THE MASK OF MIRRORS by M.A. Carrick

Darkly magical and beautifully imagined, THE MASK OF MIRRORS is the unmissable start to the Rook & Rose trilogy, a rich and dazzling fantasy adventure in which a con artist, a vigilante, and a crime lord must unite to save their city.

THE MASK OF MIRRORS
(Rook and Rose, Book 1)
by M.A. Carrick
‎ Orbit, January 2021
(via JABberwocky)

Nightmares are creeping through the city of dreams . . . Renata Virdaux is a con artist who has come to the sparkling city of Nadezra – the city of dreams – with one goal: to trick her way into a noble house and secure her fortune and her sister’s future. But as she’s drawn into the aristocratic world of House Traementis, she realises her masquerade is just one of many surrounding her. And as corrupted magic begins to weave its way through Nadezra, the poisonous feuds of its aristocrats and the shadowy dangers of its impoverished underbelly become tangled – with Ren at their heart.

“Utterly captivating. Carrick spins an exciting web of mystery, magic, and political treachery in a richly drawn and innovative world.” ―S. A. Chakraborty, author of The City of Brass

“Wonderfully immersive—I was unable to put it down.” ―Andrea Stewart, author of The Bone Shard Daughter

Book 2: THE LIAR’S KNOT (Orbit, December 2021)
An unmissable fantasy collaboration by two renowned authors in which a con artist returns to the city that betrayed her, determined to have her revenge—only to find that her fate might be to save it.

M.A. Carrick is the joint pen name of Marie Brennan (author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent) and Alyc Helms (author of the Adventures of Mr. Mystic). The two met in 2000 on an archaeological dig in Wales and Ireland — including a stint in the town of Carrickmacross — and have built their friendship through two decades of anthropology, writing, and gaming. They live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SWEEP OF STARS de Maurice Broaddus

The first in a trilogy that explores the struggles of an empire. Epic in scope and intimate in voice, it follows members of the Muungano empire – a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretches from O.E. (original earth) to Titan – as it faces an escalating series of threats.

SWEEP OF STARS
by Maurice Broaddus
‎ St. Martin’s Press, February 2023

The Muungano empire strived and struggled to form a utopia when they split away from old earth. Freeing themselves from the endless wars and oppression of their home planet in order to shape their own futures and create a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretched from Earth and Mars to Titan. With the wisdom of their ancestors, the leadership of their elders, the power and vision of their scientists and warriors they charted a course to a better future. But the old powers could not allow them to thrive and have now set in motion new plots to destroy all that they’ve built. In the fire to come they will face down their greatest struggle yet. Amachi Adisa and other young leaders will contend with each other for the power to galvanize their people and chart the next course for the empire. Fela Buhari and her elite unit will take the fight to regions not seen by human eyes, but no training will be enough to bring them all home. Stacia Chikeke, captain of the starship Cypher, will face down enemies across the stars, and within her own vessel, as she searches for the answers that could save them all. The only way is forward.

“Powerful, sweeping Afrofuturist space opera…. A hugely ambitious and notable work of postcolonial science fiction. This takes the genre in an exciting and challenging direction.”―Publishers Weekly, starred review

Maurice Broaddus is a fantasy and horror author best known for his short fiction and his Knights of Breton Court novel trilogy. He has published dozens of stories in magazines and book anthologies, including in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Black Static, and Weird Tales.

QUANTUM PHYSICS MADE ME DO IT de Jeremie Harris

An exploration of cutting-edge physics and the implications that the scientific theory has for who we are and how our society should be structured.

QUANTUM PHYSICS MADE ME DO IT
by Jeremie Harris
Penguin Canada, May 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

The discovery of quantum mechanics has paved the way to just about every important innovation in the last half century. It has led us to the technology that powers microwaves, iPhones, and self-driving cars and is about to trigger a computing revolution that will either spell the end of the human species or propel us to heights we’ve never imagined.
Without question, quantum mechanics is the single most successful scientific theory in human history. And, contrary to popular belief, it is also one of the simplest — you don’t need to know math, have fancy degrees or be buried in a mountain of student loans to understand it.
But there’s another reason that quantum mechanics is so important: it is really the only way we can understand ourselves and each other. For the last hundred years or so, physicists have been feverishly debating what quantum theory has to say about you: what you’re made of, whether you have free will, what will happen to you when you die, and much more. Are human beings immortal? Are apples conscious? Do our legal systems make assumptions about free will that are just plain wrong?
QUANTUM PHYSICS MADE ME DO IT is an amusing, irreverent exploration of our most successful scientific theory and the implications it has for who we are and how our society should be structured. In a disarming and amusing tone, it presents the reader with intuitive, battle-tested and high-school friendly explanations of these otherwise intimidating topics. It illustrates these concepts with “kets” – the glorified doodles used by physicists themselves as explanatory tools – to painlessly break down deep questions that are hotly debated to this day within the quantum physics community, and which have implications for human self-perception, law, and social structure.

