Donald Maass Literary Agency

Yoon Ha Lee’s Dragon Pearl is named a 2019 Horn Book Summer Reading middle-school selection!

Thirteen-year-old Min has a powerful secret: she’s a gumiho, a fox spirit disguised as a human, who can shape-shift and alter others’ perceptions. She enthusiastically wields these powers when she ditches her “dismal life” on the barren planet Jinju to track down her brother Jun, who’s gone AWOL. Lee’s richly detailed, cohesive, original vision is a lively mash-up of outer-space sci-fi and Korean culture and folklore.

B&N SFF: The sequel to The Stone in the Skull, set in Bear’s Eternal Sky universe, continues the story of the Lotus Kingdoms, remnants of the Alchemical Empire on a world where the nighttime sun offers heat but no light, and the daytime is lit up by millions of stars. As the kingdoms descend into bloody conflict, the Gage, an enormous brass automaton, travels into a blasted desert in pursuit of the mystery of the Stone in the Skull, while Anuraja, having captured princess Sayeh of Ansh-Sahal, marches on the city of Sarathai-tia, held by Sayeh’s cousin Mrithuri. Mrithuri counts on the rain-swollen river to protect the city—but when the rains inexplicably fail, Mrithuri finds herself hunting a traitor in her own ranks. Elizabeth Bear writes epic fantasy like no one else; her stories are as emotionally textured as their worldbuilding is ornate, and her prose borders on the poetic. Between this book and her mind-expanding space opera Ancestral Night, she’s having a hell of a 2019.

Library Journal: Meg knows her therapist means well, but any scrutiny is hard to handle when coping with overwhelming anxiety. Even driving a car or going out in public too often is stressful. Luckily, her boyfriend Austin is a help, even though he wears his scars on the outside, owing to the car accident they were both in three years ago. Facing a long teaching semester, Meg takes the chance of befriending guest university instructor Haley. Haley is bright, beautiful, and charismatic, everything Meg wants to be. As Meg warms up to her new friend, finally breaking out of the shell of her anxiety, Austin senses Meg is changing fast and not necessarily for the better. She’s looking for a life of perfection, and it might exist—just not in our reality. The story proceeds at a quick clip, with a huge amount of action in a short time frame and a narrator whom readers will feel for.

VERDICT Harrison (“Hollows” series) presents a twisty blend of psychological suspense and fantasy, blurring the edges of what is real, and to whom.

Library Journal: Haimey Dz is an engineer who, along with pilot Connla Kurucz and the sentient ship Singer, are just-barely-lawful salvagers looking for that one big haul that will make their fortunes. When searching one derelict ship, Haimey becomes infected by something that gives her knowledge about the construction of the universe itself, making her a prize for not only the interstellar government Synarche but also the space pirates determined to use her for their own nefarious plans. On the run across the galaxy, Haimey and others discover that in the black hole at the center of the galaxy is a hidden alien spaceship, and that revealing lost secrets of both the universe and Haimey’s own past, neither of which she will wish to be uncovered, is the only way to save everything.

VERDICT Hugo Award winner Bear’s (Karen Memory) foray back into space introduces an immersive setting and characters. Readers will be captivated by the creative prose.

B&N: Bestselling urban fantasy author Kim Harrison (the Hallows series) has been experimenting with sci-fi of late in novels like The Drafter and The Operator; her latest is more difficult to classify, but filled with the danger, romance, and readability that has attracted her a legion of devoted readers. Artist Meg is on the brink of breakout success, but held back by the anxiety triggered by her boyfriend’s recent serious car accident. At her therapist’s urging, she connects with a woman named Haley, a guest professor at her university who is living a life Meg dreams of. But when Haley’s influence seems to be changing Meg too much, and too fast, her boyfriend Austin attempts to intervene, she attempts to cut him out of her life – but he resists. This thriller is set in a world not quite our own, and asks compelling questions about the effects of trauma on our perception of reality.