Released Monday, August 15th, 2011
Evolve 2: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, by Nancy Kilpatrick
Featured authors include: Tanith Lee, Kelley Armstrong, John Shirley, Thomas Roche, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Heather Clitheroe, Erika Holt, Ivan Dorin, Michael Lorenson, Jason Ridler, David Beynon, Eileen Bell, Peter Sellers, Sandra Wickham, William Meikle, David Tocher, Leanne Tremblay, Ryan McFadden, Steve Vernon, Bev Vincent, Anne Mok, and Sandra Kasturi.
Henry VIII: Wolfman, by A. E. Moorat
Henry the Eighth was the bloodiest king ever to have sat on the throne of England. This fast-paced, exciting, inventive, and just plain bloody retelling of his reign will bring to light the real man behind the myth.
Be dragged back kicking and screaming five hundred years into Tudor England . . .
The Urban Fantasy Anthology, edited by Peter S. Beagle & Joe R. Lansdale
Released Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
Autumn: Purification, by David Moody
In Autumn: Purification, the heroes from the original Autumn novel and Autumn: The City work together to survive in this horrifying new world.
Without ever using the ‘Z’ word, the Autumn series offers a new perspective on the traditional zombie story. There’s no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore’s sake. Combining the atmosphere and tone of a George Romero film with the attitude and awareness of 28 Days Later, this horrifying and suspenseful novel is filled with relentless cold, dark fear.
Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, by Andrew E. C. Gaska
ICO: Castle in the Mist, by Miyuki Miyabe
When a boy named Ico grows long curved horns overnight, his fate has been sealed-he is to be sacrificed in the Castle in the Mist. But in the castle, Ico meets a young girl named Yorda imprisoned in its halls. Alone they will die, but together Ico and Yorda might just be able to defy their destinies and escape the magic of the castle.
Based on the video game filmmaker Guillemo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) called a “masterpiece”, Japan’s leading fantasist Miyuki Miyabe has crafted a tale of magic, loss, and love that will never be forgotten.
Legacy: An Event Group Thriller, by David L. Golemon
The United States is ready to make a triumphant return to the moon, striking out boldly into the solar system in an attempt to regain the confidence of the heady days of the Apollo program. The first of what are to be many missions to the lunar surface was designed to find the frozen water needed to prepare to build a base to launch an assault on Mars.
But a shocking discovery at Shackleton Crater brings the first Prometheus mission to an abrupt halt. Remote robots uncover human skeletal remains and a base that had been destroyed countless millennia ago. The information is sent back to earth where forensic analysis at NASA reveals the corpse to be over seven hundred million years old.
A secret this devastating cannot be kept forever, and the news is leaked to the world. Soon nations are thrown into a head-long collision, pitting governments against their own citizens as the flames of fundamentalism start a conflagration that threatens to engulf the world as a race to return the moon is on.
The Event Group is tasked to unravel the mystery and to offer something that can either explain our ancient visitor or, at least, keep the world from descending into chaos. Colonel Jack Collins once again leads a team of the world’s greatest scientists and philosophers on a journey that will take the Event Group to the airless world of space. But while a battle rages over the truth of our heritage, the Event Group realizes that this may not be humanity’s war alone. Could something else—someone else—be coming to finish a war that they started almost a billion years ago?
In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its champion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs. Every day is a constant hustle to find new customers and protect his turf from low-life competition like Tancred the Harelip and Ling Chi, the enigmatic crime lord of the heathens.
The Warden’s life of drugged iniquity is shaken by his discovery of a murdered child down a dead-end street . . . setting him on a collision course with the life he left behind. As a former agent with Black House—the secret police—he knows better than anyone that murder in Low Town is an everyday thing, the kind of crime that doesn’t get investigated. To protect his home, he will take part in a dangerous game of deception between underworld bosses and the psychotic head of Black House, but the truth is far darker than he imagines. In Low Town, no one can be trusted.
