2013 Debut Author Challenge - October Debuts

There are  debuts 8 debuts for October. Please note that I use the publisher's publication date in the United States, not copyright dates or non-US publication dates.

The October debut authors and their novels are listed in alphabetical order by author (not book title or publication date). Pick one or more and let us know in the comments which one(s) you'll be reading. If I've missed any, let me know in the comments.

Take a good look at the covers. Voting for your favorite October cover for the 2013 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars will take place later this month.

Please note that this may not be the definitive list. I'm still working on the full October Release List and I may (or may not) discover more debuts.




Emma Chapman

How to be a Good Wife
Publisher:  St. Martin's Press, October 15, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 288 pages
List Price:  $24.99 (print)
ISBN:  9781250018199 (print)

In the tradition of Emma Donoghue's Room and S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, How To Be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman is a haunting literary debut about a woman who begins having visions that make her question everything she knows

Marta and Hector have been married for a long time. Through the good and bad; through raising a son and sending him off to life after university. So long, in fact, that Marta finds it difficult to remember her life before Hector. He has always taken care of her, and she has always done everything she can to be a good wife—as advised by a dog-eared manual given to her by Hector’s aloof mother on their wedding day.

But now, something is changing. Small things seem off. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, elapsed moments that she can’t recall. Visions of a blonde girl in the darkness that only Marta can see. Perhaps she is starting to remember—or perhaps her mind is playing tricks on her. As Marta’s visions persist and her reality grows more disjointed, it’s unclear if the danger lies in the world around her, or in Marta herself. The girl is growing more real every day, and she wants something.

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J. Lincoln Fenn

Poe
Publisher: 47North, October 22, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 328 pages
List Price:  $14.95 (print)
ISBN:  978-1477848166

2013 Winner — Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award — Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror

It’s Halloween, and life is grim for twenty-three-year-old Dimitri Petrov. It’s the one-year anniversary of his parents’ deaths, he’s stuck on page one thousand of his Rasputin zombie novel, and he makes his living writing obituaries.

But things turn from bleak to terrifying when Dimitri gets a last-minute assignment to cover a séance at the reputedly haunted Aspinwall Mansion.

There, Dimitri meets Lisa, a punk-rock drummer he falls hard for. But just as he’s about to ask her out, he unwittingly unleashes malevolent forces, throwing him into a deadly mystery. When Dimitri wakes up, he is in the morgue—icy cold and haunted by a cryptic warning given by a tantalizing female spirit.

As town residents begin to turn up gruesomely murdered, Dimitri must play detective in his own story and unravel the connections among his family, the Aspinwall Mansion, the female spirit, and the secrets held in a pair of crumbling antiquarian books. If he doesn’t, it’s quite possible Lisa will be the next victim.

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Ann Leckie

Ancillary Justice
Series:  Imperial Radch 1
Publisher:  Orbit, October 1, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and eBook, 416 pages
List Price:  $15.00 (print)
ISBN:  9780316246620 (print)

On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Breq is both more than she seems and less than she was. Years ago, she was the Justice of Toren--a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of corpse soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

An act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with only one fragile human body. And only one purpose--to revenge herself on Anaander Mianaai, many-bodied, near-immortal Lord of the Radch.

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Matthew Quinn Martin

Nightlife
Publisher:  Pocket Star,  October 21, 2013
Format:  eBook, 384 pages,
List Price:  $1.99
ISBN:  9781476746890

For centuries an ancient evil has slept beneath the streets of New Harbor. This Halloween, it wakes up.

An action-packed debut horror novel from talented new writer Matthew Quinn Martin, Nightlife pits a feisty bartender and a mysterious loner against bloodthirsty terrors as alluring as they are deadly.

Nightclub bartender and serial heartbreaker Beth Becker might be a cynic. But when her best friend goes missing Halloween night, Beth knows it’s up to her to find out what happened.

Her quest will take her on an odyssey through the crumbling city of New Harbor, Connecticut. Along the way she meets a homeless prophet warning of something he calls the “Night Angel”—a bloodthirsty creature that feeds on the forgotten. And she will form an unlikely bond with a hunted stranger who knows all too well what stalks the streets at night.

The strange man tells Beth the hideous truth about the nightmare creatures that have haunted mankind’s imagination for eons—creatures the world calls vampires. Together they are the only hope for New Harbor, but to defeat what lurks in the shadows they’ll have to conquer something far stronger than fear—their own desires.

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Fiona McFarlane

The Night Guest
Publisher:  Faber and Faber Inc., October 1, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 256 pages
List Price:  $26.00 (print)
ISBN:  9780865477735 (print)

A mesmerizing first novel about trust, dependence, and fear, from a major new writer

Ruth is widowed, her sons are grown, and she lives in an isolated beach house outside of town. Her routines are few and small. One day a stranger arrives at her door, looking as if she has been blown in from the sea. This woman—Frida—claims to be a care worker sent by the government. Ruth lets her in.

Now that Frida is in her house, is Ruth right to fear the tiger she hears on the prowl at night, far from its jungle habitat? Why do memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency? How far can she trust this mysterious woman, Frida, who seems to carry with her own troubled past? And how far can Ruth trust herself?

The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane’s hypnotic first novel, is no simple tale of a crime committed and a mystery solved. This is a tale that soars above its own suspense to tell us, with exceptional grace and beauty, about ageing, love, trust, dependence, and fear; about processes of colonization; and about things (and people) in places they shouldn’t be. Here is a new writer who comes to us fully formed, working wonders with language, renewing our faith in the power of fiction to describe the mysterious workings of our minds.

