It’s that time of year for award nominations, and so, for your consideration, here is a list of all I edited in 2017. Some books are steampunk, some are not, but all are simply fabulous!
I appreciate any support for my authors; several of them have made the 2017 Locus Recommended Reading List (huzzah!) This is also the first year that I qualify for Best Editor, Long Form, and hey, if you liked several of my titles, little hat tip in this direction goes a long way. 🙂
After the jump, read more about these books, (listed in publication order) and, perhaps, check these out at the bookseller of your choice.
Crossroads of Canopy is the highly-anticipated fantasy debut from Aurealis and Ditmar Award-winning author Thoraiya Dyer, set in a giant mythical rainforest controlled by living gods. Now in trade paperback.
“I am impressed. A unique, gorgeous, and dangerous world, a stubborn female hero, and a writer to watch!” – Tamora Pierce
Unar dreams of greatness.
But achieving greatness is more difficult than she thinks.
Her hopes rest on becoming the next bodyguard to Audblayin, the rain forest’s divine ruler of growth and fertility. But to earn that title, Unar must embark on a dangerous quest into the shadowy depths beneath the treetops. Down below, she must confront enemy tribesmen, battle notoriously giant monsters, and master frightening new magic.
Most importantly, Unar must forget all the truths she had sworn her life to uphold… and be willing to risk destroying the very home she loves to seize her destiny.
“An engaging and beautifully wrought coming-of-age story.” —Herald Sun (Australia)
A double-agent sacrifices all his ideals in order to save his smuggler lover before a government coup takes over their decadent city in Lara Elena Donnelly’s glam spy thriller debut Amberlough. Also in trade paperback!
“Exploring the roots of hatred, nationalism, and fascism, while at the same time celebrating the diversity, love, romance, fashion, and joy the world is capable of producing.” —Bookriot
In Amberlough, amidst rising political tensions, three lives become intertwined with the fate of the city itself.
The Smuggler: By day, Aristide Makricosta is the emcee for Amberlough City’s top nightclub. By night, he moves drugs and refugees under the noses of crooked cops.
The Spy: Covert agent Cyril DePaul thinks he’s good at keeping secrets, but after a disastrous mission abroad, he makes a dangerous choice to protect himself…and hopefully Aristide too.
The Dancer: Streetwise Cordelia Lehane, burlesque performer at the Bumble Bee Cabaret and Aristide’s runner, could be the key to Cyril’s plans—if she can be trusted.
As the twinkling marquees lights yield to the rising flames of a fascist revolution, these three will struggle to survive using whatever means — and people — necessary. Including each other.
“James Bond by way of Oscar Wilde.” —Holly Black
“Sparkling with slang, full of riotous characters, and dripping with intrigue, Amberlough is a dazzling romp through a tumultuous, ravishing world.” —Robert Jackson Bennett, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edgar Award
In Cloud County, where music and Tufa, the otherworldly fae community, intermix, a monster roams the forest, while another kind of evil lurks in the hearts of men in Alex Bledsoe’s Gather Her Round
“Beautifully written, surprisingly moving, and unexpected in the best of ways.” —Seanan McGuire, New York Timesbestselling author
Young Tufa woman Kera Rogers disappears while hiking in the woods by Needsville. Soon, her half-eaten remains are found, and hunters discover the culprits: a horde of wild hogs led by a massive boar with seemingly supernatural strength.
Kera’s boyfriend Duncan Gowen mourns her death, until he finds evidence she cheated on him with his best friend Adam Procure. When Adam’s body is the next one found, who is to blame: Duncan or the monstrous swine?
As winter descends and determined hunters pursue beasts across the Appalachians, other Tufa seek the truth behind Adam and Kera’s deaths. What answers will unfold come spring?
Patterns emerge in the most unexpected places as a scientist studies the flora and fauna of a new world in Bobby Sun’s “The Awakening of Insects.”
Jingru smelled the storm long before it came.
The dusty, moist scent wafted in on the morning breeze as she tended the flowers on her porch. It tickled her nose. Her assistant-intelligence, Aimee, chirped a precipitation warning through her jawpiece.
“Attention! A significant pressure system has been detected by Central Station. There is a 64 percent chance of a sub-category storm in Reserve-133 in the next 12 hours. Estimated wind speed is 57 kilometres per hour. Please stow all lightning- and wind-sensitive equipment in an appropriate location, Dr Lee.”
“Yes, Aimee. Thank you. I’ll get the collectors.”
She put the watering can away; there would be no need for watering today. With a deliberate ease, she glided across the faux-wood boards of her front porch and slipped into her shed. The shed, somewhere between smithy and laboratory, was neat and almost well-mannered; her unstudied specimens, packed in cryojars for preservation, were neatly shelved and categorised. A long workbench was arrayed with glassware and cutters, while various items of powered lab equipment and assistant drones lay dormant along the walls. A door at the back led to a large storage room, where the specimens she’d finished studying went. Her field armour was in the corner, plugged into its charging station: a silvered, helmeted suit equipped with an exoskeleton for speed and laced with shear-thickening ferrofluid to protect from unexpected impact. Manoeuvring cables, tightly wound and connected to a body harness, rested on either side of her hips, and a pair of flechette guns were woven into its wrists. She unfastened her clothes from her body, stepped into her armour, and checked its equipment one more time before stepping out. She had work to do.
Robyn Bennis’s The Guns Above is an adventurous military fantasy debut about a nation’s first female airship captain.
They say it’s not the fall that kills you.
For Josette Dupre, the Corps’ first female airship captain, it might just be a bullet in the back.
On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend with a crew who doubts her expertise, a new airship that is an untested deathtrap, and the foppish aristocrat Lord Bernat, a gambler and shameless flirt with the military know-how of a thimble. Bernat’s own secret assignment is to catalog her every moment of weakness and indecision.