Daniel Polansky has crafted a thrilling novel steeped in noir sensibilities and relentless action, and set in an original world of stunning imagination, leading to a gut-wrenching, unforeseeable conclusion. Low Town is an attention-grabbing debut that will leave readers riveted . . . and hungry for more.
Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
Second Grave on the Left (Charley Davidson, Book 2), by Darynda Jones
When Charley is rudely awakened in the middle of the night by her best friend who tells her to get dressed quickly and tosses clothes out of the closet at her, she can’t help but wonder what Cookie’s up to. Leather scrunch boots with a floral miniskirt? Together? Seriously? Cookie explains that a friend of hers named Mimi disappeared five days earlier and that she just got a text from her setting up a meet at a coffee shop downtown. They show up at the coffee shop, but no Mimi. But Charley finds a message on the bathroom wall. Mimi left a clue, a woman’s name. Mimi’s husband explains that his wife had been acting strange since she found out an old friend of hers from high school had been found murdered a couple weeks prior. The same woman Mimi had named in her message.
Meanwhile, Reyes Alexander Farrow (otherwise known as the Son of Satan. Yes. Literally) has left his corporeal body and is haunting Charley. He’s left his body because he’s being tortured by demons who want to lure Charley closer. But Reyes can’t let that happen. Because if the demons get to Charley, they’ll have a portal to heaven. And if they have a portal to heaven…well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be pretty. Can Charley handle hot nights with Reyes and even hotter days tracking down a missing woman? Will Cookie ever get a true fashion sense? And is there enough coffee and chocolate in the world to fuel them as they do?
Here is your signpost for the most hilarious read of the summer: Second Grave On The Left.
The Moon Maze Game (Dream Park), by Larry Niven & Steven Barnes
Against this background, professional “Close Protection” specialist Scotty Griffin, fresh off a disastrous assignment, is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: to shepherd the teenaged heir to the Republic of Kikaya on a fabulous vacation. Ali Kikaya will participate in the first live action role playing game conducted on the Moon itself. Having left Luna–and a treasured marriage–years ago due to a near-tragic accident, Scotty leaps at the opportunity.
Live Action Role Playing attracts a very special sort of individual: brilliant, unpredictable, resourceful, and addicted to problem solving. By kidnapping a dozen gamers in the middle of the ultimate game, watched by more people than any other sporting event in history, they have thrown down an irresistible gauntlet: to “win” the first game that ever became “real.” Pursued by armed and murderous terrorists, forced to solve gaming puzzles to stay a jump ahead, forced to juggle multiple psychological realities as they do…this is the game for which they’ve prepared their entire lives, and they are going to play it for all it’s worth.
The Omen Machine, by Terry Goodkind
Since the seven rarely used doors, the shutters on the windows down on the ground level several stories below stood open as a fearless show of invitation. Though they frequently chose to use windows, they didn’t actually need the windows any more than they needed the doors. They could seep through any opening, any crack, like vapor rising in the early morning from the stretches of stagnant water that lay in dark swaths through the peat barrens.
The open shutters were meant to be a declaration for all to see, including the seven, that Hannis Arc feared nothing.
#1 New York Times-bestselling author Terry Goodkind returns to the lives of Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell—in a compelling tale of a new and sinister threat to their world.
Bargains and Betrayals: A 13 to Life Novel, by Shannon Delany
Released Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
The Edinburgh Dead, by Brian Ruckley
In the starkly-lit operating theaters of the city, grisly experiments are being carried out on corpses in the name of medical science. But elsewhere, there are those experimenting with more sinister forces.
Amongst the crowded, sprawling tenements of the labyrinthine Old Town, a body is found, its neck torn to pieces. Charged with investigating the murder is Adam Quire, Officer of the newly- formed Edinburgh Police. The trail will lead him into the deepest reaches of the city’s criminal underclass, and to the highest echelons of the filthy rich.
Soon Quire will discover that a darkness is crawling through this city of enlightenment – and no one is safe from its corruption.
The Edinburgh Dead is a powerful fusion of gothic horror, history, and the fantastical.
Lists from B&N and Amazon, summaries from Amazon