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Dozois, Gardner, ed. :
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-fourth Annual Collection
(St. Martin's Griffin 978-0-312-36334-5, $35, 41+662pp, hardcover, July 2007, jacket illustration Stephan Martiniere)
Anthology of 28 stories first published in 2006, plus a 29-page "Summation: 2006", and 10 pages of 'honorable mentions'. Contents include Hugo nominated stories "Julian: A Christmas Story" by Robert Charles Wilson, "The Djinn's Wife" by Ian McDonald, "The House Beyond the Sky" by Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Paolo Bacigalupi's "Yellow Card Man"; plus works by Michael Swanwick, Alastair Reynolds, Walter Jon Williams, Gregory Benford, Greg Egan, Ken MacLeod, Stephen Baxter, and many others.
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The book is also available in trade paperback.
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Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, from its May 28th issue: "Like a giant sequoia towering over a copse of maple trees, Hugo-winner Dozois's annual shelf-bending collection of the year's best SF continues to overshadow all other anthologies. ... This yearly anthology is required reading for every serious SF fan."
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Gary K. Wolfe reviews the book, and the stories in it, in the upcoming August issue of Locus Magazine.
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Helfers, John, & Martin H. Greenberg, eds. :
Man vs. Machine
(DAW 978-0756404369, $7.99, 308pp, mass market paperback, July 2007)
Anthology of 15 original stories about the interaction of humanity and technology.
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Authors include Jane Lindskold & Fred Saberhagen, Bill Fawcett, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Stephen Leigh, Jean Rabe, and S. Andrew Swann.
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The publisher's page has a brief description.
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Landon, Kristin :
The Hidden Worlds
(Ace 978-0441015115, $7.99, 356pp, mass market paperback, July 2007, cover art Craig White)
SF novel, the author's first novel, about a 19-year-old who trains to be a pilot, in a far future when humanity has spread among various planet to escape the Cold Minds, machine intelligences that destroyed Earth.
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The author's site has a description and quotes from reviews, plus background on the author.
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Cynthia Ward reviewed the book for Sci Fi Weekly, giving it a B: "In this promising debut novel, scientist/technical writer/medical editor Kristin Landon demonstrates a number of strengths. Chief among them is a gift for the details that bring her protagonist and protagonist's world to life...."
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Le Guin, Ursula K. :
Powers
(Harcourt 978-0152057701, $17, 502pp, hardcover, September 2007, jacket illustration Larry Rostant)
Young adult fantasy novel, third book in the "Annals of the Western Shore" following Gifts (2004) and Voices (2006). This book concerns Gav, a young slave who can remember a page of a book after one glance, and sometimes foresees the future.
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Harcourt has this page for the book, with a synopsis and Chapter One excerpt.
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Le Guin's official site has this page for the series, with quotes from reviews and links to excerpts.
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Despite the announced September 2007 publication date, the book is in stores and is available from Amazon. (However no reviews seem to have been published yet.)
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Perry, Steve, & Dal Perry :
Chris Bunch's The Gangster Conspiracy
(Roc 978-0451461629, $7.99, 349pp, mass market paperback, July 2007)
SF novel in the "Star Risk, Ltd." series by Chris Bunch, who died in 2005, about an interstellar security firm that will do anything for a price. This time they're hired by a politician to clear his assassinated father's name.
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The publisher's site has this description.
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Putney, Mary Jo :
A Distant Magic
(Ballantine Del Rey 978-0-345-47691-3, $24.95, 333pp, hardcover, July 2007, jacket illustration Gene Mollica)
Historical romantic fantasy novel, follow-up to A Kiss of Fate (2004) and Stolen Magic (2005), about magic-wielding Guardians in 18th-century England. This volume concerns a pirate captain fighting slavery, and a freed slave who time travels from future London.
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The author's site has a description and a link to a PDF excerpt.
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "The mix of magic, time travel, history, adventure, romance and social consciousness will delight series fans, but may strike some readers as an incongruous blend."
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Rowling, J. K. :
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
(Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books 978-0-545-01022-1, $34.99, 759pp, hardcover, July 2007, jacket art Mary GrandPré)
Young adult fantasy novel, seventh and final volume in the series about the boy wizard's battle with evil, whose publication has been the focus of much media attention and reader anticipation, with predictions of it being the fastest-selling book in history.