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Libby McGugan

The Eidolon
Publisher:  Solaris, October 29, 2013 (US/Canada)
Format:  Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 336 pages
List Price: $7.99 (print)
ISBN:   9781781081570

A contemporary SF thriller. The divide between science and the human spirit is the setting for a battle for the future.

When physicist Robert Strong loses his job at the Dark Matter research lab and his relationship falls apart, he returns home to Scotland. Then the dead start appearing to him, and Robert begins to question his own sanity. Victor Amos, an enigmatic businessman, arrives and recruits Robert to sabotage CERN’S Large Hadron Collider, convincing him the next step in the collider’s research will bring about disaster. Everything Robert once understood about reality, and the boundaries between life and death, is about to change forever. And the biggest change will be to Robert himself... Mixing science, philosophy and espionage, Libby McGugan’s stunning debut is a thriller like no other.

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Mark Onspaugh

The Faceless One
Publisher:  Hydra (Random House), October 28, 2013
Format:  eBook, 410 pages
List Price:  $2.99
ISBN:  978-0-345-54918-1

From a brilliant new voice in horror comes a riveting nightmare of ancient evil unleashed—and the bravery and sacrifice of those called to combat it.

In 1948, when he was just a boy, Jimmy Kalmaku trained with his uncle to be the shaman of his Tlingit village in Alaska. There he learned the old legends, the old myths, the old secrets. Chief among them was that of a mask locked in a prison of ice, and of the faceless god imprisoned within: a cruel and vengeful god called T'Nathluk, dedicated to the infliction of pain and suffering.

Now all but forgotten in a Seattle retirement home, Jimmy finds his life turned upside down. For when an unwitting archaeologist pries the mask free of its icy tomb, he frees T’Nathluk as well. Stuck in spirit form, the Faceless One seeks a human to serve as a portal through which he can enter our reality. The Faceless One can control—and mercilessly torture—anyone who touches the mask, which means there is no shortage of slaves to ferry it across the country to its chosen host.

Yet the Faceless One has foes as well: Stan Roberts, a tough New York cop whose pursuit of justice will lead him into a dark abyss of the soul; Steven, Liz, and Bobby, the family of the doomed archaeologist; and Jimmy Kalmaku, who must at last become the shaman of his boyhood dreams.

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Patrick Weekes

The Palace Job
Publisher:  47North, October 8, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 438 pages
ISBN:  9781477848203 (print)
List Price:  $14.95 (print)
(first in own world)

Loch is seeking revenge.

It would help if she wasn’t in jail.

The plan: to steal a priceless elven manuscript that once belonged to her family, but now is in the hands of the most powerful man in the Republic. To do so Loch—former soldier, former prisoner, current fugitive—must assemble a crack team of magical misfits that includes a cynical illusionist, a shapeshifting unicorn, a repentant death priestess, a talking magical warhammer, and a lad with seemingly no skills to help her break into the floating fortress of Heaven’s Spire and the vault that holds her family’s treasure—all while eluding the unrelenting pursuit of Justicar Pyvic, whose only mission is to see the law upheld.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Palace Job is a funny, action-packed, high-fantasy heist caper in the tradition of Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards series, from debut author Patrick Weekes.

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2013 Debut Author Challenge - September Debuts

There are 16 debuts for September. Please note that I use the publisher's publication date in the United States, not copyright dates or non-US publication dates.

The September debut authors and their novels are listed in alphabetical order by author (not book title or publication date). Pick one or more and let us know in the comments which one(s) you'll be reading. If I've missed any, let me know in the comments.

Take a good look at the covers. Voting for your favorite September cover for the 2013 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars will take place later this month.

Jan DeLima, Geoffrey Girard, Elliott James, K. B. Laugheed, Jaime Lee Moyer, Peter Rawlik, V. E. Schwab, Luke Scull, and Chris Willrich are 2013 Debut Author Challenge Featured Authors.

Updated to include the US Debut of Sleepless Knights by Mark H. Williams.



Jan DeLima

Celtic Moon
Series:  Celtic Wolves 1
Publisher:  Ace, September 24, 2013
Format:  Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 304 pages
Price:  $7.99 (print)
ISBN:  9780425266205 (print)

Like father, like son…

Sophie Thibodeau has been on the run from the father of her son for more than fifteen years. Now her son, Joshua, is changing, and her greatest fears are about to be realized. He’s going to end up being just like his father—a man who can change into a wolf.

Dylan Black has been hunting for Sophie since the night she ran from him—an obsession he cannot afford in the midst of an impending war. Dylan controls Rhuddin Village, an isolated town in Maine where he lives with an ancient Celtic tribe. One of the few of his clan who can still shift into a wolf, he must protect his people from the Guardians, vicious warriors who seek to destroy them.

When Sophie and Dylan come together for the sake of their son, their reunion reignites the fierce passion they once shared. For the first time in years, Dylan’s lost family is within his grasp. But will he lose them all over again? Are Joshua and Sophie strong enough to fight alongside Dylan in battle? Nothing less than the fate of his tribe depends on it…

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Geoffrey Girard

Cain's Blood
Publisher:  Touchstone, September 3, 2013
Format:   Hardcover and eBook, 352 pages
Price:  $25.99 (print)
ISBN:  9781476704043 (print)

Ted Bundy. The Son of Sam. The Boston Strangler. Albert Fish. Henry Lee Lucas.

