Scifi & Fantasy

From one of the most powerful writers in modern fiction and World Fantasy Award winner comes a dystopian vision of a world where money reigns supreme, and nothing is so precious that it can't be bought....

The penalty for Dani Cumali's murder: £84,000.

Theo works in the Criminal Audit Office. He assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full.

These days, there's no need to go to prison - provided that you can afford to pay the penalty for the crime you've committed. If you're rich enough, you can get away with murder.

But Dani's murder is different. When Theo finds her lifeless body, and a hired killer standing over her and calmly calling the police to confess, he can't let her death become just an entry on a balance sheet.

Someone is responsible. And Theo is going to find them and make them pay.

Perfect for fans of speculative fiction such as The Handmaid's Tale and Never Let Me Go, Claire North's moving and unnerving new novel will resonate with readers around the world.

Previous books by Claire North: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry AugustTouchThe Sudden Appearance of HopeThe End of the Day

By the same author, writing as Kate Griffin:
A Madness of Angels
The Midnight Mayor
The Neon Court
The Minority Council
The Glass God
Stray Souls

Welcome to the Adventure Zone!

SEE! The illustrated exploits of three lovable dummies set loose in a classic fantasy adventure!

READ! Their journey from small-time bodyguards to world-class artifact hunters!

MARVEL! At the sheer metafictional chutzpah of a graphic novel based on a story created in a podcast where three dudes and their dad play a tabletop role playing game in real time!

Join Taako the elf wizard, Merle the dwarf cleric, and Magnus the human warrior for an adventure they are poorly equipped to handle AT BEST, guided ("guided") by their snarky DM, in a graphic novel that, like the smash-hit podcast it's based on, will tickle your funny bone, tug your heartstrings, and probably pants you if you give it half a chance.

With endearingly off-kilter storytelling from master goofballs Clint McElroy and the McElroy brothers, and vivid, adorable art by Carey Pietsch, The Adventure Zone: Here There be Gerblins is the comics equivalent of role-playing in your friend's basement at 2am, eating Cheetos and laughing your ass off as she rolls critical failure after critical failure.

"Some truths are better left undiscovered.... Govcorp detective Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left Earth to seek truth among the stars. But in that moment, the course of Carlos's entire life changed. Atlas is what took his mother away, what made his father lose hope, what led Alejandro Casales, leader of the religious cult known as the Circle, to his door. And now, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Atlas's departure, it's got something to do with why Casales was found dead in his hotel room--and why Carlos is the man in charge of the investigation. To figure out who killed one of the most powerful men on Earth, Carlos is supposed to put aside his personal history. But the deeper he delves into the case, the more he realizes that escaping the past isn't so easy. There is more to Casales's death than meets the eye, and something much more sinister to the legacy of Atlas than anyone realizes..."--

The author of Printz Honor book Grasshopper Jungle returns with another genre-bending literary exploration of the absurd.

Once again blending multiple story strands that transcend time and place, Grasshopper Jungle author Andrew Smith tells the story of 15-year-old Ariel, a refugee from the Middle East who is the sole survivor of an attack on his small village. Now living with an adoptive family in Sunday, West Virginia, Ariel's story of his summer at a boys' camp for tech detox is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber and the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late nineteenth century. Oh, and there's also a depressed bionic reincarnated crow.

"Smith takes [readers] to a place where humanity is imbued with the potential to render people inhuman...and reminding us that being human, all too human, is far better than any conceivable alternative." --BCCB Reviews, starred review

"Magnificently bizarre, irreverent and bitingly witty" --Kirkus, starred review

"Smith is a spiritual heir to Kurt Vonnegut" --Booklist, starred review

"Fans of Smith's raunchy, profane, and provocative work will find this funny but morally serious tale deeply appealing." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Kim Newman's Anno Dracula is back in print, and we must celebrate. It was the first mash-up of literature, history and vampires, and now, in a world in which vampires are everywhere, it's still the best, and its bite is just as sharp. Compulsory reading, commentary, and mindgame: glorious." - Neil Gaiman

