Books, Books and More Books

Better than water, water everywhere, which is what our plumbing is threatening to give us. While we're trying to nurse a failing drain along until we can get a plumber out here to work on it, here are some delightfully spooky reads for Halloween.



Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland by L. Jagi Lamplighter

It’s Halloween at the Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts, and Rachel Griffin is stirring up the dead!

All her life, Rachel has wanted to visit Beaumont Castle in the kingdom of Transylvania, the last known location of her hero, librarian-adventurer “Daring” Northwest. Only falling out of the land of dreams onto her face was not how she had expected to arrive.

Now, the castle is right there, looming over her. Only her best friend, the Princess of Magical Australia does not want to go in, so as to avoid an international incident. But what if the castle holds some clue as to her hero’s final fate?

And who was that mysterious figure hanging by the neck she glimpsed in the dreamlands, just before she fell. Could the Dead Men’s Ball, where the spooks and ghosts of the Hudson Highland gather once a year on Halloween to dance to the music of some very unexpected musicians, be the key to discovering the hanged man’s identity?

(The third in the Rachel Griffin series, which began with The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffith and continued in The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel, it will be on sale October 31 for Halloween.)



Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian

Many are called... She alone can save the world and become Death's bride.

COBWEB BRIDE (Cobweb Bride Trilogy, Book One) is a history-flavored fantasy novel with romantic elements of the Persephone myth, about Death's ultimatum to the world.

What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?

In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary "pocket" of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill....

Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness... Her skin is cold as snow... Her eyes frozen... Her gaze, fiercely alive...

While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war... A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father… Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court.... Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living...

Look closer—through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars...

And one small village girl, Percy—an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter—is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.

As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death's own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North…

And everyone is trying to stop her.



Blood Spirits by Sherwood Smith

Everyone's favorite sword-wielding California girl returns-from the author of Coronets and Steel.

With the man she loves set to marry a look-alike princess, Kim Murray returns to California from the magical country of Dobrenica to heal her broken heart. But family politics soon have her leaving for London, where she is forced into a duel with a Dobrenican nobleman. He reveals that her great sacrifice, leaving Alec, was a disaster. To fix her mistake, Kim returns to Dobrenica, but what she finds there is far more shocking and dangerous than she ever imagined. Not just politics and personalities but ghosts and magic, murder and mystery, await her as she struggles to understand the many faces of love. Once again Kim has to take sword in hand as she tries to make peace and learn the truth. Only, whose truth?

(The sequel to Coronets and Steel, it delves deeper into the supernatural elements of Sherwood Smith's Ruritanian kingdom of Dobrenica).



Steampunk Cthulhu by Brian Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass, editors

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

So said H.P. Lovecraft in the first chapter of his most famous story, "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926). This is also the perfect introduction to Steampunk Cthulhu, for within these stories mankind has indeed voyaged too far, and scientific innovations have opened terrifying vistas of reality, with insanity and worse as the only reward.

The Steampunk genre has always incorporated elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror and alternative history, and certainly the Cthulhu Mythos has not been a stranger to Steampunk. But until now there has never been a Steampunk Cthulhu collection, so here are 18 tales unbound from the tethers of mere airships, goggles, clockwork, and tightly bound corsets; stories of horror, sci-fi, fantasy and alternative realities tainted with the Lovecraftian and the Cthulhu Mythos. Here you will discover Victorian Britain, the Wild West era United States, and many other varied locations filled with anachronistic and sometimes alien technology, airships, submersibles and Babbage engines. But the Victorian era here is not only one of innovation and exploration, but of destruction and dread.

(This anthology includes my own short story "The Baying of the Hounds," which features Gilded Age heroes Nikola Tesla and Thomas Alva Edison).



The Shadow over Leningrad by Leigh Kimmel

In Stalin's Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He's seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.

He's not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad's First Party Secretary.

So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.

(The sequel to "Gnawing the Bones of the City," which was published in Fiction Vortex).

If you'd like to have your works included in future promo posts, let me know at leighkimmel@yahoo.com

Crossposted at The Billion Lightyear Bookshelf and The Starship Cat Blog.