The DNA of the world’s most notorious serial killers has been cloned by the U.S. Department of Defense to develop a new breed of bioweapon. Now in Phase Three, the program includes dozens of young men who have no clue as to their evil heritage. Playing a twisted game of nature vs. nurture, scientists raise some of the clones with loving families and others in abusive circumstances. But everything changes when the most dangerous boys are set free by their creator. A man with demons of his own, former black ops soldier Shawn Castillo is hot on their trail. But Castillo didn’t count on the quiet young man he finds hiding in an abandoned house—a boy who has just learned he is the clone of Jeffrey Dahmer. As Jeffrey and Castillo race across the country on the trail of the rampaging teens, Castillo must protect the boy who is the embodiment of his biggest fears—and who may also be his last hope. Melding all-too-plausible science and ripped from- the-headlines horror, Cain’s Blood is a stunning debut about the potential for good and evil in us all.

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David Hair

Mage's Blood
Series:  The Moontide Quartet 1
Publisher:  Jo Fletcher Books, September 3, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 704 pages
Price:  $26.95 (print)
ISBN:  978-1-62365-014-8 (print)
Adult Debut

Most of the time the Moontide Bridge lies deep below the sea, but every 12 years the tides sink and the bridge is revealed, its gates open for trade.

The Magi are hell-bent on ruling this new world, and for the last two Moontides they have led armies across the bridge on "crusades of conquest."

Now the third Moontide is almost here, and this time the people of the East are ready for a fight…but it is three seemingly ordinary people that will decide the fate of the world.

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Jeff Jackson

Mira Corpora
Publisher:  Two Dollar Radio, September 3, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback, 182 pages
Price:  $16.00 (print)
ISBN:  9781937512132 (print)

Mira Corpora is the debut novel from acclaimed playwright Jeff Jackson, an inspired, dreamlike adventure by a distinctive new talent.

Literary and inventive, but also fast-paced and gripping, Mira Corpora charts the journey of a young runaway. A coming-of-age story for people who hate coming-of-age stories, featuring a colony of outcast children, teenage oracles, amusement parks haunted by gibbons, mysterious cassette tapes, and a reclusive underground rockstar.

With astounding precision, Jackson weaves a moving tale of discovery and self-preservation across a startling, vibrant landscape.

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Elliott James

Charming
Series:  Pax Arcana 1
Publisher:  Orbit, September 24, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and eBook, 400 pages
Price:  $15.00 (print)
ISBN:  9780316253390 (print)

John Charming isn't your average Prince...

He comes from a line of Charmings -- an illustrious family of dragon slayers, witch-finders and killers dating back to before the fall of Rome. Trained by a modern day version of the Knights Templar, monster hunters who have updated their methods from chainmail and crossbows to kevlar and shotguns, he was one of the best. That is-- until he became the abomination the Knights were sworn to hunt.

That was a lifetime ago. Now, he tends bar under an assumed name in rural Virginia and leads a peaceful, quiet life. One that shouldn't change just because a vampire and a blonde walked into his bar... Right?

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K.B. Laugheed

The Spirit Keeper
Publisher:  Plume, September 24, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and eBook, 352 pages
Price:  $16.00 (print)
ISBN:  9780142180334 (print)

This is the account of Katie O Toole, late of Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania, removed from her family by savages on March the 2nd in the year of our Lord 1747

The thirteenth child conceived of miserable Irish exiles, Katie O Toole dreams of a different life. Little does she know that someone far away is dreaming of her.

In 1747, savages raid her family home, and seventeen-year-old Katie is taken captive. Syawa and Hector have been searching for her, guided by Syawa s dreams. A young Holyman, Syawa believes Katie is the subject of his Vision: the Creature of Fire and Ice, destined to bring a great gift to his people. Despite her flaming hair and ice-blue eyes, Katie is certain he is mistaken, but faced with returning to her family, she agrees to join them. She soon discovers that in order to fulfill Syawa s Vision, she must first become his Spirit Keeper, embarking on an epic journey that will change her life and heart forever.

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Alison Littlewood

A Cold Season
Publisher:  Jo Fletcher Books, September 24, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 304 pages
Price:  $24.95 (print)
ISBN:  978-1-62365-022-3 (print)
US Debut

A dark and disturbing tale from a bold new voice in horror writing: After the battlefront death of her husband, a soldier, in the sands of the Middle East, a distraught Cass decides to move to the bucolic, picture-perfect village of Darnshaw with her teenaged son. Since Cass’s website design business can be run from anywhere with an internet connection and Ben could benefit from a change of scenery, a move to the highlands village seems like just the thing.

But the locals aren’t as friendly as she had hoped and the internet connection isn’t as reliable as her business requires. And when Ben begins to display a hostility that is completely unlike his usual gentle nature, Cass begins to despair. Finally, the blizzards thunder through and Darnshaw is marooned in a sea of snow.

When things look their blackest, she finds one sympathetic ear in the person of her son’s substitute teacher. But his attentions can’t put to rest her growing anxiety about her son and her business. And soon, she finds herself pitted against dark forces she can barely comprehend. The cold season has begun.

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Eric Lundgren

The Facades
Publisher:  Overlook, September 12, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 272 pages
Price:  $25.95 (print)
ISBN:  9781468306873 (print)

Along the streets of the once-great Midwestern city of Trude, the ornate old buildings lie in ruin. Shrouded in disappointment and nostalgia, Trude has become a place to "lose yourself," as one tourist brochure puts it: a treacherous maze of convoluted shopping malls, barricaded libraries, and elitist assisted-living homes.

One night at Trude's opera house, the theater's most celebrated mezzo-soprano vanishes during rehearsal. When police come up empty-handed, the star's husband, a disconsolate legal clerk named Sven Norberg, must take up the quest on his own. But to discover the secret of his wife's disappearance, Norberg must descend into Trude's underworld and confront the menacing and bizarre citizens of his hometown: rebellious librarians, shifty music critics, a cop called the Oracle, and the minister of an apocalyptic church who has recruited Norberg's teenage son. Faced with the loss of everything he loves, Norberg follows his investigation to the heart of the city and through the buildings of a possibly insane modernist architect called Bernhard, whose elaborate vision will offer him an astonishing revelation.

