Archives de catégorie : London 2023 Fiction

THE RIFT WALKER SERIES de Clay Harmon

An epic new fantasy in a world of ice, fire, and magic, set on a bitterly cold place where people live below in cavernous cities that rely on geothermal energy, where power comes from binding people to the rocks and metals via life-threatening trials.

THE RIFT WALKER SERIES
by Clay Harmon
‎ Solaris, 2022 / 2024
(via JABberwocky)

Book 1: FLAMES OF MIRA (July 2022)
Born through life-threatening trials that bind chemical elements to the human body, Ig was forged in the boiling volcanoes under Mira’s frozen lands. One of the most powerful known elementals, he serves as an enforcer for Magnate Sorrelo Adriann. Ig is blessed with great power, but cursed with a flesh binding that ties him until death to serve Sorrelo, and if he tries to disobey any one of Sorrelo’s cruel commands, the flesh binding magic will instantly kill him.
When Sorrelo is overthrown, Ig quickly learns he can do far worse than what has been asked of him so far. If he can’t escape the flesh binding in time, Ig will have to kill friend and foe alike to stop his master reclaiming the throne, or sacrifice himself trying.

With some of the most unique and fascinating worldbuilding I’ve ever seen in a fantasy novel, Flames of Mira is a captivating read from start to finish.” – Nick Martell, author of The Two-Faced Queen

Book 2: INTO THE RIFT (Summer 2024)
After stopping the mercenary army and saving Augustin, Jakar and Efadora set their sights on Sulian Daw, where Jakar plans to hunt down the cultists who enslaved him and save the elemental children he grew up beside. But first, that will mean crossing the Rift, the most treacherous place in Ra Thuzan. Back in Mira, Ester, fledgling smith of the Foundry must track down the smith’s source of power after it goes missing. And if she fails, it will mean the death of everyone in the Foundry at the hands of the Sovereign and the child prince.

Clay Harmon has spent most of his life in California’s Central Valley, growing up outside of Yosemite, then moving to Fresno, where he worked at a B&N while studying Business Administration & Marketing. He now works in marketing for a software development firm. In his off-time, he lifts weights, loses at video games, and terrorizes his cats. He currently lives in Saratoga Springs, Utah, with his wife.

Clay Harmon has spent most of his life in California’s Central Valley, growing up outside of Yosemite, then moving to Fresno, where he worked at a B&N while studying Business Administration & Marketing. He now works in marketing for a software development firm. In his off-time, he lifts weights, loses at video games, and terrorizes his cats. He currently lives in Saratoga Springs, Utah, with his wife.

IN HER DEFENSE de Philippa Malicka

Ottessa Moshfegh meets The Talented Mister Ripley in this literary debut about a fractured wealthy family told through the eyes of their hired help.

IN HER DEFENSE
by Philippa Malicka
Hodder, July 2024
(via Mushens Entertainment)

IN HER DEFENSE follows the libel trial of TV personality, household name and ceramics entrepreneur, Anna Finbow, whose daughter Mary has cut off all contact with the family. After Anna accuses her daughter’s therapist of being behind the split in her newspaper column, the publicity is overwhelming, and a legal summons swiftly follows.
Mary is adamant that her childhood was abusive, whereas Anna believes the therapist is a charlatan preying on her daughter’s trust fund. Watching it all is young sculptor Augusta (Gus), Anna’s dogwalker – who has her own reasons for inveigling her way into Anna’s life…

Philippa Malicka was born in Essex and works in publishing. She is an alumnus of the Prose Fiction MA at the University of East Anglia. Her non-fiction has appeared in The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph and Grazia. IN HER DEFENSE is her first novel and was longlisted for the Bridport First Novel Award.

THE SUNSET CROWD de Karin Tanabe

In 1970s Los Angeles, everyone is fighting to reach the top, but very few have the talent, ambition, and luck to get there.