Promo Awaits

I'm busy getting ready for Grand Rapids Comic Con, including catching up on some bookwork. So I wanted to get this week's promo post out before the day slips away from me. Enjoy, and hope to see a least some of you at the con.



The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin by L. Jagi Lamplighter

Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts – A magic school like no other!

To Rachel Griffin, Roanoke Academy is a place of magic and wonder. Nestled amidst the beauty of New York’s Hudson Highlands and hidden from the eyes of the Unwary, it offers everything a young sorceress could desire—enchantments, flying brooms, and the promise of new friends.

On her first day of school, Rachel discovers her perfect memory has an unexpected side effect. She can see through the spell sorcerers use to hide their secrets.

When someone tries to kill a fellow student, Rachel investigates. She soon discovers another far-vaster secret world that hides from the Wise the way the Wise hide from mundane folk. Rushing forward where others fear to tread, Rachel bravely faces wraiths, embarrassing magical pranks, mysterious older boys, a Raven that brings the doom of worlds, and at least one fire-breathing teacher.

Described by fans as: "Fringe meets Narnia at Hogwarts", The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin is a tale of wonder and danger, romance and heartbreak, and, most of all, of magic and of a girl who refuses to be daunted.

Curiosity may kill a cat, but nothing stops Rachel Griffin!

"Lamplighter introduces many imaginative elements in her world that will delight..." VOYA

(The first of a series that currently stands at three volumes, with more to come).



A Diabolical Bargain by Mary Catelli

Growing up between the Wizards' Wood and its marvels, and the finest university of wizardry in the world, Nick Briarwood always thought that he wanted to learn wizardry.

When his father attempts to offer him to a demon in a deal, the deal rebounded on him, and Nick survives -- but all the evidence points to his having made the deal.

Now he really wants to learn wizardry. Even though the university, the best place to master it, is also the place where he is most likely to be discovered.



Wren Journeymage by Sherwood Smith

The first summer of peace brings Wren on her weekly visit to the young Queen Teressa, where she encounters the derisive, upsetting Hawk Rhiscarlan riding in! Wren races to warn Teressa, to discover he's expected, which causes the girls' first argument. Tyron gives Wren a chance to leave Meldreth by sending her on a new journeymage project--to find Connor, who had wandered off to the Summer Isles. When Wren vanishes, her scry stone abandoned, Teressa veers between regret over the argument, worry about Wren, and the beguilement of attraction as Hawk skillfully upsets her court. Wren has just made friends with some young sailors when they are captured and forced on board a shady smuggler, where Wren learns all about the sea. When pirates attack, Wren does magic, which leads her straight to another confrontation with the villain she hates most, aided by the boy she . . . what do you call these feelings? Once again the four--Wren, Teressa, Connor, and Tyron--find themselves deep in adventure, as they try to navigate the treacherous waters of growing up.

(The first three Wren books were originally published by Jane Yolen's YA imprint with Harcourt. When Harcourt discontinued the imprint, it left the series orphaned with the fourth book unwritten. Sherwood Smith has reissued the series through Book View Cafe, a writers' co-op. It begins with Wren to the Rescue and continues through Wren's Quest and Wren's War.)



The Sun Never Sets by Joseph T. Major

A passionate defense of an exiled prince leads to changes that shake the course of European and world history, and lay the stage for a wider and wider yet monarchy.
In our world, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, sister of the gallant Prince Rupert of the Rhine, was made heir to the British throne, only to die just too soon, leaving the succession to her son. Once, though, she got a little too exercised about the poor exiled Pretender . . . and if she had been just a little more exercised, William of Orange might have changed his mind.
Such a change could put a strange and striking monarch in reach of the British throne. But the heirs of the Stuarts were not yet gone, and they could strike back. The result of this bold decision would mean wars across the world, involving people from lands spreading from Poland to Virginia, from Scotland to Naples. It would mean battles in the Cockpit of Europe, in the wilds of Saxony, and indeed on the green fields of England itself.
Not all is war. Literary figures such as Swift,Johnson, and Voltaire have strange and different meetings. The universal genius Benjamin Franklin, Printer, has an entirely new field of endeavor.
The opposed royal houses, and the other princes of Europe, face off in new and strange alliances in this novel.



