Black Gate

Les Johnson is the co-author (with Travis S. Taylor) of Back to the Moon (2010), and (with Ben Bova) of Rescue Mode (2014). He also co-edited Going Interstellar (2012) with Jack McDevitt.

His first standalone novel is Mission to Methone, the tale of a vast and ancient galactic war, a derelict spaceship hiding in our solar system, and an artificial intelligence that has been concealing the existence of mankind. It appears humanity is not alone in the universe. Far across the galaxy, a war is raging between advanced alien races, and it’s about to be brought to our doorstep.

The year is 2065 and an accidental encounter in space leads to the discovery that we are not alone in the universe — and that our continued existence as a species may be in jeopardy.

Chris Holt, working in his office at the Space Resources Corporation, discovers that one of the asteroids he is surveying for mining is actually not an asteroid at all but a derelict spaceship. The word gets out and soon the world’s powers are competing to explore and claim for themselves the secrets that it holds.

What they don’t know is that across the galaxy, a war has been underway for millennia. A war between alien civilizations that have very different ideas about what should be done about emerging spacefaring civilizations like our own. The artificial intelligence resident in the derelict Holt discovered has been in our solar system since before the dawn of human civilization, watching, waiting and keeping quiet lest the interstellar war return and wipe out the sentient race that now resides there — humanity.

And that war might soon be again coming to our front door. The truth can only be discovered on Methone, a tiny, egg-shaped moon of the planet Saturn. Who will get there first? And will it be in time?

Mission to Methone will be published by Baen Books on February 6, 2018. It is 304 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback. The cover is by Bob Eggleton. Read the first ten chapters at the Baen website.

The Starlit Wood, the first book from Dominik Parisien and‎ Navah Wolfe, was one of the most acclaimed anthologies of 2016. It was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award, and won the Shirley Jackson Award. And Amal El-Mohtar’s “Seasons of Glass and Iron” swept the short fiction awards, winning the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards.

Their second anthology, scheduled to arrive in two weeks from Saga Press, is Robots vs. Fairies, and it includes another steller list of contributors, including Seanan McGuire, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Howard, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jeffrey Ford, Madeline Ashby, Lavie Tidhar, John Scalzi, Catherynne M. Valente, and many others. Publishers Weekly says:

Distinguished authors take sides in battles between robots and fairies by crafting serious (and seriously weird) reflections on whether magical or mechanical might would prove the stronger… Ken Liu creatively takes on big cities, rats, and unforeseen consequences in “Quality Time.”… Sarah Gailey’s “Bread and Milk and Salt” is a horrific rumination on the true natures of robots, fairies, and humans. Editors Parisien and Wolfe (The Starlit Wood) have cannily chosen a variety of stories that offer individual, distinctive insights into both living machines and magical creatures, along with glimpses of how humans might react to their face-off.

Reviews have already started to appear. Howling Libraries says Tim Pratt’s “Murmured Under the Moon” is a tale of “a human librarian who takes care of a fairy library, and is forced to go on a rescue mission when the fairy princess is taken hostage by a wicked man… fun, and unique, and magical, and fantastical, and sweet.” And Jim C. Hine’s Peter Pan-inspired “Second to the Left, and Straight On” is “twisted and haunting and beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking… It’s about a private investigator who is seeking out little girls that have been abducted by Tinker Bell.”

Read more at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, including the catalog copy and more details on the intricate cover, here.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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J.D. Horn is the bestselling author of the Witching Savannah series (The Line, The Source, etc.) His newest is the tale of a young witch’s quest to uncover her family’s terrifying history. It arrives next month from 47 North, Amazon’s publishing imprint, which has jumped into genre fiction in a big way but has yet to make a significant splash. It does tend to take chances with new and emerging authors, however, which I heartily approve.

The King of Bones and Ashes is the first volume of a new series, Witches of New Orleans. Publishers Weekly says “Sparkling magic and creepy villains bolster the narrative… The terrifying conclusion will have readers looking forward to the next installment.”

The King of Bones and Ashes will be published by 47North on January 23, 2018. It is 354 pages, priced at $24.95 in hardcover, $14.95 in trade paperback, and $4.99 for the digital edition. No sample chapters online that I can find, but I’ll keep looking.

Nora Roberts is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 novels. I want to repeat that for emphasis. Two. Hundred. Novels. That’s not even including the many she’s written under the pen name J. D. Robb, like the bestselling In Death series. Last year she placed #7 on Forbes list of Highest-Paid Authors (beating GRRM by 5 slots.) She has over 500 million books in print.

How can anything produced by a word factory like that be worth reading? Folks I trust tell me they really enjoy her novels and, let’s face it, many of the pulp writers I adore churned out books in similar volume. It sounds to me like she’s worth a try, and her upcoming post-apocalyptic fantasy Year One might be the place to start.

It began on New Year’s Eve.

The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed ― and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.

Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magick rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river ― or in the ones you know and love the most.

As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.

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