Books Received

Season of the Witch (trade paperback)
Author: Natasha Mostert

Book Description: Gabriel Blackstone is an unscrupulous hacker and unrepentant "remote viewer" who can’t resist his ex-lover’s request to look into her stepson’s disappearance. His investigation leads him to a rambling Victorian home that bewitches him-as do its beautiful, enigmatic owners, the Monk sisters. The pair are solar witches, obsessed with alchemy and the Art of Memory, a practice invented by the ancient Greeks. | With his uneasy suspicion that one of the sisters is a killer, Gabriel sets out to determine which. But the more entangled in the case he becomes, the more deeply he is drawn into the sisters’ entrancing world-losing hold of reality even as he falls into mortal danger…

Null-A Continuum (ARC)
Author: John C. Wright

Book Description: Grandmaster A. E. van Vogt was one of the giants of the Golden Age of classic SF, the 1940s. Of his masterpieces, The World of Null-A is perhaps most influential. It was the first major trade SF hardcover ever, in 1949, and has been in print ever since. The careers of Philip K. Dick, Keith Laumer, Alfred Bester, Charles Harness, and Philip Jose Farmer were created or influenced by The World of Null-A. It is required reading for anyone who wishes to know the canon of SF classics.And so John C. Wright was inspired to write a sequel to the two novels of Null-A (the second was The Players of Null-A). To do this, he trained himself to write in the pulp style and manner of van Vogt. So return again to the Null-A future, in which the man with two brains, Gilbert Gosseyn, now discovers his third brain and travels through heretofore unimaginable distances in space and in time to fend off the death of the Universe and the extermination of human life as humanity reaches the peak of evolution millions of years in the future.

Darkside (hardcover)
Author: Tom Becker

Book Description: Jonathan Starling’s home has been attacked, his dad is in an asylum, he’s running for his life, and there’s nowhere to hide. Jonathan has stumbled upon London’s greatest secret: Darkside. Incredibly dangerous and unimaginably exciting, Darkside is the creepiest place Jonathan has ever seen. It’s a world of nightmares and secrets, where fear and evil rule, and Jonathan has to find a way out…. | Since Tom Becker learned to hold a pen, he wanted to become a writer. In fact, when he was five years old, he wrote in a notebook that it was his dream was to be an author. Tom studied History at Oxford University and was inspired by the otherworldly atmosphere of this academic institution. He used to spend long days studying and reading in the University library, but now he spends long days writing.

Runemarks (hardcover)
Author: Joanne Harris

Book Description: Seven o’clock on a Monday morning, five hundred years after the end of the world, and goblins had been at the cellar again. . . . Not that anyone would admit it was goblins. In Maddy Smith’s world, order rules. Chaos, old gods, fairies, goblins, magic, glamours–all of these were supposedly vanquished centuries ago. But Maddy knows that a small bit of magic has survived. The “ruinmark” she was born with on her palm proves it–and makes the other villagers fearful that she is a witch (though helpful in dealing with the goblins-in-the-cellar problem). But the mysterious traveler One-Eye sees Maddy’s mark not as a defect, but as a destiny. And Maddy will need every scrap of forbidden magic One-Eye can teach her if she is to survive that destiny.

Empress (ARC)
Author: Karen Miller

Book Description: In a family torn apart by poverty and violence, Hekat is no more than an unwanted mouth to feed, worth only a few coins from a passing slave trader. But Hekat was not born to be a slave. For her, a different path has been chosen. It is a path that will take her from stinking back alleys to the house of her God, from blood-drenched battlefields to the glittering palaces of Mijak.This is the story of Hekat, precious and beautiful.

The Journal of Curious Letters (ARC)
Author: James Dashner

Book Description: What if every time you made a choice that had a significant consequence, a new, alternate reality was created–the life that would’ve been had you made the other choice? What if those new realities were in danger? What if it fell to you to save all the realities? Atticus Higginbottom, a.k.a. Tick, is an average thirteen-year-old boy until the day a strange letter arrives in his mailbox. Postmarked from Alaska and cryptically signed with the initials "M.G.," the letter informs Tick that dangerous–perhaps even deadly–events have been set in motion that could result in the destruction of reality itself. M.G. promises to send Tick twelve riddles that will reveal on a certain day, at a certain time, at a certain place, something extraordinary will happen. Will Tick have the courage to follow the twelve clues M.G. sends to him? Will he be able to solve the riddles in time? Will Tick discover the life he was meant to live? The first volume of an outstanding new children’s fantasy series, The Journal of Curious Letters is filled with adventure, humor, riddles, and, oh, yes–danger… As M.G. warns Tick, Very frightening things are coming your way. Will you join Tick and his friends on an amazing journey through the Realities? What will your choice be?

Blood Ties (ARC)
Author: Pamela Freeman

Book Description: A thousand years ago, the Eleven Domains were invaded and the original inhabitants forced on the road as Travelers, belonging nowhere, welcomed by no-one. Now the Domains are governed with an iron fist by the Warlords, but there are wilder elements to the landscape which cannot be controlled and which may prove their undoing. Some are spirits of place, of water and air and fire and earth. Some are greater than these. And some are human.Bramble: a village girl, whom no-one living can tame … forced to flee from her home for a crime she did not commit. Ash: apprentice to a safeguarder, forced to kill for an employer he cannot escape. Saker: an enchanter, who will not rest until the land is returned to his people. As their three stories unfold, along with the stories of those whose lives they touch, it becomes clear that they are bound together in ways that not even a stonecaster could foresee – bound by their past, their future, and their blood.