Historical Lovecraft by Silvia Monero-Garcia, editor

Historical Lovecraft, a unique anthology blending historical fiction with horror, features 26 tales spanning centuries and continents. This eclectic volume takes the readers through places as varied as Laos, Greenland, Peru, and the Congo, and from antiquity until the 20th century, pushing the envelope of Lovecraftian lore. William Meikle’s inquisitor tries to unravel the truth during a very hostile questioning. Jesse Bullington narrates the saga of a young Viking woman facing danger and destruction. E. Catherine Tobler stops in Ancient Egypt, where Pharaoh Hatshepsut receives an exquisite and deadly gift. Albert Tucher discovers that the dead do not remain silent in 10th century Rome.

These are tales that reimagine history and look into the past through a darker glass. Tales that show evil has many faces and reaches through the centuries. Tales that will chill your heart.

Join us in our journey through horror and time, if you dare.

Stories by: Regina Allen, Jesse Bullington, Nathalie Boisard-Beudin, Mason Ian Bundschuh, Andrew G. Dombalagian, Mae Empson, Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas, Orrin Grey, Sarah Hans, Travis Heermann, Martha Hubbard, Nathaniel Katz, Leigh Kimmel, Meddy Ligner, William Meikle, Daniel Mills, Aaron Polson, Y. Wahyu Purnomosidhi, Alter S. Reiss, Josh Reynolds, Julio Toro San Martin, Bradley H. Sinor, Molly Tanzer, Albert Tucher, E. Catherine Tobler, Bryan Thao Worra

(Contains my short story "Red Star, Yellow Sign," which is tied to my indie short stories The Other Side of Midnight and The Shadow over Leningrad



All the Little Hedgehogs" by Leigh Kimmel

The Lower Volga Special Bio-Research Laboratory is one of the Soviet Union's most closely guarded secrets. Yona Feldberg didn't even know it existed until the day Academician Voronsky arrived at the Suvorov School and took him away from the austere life of a military cadet.

Here Yona learned why he, the son of a KGB labor camp commandant, should have been placed in a school to train the Soviet Army's future officers: he is a clone of one of the Red Army officers murdered in the Great Terror. However, his extraordinary talent for genetics makes him more valuable as the Academician's personal student, learning the technology of gene splicing alongside the Academician's adopted son.

But privileges can be revoked, as Yona discovers when he runs afoul of the local guardians of propriety. Now he will get a different kind of education, in teh darker secrets of the Soviet cloning program.

(Another story set in the Soviet Union, in the Gus on the Moon timeline).

Over at Sarah Hoyt's blog, the Free Range Oyster has even more cool books. In the comments you can also find a story beginning of mine, for another story in the Gus on the Moon timeline.

I also have some new in-depth book reviews up at The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf.

As always, if you'd like to have your works included in future versions of this promo post, please let me know at leighkimmel@yahoo.com. Because I'll be setting next week's promo post up while I'm at Grand Rapids Comic Con, they'll stand a better chance of being included in it if sent earlier.

Crossposted at The Billion Lightyear Bookshelf Blog and The Starship Cat Blog.

Making Time for Promo

I'm between events right now, but it doesn't mean I'm not busy. There's merchandise to manage and bookwork to do. And there is my other business, developing and maintaining AdSense websites, which has suffered from lack of attention for far too long. So it's easy to let the day slip away and discover it's gone and I still haven't done the promo post this week.



The Bandit Steals a City by Joseph T. Major

Ordinary worlds have problems with fanatics. So do faerie ones. The faerie worlds have ways to deal with them, but some may be very mundane and ordinary. And then there is the problem of cleaning up afterwards.
Our bandit and her husband the scholar have to deal with a family crisis, an evil that masquerades as good. Not to mention having to raise more of their kind, understand how their lives work, and provide for family of all sorts. There are so many things that go into life, and having it for longer only makes them accumulate.

(The second in the Lady Was a Bandit series, which began with The Death of a Bandit)



Pride and Platypus by Jane Austen and Vera Nazarian

From the critically acclaimed author of Mansfield Park and Mummies and Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons...

Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret

When the moon is full over Regency England, all the gentlemen are subject to its curse.

Mr. Darcy, however, harbors a Dreadful Secret...