THE SUNSET CROWD
by Karin Tanabe
St. Martin’s Press, July 2023

Fame. Fortune. Love. You can’t have them all.
Meet L.A. darling Evra Scott. The daughter of an Oscar-winning director and a Brazilian bombshell actress, Evra is the city’s reigning style queen. By day, she’s at the helm of Sunset on Sunset, 
the store beloved by Hollywood’s young and beautiful. By night, she’s on the arm of Kai de la Faire, Hawaii’s hottest export, and the screenwriter of the moment. 
Enter Theodora Leigh. The twenty-something Paramount assistant looks like a big screen star, but her sights are firmly set behind the scenes, as she fights to become a movie producer in a town where sex and sexism sell. Theodora’s got the talent and instincts, but she’s not willing to wait. Luckily, getting ahead by any means necessary is L.A.’s mantra.      
Observing it all is Bea Dupont, a photographer for 
Rolling Stone and Vogue, who never misses the party, but always keeps to its fringes. A Manhattan blue blood turned West Coast bohemian, Bea holds Evra’s Sunset crowd together. She’s also Kai’s oldest friend, and she’s harbored a not-so-secret flame for him since they met at an elite Swiss boarding school. 
But in Hollywood, no one stays on top forever. And it’s not long before Theodora’s unrelenting ambition sets in motion a dramatic quest for power in an industry that is as glamorous as it is duplicitous.
From the pulsating Sunset Strip to the French Riviera, Tanabe’s new novel is a story of survival and reinvention, of faking it until you make it, and the glittering appeal of wealth and power, as it seeks to answer that timeless question—who gets to have the American dream? 

Karin Tanabe is the author of several novels, including A Woman of Intelligence, A Hundred Suns and The Gilded Years (soon to be a major motion picture starring Zendaya, who will produce alongside Reese Witherspoon/Hello Sunshine). A former Politico reporter, her writing has also been featured in The Washington Post, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, and Newsday. She has appeared as a celebrity and politics expert on Entertainment Tonight, CNN, and CBS Early Show. A graduate of Vassar College, Karin lives in Washington, DC.

AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY d’Ani Kayode Somtochukwu

A searingly honest and resonant debut from a Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist, exploring what love and freedom cost in a society steeped in homophobia.

AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY
by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, June 2023

 

August is a God-fearing track star who leaves Enugu City to attend university and escape his overbearing sisters. He carries the weight of their lofty expectations, the shame of facing himself, and the haunting memory of a mother he never knew. It’s his first semester and pressures aside, August is making friends, doing well in his classes. He even almost has a girlfriend. There’s only one problem: he can’t stop thinking about Segun, an openly gay student who works at a local cybercafé. Segun carries his own burdens and has been wounded in too many ways. When he meets August, their connection is undeniable, but Segun is reluctant to open himself up to August. He wants to love and be loved by a man who is comfortable in his own skin, who will see and hold and love Segun, exactly as he is.
Despite their differences, August and Segun forge a tender intimacy that defies the violence around them. But there is only so long Segun can stand being loved behind closed doors, while August lives a life beyond the world they’ve created together. And when a new, sweeping anti-gay law is passed, August and Segun must find a way for their love to survive in a Nigeria that was always determined to eradicate them. A tale of rare bravery and profound beauty, AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY is an extraordinary debut that marks Ani as a voice to watch.

Ani Kayode Somtochukwu is an award-winning Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist. His work interrogates themes of queer identity, resistance, and liberation. His writings have appeared in literary magazines across Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America.

 

RIPE de Sarah Rose Etter

From an award-winning writer whose work Roxane Gay calls “utterly unique and remarkable” comes a surreal novel about a woman in Silicon Valley who must decide how much she’s willing to give up for success—for fans of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Her Body and Other Parties.

RIPE
by Sarah Rose Etter
Scribner, July 2023
(via Neon Literary)

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of houseless people bathing in the bay. Start-up burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets.
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, growing or shrinking in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever closer as the world around her unravels.
When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, RIPE portrays one millennial woman’s journey through our late-capitalist hellscape and offers a brilliantly incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

« Sarah Rose Etter is a wonder, and this novel is a knife to the heart. » —Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

« RIPE is exactly the kind of book I want to read: astoundingly bold, terrifically haunting, and deeply human. Etter refuses to pull any punches here, asking us to look directly at the nightmares we sometimes agree to live with in exchange for comfort and security. Reading this book felt like pressing repeatedly on a bruise; the most pleasurable kind of pain. Ripe is a dazzlingly gorgeous novel and Sarah Rose Etter is truly one hell of a writer. » —Kristen ArnettNew York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things

Sarah Rose Etter is the author of the chapbook Tongue Party and The Book of X, winner of a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. Her work has appeared in TimeGuernicaBOMB, the Bennington ReviewThe CutVICE, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residences at the Jack Kerouac House, the Disquiet International program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan in Iceland. She earned her BA in English from Pennsylvania State University and her MFA in fiction from Rosemont College. She lives in Los Angeles.