"Politics, horror, and romance are woven together in this brilliantly imagined and realized novel. Newman's prose is a delight, his attention to detail is spellbinding." - Time Out

"Stephen King assumes we hate vampires; Anne Rice makes it safe to love them, because they hate themselves. Kim Newman suspects that most of us live with them... Anno Dracula is the definitive account of that post-modern species, the self-obsessed undead." - New York Times

"Anno Dracula will leave you breathless... one of the most creative novels of the year." - Seattle Times

"Powerful... compelling entertainment... a fiendishly clever banquet of dark treats." - San Francisco Chronicle

'A ripping yarn, an adventure romp of the best blood, and a satisfying... read' - Washington Post Book World

"The most comprehensive, brilliant, dazzlingly audacious vampire novel to date. 'Ultimate' seems an apt description... Anno Dracula is at once playful, horrific, intelligent, and revelatory." - Locus

"A marvelous marriage of political satire, melodramatic intrigue, gothic horror, and alternative history. Not to be missed." - The Independent

"Once you start reading this Victorian-era thriller, you will not be satiated until you reach the end." - Ain't It Cool

"Anno Dracula is the smart, hip Year Zero of the vampire genre's ongoing revolution." - Paul McAuley

"Kim Newman brings Dracula back home in the granddaddy of all vampire adventures. Anno Dracula couldn't be more fun if Bram Stoker had scripted it for Hammer. It's a beautifully constructed Gothic epic that knocks almost every other vampire novel out for the count." - Christopher Fowler
"The most interesting take on the Dracula story... to date. Recommending this one to all those that love Dracula and historical fiction!" - RexRobotReviews
--

It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort Vlad Tepes, the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. Peppered with familiar characters from Victorian history and fiction, the novel follows vampire Geneviève Dieudonné and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club as they strive to solve the mystery of the Ripper murders.

Anno Dracula is a rich and panoramic tale, combining horror, politics, mystery and romance to create a unique and compelling alternate history. Acclaimed novelist Kim Newman explores the darkest depths of a reinvented Victorian London.

This brand-new edition of the bestselling novel contains unique bonus material, including a new afterword from Kim Newman, annotations, articles and alternate endings to the original novel.

A new science fiction adventure from the New York Times bestselling author of the Three-Body Trilogy, Cixin Lu's Ball Lightning is a fast-paced story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against the drive to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences.

When Chen's parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station.

The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier. While Chen's quest for answers gives purpose to his lonely life, it also pits him against soldiers and scientists with motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge.

"Wildly imaginative."--Barack Obama on The Three-Body Problem trilogy

Tor books by Cixin Liu

The Remembrance of Earth's Past
#1 The Three-Body Problem
#2 The Dark Forest
#3 Death's End

The tale of Beren and Lúthien was, or became, an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of the First Age of the World conceived by J.R.R. Tolkien. Returning from France and the battle of the Somme at the end of 1916, he wrote the tale in the following year.

Essential to the story, and never changed, is the fate that shadowed the love of Beren and Lúthien: for Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal elf. Her father, a great elvish lord, in deep opposition to Beren, imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. This is the kernel of the legend; and it leads to the supremely heroic attempt of Beren and Lúthien together to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril.

In this book Christopher Tolkien has attempted to extract the story of Beren and Lúthien from the comprehensive work in which it was embedded; but that story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history. To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, he has told the story in his father's own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed. Presented together for the first time, they reveal aspects of the story, both in event and in narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost.

Published on the tenth anniversary of the last Middle-earth book, the international bestseller The Children of Húrin, this new volume will similarly include drawings and color plates by Alan Lee, who also illustrated The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and went on to win Academy Awards for his work on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

The thrilling sequel to the Hugo and Nebula-winning Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, and a finalist for the 2018 Hugo and Nommo Awards

It's been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she found friendship in the unlikeliest of places.

