Crash by Guy Haley

Crash by Guy Haley (Solaris £7.99) is now available:

“The Market rules all, an Al that plots the rise and fall of fortunes without human intervention. To function, the Market must expand. The earth is finite, and cannot hold it, and so a bold venture to the stars is embarked upon, offering a rare chance for freedom to a select few people. But when the colony fleet is sabotaged, a small group finds itself marooned upon the tidally-locked world of Nychthemeron, a world where one hemisphere is bathed in perpetual daylight, the other hidden by eternal night. Isolated and beset, the stricken colony members must fight for survival on the hostile planet, while secrets about both the cause of their shipwreck and the nature of Nychthemeron itself threaten to tear their fragile society apart...”

Affliction by Laurell K Hamilton

Affliction is the latest Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel from Laurell K Hamilton (Headline £18.99), out on 4 July:

“It's a typical day at work for Anita Blake, if your day job is raising the dead and being a US Marshal for the preternatural branch. One phone call changed everything. It was from the mother of one of her live-in boyfriends. Micah Callahan's father was in the hospital and he was dying. Micah had been estranged from his family for years, but now, his mother wants Anita to bring the prodigal son home for a last good-bye.”

Time Travel SF edited by Mike Ashley

The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF is edited by Mike Ashley, and is out from Robinson on 4 July (£7.99):

“These stories show what happen once you start to meddle with time and the paradoxes that might arise. It also raises questions about whether we understand time, and how we perceive it. Once we move outside the present day, can we ever return or do we move into an alternate world? What happens if our meddling with Nature leads to time flowing backwards, or slowing down or stopping all together? Or if we get trapped in a constant loop from which we can never escape. Is the past and future immutable or will we ever be able to escape the inevitable? These are just some of the questions that are raised in these challenging, exciting and sometimes amusing stories...”

Contributors include: 

• Kage Baker
• Gregory Benford
• Simon Clark
• Fritz Leiber
• Christopher Priest
• Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Robert Silverberg
• Michael Swanwick
• Steve Utley
• John Varley
• Ian Watson
• Liz Williams
• ...and many others

 Twenty-five stories in all – an excellent anthology, for quality and value.

Satan's Reach by Eric Brown

Eric Brown’s Satan’s Reach (Abaddon Books £7.99) is now available:

“Telepath Den Harper did the dirty work for the authoritarian Expansion, reading the minds of criminals, spies and undesirables, for years. Unable to take the strain, he stole a starship and headed into the void, a sector of lawless space known as Satan’s Reach. For five years he worked as a trader among the stars – then discovered that the Expansion had set a bounty hunter on his trail.

But what does the Expansion want with a lowly telepath like Harper? Is there something in the rumours that human space is being invaded by aliens from another realm? Harper finds out the answer to both these questions when he rescues a young woman from certain death – and comes face to face with the terrible aliens known as the Weird.”

London Falling by Paul Cornell

London Falling by Paul Cornell is released on 18 July from Tor at £7.99:

“The dark is rising . . . Detective Inspector James Quill is about to complete the drugs bust of his career. Then his prize suspect Rob Toshack is murdered in custody. Furious, Quill pursues the investigation, co-opting intelligence analyst Lisa Ross and undercover cops Costain and Sefton. But nothing about Toshack’s murder is normal.

Toshack had struck a bargain with a vindictive entity, whose occult powers kept Toshack one step ahead of the law – until his luck ran out. Now, the team must find a 'suspect' who can bend space and time and alter memory itself. And they will kill again.”

The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce

The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce is now available from Gollancz (£12.99 – a great price for a hardback novel):

“It is the summer of 1976, the hottest since records began and a young man leaves behind his student days and learns how to grow up. A first job in a holiday camp beckons. But with political and racial tensions simmering under the cloudless summer skies there is not much fun to be had. And soon there is a terrible price to be paid for his new-found freedom and independence. A price that will come back to haunt him, even in the bright sunlight of summer.”