Written with boundless intelligence and razor-sharp wit, The Facades is a comic and existential mystery that unfolds at the urgent pace of a thriller.

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Kate Maruyama

Harrowgate
Publisher:  47North, September 24, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 286 pages
Price:  $14.95 (print)
ISBN:  9781477807651 (print)

Michael should be overjoyed by the birth of his son, but his wife, Sarah, won?t let him touch the baby or allow anyone to visit.

Greta, an intrusive, sinister doula has wormed her way into their lives, driving a wedge between Michael and his family. Every time he leaves the Harrowgate, he returns to find his beloved wife and baby altered. He feels his family slipping away, and as a malevolent force begins to creep in, Michael does what any new father would do?he fights to keep his family together.

Kate Maruyama?s debut novel, Harrowgate, is a chilling, richly detailed story of love, loss, and the haunted place that lies between.

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Jaime Lee Moyer

Delia's Shadow
Publisher:  Tor, September 17, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 336 pages
Price:  $24.99 (print)
ISBN:  9780765331823 (print)

It is the dawn of a new century in San Francisco and Delia Martin is a wealthy young woman whose life appears ideal. But a dark secret colors her life, for Delia’s most loyal companions are ghosts, as she has been gifted (or some would say cursed) with an ability to peer across to the other side.

Since the great quake rocked her city in 1906, Delia has been haunted by an avalanche of the dead clamoring for her help. Delia flees to the other side of the continent, hoping to gain some peace. After several years in New York, Delia believes she is free…until one determined specter appears and she realizes that she must return to the City by the Bay in order to put this tortured soul to rest.

It will not be easy, as the ghost is only one of the many victims of a serial killer who was never caught. A killer who after thirty years is killing again.

And who is now aware of Delia’s existence.

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Peter Rawlik

Reanimators
Publisher:  Night Shade Books, September 3, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and eBook, 280 pages
Price:  $14.99 (print)
ISBN:  9781597804783 (print)

Two Men. A Bitter Rivalry. And a Quarter-Century of Unspeakable Horrors.

Herbert West’s crimes against nature are well-known to those familiar with the darkest secrets of science and resurrection. Obsessed with finding a cure for mankind’s oldest malady, death itself, he has experimented upon the living and dead, leaving behind a trail of monsters, mayhem, and madness. But the story of his greatest rival has never been told — until now.

Dr. Stuart Hartwell, a colleague and contemporary of West, sets out to destroy him by uncovering the secrets of his terrible experiments, only to become what he initially despised: a reanimator of the dead.

For more than twenty years, the two scientists race each other to master the mysteries of life . . . and unlife. From the grisly battlefields of the Great War to the haunted coasts of Dunwich and Innsmouth, from the halls of fabled Miskatonic University to the sinking of the Titanic, their unholy quests leave their mark upon the world — and create monsters of them both.

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V. E. Schwab

Vicious
Publisher:  Tor, September 24, 2013
Format:   Hardcover and eBook, 368 pages
Price:  $24.99 (print)
ISBN:  9780765335340 (print)
Adult Debut

A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn’t automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question.

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Luke Scull

The Grim Company
Series:  Grim Company 1
Publisher:  Roc, September 3, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 400 pages
Price:  $26.95 (print)
ISBN:  9780425264843 (print)

The Gods are dead. The Magelord Salazar and his magically enhanced troops, the Augmentors, crush any dissent they find in the minds of the populace. On the other side of the Broken Sea, the White Lady plots the liberation of Dorminia, with her spymistresses, the Pale Women. Demons and abominations plague the Highlands.

The world is desperately in need of heroes. But what they get instead are a ragtag band of old warriors, a crippled Halfmage, two orphans and an oddly capable manservant: the Grim Company.

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Michael Farris Smith

Rivers
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster, September 10, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 352 pages
Price:  $25.00 (print)
ISBN:  9781451699425 (print)

It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn’t rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land.

Following years of catastrophic hurricanes, the Gulf Coast—stretching from the Florida panhandle to the western Louisiana border—has been brought to its knees. The region is so punished and depleted that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline. Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules.

Cohen is one who stayed. Unable to overcome the crushing loss of his wife and unborn child who were killed during an evacuation, he returned home to Mississippi to bury them on family land. Until now he hasn’t had the strength to leave them behind, even to save himself.

But after his home is ransacked and all of his carefully accumulated supplies stolen, Cohen is finally forced from his shelter. On the road north, he encounters a colony of survivors led by a fanatical, snake-handling preacher named Aggie who has dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region.

Realizing what’s in store for the women Aggie is holding against their will, Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman’s captives across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down—and Cohen harboring a secret that may pose the greatest threat of all.

Eerily prophetic in its depiction of a southern landscape ravaged by extreme weather, Rivers is a masterful tale of survival and redemption in a world where the next devastating storm is never far behind.

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Mark H. Williams

Sleepless Knights
Publisher:  Atomic Fez Publishing, September 24, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and eBook, 418 pages
Price:  $15.00
ISBN:  978-1927609019
US Debut

It’s not easy being the man behind the myth.

Sir Lucas is butler to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table — the person who managed every quest from behind the scenes. He’s a man whose average working day involved defeating witches and banishing werewolves, while ensuring the Royal pot of tea never crossed the thin line separating ‘brewed’ from ‘stewed.’ What’s more, 1,500 years after that golden age, he’s still doing it — here in the modern world, right under our noses.