So when the enemy makes an unprecedented move that could turn the tide of the war, can Josette deal with Bernat, rally her crew, and survive long enough to prove herself?
“Full of sass and terrific characters. Great storytelling. Loved it.” —Patricia Briggs
New York Times bestselling author A. J. Hartley returns to his intriguing, 19th-century South African-inspired fantasy world in Firebrand, another adrenaline-pounding adventure.
Once a steeplejack, Anglet Sutonga now assists Josiah Willinghouse behind the scenes of Parliament. When government plans for a secret weapon are stolen, their investigation leads to the doorstep of Bar-Selehm’s super-exclusive social club. Ang has a chance to catch the thief, but only if she can pass for a foreign princess. Her best chance to learn the ways of royalty lies in the regal and brash women of the Willinghouse family — even if their lessons also involve tamed hyenas alongside dinner etiquette.
Yet Ang has other things on her mind. Refugees from the north are trickling into the city, but an ambitious politician is proposing extreme measures to get rid of them. She soon discovers that one theft could spark a conflagration of conspiracy which threatens the city’s most vulnerable people. Unless she can stop it.
“Richly-drawn with a diverse cast of characters and an unstoppable plot!” – Carrie Ryan, New York Times bestselling author, on Steeplejack
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy pits utopian anarchists against rogue demon deer in this dropkick-in-the-mouth punk fantasy that Alan Moore calls “scary and energetic.”
Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa, and witnesses a protector spirit — in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer — begin to turn on its summoners. She and her new friends have to act fast if they’re going to save the town — or get out alive.
“Intelligent and fiercely imagined.” —Alan Moore
“A dark story of the human need for power.” —Eileen Gunn
“Daring anti-fantasy.”— Nick Mamatas
“A unique bite of punk culture.” — Delilah S. Dawson
“Important, thought-provoking…thrilling ride.” —Lewis Shiner
“Always vivid.”—Tobias Buckell
“As relatable as it is harrowing.” —Leanna Renee Hieber
“Utterly engrossing…it refuses to let you go.” —Mur Lafferty
Discover your inner child once again in this debut fantasy adventure for fans of Madeleine L’Engle, Diana Wynne Jones, and E. L. Konigsburg with Kari Maaren’s Weave a Circle Round.
When the unexpected moves in next door, anything can happen in Weave a Circle Round, Kari Maaren’s debut in this YA-friendly fantasy adventure.
Freddy doesn’t want people to think she’s weird. Her family makes that difficult, though: her deaf stepbrother Roland’s a major geek, and her genius little sister Mel’s training to be the next Sherlock Holmes. All Freddy wants is to survive high school.
Then two extremely odd neighbors move in next door.
Cuerva Lachance and Josiah definitely aren’t normal. Neither is their house, which defies the laws of physics. Neither is Freddy’s situation, when she suddenly finds herself stuck thousands of years in the past with her very, very weird neighbors. And that’s only the beginning.
“I adored this brilliant book from start to finish. It left me reeling with delight and I can’t wait for the rest of the world to get as lost in its pages as I was.” —Charles de Lint
“I’d have loved this book when I was twelve, and I love it now.” —Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy-Award winning author Jo Walton
I’m also the in-house editor for George R. R Martin’s Wild Card series, and we published these titles in 2017:
Novels
Wild Cards VI: Ace in the Hole
Continuing the best-sage alternate universe series edited by George R.R. Martin, the sixth volume in the Wild Cards saga is set in Atlanta of 1988. Terror stalks the halls of the Omni convention center. For a fanatical religious leader has vowed to crush the rights of all Wild Cards, and a hidden Ace wields a terrifying power to determine the outcome of the convention. Against this backdrop of passion and intrigue, a handful of Aces and Jokers struggle for control of a nation.
Wild Cards VII: Dead Man’s Hand
Chrysalis, the glass-skinned queen of the Joker underworld, has been found brutally murdered in her popular restaurant, the Crystal Palace. Now two men are out to find her killer – Jay Ackroyd, the Ace private detective who discovered her ruined body, and the vigilante archer known as The Yeoman, who has been framed for the crime. Their quest leads them on a nightmare journey of madness, violence, passion and intrigue that will forever alter the fate of those who contracted the Wild Card virus. Collaboratively written by George R. R. Martin and John J. Miller, this is both a gripping mystery and a chilling story of suspense.
Now on its final voyage, the historical steamboat Natchez is known for her super-powered guest entertainers. But after the suspicious death of a crewmember, retired NY police detective Leo Storgman decides to make this incident his personal case. His findings only lead to a growing number of questions. Is there some truth behind the ghostly sightings of the steamboat’s first captain Wilbur Leathers? What secret does the current captain seem to be hiding? And could the Natchez be ferrying mysterious – and possibly dangerous – cargo onboard?
Edited by author George R. R. Martin, Mississippi Roll is an adventurous journey along Ol’ Man River, featuring beloved characters from the Wild Cards universe. Available December 5th from Tor Books, Mississippi Rollfeatures the writing talents of Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Carrie Vaughn (Martians Abroad), Hugo-Award winning author David D. Levine (Arabella of Mars), and Hugo and Nebula Award finalist Cherie Priest (Boneshaker).
Short Fiction
One act of terrorism changes the life of Michael “Drummer Boy” Vogali forever in Stephen Leigh’s “The Atonement Tango.” Now without his band, Joker Plague, Michael must figure out a way to re-build his life–and seek revenge.
Once an assassin and spy, superpowered ace Noel Matthews confronts unexpected enemies after discovering a dead body on the job.
Beyond Victoriana 