The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter

“She had no name. She had only her mission - she would return Home. And bathe in the light of a long-dead sun... Even if it meant the sacrifice of this pointless little moon to do it.

The Wheel of Ice: a ring of ice and steel turning around a moon of Saturn, home to a colony mining minerals for a resource-hungry future Earth. A bad place to grow up. The Wheel has been plagued by problems. Maybe it's just gremlins, just bad luck. But what's the truth of the children's stories of 'Blue Dolls' glimpsed aboard the gigantic facility? And why won't the children go down the warren-like mines? And then sixteen-year-old Phee Laws, surfing Saturn's rings, saves an enigmatic blue box from destruction.

Aboard the Wheel, The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find a critical situation - and three strangers who have just turned up out of nowhere look like prime candidates to be accused of sabotage ... The Doctor finds himself caught up in a mystery that goes right back to the creation of the solar system. But it's a mystery that could have dire repercussions for the people on the Wheel. It's a mystery that could kill them all.”

Discover more in Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter (BBC Books £16.99), now available.

The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams

The Dirty Streets of Heaven is Tad Williams new novel, the first in the Bobby Dollar series (Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99, out in September).

“Bobby Dollar is an angel – a real one. He knows a lot about sin, and not just in his professional capacity as an advocate for souls caught between Heaven and Hell. Bobby’s wrestling with a few deadly sins of his own: pride, anger, even lust. But his problems aren’t all his fault. Bobby can’t entirely trust his heavenly superiors, and he’s not too sure about any of his fellow earthbound angels either, especially the new kid that Heaven has dropped into their midst, a trainee angel who asks too many questions. And he sure as hell doesn’t trust the achingly gorgeous Countess of Cold Hands, a mysterious she-demon who seems to be the only one willing to tell him the truth.

When the souls of the recently departed start disappearing, catching both Heaven and Hell by surprise, things get bad very quickly for Bobby D. End-of-the-world bad. Beast of Revelations bad. Caught between the angry forces of Hell, the dangerous strategies of his own side, and a monstrous undead avenger that wants to rip his head off and suck out his soul, Bobby’s going to need all the friends he can get – in Heaven, on Earth, or anywhere else he can find them.”

The Dusk Watchman by Tom Lloyd

Tom Lloyd’s The Dusk Watchman is book five in The Twilight Reign series (Gollancz £14.99), out later this month.

“After his pyrrhic victory at Moorview, King Emin learns the truth about the child Ruhen, but he is powerless to act. Instead, he must mourn his dead friends while his enemy promises the beleaguered peoples of the Land a new age of peace. The past year has taken a grave toll: the remaining Menin troops seek revenge upon Emin, daemons freely walk the Land, and Ruhen's power is increasing daily.

And yet, a glimmer of hope remains. There is one final, desperate chance for victory: a weapon, so terrible only a dead man could wield it, and only a madman would try. But if they do not grasp this opportunity, King Emin and his allies will be obliterated as Ruhen's millennia-old plans are about to bear terrible fruit. If his power continues unchecked, Ruhen will achieve total dominion and not just over mankind, but over the Gods themselves.
One way or another, the future of the Land will be decided now written in the blood of men.”

Frightfully Cosy and Mild Stories for Nervous Types

Coming in September from Shadow Publishing (£7.99): Frightfully Cosy and Mild Stories for Nervous Types by Johnny Mains. 

The author says: "This collection was originally going to be 'The Difficult Second Collection' but then I discovered that the 'popular disc jockey' Chris Moyles called his latest 'bestseller' 'The Difficult Second Book' and that put paid to that. The title for this book comes in part from a reviewer who called my first collection 'awfully cosy and mild'. The sentence tickled me so much so (though I didn’t agree with the review!) that I thought I’d pinch it and make it near unrecognisable for this new collection."

Earth Girl by Janet Edwards

Earth Girl is the YA debut novel from Janet Edwards (Harper  Voyager, £7.99).

“2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can’t travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She’s a ‘throwback’, but she won’t give in.

Jarra invents a fake background for herself. She joins a class of norms that is on Earth to excavate the ruins of the old cities. When an ancient skyscraper collapses, burying another research team, Jarra’s role in their rescue puts her in the spotlight. No hiding at back of class now. To make life more complicated, she finds herself falling in love with one of her classmates – a norm from another planet. Somehow, she has to keep the deception going.