And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders.

But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace.

After generations of conflict can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?

The Binti Series
Book 1: Binti
Book 2: Binti: Home
Book 3: Binti: The Night Masquerade

Praise for Nnedi Okorafor

"Binti is a supreme read about a sexy, edgy Afropolitan in space! It's a wondrous combination of extra-terrestrial adventure and age-old African diplomacy. Unforgettable!" - Wanuri Kahiu, award winning Kenyan film director of Pumzi and From a Whisper

"A perfect dove-tailing of tribal and futuristic, of sentient space ships and ancient cultural traditions, Binti was a beautiful story to read." - Little Red Reviewer

"Binti is a wonderful and memorable coming of age story which, to paraphrase Lord of the Rings, shows that one girl can change the course of the galaxy." - Geek Syndicate

"Binti packs a punch because it is such a rich, complex tale of identity, both personal and cultural... and like all of Nnedi Okorafor's works, this one is also highly, highly recommended." - Kirkus Reviews

"There's more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor's work than in whole volumes of ordinary fantasy epics." -Ursula Le Guin

"Okorafor's impressive inventiveness never flags." - Gary K. Wolfe on Lagoon

The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher.
*Look out for Season of Storms in May 2018*
For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over, and now the races are fighting once again. The only good elf, it seems, is a dead elf.

Geralt of Rivia, the cunning assassin known as The Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child. This child has the power to change the world - for good, or for evil.

As the threat of war hangs over the land and the child is hunted for her extraordinary powers, it will become Geralt's responsibility to protect them all - and the Witcher never accepts defeat.
Blood of Elves is the first full-length Witcher novel, and the perfect follow up if you've read The Last Wish collection.

Witcher novelsBlood of Elves
The Time of Contempt
Baptism of Fire The Tower of SwallowsLady of the Lake
Witcher collectionsThe Last WishSword of Destiny
The Malady and Other Stories: An Andrzej Sapkowski Sampler (e-only)

Translated from original Polish by Danusia Stok

The #1 New York Times bestselling series finale and sequel to A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night

Bringing the magic and suspenseof the All Souls Trilogy to a deeply satisfying conclusion, this highly anticipated finale went straight to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In The Book of Life,
Diana and Matthew time-travel back from Elizabethan London to make a dramatic return to the present--facing new crises and old enemies. At Matthew's ancestral home, Sept-Tours, they reunite with the beloved cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches--with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency.

Ben Aaronovitch's bestselling Rivers of London urban fantasy series - "The perfect blend of CSI and Harry Potter." --io9

A mutilated body in Crawley. A killer on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil, possibly an associate of the twisted wizard known as the Faceless Man. Or maybe just a garden-variety serial killer.

Before apprentice wizard and Police Constable Peter Grant can even get his head 'round the case, two more are dropped in his lap: a town planner has gone under a tube train, and there's a stolen grimoire for Grant to track down.

So far, so London.

But then Peter gets word of something very odd happening on a housing estate designed by a nutter, built by charlatans, and inhabited by the truly desperate.

Is there a connection?

And if there is, why oh why did it have to be South of the River--in the jurisdiction of some pretty prickly local river spirits?

CAN'T FIND A RATIONAL EXPLANATION TO A MYSTERY? CALL IN THE QUIET COUNCIL. The mysterious and glamorous Lady De Winter is one of their most valuable agents. A despicable murder inside a locked and bolted room on the Rue Morgue in Paris is just the start. This whirlwind adventure will take Milady to the highest and lowest parts of that great city - and cause her to question the very nature of reality itself.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it - for the first time, also includes "Titanic," a short story from the Lost Files of the Bookman Histories.

File Under: Steampunk [ Alternate History - Reptilian Royalty - Murder Most Foul - The World's Fair ]