“Jeremie Harris has the uncanny ability to make the most esoteric, theoretical science not just understandable — but incredibly engaging. I am fairly certain that nobody else could have explained quantum physics to me in a way that gave me a solid and deep understanding of the processes at work — enough that I could turn around and teach them to someone else. And like the best professors, Harris is compulsively captivating, funny, and engrossing. This isn’t a lecture; it’s entertainment that feeds the brain.” — Jodi Picoult, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Book Of Two Ways

Jeremie Harris received a Master’s in Physics from the University of Toronto in 2013. His academic research in quantum mechanics has been featured in many of the top peer-reviewed journals in physics including Nature Physics, Physical Review Letters and Optica. For his research, he was awarded the Vanier Scholarship, Canada’s most prestigious graduate research award, equivalent to the Rhodes or Fulbright scholarships in the UK and US. In 2016, after completing most of a PhD studying the foundations of quantum mechanics, Jeremie founded an artificial intelligence startup which eventually became SharpestMinds, a mentorship program for aspiring machine learning and AI specialists. With over 500 alumni and $15 million in new salaries created, it’s the world’s first profitable income share program, and they’ve gone on to raise funds from top Silicon Valley investors. Jeremie hosts the official podcast of Towards Data Science, a Medium publication with over 20 million monthly views, focused on AI, machine learning and the future of humanity. He is 30 years old.

AMERICAN MERMAID de Julia Langbein

The Pisces by way of Emily St. John Mandel or Karen Russell meets The Snow Child and The Need, AMERICAN MERMAID is by turns both a comic and fabulously insightful tale of two female characters in search of truth, love and self-acceptance as they move between worlds without giving up their voices.

AMERICAN MERMAID
by Julia Langbein
‎ Doubleday, Spring 2023
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

Penelope Schleeman, a consistently broke Connecticut high school teacher, is as surprised as anyone when her sensitive debut novel, American Mermaid—the story of a wheelchair-bound scientist named Sylvia who discovers that her withered legs are the vestiges of a powerful tail—becomes a bestseller. Penelope soon finds herself lured to LA by promises of easy money to co-write the American Mermaid screenplay for a major studio with a pair of male hacks. As the studio pressures Penelope to change American Mermaid from the story of a fierce, androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clam bra, strange things start to happen. Threats appear in the screenplay draft; siren calls lure people into danger. When Penelope’s screenwriting partners try to kill Sylvia off entirely in a bitterly false but cinematic end, matters off the page escalate. Is Penelope losing her mind, or has her mermaid come to life, enacting revenge for Hollywood’s violations?

Julia Langbein (BA, Columbia University, 2003; PhD, University of Chicago, 2013) held a postdoctoral fellowship in Art History at Oxford University from 2014-2018 and is currently a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin, where she is writing a book about how generational conflict and changing ideas of old age have shaped modern art. Her monograph, Laugh Lines: Caricaturing Painting in Nineteenth-Century France, which brings to light a brilliant subculture of comic criticism and argues for its importance in the development of modernist painting, will be published in March 2022 by Bloomsbury Visual Art and has received outstanding advance praise from senior scholars (“impeccably researched,” “engaging,” “essential”). Langbein, a sketch and standup comedian for many years, was the author of the viral comedy blog The Bruni Digest (2003-2007), which reviewed New York Times critic Frank Bruni’s restaurant reviews every week. She has since written about food, art and travel for Gourmet, Eater, Salon, Frieze and other publications.

HARPY de Caroline Magennis

An essay by academic and writer Caroline Magennis on the choice of a childless life available to women today, and the structures that condemn women who make an active choice not to be parents.

HARPY
by Caroline Magennis
Icon Books UK, Spring 20224
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Whilst roughly one in five women are intentionally childless, the media is fascinated by the topic – whether Jennifer Aniston being rumoured to announce an adoption at the Friends reunion, or the use of derogatory terms like ‘crazy cat lady’ or ‘spinster’. The idea that women could choose a childless life seems to be anathema, but it’s an increasing fact, that each generation has more childless women than the last, with reasons ranging from more economic freedom for women, to the desire to prioritise career, or friendships. So why is it still so taboo? In her new book HARPY, academic and writer, Caroline Magennis invites us to meditate on the privileges of this choice and to question the structures that condemn women who make an active choice not to be parents.

Caroline Magennis, originally from Portadown, Co. Armagh, is an academic and writer based in Manchester. Her essays on Northern Irish fiction have been featured in books published by Cambridge, Oxford, Palgrave and Routledge and her second book, Northern Irish Fiction After The Troubles: Affects, Intimacies, Pleasures, was published by Bloomsbury in August 2021. Her writing has appeared in The Independent, Prospect Magazine and The Irish Times. She has chaired literary festival events and is regularly invited to give lectures for academic and public audiences.