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New Books April #3
Bruce Boston
Damien Broderick
Simon Brown
Dan Chernenko
Christopher Golden
Laurell K. Hamilton
Karin Lowachee
Julian May
Dennis L. McKiernan
John Moore
Andre Norton
Sam Weller
Glenn Yeffeth

New Books April #2
Bryan Appleyard
Kazuo Ishiguro
Ian R. MacLeod
Mike Resnick
Chris Roberson
Travis Taylor
Harry Turtledove
Steve White

2005 Archive

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This page lists selected newly published SFFH books seen by Locus Online (independently from the listings compiled by Locus Magazine).

Review copies received will be listed (though reprints and reissues are on other pages), but not galleys or advance reading copies. Selections, some based only on bookstore sightings, are at the discretion of Locus Online.

* = first edition
+ = first US edition
Date with publisher info is official publication month;
Date in parentheses at paragraph end is date seen or received.

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New SF, Fantasy, and Horror books seen : 4th Week April 2005
posted 5 May 2005

* Antieau, Kim : Counting on Wildflowers: An Entanglement
(Aqueduct Press 0-9746559-7-x, $9, 106pp, trade paperback, April 2005)

Collection of essays, poetry, and a short story, several previously published online, with illustrations by Terri Windling.
• The publisher has this brief description.
• Not available from Amazon; order from Aqueduct Press.
• The author has a website and a blog.

(Thu 21 Apr 2005)

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+ Campbell, Ramsey : The Overnight
(Tor 0-765-31299-9, $24.95, 396pp, hardcover, March 2005, jacket art David Bowers) First US edition (UK: PS Publishing, June 2004)

Horror novel set in a large chain bookstore, based on the author's own experiences. Locus Magazine's New and Notable Books list for May calls it a "chilling, somewhat tongue-in-cheek novel of employees working overnight in a haunted superstore".
• PS Publishing, which issued the first edition last year, has this synopsis. Amazon's "search inside" feature excerpts the first few pages.
• Tim Pratt reviews the book in the April issue of Locus.

(Fri 29 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Duchamp, L. Timmel : Alanya to Alanya
(Aqueduct Press 0-9746559-6-1, $19, 443pp, trade paperback, June 2005, cover design Lynne Jensen Lampe)

SF novel, book one of the Marq'ssan Cycle, projected to be five volumes, about alien invaders who arrive at Earth in 2076. The story focuses on feminist professor Kay Zeldin as she assists government officials responding to the threat.
• The publisher has this description, with a Chapter 1 excerpt (pdf) and blurbs, including one from Samuel R. Delany: "the most exciting--and certainly the most intelligent!--tale of alien invasion I've read in decades".
Author's website.

(Sat 23 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Effinger, George Alec : George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth
(Golden Gryphon Press 1-930846-32-0, $25.95, 363pp, hardcover, May 2005, jacket painting John Picacio, jacket design Lynne Condellone)

Collection of 22 stories from throughout the career of the author, who died in 2002, selected and introduced by 16 writers, including Neil Gaiman, Michael Bishop, Gardner Dozois, Mike Resnick, Lawrence Person, and Howard Waldrop. Stories include Hugo nominee "All the Last Wars at Once", Hugo and Nebula nominee "The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything", and eight previously uncollected stories written under the pseudonym O. Niemand, in which Effinger mimics the style of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and other literary icons in stories set on the asteroid Springfield.
• Golden Gryphon's site has this description with the complete table of contents.
• Amazon has reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Golden Gryphon's site includes the full text of these, as well as of Damien Broderick's review from the April issue of Locus Magazine.

(Sat 23 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Emshwiller, Carol : I Live with You
(Tachyon Publications 1-892391-25-2, $14.95, 204pp, trade paperback, April 2005, cover illustration Ed Emshwiller, cover design Ann Monn)

Collection of 12 recent stories and a speech (given at WisCon), with an introduction by Eileen Gunn.
• The publisher's site has this description, with an excerpt from Gunn's introduction.
• Amazon has the reviews from PW and Booklist: "Skirting the border between fantasy and SF, the 12 stories, all published since 2002, feature broadly drawn characters and situations that give them the universality of fables." says PW.
• Cheryl Morgan just posted this review in Emerald City.
• Gary K. Wolfe, Faren Miller, and Nick Gevers review the book in the May issue of Locus Magazine; noting that this year marks Emshwiller's 50th anniversary as a writer, Wolfe writes "She circles around genre materials and themes like a poet, and as a result you often find that the centers of her tales are not where you thought they were, and are almost never in the machineries of the fantastic which she employs. When she adopts a familiar trope like aliens among us, she immediately shifts the angle of vision by narrating from the point of view of the alien."