Shape-shifting demons mingle with Australian wildlife, polite society, and high satire, in this elegant, hilarious, witty, insane, and unexpectedly romantic supernatural parody of Jane Austen's classic novel.

The powerful, mysterious, handsome, and odious Mr. Darcy announces that Miss Elizabeth Bennet is not good enough to tempt him. The young lady determines to find out his one secret weakness -- all the while surviving unwanted proposals, Regency balls, foolish sisters, seductive wolves, matchmaking mothers, malodorous skunks, general lunacy, and the demonic onslaught of the entire wild animal kingdom!

What awaits her is something unexpected. And only moon, matrimony, and true love can overcome pride and prejudice!

Gentle Reader -- this Delightful Illustrated Edition includes Scholarly Footnotes and Appendices

(Who ever thought lycanthropy could be funny?)



The Trouble with Kings by Sherwood Smith

“With music you can tell the truth about human experience.”

In this romantic fantasy set in the same world as Crown Duel, Flian is an ordinary princess who would rather be left with her music, but gets abducted not once, not twice—three times.

What is a civilized princess to do? Especially when she can’t tell which prince is the hero and which the villain!

Re-edited and reissued by Book View Cafe

(If Jane Austen were to write a novel in Sherwood's Sartorias-deles universe, it would look like this).



Lazarus Risen by Hayden Trenholm (ed.)

Dreams of immortality and eternal youth are almost as old as human culture itself. But what would the world look like if everyone could live and be young forever? What would it look like if only some of us had that privilege? Lazarus Risen presents sixteen stories from around the world that explore the economic, political, social and psychological consequences of life extension, human cloning, the hard upload and other forms of the biological singularity.

Stories by Brent Nichols, Sean McMullen, Teri Babcock, Nancy SM Waldman, Brad C. Anderson, Fiona Moore, Felice Picano, Matthew Shean, Matt Moore, Suzanne Church, Peter Wendt, Holly Schofield, Deborah Walker, Kevin Edwin Stadt, Leigh Kimmel, and Andrew Barton.

(This anthology contains my story "Phoenix Dreams," a companion story to The Crime and Glory of Antonia DeVilbiss.)



The Moon Mirror by Leigh Kimmel

Chelsea Ayles dreamed of going to the Moon since she was a child. Now her dream job at NASA has turned into a nightmare, thanks to those many blood-sucking arachnids. Yeah, politics, as in a Senator accusing her of destroying America's priceless heritage because she chose the moonrocks that were used to make a proof-of-concept mirror segment for a lunar telescope project. Now the mirror sits in her office like a bitter mockery of what might have been -- until the day her reflection turns into a handsome stranger who calls himself the Man in the Moon and offers her visions of a world that might have been. Visions that ignite a longing of an intensity she hasn't known since she was in grade school and watched videos of the Apollo lunar missions in science class.

(Another story that involves the Gus on the Moon universe).

Over at Sarah Hoyt's blog, Free Range Oyster has more interesting books for you to check out.

To get your book in next week's promotional posting, send me a note with the title and publication information atleighkimmel@yahoo.com

Crossposted at The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf and Through the Worldgate.

Books for Fall

In the United States, Labor Day is considered the beginning of autumn for social purposes. Traditionally, white shoes and hats were put away until Memorial Day, outdoor public swimming pools were closed, and school reopened for the fall semester after summer break.

Today the rules aren't nearly so strict. People wear whatever colors they want throughout the year. Heated pools stay open well into fall, and a lot of schools open near the beginning of August, shortening summer vacation in hopes of increasing retention of skills learned the previous year.

But it's still a good time for some fun books.



I Am a Wondrous Thing by Rob Howell

War looms in the west as sword, axe, and flame sweep the Kreisens and threaten to drag all of the neighboring realms, including Periaslavl, into the maelstrom.

Irina Ivanovna, ruler of Periaslavl, knows that war would destroy much of her land. Even though magic has kept her body young, she is tired and sees that she is not the one to lead her land through the upcoming storm.

She steps down in favor of her heir, as tradition dictates, and disappears from sight. She heads to the Kreisens to see if her magic can halt the bloodshed and pain.