When King Arthur and six of his knights are exposed as living among us, Merlin is unleashed and a grim apocalypse unfolds, uncovering secrets from the past that King Arthur would rather stay buried. When Lucas is forced to confront his own peculiar destiny, will he choose to sacrifice his true love and lay down his life in the service of his master?

Sleepless Knights is a tale of high adventure and warm humour, with a spring in its step, a twinkle in its eye and, at its heart, the ultimate butler.

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Chris Willrich

The Scroll of Years
Series:  Gaunt and Bone
Publisher:  Pyr, September 24, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and eBook, 270 pages
Price:  $15.95 (print)
ISBN:  978-1-61614-813-3 (print)

It's Brent Weeks meets China Mieville in this wildly imaginative fantasy debut featuring high action, elegant writing, and sword and sorcery with a Chinese flare.

Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone are a romantic couple and partners in crime. Persimmon is a poet from a well-to-do family, who found herself looking for adventure, while Imago is a thief in his ninth decade who is double-cursed, and his body has not aged in nearly seventy years. Together, their services and wanderlust have taken them into places better left unseen, and against odds best not spoken about. Now, they find themselves looking to get away, to the edge of the world, with Persimmon pregnant with their child, and the most feared duo of assassins hot on their trail. However, all is never what it seems, and a sordid adventure-complete with magic scrolls, gangs of thieves, and dragons both eastern and western-is at hand.

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2013 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars - August 2013

It's time for the 2013 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars for August 2013!

Since Cover Wars was so much fun as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge, we're doing it again for the 2013 Debut Author Challenge. Each month you will be able to vote for your favorite cover from each month's debut novels. At the end of the year the 12 monthly winners will be pitted against each other to choose the 2013 Debut Novel Cover of the Year. Please note that a debut novel cover is eligible in the month in which the novel is released in the US. Cover artist/illustrator information is provided when I have it.

Vote for your Favorite August 2013 Debut Novel Cover!
	Twilight Hunter
	The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic
	The Ghost Bride
	Saxon's Bane
	Children of Fire
	The Daedalus Incident
	The Returned
	The Bone Season
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Voting will close on August 31, 2013.

(Please note that when you click "View" above it will take you to the PollCode site. Please click "Back" there to come back to this post. Leave any comments below.)

2013 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars - July 2013

It's time for the 2013 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars for July 2013!

Since Cover Wars was so much fun as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge, we're doing it again for the 2013 Debut Author Challenge. Each month you will be able to vote for your favorite cover from each month's debut novels. At the end of the year the 12 monthly winners will be pitted against each other to choose the 2013 Debut Novel Cover of the Year. Please note that a debut novel cover is eligible in the month in which the novel is released in the US. Cover artist/illustrator information is provided when I have it.

Vote for your Favorite July 2013 Debut Novel Cover!
	William Shakespeare's STAR WARS
	The Darwin Elevator
	The Curiosity
	Woof at the Door
	Three
	Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders
	Blood Song
	The Age of Ice
	Fiend
pollcode.com free polls

Voting will close on July 31, 2013.

(Please note that when you click "View" above it will take you to the PollCode site. Please click "Back" there to come back to this post. Leave any comments below.)

 

Cover Art: Chris McGrath

 

Cover Art: Steven Meyer-Rassow

Cover Art: Eamon O’Donoghue.

Interview with Richard Ellis Preston, Jr., author of Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders, and Giveaway - July 3, 2013

Please welcome Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. to The Qwillery as part of the 2013 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders was published on July 2, 2013. You may read Richard's Guest Blog - Romulus Buckle, Steampunk and the Female Swashbuckler - here.

TQ:  Welcome to the Qwillery.

Richard:  Thanks, Sally! This is a great site for readers and writers and I am thrilled to be here.



TQ:  When and why did you start writing?

Richard:  I am a late bloomer in every conceivable way, I suppose. I always loved to write but I did not make the decision to dedicate my life to a writing career until I was almost thirty years old. I’d had a lot of jobs at that point and bailed out of several careers. I realized that I was unhappy unless I was writing, so I took the plunge and moved back to Los Angeles from Canada, where I had lived for twenty years. I started writing screenplays while I worked in a bookstore on Ventura Boulevard (where I met my future wife) and later read scripts at Universal studios for a year or so. After a decade of writing screenplays for low budget action movies and episodes for family television (which was a lot of fun) I realized that I wanted to write books. Screenplays are difficult and rewarding to write, but they are not a finished thing (the filmed movie is the finished thing) and the collaborative process of filmmaking makes you take on other peoples’ concepts and ideas. This can be a great creative synthesis, but I was tired of it and attracted to the form of the novel, where every inch of the story would be my own construction. And if the book failed, it was all my failure—I’d rather go down swinging my own sword, anyway.



TQ:  What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

Richard:  Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t think that I am a quirky writer. I am silly, but not quirky. I probably have some quirks but I can’t see them.



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Richard:  I am a plotter—a big time plotter—and then I spin into a pantser, of sorts. I work out all of the major story scenes and character arcs on index cards and thumbtack them up on bulletin boards—the walls of my office are packed with big bulletin boards. This is an interesting process because of how many times the cards get rearranged in the early stages. Once I have the skeleton of the story set, I start writing, which tends to blow the whole thing up almost immediately, turning me into something of a pantser. But it is a safe place to careen around in, because I already know where I am going (I know how it ends) and I know what major story elements I need to accomplish. Much of this will change - even the ending, sometimes, but I have (and need) a well-established spine that I can look at and see how my new ideas might enrich or detract from the entire structure, and how profoundly any new change might alter the story from beginning to end.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about your writing?

