they discover grim truths about the price of life in the void.
Then, Seske is unexpectedly thrust into the role of clan matriarch, responsible for thousands of lives in a harsh universe where a single mistake can be fatal. Her claim to the throne is challenged by a rival determined to overthrow her and take control—her intelligent, cunning, and confident sister.
Seske may not be a born leader like her sister, yet her unorthodox outlook and incorruptible idealism may be what the clan needs to save themselves and their world.
Chinese (complex) rights to Martha Wells’ Nebula and Hugo Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series (ALL SYSTEMS RED, ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, ROGUE PROTOCOL, and EXIT STRATEGY), to Global Group, by Gray Tan at Grayhawk Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
French rights to Brent Weeks’s THE BURNING WHITE, final book in the Lightbringer series, to Bragelonne, by Robin Batet of Anna Jarota Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass.
Italian rights to World Fantasy Award nominee Tamsyn Muir’s The Ninth House trilogy (GIDEON THE NINTH, HARROW THE NINTH, ALECTO THE NINTH), to Mondadori, by Stefania Fietta at Donzelli Fietta Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
Korean rights to the second, third, and fourth books in Martha Wells’ Nebula and Hugo Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series, ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, ROGUE PROTOCOL, and EXIT STRATEGY, to Alma Publishing Co., by Jackie Yang at the Eric Yang Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
Korean rights to Nnedi Okorafor’s BINTI: Home and BINTI: The Night Masquerade, to Alma, by Jackie Yang at Eric Yang Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass.
Russian rights to James Scott Bell’s HOW TO WRITE DAZZLING DIALOGUE: THE FATEST WAY TO IMPROVE ANY MANUSCRIPT, to Alpina, by Igor Korzhenevski at Alexander Korzhenevski Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass.
Russian rights to the third and fourth books in Martha Wells’ Nebula and Hugo Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series, ROGUE PROTOCOL and EXIT STRATEGY, to Eksmo, by Alexander Korzhenevski at Alexander Korzhenevski Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.