This series is for helping you track down cool editions of your favorite books, be they special or international editions or what have you! (Available while supplies last, of course; I am not responsible for a fave selling out!))
Baggage by Alan Cumming (Signed UK Hardcover)
Untamed by Glennon Doyle (Signed US Hardcover) (Book of the Month)
Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby (Signed UK Edition)
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe (Deluxe Edition)
Unprotected by Billy Porter (Signed US Hardcover)
Today on the site, we’re revealing the cover to Aaron S Bentzel’s LifeBringer, officially closing out the fantasy western Prime Wranglers Saga with its release on April 12th! Here’s the story:
Cazo Briggs used to be somebody. He had a handsome boyfriend in Zee, and a legendary Prime who wanted to be his partner. And then it all fell apart at Echo Rock.
Now, defeated, Cazo and his allies seek refuge in the desert fortress of the Acanti people. But that is not all that they seek there.
The Acanti have a Prime that controls water, the scarcest and most vital element in the desert. They call it the LifeBringer, and now the Republic has their eyes on it.
The same Republic that drove Cazo out. The same Republic that forced his Redhand allies onto reservations and killed their sacred Primes. The same Republic that seduced his beloved Zee away from him.
Having fought the Republic before, Cazo and friends know what a relentless foe they can be. The only way to win a lasting peace in an independent West is to set the LifeBringer free. But can they convince the Acanti prince?
And without Zee, does Cazo still have the will to fight? Or will he yield to the doubts that hound him and lose the West for them all?
LIFEBRINGER is the stunning conclusion of the Prime Wranglers saga, a fantasy western set in a reimagined West. Here, powerful creatures known as Primes roam the frontier, and daring wranglers risk their lives to capture them.
And here’s the cover, designed by Ebook Launch (www.ebooklaunch.com)!
Buy it: Amazon
From Atlanta, GA by way of Albany, NY, Aaron has been writing books for the past 10 years. An omnivore when it comes to story, he takes inspiration from such diverse works as Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, daytime soap operas, and the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
When not curled up on his rattan chair with a 5-subject notebook on his lap, he can usually be found boiling water for tea, walking up and down the banks of the Chattahoochee River in his orange-billed baseball cap, or singing show tunes to himself in the bathroom mirror.
This blog series is for helping you track down cool editions of your favorite books, be they special or international editions or what have you! (Available while supplies last, of course; we are not responsible for a fave selling out!)
All That’s Left in the World by Erik J. Brown (Signed UK Edition)
Signed copies of C.B. Lee’s entire backlist
Cafe Con Lychee by Emery Lee (Signed US Hardcover)
Signed copies of Malinda Lo’s entire backlist
Man o’ War by Cory McCarthy (Signed US Hardcover)
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston (B&N Exclusive Edition) (Signed Exclusive UK Edition) (Indigo Exclusive Edition)
At the End of Everything by Marieke Nijkamp (US Edition w/signed bookplate and postcard)
The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes (Signed US Hardcover)
The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski (Illumicrate) (UK Edition, whose design matches the US hardcover of The Midnight Lie, though please note they have different trim sizes)
History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera (Deluxe Edition, with foreword by Becky Albertalli)
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (Waterstones Special Edition)
The First to Die at the End by Adam Silvera (Signed UK Edition)
Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu (Collector’s Edition)
Shatter the Sky by Rebecca Kim Wells (Signed US Hardcover)
The Temperature of Me and You by Brian Zepka (Signed US Hardcover)
Today on the site, I’m thrilled to reveal the cover of the upcoming graphic novel The Marble Queen, written by Anna Kopp and illustrated by Gabrielle Kari, which will be published in November by Dark Horse Comics! (It’ll be available in comic shops on November 9, 2022, and bookstores on November 22.) Here’s the story behind the Sapphic political fantasy:
The Marble Queen brings the political drama of Nimona together with the heartfelt romance of The Princess and the Dressmaker, now presented in a sapphic romance surrounded by a mist of magic.
Princess Amelia’s kingdom is in shambles after months of trade routes being ravaged by pirates. Now, the only option left to save it seems to be a marriage alliance. When Amelia gets an exorbitant offer from the royalty of Iliad—a country shrouded in mystery—she accepts without question and leaves her home to begin a new life. However, she lands on Iliad’s shores to find that her betrothed isn’t the country’s prince, but the recently crowned Queen Salira.
Shocked, Amelia tries to make sense of her situation and her confused heart: Salira has awakened strange new feelings inside her, but something dark hides behind the Queen’s sorrowful eyes. Amelia must fight the demons of her own anxiety before she can tackle her wife’s problems, all while war looms on the horizon.
And here’s the stunning cover by Gabrielle Kari!
Buy it: Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
Anna Kopp is a children’s author who lives in Ohio with her husband, two boys, and two cats. Anna loves creating fantastical stories for children of all ages, from picture books to young adult novels. When she’s not writing she’s playing video games or reading the latest books about lost princesses.
Gabrielle Kari is a freelance lesbian artist whose work is largely inspired by shoujo fantasy and romance. She loves creating comics and illustrations centered around queer stories whether it be science fiction, fantasy, or horror.
This series is for helping you track down cool editions of your favorite books, be they special or international editions or what have you! (Available while supplies last, of course; I am not responsible for a fave selling out!))