Richard:  Dialogue, especially early on in the story. I love world-building and structure and that comes easy for me. Characters emerge and flesh out over time, and I come to love them and know them intimately, but their actual voices form very slowly for me—it takes me a while to hear them talking. Because of that, much of my first pass dialogue is an exploration of the moment—often I just state what the character wants and how they might be trying to get it—or do they even understand what it is they need as opposed to they think they want—so my subconscious can stew on their state of mind until the next pass. Dialogue is the most heavily reworked thing in my books, but when the characters finally do start talking to me it is insanely rewarding, and then they won’t shut up. All I have to do is listen. Unfortunately (or fortunately) that sometimes wipes out all of the first dialogue I had worked so hard to generate.



TQ:  Describe Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders in 140 characters or less (like a tweet).

Richard:  “Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders”—a steampunk Pirates of the Caribbean! A post-apocalyptic sky adventure #steampunk Coming July 2. (I just tweeted that)



TQ:  What inspired you to write Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders?

Richard:  Once I decided to tackle novels, I lunged into a massive trilogy project set in Russia during the Second World War. This involved an immense amount of research. I took a trip to Russia and toured the battlefields, and even interviewed several surviving veterans with an interpreter in Moscow. The project is very big, and I am nearly finished with the first book at this point. But two summers ago I was bogged down in the trilogy, and I thought it would be refreshing to tackle something else I loved—something I could do in six months—so I could return to the Russia monster fresh and have something I was proud to peddle in the meantime. My beloved dog, Kellie, had just passed away, so I was inspired to put her in it in some small way, so I could hang out with her again. I wanted to create something that was the opposite of my tragic and weighty Russian books, so I plunged into my love for Indiana Jones, Star Wars and the old Saturday afternoon matinee and created the story of a swashbuckling zeppelin crew soaring across the skies of the future. It was a blast to write. Luck was on my side this time, and an agent and publisher picked it up very quickly.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders?

Richard:  The Snow World is of course a fantastical environment but it is anchored in the real world. I had to research all of my major story elements so I could speak on them with some familiarity and authority and also so I would know exactly when I was taking these elements out of the realm of reality. People reading speculative fiction are ready for you to transport them into the fantastical, but in order to maintain their suspension of disbelief the author has to make good on the “real” elements and then carry that authority forward into the fantasy part as well. I researched everything that appears in the book, including zeppelins and the properties of hydrogen, steam engines, 18th century muzzle-loading cannons, Victorian/Edwardian clothing and hats, Victorian culture, Darwinism, bustles, baggywrinkle (I love that word) and a myriad of other infernal devices, large and small.



TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Richard:  Romulus Buckle and the two female lead characters, Chief Navigator Sabrina Serafim and Chief Engineer Max (a half-Martian woman) came to me quickly and they tend to be easier for me to understand and write for. They live in my soul and normally I find them accessible although sometimes I really have to dig to discover their true feelings and attitudes about things. Buckle can present a problem in these early books because he starts our so confident and capable—I have to fight to keep him from falling completely into a one-dimensional zone. The hardest character for me to write is probably the father, Balthazar, mainly because he is older and central to the story history and his experiences and motivations are so layered and complex.



TQ:  Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders?

Richard:  I can think of two scenes that stick out for me right now: the first is a huge action sequence where Buckle must lock swords with enemy steampipers as they breach the cavernous envelope of the burning airship; the second is the intimate moment when Sabrina realizes that Max is in love with Buckle, and Sabrina is suddenly unsure of her own feelings toward him. One scene is big and the other is tiny, but both are vital to the story.



TQ:  What’s next?

Richard:  The second book in the Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin series, Romulus Buckle and the Engines of War, is finished and slated for release on November 19th, 2013. The first book in my Russian WW2 trilogy should be polished up and ready to submit to publishers soon, but the submission-purchase (if I am very lucky and it is sold)-marketing-printing-release process takes a long time, so even if lighting strikes that one won’t surface anytime soon.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Richard:  The pleasure is all mine, Sally. I hope to be back.

TQ:  We'd love to have you visit again!

About The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin

Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders
The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin 1
47North, July 2, 2013
Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 456 pages

In a post-apocalyptic world of endless snow, Captain Romulus Buckle and the stalwart crew of the Pneumatic Zeppelin must embark on a perilous mission to rescue their kidnapped leader, Balthazar Crankshaft, from the impenetrable City of the Founders. Steaming over a territory once known as Southern California - before it was devastated in the alien war - Buckle navigates his massive airship through skies infested with enemy war zeppelins and ravenous alien beasties in this swashbuckling and high-octane steampunk adventure. Life is desperate in the Snow World - and death is quick - Buckle and his ship’s company must brave poisoned wastelands of noxious mustard and do battle with forgewalkers, steampipers and armored locomotives as they plunge from the skies into the underground prison warrens of the fortress-city.

Captain Romulus Buckle must lead the Pneumatic Zeppelin and its crew of never-do-wells on a desperate mission where he must risk everything to save Balthazar and attempt to prevent a catastrophic war which could wipe out all that is left of civilization and the entire human race.

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Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War
The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin 2
47North,  November 19, 2013
Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook

The frozen wasteland of Snow World—known as Southern California before an alien invasion decimated civilization—is home to warring steampunk clans. Crankshafts, Imperials, Tinskins, Brineboilers, and many more all battle one another for precious supplies, against ravenous mutant beasts for basic survival, and with the mysterious Founders for their very freedom.

Through this ruined world soars the Pneumatic Zeppelin, captained by the daring Romulus Buckle. In the wake of a nearly suicidal assault on the Founders’ prison city to rescue key military leaders, both the steam-powered airship and its crew are bruised and battered. Yet there’s little time for rest or repairs: Founders raids threaten to shatter the fragile alliance Buckle has risked everything to forge among the clans.