(Fri 22 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Eschbach, Andreas : The Carpet Makers
(Tor 0-765-30593-3, $24.95, 300pp, hardcover, April 2005, jacket art Rick Berry)

SF novel, the first by this German SF writer to appear in English (originally published as Die Haarteppichknüpfer in 1995), translated by Doryl Jensen. It's about a planet where weavers make carpets out of human hair, each carpet taking a lifetime, for a far away emperor. An extract appeared as "Carpetmaker's Son" in F&SF, January 2001. The book is introduced by Orson Scott Card. In translations, it won the 2002 Italia Award, and the 2001Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire.
• Amazon has reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.
• The author's website, www.andreaseschbach.de, has an English version.
• John Clute reviewed it for Science Fiction Weekly.
• Gary K. Wolfe's review in the April issue of Locus Magazine discusses the difficulties of marketing translated fiction in the US, and concludes that this book "is a considerable achievement, and one that suggests the presence of a world-class SF voice that we ought to know about."

(Fri 22 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Guilfoile, Kevin : Cast of Shadows
(Knopf 1-4000-4308-5, $24.95, 321pp, hardcover, March 2005)

Near-future thriller set in a world in which cloning is legal, about a doctor who creates a clone from DNA evidence at his daughter's murder scene in order to one day try to understand the killer's motives. The author's first novel.
• The book's official website has numerous excerpts from reviews, and (on page two) a link to an excerpt.
• The publisher's site has this excerpt.
• Amazon has its own review by Jane Adams, and the PW review, which concludes "if his plot is a bit of a patchwork, the novel as a whole is rich and involving."

(Wed 20 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Hemry, John G. : Rule of Evidence
(Ace 0-441-01262-0, $6.99, 276pp, mass market paperback, March 2005, cover art Michael Herring)

Military SF legal thriller featuring lawyer-in-space Paul Sinclair, third in the series following A Just Determination and Burden of Proof (2004).
• Hemry's webpage has a description and an excerpt.

(Fri 29 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Hickman, Tracy & Laura : Mystic Quest
(Warner Aspect 0-446-53106-5, $24.95, 453pp, hardcover, April 2005, jacket illustration Matt Stawicki)

Fantasy novel, second in the "Bronze Canticles" series following Mystic Warrior (2004), involving parallel worlds of human, goblin, and faery.
• The series' website www.bronzecanticles.com has previews, sample chapters, etc.
• The publisher's site has this description and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review.
Green Man Review ran this review by Elizabeth Vail.

(Wed 20 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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+ Jensen, Jan Lars : Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature
(Carroll & Graf 0-7867-1562-6, $14.95, 273pp, trade paperback, 2005) First US edition (Canada: Raincoast Books, February 2004)

Nonfiction memoir about the author's experience "losing his mind" following the sale of his first novel Shiva 3000 in 1999 -- concerned that hostile reactions to the book in India, the novel's setting, would trigger lawsuits, nuclear strikes, and the end of the world.
• The author's website has this news log about the book.
• Claude Lalumière called it his "favourite book of 2004" in his Best SF and Fantasy Books of 2004 summary for Locus Online: "Jensen brings to this personal tale all of his considerable storytelling skills (including peppering the text with deliciously memorable phrases), entertaining his readers while he shares a story that exposes how dangerous it can be to blindly trust the medical establishment."

(Fri 22 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Oltion, Jerry : Anywhere but Here
(Tor 0-765-30619-0, $25.95, 382pp, hardcover, March 2005, jacket art Vincent Di Fate)

SF novel, sequel to The Getaway Special (2001), in which cheap interstellar travel enables lots of ordinary citizens to abandon Earth for the stars. This book follows a couple from Wyoming who "climb into their pickup truck and head for Alpha Centauri" according to the Publishers Weekly review reproduced on the Amazon page.
• Amazon has both the PW and Booklist reviews; both call the book "meandering"; PW calls it "meandering but satisfying".
• D. Douglas Fratz' SF Weekly review gave it an A-.

(Fri 29 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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+ Williams, Sean : The Resurrected Man
(Prometheus/Pyr 1-59102-311-4, $25, 529pp, hardcover, April 2005, jacket illustration and design John Picacio) First US edition (Australia: HarperCollins/Voyager, 1998)

SF novel in which teleportion technology is used by a serial killer to repeatedly murder the same duplicated person.
• The publisher's site has this description.
• The original Australian edition won that country's Ditmar Award for best novel and was a nominee for the Aurealis Award.
• Paul Di Filippo's SF Weekly review this week gives it an A.
• Jonathan Strahan reviewed the book in the January 1998 issue of Locus; this edition's cover carries his blurb: "compulsively readable".

(Thu 21 Apr 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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