But the storm was orchestrated by foes she does not know she has. They stalk her, knowing her magic is the key.

She must elude the hunters so she can discover what is truly threatening not just Periaslavl, but all of Shijuren.

Where will the lightning strike?

(This is the third and latest volume in the World of Shijuren.)



The Death of a Bandit: The Lady Was a Bandit volume 1 by Joseph T. Major

You can easily find the tale of the Diverse Band of Ordinary But Special People questing for the Magic Knickknack of Querty to help them win the Ultimate Battle Between Good and Evil which will mark the End of the Faerie Folk in Our World. This isn't one of those stories.
A bandit queen finds herself forced to choose between domesticity and execution. A scholar goes to extraordinary ends to find a wife. Together, they seek to solve the problems presented them in a world where magic and faerie are, well, just there.

WARNING: Contains violence, sex, and family.

(Humorous fantasy -- avoid choking, don't read while eating or drinking)



Whispered Magics by Sherwood Smith

As a child, Sherwood Smith was always on the watch for magic: no fog bank went unexplored, no wooden closet unchecked for a false back, no possible magical token left on the ground or in the gutter. In these nine stories, the impossible becomes possible, magic is real, aliens come visiting. How would our lives change?

(Although Sherwood Smith's muse usually runs to novels, even whole sequences of novels, every now and then it serves her up a perfect little gem of a short story. These are stories from the heart, that have stuck with me ever since I read them in the now-vanished magazines and kids' anthologies in which they first appeared).



Salt of the Air by Vera Nazarian

You are familiar with the salt of the earth. But did you know there is an even finer, more delicate essence?

Take wisdom and imagination, responsibility and beauty, and mix them together in arcane proportions to form a rich and peculiar brine. The resulting water of life is an emotional muddy liquid, filled with existential sediment swirling in the light of secret reality and reflecting prismatic colors of hope and wonder. If allowed to evaporate -- escape, flee, ascend into the ether and join the music of the spheres -- what remains is the quintessence; a precious concentrate that is elusive and volatile, neither fully solid nor so illusory as to be devoid of pithy substance. It is the Salt of the Air.

In this debut collection from the critically acclaimed author of Dreams of the Compass Rose and Lords of Rainbow, the nineteen stories are distillations of myth and philosophy, eroticism and ascetic purity. Dipping into an ancient multi-ethnic well, they are the stuff of fantasy—of maidens and deities and senior retirees, of emperors and artists and con artists, of warriors and librarians, of beings without a name and things very fey indeed....

Don't be afraid of ingesting ethereal salt.

Open your mind and inhale.

"Cautionary, sensual stories of love, reversal and revenge upend fairy tale conventions in Nazarian's lush collection... Sumptuous detail, twisty plots and surprising endings lift these extravagant tales."
-- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"These are beautiful, haunting confections, reminiscent of Tanith Lee's erotically charged tales... Fine shades of emotion, mythic grandeur, crystalline prose, sharp revisionist intelligence: these are Vera Nazarian's hallmarks..."
-- Nick Gevers, LOCUS

Vera Nazarian immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages.

She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed novel DREAMS OF THE COMPASS ROSE, followed by epic fantasy about a world without color, LORDS OF RAINBOW. Her novella "The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass" with an introduction by Charles de Lint made the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2005. This first collection Salt of the Air, with an introduction by Gene Wolfe, contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated "The Story of Love." Recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Award-nominated, baroque novella "The Duke in His Castle."

Ancient myth, moral fables, eclectic philosophy, and her Armenian and Russian ethnic heritage play a strong part in all her work, combining the essences of things and places long gone into a rich evocation of wonder.

In addition to being a writer and award-winning artist, she is also the publisher of Norilana Books.

Official website: www.veranazarian.com

(A collection of Vera Nazarian's fantasy short stories that don't belong to the Compass Rose universe.)



Mortis Operandi by Kfir Luzzatto and Dru Pagliassotti

Although not every criminal is a monster, nor every monster a criminal, you might be forgiven for mistaking the two as you investigate the gritty underworld of supernatural crime. Join officers of the law, private eyes, firefighters, bodyguards, crime-scene cleaners, security specialists, and other not-so-everyday citizens as they struggle against the macabre machinations of MORTIS OPERANDI.