Even as he musters what seems a futile defense in the face of inevitable war, Buckle learns that the most mysterious clan of all is holding his long-lost sister in a secret base—and that she holds the ultimate key to victory over the Founders. But rescuing her means abandoning his allies and praying they survive long enough for there to be an alliance to return to.

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The gorgeous covers for the Romulus Buckle novels are by Eamon O’Donoghue.





About Richard 

Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. is fascinated by the steampunk genre, which he sees as a unique storytelling landscape. Romulus Buckle and the City of the Founders is the first installment in his new steampunk series, The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin. Richard has also written for film and television. He lives in California.



Website  ~  Facebook  ~  Twitter @RichardEPreston









Richard's Giveaway

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2013 Debut Author Challenge - July 2013 Debuts

There are 9 debuts for July. Please note that I use the publisher's publication date in the United States, not copyright dates or non-US publication dates.

The July debut authors and their novels are listed in alphabetical order by author (not book title or publication date). Pick one or more and let us know in the comments which one(s) you'll be reading. If I've missed any, let me know in the comments.

Take a good look at the covers. Voting for your favorite July cover for the 2013 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars will take place later this month.





William Shakespeare's Star Wars®
Author:  Ian Doescher
Publisher:  Quirk Books, July 2, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 176 pages
Price:  $14.95 (print)
Genre:  MashUp / Science Fiction (print)
ISBN:  9781594746376

Return once more to a galaxy far, far away with this sublime retelling of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. ’Tis a tale told by fretful droids, full of faithful Wookiees and fearstome stormtroopers, signifying...pretty much everything.

Reimagined in glorious iambic pentameter—and complete with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations--William Shakespeare’s Star Wars will astound and edify Rebels and Imperials alike. Zounds! This is the book you’re looking for.

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The Darwin Elevator
Author:  Jason Hough
Series:  The Dire Earth Cycle 1
Publisher:  Del Rey, July 30, 2013
Format:  Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 496 pages
Price:  $9.99 (print)
ISBN:  978-0-345-53712-6

Jason M. Hough’s pulse-pounding debut combines the drama, swagger, and vivid characters of Joss Whedon’s Firefly with the talent of sci-fi author John Scalzi.

In the mid-23rd century, Darwin, Australia, stands as the last human city on Earth. The world has succumbed to an alien plague, with most of the population transformed into mindless, savage creatures. The planet’s refugees flock to Darwin, where a space elevator—created by the architects of this apocalypse, the Builders—emits a plague-suppressing aura.

Skyler Luiken has a rare immunity to the plague. Backed by an international crew of fellow “immunes,” he leads missions into the dangerous wasteland beyond the aura’s edge to find the resources Darwin needs to stave off collapse. But when the Elevator starts to malfunction, Skyler is tapped—along with the brilliant scientist, Dr. Tania Sharma—to solve the mystery of the failing alien technology and save the ragged remnants of humanity.

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The Curiosity
Author:  Stephen P. Kiernan
Publisher:  William Morrow, July 9, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 432 pages
Price:  $25.99 (print)
ISBN:  978-0-06-222106-3 (print)

A powerful debut novel in which a man, frozen in the Arctic ice for more than a century, awakens in the present day and finds the greatest discovery is love . . .

The Curiosity

Dr. Kate Philo and her scientific exploration team make a breathtaking discovery in the Arctic: the body of a man buried deep in the ice. As a scientist in a groundbreaking project run by the egocentric and paranoid Erastus Carthage, Kate has brought small creatures—plankton, krill, shrimp—back to life for short periods of time. But the team's methods have never been attempted on larger life-forms.

Heedless of the potential consequences, Carthage orders that the frozen man be brought back to the lab in Boston and reanimated. The endeavor is named "The Lazarus Project." As the man begins to regain his memories, the team learns that he was—is—a judge, Jeremiah Rice, and the last thing he remembers is falling overboard into the Arctic Ocean in 1906. When news of the project and Jeremiah Rice breaks, it ignites a media firestorm and protests by religious fundamentalists.

Thrown together by fate, Kate and Jeremiah grow closer. But the clock is ticking and Jeremiah's new life is slipping away. With Carthage planning to exploit Jeremiah while he can, Kate must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the man she has come to love.

A gripping, poignant, and thoroughly original thriller, Stephen P. Kiernan's provocative debut novel raises disturbing questions about the very nature of life and humanity—man as a scientific subject, as a tabloid novelty, as a living being: a curiosity.

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Woof at the Door
Series:  A Call of the Wilde Mystery 1
Author:  Laura Morrigan
Publisher:  Berkley, July 2, 2013
Format:  Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 304 pages
Price:  $7.99 (print)
ISBN:  9780425257197 (print)

Animal behaviorist Grace Wilde keeps her ability to psychically communicate with furry and feathered critters under wraps. But when a Doberman turns out to be the only witness to a crime, Grace will have to let the cat out of the bag in order to catch a killer.

Grace Wilde’s job is anything but normal. When she’s not helping out at the zoo by comforting agitated lemurs, she’s listening to the woes of annoyed house pets. Grace’s life gets even more complicated, though, when the cops summon her to a crime scene to help deal with the murder victim’s terrified Doberman.

The pooch turns out to be the only one who saw what happened the night of the shooting—and only Grace can get the information out of him. The problem is, how will Grace tell the distractingly gorgeous Sergeant Kai Duncan that it’s the dog who’s giving her the intel without spilling her big secret or sounding crazy? Left on her own, Grace will have to follow the pup’s lead to track down the killer. But she’ll have to be careful—or curiosity may end up killing the cat whisperer.