A freak solar storm strikes the atmosphere, and the class is ordered to portal off-world for safety – fatal for Jarra. The storm is so bad that the crews of the orbiting solar arrays have to escape to planet below: the first landing from space in 600 years. And one is on collision course with their shelter.”

The Black Mausoleum by Stephen Deas

The Black Mausoleum by Stephen Deas is available soon from Gollancz (£12.99).

“Two years have passed since the events of the Order of the Scales. Across the realms, dragons are still hatching…

Skorl is an Ember, a soldier trained from birth to fight dragons. He is a living weapon, one-shot only, saturated with enough dragon-poison to bring down a monster all on his own. Misanthrope, violent and a drunk, to fulfil his purpose and slay a dragon, means to be eaten. Now Skorl has a choice: he can hang for his crimes, or he can go with the last of the Adamantine Men, fighting against an enemy he was born to face.

Rat is an Outsider. He's on the run and he's stumbled onto something that's going to make him rich beyond all his dreams. It's just a shame that the end of the world has started without him.

Kataros is an alchemist, one of the order responsible for keeping the dragons in check. One of the order that has just failed, and disastrously so.

Two men, one woman. One chance to save the world from a storm of dragons…”

Iron Winter by Stephen Baxter

“Many generations ago the Wall was first built to hold back the sea. Northland, a country of fertile plains and ancient forests, has become a thriving civilisation. The whole of Europe, spanned by the Northlanders’ steam caravan lines, has been changed in ways that could never have been predicted. But nothing lasts forever. The weather is changing, growing colder, and in the wake of the long winters come famine, destruction and terror […] There is one man who believes he can calculate why the world is cooling, and perhaps even salvage some of the great civilisation. But as he embarks on his grand quest, only one thing is certain: the ice is coming.”

This is the final volume in the millennia-spanning Northland trilogy. Iron Winter by Stephen Baxter is out this month from Gollancz (£14.99).

Total Recall by Philip K Dick

To coincide with the new movie, Gollancz is releasing a new edition of Philip K Dick’s Total Recall (£8.99).

When the book arrived I had was momentarily confused – Total Recall isn’t a 390-page novel. I was relieved to learn that my memory could recall it for me (wholesale?). This book is, in fact, an collection of some 25 short stories including “We Can Remember it for You, Wholesale” – the basis for the movie Total Recall.

Other stories include “Your Appointment will be Yesterday”, “A Game of Unchance”, “Return Match” and “The Little Black Box”. Also included are an introduction by Thomas M Disch and a series of notes by Dick on many of the stories.

Full marks to Gollancz for publishing this collection. It is important to keep such seminal works in print. But null points for the ridiculously small font. 

Trinity Rising by Elspeth Cooper

Trinity Rising by Elspeth Cooper is the follow-up to 2011’s Songs of the Earth. Trinity Rising is already available from Gollancz (£14.99).

“The future holds nothing but blood and death  . . . and Teia fears there is nothing she can do about it. Her clan is riding to war, but her secret, untrained gift of foretelling has shown her they are riding to their doom. If she cannot turn them from their course, her only hope of saving them will be to betray them to their sworn enemies.

Gair is mourning his past . . . but there is no time to dwell on his grief or hunger for revenge. Pursuing an artefact from the Founding Wars, he travels deep into the hostile southern deserts. As religious tensions erupt into bloody violence around him, he must make an impossible choice: save innocent lives or sacrifice them in the hope that thousands more can be saved later.

And all the while, his grip on his powers is failing.”

Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson

“‘I will tell you a story, but it comes with a warning; when you hear it, you will become someone else.’

He calls himself Alif - few people know his real name - a young man born in a Middle Eastern city that straddles the ancient and modern worlds. When Alif meets the aristocratic Intisar, he believes he has found love. But their relationship has no future - Intisar is promised to another man and her family's honour must be satisfied. As a remembrance, Intisar sends the heartbroken Alif a mysterious book. Entitled The Thousand and One Days, Alif discovers that this parting gift is a door to another world - a world from a very different time, when old magic was in the ascendant and the djinn walked amongst us.

With the book in his hands, Alif finds himself drawing attention - far too much attention - from both men and djinn. Thus begins an adventure that takes him through the crumbling streets of a once-beautiful city, to uncover the long-forgotten mysteries of the Unseen. Alif is about to become a fugitive in both the corporeal and incorporeal worlds. And he is about to unleash a destructive power that will change everything and everyone - starting with Alif himself.”

Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson promises to be a treat. It’s published this month by Corvus (12.99). Wilson is also the writer of the acclaimed graphic novel Cairo.