MORTIS OPERANDI features stories that revolve around the investigation of a crime and in which the supernatural plays a central role.

(This anthology includes my short story "Once a Chekist," which belongs in the Gus on the Moon timeline but is set in Russia).



The Shadow over Leningrad by Leigh Kimmel

In Stalin's Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He's seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.

He's not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad's First Party Secretary.

So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.

(The sequel to "Gnawing the Bones of the City," which appeared in Fiction Vortex in 2015.)

And over at Sarah Hoyt's blog, there's the annual Indie Author Labor Day Sale.

Crossposted at The Starship Cat blog and The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf.

Back Home With Books

We're back home from Worldcon, and back into the beastly heat. A perfect time to curl up in a cool place with a good book.



The Eyes of a Doll by Rob Howell

Just another day in Achrida... All Edward Aethelredson wanted to do was to enjoy his ale, heal from his wounds, relax during the summer, and help his friend with what should have been nothing more than a pleasant ride in the country. Two bodies later, including one he kills in self-defense, Edward is drawn into the dark recesses of the Empire’s criminal underworld. He cannot flee, for that would impugn his honor. He cannot hide, for that would leave a six-year-old girl and her family in danger for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He cannot attack, for he does not know who to strike at. With an ally who is more foe than friend and his back against the wall, can Edward find the cunning necessary to save his friends? Or will crime lords and deadly wizards spell the end of him?

(This is the second volume of the world of Shijuren, which began with A Lake Most Deep).



Silent Meridian by Elizabeth Crowens

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is obsessed with a legendary red book. Its peculiar stories have come to life, and rumors claim that it has rewritten its own endings. Convinced that possessing this book will help him write his ever-popular Sherlock Holmes stories, he takes on an unlikely partner, John Patrick Scott, known to most as a concert musician and paranormal investigator. Although in his humble opinion, Scott considers himself more of an ethereal archeologist and a time traveler professor.

Together they explore lost worlds and excavate realms beyond the knowledge of historians when they go back in time to find it. But everything backfires, and their friendship is tested to the limits. Both discover that karmic ties and unconscionable crimes have followed them like ghosts from the past, wreaking havoc on the present and possibly the future.

Silent Meridian reveals the alternate histories of Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Houdini, Jung and other notable luminaries in the secret diaries of a new kind of Doctor Watson, John Patrick Scott, in an X Files for the 19th century. Stay tuned for A Pocketful of Lodestones; book two in the Time Traveler Professor series by Elizabeth Crowens.

(If you like steampunk and time travel, take a look).



After the Sundial by Vera Nazarian

AFTER THE SUNDIAL by Vera Nazarian is the author's first short fiction collection that focuses specifically on science fiction works, and can be viewed as a companion volume to her earlier collection, SALT OF THE AIR which focused on fable, myth, and fantasy.

Bound by the common theme of time and temporal exploration, the ten selections here range widely from traditional speculative fiction to the surreal literary to poetry to bawdy adventure humor to space opera and far future speculation.

Includes an introduction by the author, two previously unpublished works and a full-length critically acclaimed novella THE CLOCK KING AND THE QUEEN OF THE HOURGLASS.

(One of my favorite single-author collections, I originally read it in uncorrected proof. And I still enjoy re-reading it, savoring the stories that range from pretty hard sf to mystical speculation that isn't exactly sf or fantasy, almost philosophical fiction).



Sasharia En Garde by Sherwood Smith

First published as two books—Once a Princess, and Twice a Prince—this romantic fantasy has been revised and published as one book, as first intended. It is set in the same world as Crown Duel, to which Sasha’s mother, Sun, was once swept away by a real prince.

But not to happily ever after. Her prince vanished, and a wicked king took the throne. Since then, Sasha and Sun have been hiding on Earth, both training in martial arts until Sasha is tricked into going back to Khanerenth.

She’s more than ready to kick some bad-guy butt, but is the stylish pirate Zathdar the bad guy? Or artistic, dreamy Prince Jehan, son of the wicked king?

Meanwhile Sun is determined to cross worlds to save her daughter. She might not have been a very good princess, but nobody messes with Mom!