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Three
Author:  Jay Posey
Series:  Legends of the Duskwalker 1
Publisher:  Angry Robot Books, July 30, 2013 (US/Canada)
     August 1, 2013 (UK)
Format:  Mass Market Paperback and eBook,
Price:  $7.99 (print)
ISBN:  9780857663634

The world has collapsed, and there are no heroes any more.

But when a lone gunman reluctantly accepts the mantle of protector to a young boy and his dying mother against the forces that pursue them, a hero may yet arise.

File Under: Science Fiction [ Three For All | Apocalyptic Wasteland | A Journey Home | Fear the Weir ]

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Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders
Author:  Richard Ellis Preston, Jr.
Series:  The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin 1
Publisher:  47North, July 2, 2013
Format:  Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 456 pages
Price:  $14.95 (print)
ISBN:   9781611099188

In a post-apocalyptic world of endless snow, Captain Romulus Buckle and the stalwart crew of the Pneumatic Zeppelin must embark on a perilous mission to rescue their kidnapped leader, Balthazar Crankshaft, from the impenetrable City of the Founders. Steaming over a territory once known as Southern California - before it was devastated in the alien war - Buckle navigates his massive airship through skies infested with enemy war zeppelins and ravenous alien beasties in this swashbuckling and high-octane steampunk adventure. Life is desperate in the Snow World - and death is quick - Buckle and his ship’s company must brave poisoned wastelands of noxious mustard and do battle with forgewalkers, steampipers and armored locomotives as they plunge from the skies into the underground prison warrens of the fortress-city.

Captain Romulus Buckle must lead the Pneumatic Zeppelin and its crew of never-do-wells on a desperate mission where he must risk everything to save Balthazar and attempt to prevent a catastrophic war which could wipe out all that is left of civilization and the entire human race.

Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : Powell's

Blood Song
Author:  Anthony Ryan
Series:  Raven's Shadow Trilogy 1
Publisher:   Ace, July 2, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 592 pages
Price:  $27.95 (print)
ISBN:  9780425267691 (print)
(US Debut)

From “a new master storyteller” comes the beginning of an epic fantasy saga of blood, honor, and destiny…

“The Sixth Order wields the sword of justice and smites the enemies of the Faith and the Realm.”

Vaelin Al Sorna was only a child of ten when his father left him at the iron gate of the Sixth Order. The Brothers of the Sixth Order are devoted to battle, and Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate, and dangerous life of a Warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.

Vaelin’s father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the unified realm. Vaelin’s rage at being deprived of his birthright and dropped at the doorstep of the Sixth Order like a foundling knows no bounds. He cherishes the memory of his mother, and what he will come to learn of her at the Order will confound him. His father, too, has motives that Vaelin will come to understand. But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the realm, but the world.

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The Age of Ice
Author:  J. M. Sidorova
Publisher:  Scribner, July 23, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 416 pages
Price:  $26.00 (print)
ISBN:  9781451692716 (print)

The Empress Anna Ioannovna has issued her latest eccentric order: construct a palace out of ice blocks. Inside its walls her slaves build a wedding chamber, a canopy bed on a dais, heavy drapes cascading to the floor—all made of ice. Sealed inside are a disgraced nobleman and a deformed female jester. On the empress’s command—for her entertainment—these two are to be married, the relationship consummated inside this frozen prison. In the morning, guards enter to find them half-dead. Nine months later, two boys are born.

Surrounded by servants and animals, Prince Alexander Velitzyn and his twin brother, Andrei, have an idyllic childhood on the family’s large country estate. But as they approach manhood, stark differences coalesce. Andrei is daring and ambitious; Alexander is tentative and adrift. One frigid winter night on the road between St. Petersburg and Moscow, as he flees his army post, Alexander comes to a horrifying revelation: his body is immune to cold.

J. M. Sidorova’s boldly original and genrebending novel takes readers from the grisly fields of the Napoleonic Wars to the blazing heat of Afghanistan, from the outer reaches of Siberia to the cacophonous streets of nineteenth-century Paris. The adventures of its protagonist, Prince Alexander Velitzyn—on a lifelong quest for the truth behind his strange physiology—will span three continents and two centuries and bring him into contact with an incredible range of real historical figures, from Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, to the licentious Russian empress Elizaveta and Arctic explorer Joseph Billings.

The Age of Ice is one of the most enchanting and inventive debut novels of the year.

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Fiend
Author:  Peter Stenson
Publisher:  Crown, July 9, 2013
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 304 pages
Price:  $22.00 (print)
ISBN:   9780770436315 (print)

There’s more than one kind of monster.

    When Chase Daniels first sees the little girl in umbrella socks tearing open the Rottweiler, he's not too concerned. As a longtime meth addict, he’s no stranger to horrifying, drug-fueled hallucinations.
    But as he and his fellow junkies soon discover, the little girl is no illusion. The end of the world really has arrived.
    The funny thing is, Chase’s life was over long before the apocalypse got here, his existence already reduced to a stinking basement apartment and a filthy mattress and an endless grind of buying and selling and using. He’s lied and cheated and stolen and broken his parents’ hearts a thousand times. And he threw away his only shot at sobriety a long time ago, when he chose the embrace of the drug over the woman he still loves.
    And if your life’s already shattered beyond any normal hopes of redemption…well, maybe the end of the world is an opportunity. Maybe it’s a last chance for Chase to hit restart and become the man he once dreamed of being. Soon he’s fighting to reconnect with his lost love and dreaming of becoming her hero among civilization’s ruins.
    But is salvation just another pipe dream?
    Propelled by a blistering first-person voice and featuring a powerfully compelling antihero, Fiend is at once a riveting portrait of addiction, a pitch-black love story, and a meditation on hope, redemption, and delusion—not to mention one hell of a zombie novel.

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