Worse Things Than Spiders by Samantha Lee

Samantha Lee's collection Worse Things Than Spiders and Other Stories is her first collection of horror tales and will be launched at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton later this year from Shadow Publishing. The fabulous cover art is by Dave Carson.

Two from Immanion Press

Fossil Circus by John Kaiine is a horror novel now available from Immanion Press (£11.99):

“London 1992. Four ex-psychiatric patients are bequeathed a Victorian asylum by their psychoanalyst. Jerusalem Lamb, madman, lurks in the Church of Rust, a magpie-faced God chooses his victims, the Voices cheer him on. Devastation and secrets unfurl. And the circus is coming to town...”

Runners by Sharon Sant is a young adult novel, now out (Immanion Press £11.99):

“Elijah is nothing special. He’s just a skinny kid doing his best to stay one step ahead of starvation and the people who would have him locked away in a labour camp - just another Runner. But what he stumbles upon in a forest in Hampshire shows him that the harsh world he knows will become an even more sinister place, unless he can stop it.”

Checkout the Immanion website for further details.

Blood & Feathers: Rebellion by Lou Morgan

Blood & Feathers: Rebellion by Lou Morgan is out from Solaris (£7.99) on 4 July:

“Following her stunning debut with Blood and Feathers, Lou Morgan has returned to her genre-busting take on angels and demons. Blood and Feathers: Rebellion picks up the story after the events of the first book, with the final war between good and evil being waged, and Alice and Mallory trapped in the middle.

Driven out of hell and with nothing to lose, the Fallen wage open warfare against the angels on the streets. And they’re winning. As the balance tips towards the darkness, Alice – barely recovered from her own ordeal in hell and struggling to start over – once again finds herself in the eye of the storm. But with the chaos spreading and the Archangel Michael determined to destroy Lucifer whatever the cost, is the price simply too high? And what sacrifices will Alice and the angels have to make in order to pay it?”

I rather like the cover artwork – very dramatic.

Joyland by Stephen King: book review

Joyland by Stephen King. Titan/ Hard Case Crime £7.99

Reviewed by Peter Coleborn

I haven’t read a Stephen King novel in a long time, just short stories and novellas, which I rather enjoy. And to be honest, I’m often deterred by the size of some of his novels – The Dome, for instance. Thus getting my hands on Joyland, at a mere 280 or so pages, should’ve been a delight. Well, was it? In a word: yes!

However, the first 60-80 pages are mostly scene setting, and the story proper doesn’t start until then. That’s when Devin’s character – the narrator – blossoms. That’s when the relationships with his friends and co-workers at Joyland come into their own. That’s when the story of the murdered Linda Gray (killed in the 1960s) really begins to impinge on Devin’s life.

Devin Jones takes a job at Joyland in the summer of 1973. Joyland is a fairground, with rides and stalls and a ghost train, and a fortune-teller who does, in fact, have some psychic abilities. And in the House of Horrors: that’s where the ghost of Linda Gray is sometimes seen. He also encounters another psychic, this time a crippled 12-year old boy called Mike, and his mother Annie.

Devin becomes fixated on the murder of Linda Gray and soon discovers that there are other murdered girls, a connection that the police had missed. Needless to say, the story of Linda Gray becomes entwined with Devin losing his girlfriend and his growing relationship with Mike and, especially, Annie. And it all builds up the expected climax as a tropical storm heads towards Joyland.

Because those early pages were written in such an easy-going, engaging style it soon didn’t matter that they were mainly exposition for the following narrative. In truth they become essential background reading and once your engagement in the story kicks in you, the reader, will be hooked, and drawn into the delights – and horrors – of Joyland.

Although published as part of Titan’s crime line, Joyland could easily be read as a supernatural tale. Stephen King is a past-master at story telling. He’s a bard who is able to build dark and frightening worlds, spinning yarns that net in the audience. A thoroughly satisfying read, however you interpret it.