(I originally read the two-volume version. A side story, but with ties to Crown Duel and A Stranger to Command. Because it's self-contained and starts on Earth, it may be a good entry point to the intricate world of Sartorias-deles).



The Ten Just Men by Joseph T. Major

The fighting in Europe is over but the war is not yet done. The allies cannot agree. The defeated must rebuild, faced with the problem of overcoming the last eleven years, of creating a new structure of society, of making some sort of economy.
All the while, the former allies are facing problems inside and out.
In the not very pacific Pacific, the power of the Allies is converging on the last enemy. The price needed to be paid to overcome them may be more than can be paid -- even if wonder weapons provide a final out.
In the midst of this tumult, ordinary people try to pick up and carry on, to bring new life into the world and to reconstruct existing life.
The war is grinding to an end . . . but only the dead have known the end of war.

(The fifth volume of Joseph T. Major's Alternate World War II series, it covers the time after VE Day, as Japan alone of the Axis remains to be defeated. This saga began in Bitter Weeds and continued in No Hint of War, The Road to the Sea and An Irresponsible Gang).



Visions V: Milky Way, edited by Carrol Fix

Visions V stories take place somewhere—anywhere—in the Milky Way Galaxy. Planets, stars, and aliens, with no limitations, form the subject and action taking place outside our Solar System and within the Milky Way.

Humankind has forded the immense stream of space between stars and reached our nearest solar neighbors. What will we discover on hospitable planets circling those new stars? Will we find almost familiar moons, asteroids, planetary rings? Or, could there be never before seen astronomical formations? The sky is no longer the limit for our soaring imaginations, because somewhere out there is a potential haven for the remnants of our beleaguered civilization.
Global catastrophe is a constant threat for our war-torn and dysfunctional human race. No one can foresee the future, but we have lived on the brink of extinction since the invention of the atomic bomb and, more recently, germ warfare and genetic manipulation.
Astrophysicist Professor Stephen Hawking has said, "I believe that the long term future of the human race must be space and that it represents an important life insurance for our future survival, as it could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonizing other planets."
The vast Milky Way Galaxy may allow the seeds of our future to be widely distributed, past the danger of a final extinction.
Visions V: Milky Way brings together a collection of fascinating and entertaining stories by award-winning science fiction authors.

“Ships in the Night” by Jay Werkheiser
“End Around” by E. J. Shumak
“Unwanted Gifts” by S. M. Kraftchak
“Greatcloak” by Jonathan Shipley
“Claim Jumpers” by Doug C. Souza
“The Device” by Tara Campbell
“Where the Last Tramz Stops” by Sam Bellotto Jr.
“Eighteen Winters” by D. A. Couturier
“Yellow Star” by John Moralee
“The Shadow of a Dead God” by Leigh Kimmel
“Black Hearts and Blue Skins” by Timothy Paul
“Welcome to Your Dream House” by Steve Bates
“Pan Ad Aster” by Bruce C. Davis
“Rachel’s Fall” by Teresa Howard
“When Unknown Gods Leave” by Margaret Karmazin
“First Sunrise” by Marie Michaels
“Dropworld” by Fredrick Obermeyer
“Bright Horizon” by Thomas Olbert
“The Mirror Dialogues” by Richard Zwicker
“The Drive” by W. A. Fix

(Yet another anthology with a story of mine -- except why did I persistently remember the title as "The Long Shadow of a Dead God"? Was that an earlier working title, later edited away, or was it from some ot her work, now abandoned? Memory is such a tricky thing).



The Stirge by Leigh Kimmel

When Liphrel's family fell too far on their debts, he was sold to the priests of the death god. But his family were followers of the birth goddess, which left him in a difficult position.

(One of my first published stories, it was accepted right at a time when I was at the nadir of my life. Not only was I despairing of ever being published, I was starting to wonder if my life as a whole was ever going to improve. And then things turned around, and by the time it actually saw print, I was in considerably improved circumstances).

The Free-Range Oyster also has more cool book recommendations over at Sarah Hoyt's blog.

And as always, If you would like your work promoted in my blog, please e-mail me at leighkimmel@yahoo.com.

Crossposted at The Starship Cat and The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf Blog.