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Interior illustrations are again by Mary GrandPré.
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http://www.harrypotter.com leads to a http://www.harrypotterorderofthephoenix.com/ for the current film of volume 5. Wikipedia already has this page with an extensive plot summary.
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Amazon's page has summaries of the previous books, but no excerpts yet from formal reviews. As of mid-day Saturday, nearly 100 reader reviews have been posted, many 5-star reviews but a few 1-star reviews from readers disgruntled that their books (ordered from Amazon) haven't yet arrived.
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Reviews available online include Michiko Kakutani's in the New York Times -- "J. K. Rowling has created a world as fully detailed as L. Frank Baum's Oz or J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, a world so minutely imagined in terms of its history and rituals and rules that it qualifies as an alternate universe, which may be one reason the 'Potter' books have spawned such a passionate following and such fervent exegesis." -- and Laura Miller's review in Salon (which has spoiler warnings).
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Sturgeon, Theodore :
The Nail and the Oracle: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume XI
(North Atlantic Books 978-1-55643-661-1, $35, 32+256pp, hardcover, July 2007)
Collection of 12 stories, first written and/or published from 1957 to 1970; eleventh in the ongoing series of books collecting all the short fiction by Theodore Sturgeon, with presumably one more volume to follow. This volume includes the title story, "The Nail and the Oracle", as well as "When You Care, When You Love", "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" (first published in Dangerous Visions), "Runesmith" (in collaboration with Harlan Ellison), and "Brownshoes" (which was retitled "The Man Who Learned Loving" and was nominated for a Nebula [though it did not win, as the editorial notes claim on page 256]), as well as two detective stories and a Western, "Ride In, Ride Out".
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This volume has a foreword by Harlan Ellison, and background story notes by Paul Williams.
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The publisher's site has this description.
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Turtledove, Harry :
Settling Accounts: In at the Death
(Ballantine Del Rey 978-0-345-49247-0, $26.95, 609pp, hardcover, July 2007, jacket illustration Big Dot Design)
Alternate-history novel, fourth in the "Settling Accounts" series following Return Engagement (2004), Drive to the East (2005), and The Grapple (2006, just out in paperback). In this book World War II comes to an end as the US defeats the Confederacy.
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The volume is the 11th in the longer series covering 60 years that began with How Few Remain and included three novels in the "Great War" and three in the "American Empire" series. Steven H Silver helpfully lists all the books, with links to reviews, on this page.
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Del Rey's site has this description (but no excerpt).
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Steven H Silver has this review of the book: "an excellent coda to this massive series of eleven novels".
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Alternate history master Turtledove brings his 10-book saga of a Confederate Civil War victory to a satisfying if predictable conclusion...."
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Wills, Larriane :
Looking Glass Portal
(Swimming Kangaroo Books 1-934041-18-1, $18.99, 372pp, trade paperback, March 2007, cover art Berin D. Uriegas)
SF novel about a cowboy abducted by aliens.
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The publisher's site has this order page for the book, with a brief description: "All heck breaks loose when a cowboy and his horse are brought aboard an alien spaceship!..."
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The author has website www.larriane.com; she writes romance and historical fiction under the name Larion Wills. Her science fiction page has several short excerpts from this book.
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Wright, Peter, ed. :
Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe On Writing/Writers on Wolfe
(Liverpool University Press 978-184631-058-4, $27.5, 14+256pp, trade paperback, July 2007, cover illustration Bruce Pennington)
Collection of interviews with Gene Wolfe and nonfiction pieces by Gene Wolfe.
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Interviewers include Malcolm Edwards, Robert Frazier, Larry McCaffrey, Lawrence Person, Nick Gevers, Joan Gordon, Colin Greenland, Nancy Kress.
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Pieces by Wolfe include "Wolfe's Rules: What You Must Do to Be a Writer", "What do They Mean, SF?", "The Handbook of Permissive English", and "A Fantasist Reads the Bible and Its Critics".
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The publisher's site has this description. In the US the book is distributed by University of Chicago Press. Both publishers offer higher-priced hardcover editions.
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