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (Signed UK Hardcover)
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake (Waterstones Exclusive Edition)
Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson (Signed UK Hardcover)
They by Kay Dick (McNally Edition)
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Illumicrate)
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi (Signed UK Hardcover)
Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James (Signed Exclusive UK Edition) (Signed US Hardcover)
The Romantic Agenda by Claire Kann (Signed US Paperback)
Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly (Book of the Month)
Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune (Signed UK Hardcover) (Indigo Exclusive Edition)
Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May (Signed UK Edition)
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (Hardcover Collectors’ Edition) (Book of the Month)
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Illumicrate) (Indigo Exclusive Edition)
Best Laid Plans and Better Than People by Roan Parrish (Signed US Paperbacks)
The Verifiers by Jane Pek (Book of the Month)
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (German hardcover)
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Book of the Month)
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers (Book of the Month)
Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski (Waterstones Special Edition)
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (B&N Exclusive Edition) (Special Edition)
Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So (Book of the Month)
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (Signed UK Hardcover)
Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon (and others) (Signed US paperbacks)
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (Waterstones Special Edition)
Today on the site I’m delighted to reveal the cover for yet another Neon Hemlock novella, Uncommon Charm by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver, which releases on May 17, 2022! Crowdfunding will begin on March 14th on Indiegogo as part of the 2022 Novella series crowdfunding campaign, so in anticipation of that, let’s get to the story:
In the 1920s gothic comedy Uncommon Charm, bright young socialite Julia and shy Jewish magician Simon decide they aren’t beholden to their families’ unhappy history. Together they confront such horrors as murdered ghosts, alive children, magic philosophy, a milieu that slides far too easily into surrealist metaphor, and, worst of all, serious adult conversation.
But wait, there’s more! Read on for an excerpt of Uncommon Charm by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver!
Chapter One
Three days after I was expelled from the Marable School for Girls, our poor Simon arrived. My mother told me to expect him, so when the bell rang, I opened the door onto a gloomy November sky, a gloomy November street, and a gloomy November of a boy. (And boy he was, only twenty years old to my sixteen.) He was short and nicely strong, wiry, with tanned cheeks and big dark eyes. Not at all like his father—but on second glance, there did lurk a spectre of Uncle Vee in his prettyish face, down which a raindrop gently rolled. He’d already doffed his hat; those slick curls of his would be ruined.“You’re Mr. Wolf,” I said. “Or is it Mr. Koldunov now?”
The car behind him hadn’t left yet. I saluted the Koldunovs’ driver, Tom, to let him know everything was well, he’d safely delivered the goods, he needn’t subject himself to the weather. Simon and I could surely handle his single, very sad suitcase. Tom returned my wave and drove away.
“Er,” said our guest. “Mr. Wolf will do. You’re Miss Selwyn-Stirling?”
“When I care to answer to it, but don’t call me miss around the Koldunovs. They’ll tease you, and not in the nice you’re-one-of-us-now way.”
“Thanks for the advice,” he said, and he continued to stand on our doorstep, looking about and letting himself be drizzled upon. I wondered why until I realised, oh no, he was waiting for me to invite him inside, at which point I decided I would walk to the moon and back for my new friend.
Grandly, I bowed him into the front hall. As he was taking off his wet things—he clutched his coat and hat until I nodded at the rack, strange boy, it was right there—Muv appeared on the first floor landing, at the top of the stairs.
You’d have thought Simon was a bird that’d biffed itself against a window instead of a student meeting his new mentor, though he wasn’t wrong to find Muv intimidating. From his point of view, I’d have seen not only a small, brisk woman whose bobbed auburn hair absolutely guillotined her jaw, whose freckles foxed her face like that rust on old books, whose black suit cut her body into clean ink lines, but the most ruthless magician England had ever borne. And she was a pretty ruthless mother, too.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wolf,” she said. “You may address me as Lady Aloysia, my lady, or ma’am.” It was her way of trying to set him at ease, laying out the protocol, only she was always so dreadfully blunt about answering questions you hadn’t asked. More embarrassing still, Simon’s nod became a strange half-bow.
“Oh, don’t,” I groaned.
“Julia will show you around the house.” Muv fixed an eye on me. “His room first, please. You will not make him haul his luggage everywhere. Is there more?”
Simon’s hands tightened around the handle. “No, ma’am. Just the one.”
“Very well. We will meet for dinner three hours from now. Do tell me whether I’ve correctly understood your dietary needs.”
“Muv, honestly, you needn’t be the lepidopterist pinning butterflies. You can ask him these things like you’re both human people.”
She gestured for me to take the suitcase. I hefted it before Simon could object.
“I—thanks, Miss Sel—er, Lady Aloysia, ma’am, no, it’s—” Simon grasped uselessly at the air. “Thanks, but you don’t have to do all that.”
Muv tapped her elbow. “I see. Julia, after you help Mr. Wolf get settled, please inform Beth the week’s menu may remain as it is. I asked,” she continued, both addressing him and chiding me, “because I would not put it past Madam Koldunova to serve you roast pork every day.”
“It was every other day,” said Simon.
Muv blinked down at him. He blinked up at her. Silence could be loud indeed. An entire three-second opera played out as I started to drag the suitcase upstairs.
Simon’s footsteps came in a flurry after me, and, generous girl that I was, I let him take charge of his own belongings. When we reached the second floor, he turned back with a perplexed look, but Muv had disappeared into her laboratory. He couldn’t have expected hugs and smiles, not from the Lady Aloysia Stirling, not with her reputation, though I knew for a fact he’d received colder welcomes: I had the whole of it from Marie and Adele Koldunova. After three weeks with the Koldunovs, Muv ought to seem downright tropical.
“Er,” Simon murmured, “did you see—?” Though I tilted my head, yes, do go on, he shuttered himself. “Never mind.”
“These games are unnecessary, you know. You don’t have to keep secrets, and you don’t have to doubt your eyes. I can help! I did grow up here. Muv never fails to keep a thread in her needle, not that I pay her magic any mind. It is so tedious when your mother always knows where you are and what you’re thinking, but you’ll find out soon enough. I didn’t see anything. What did you see?”
“A woman,” Simon said, startled into answering. “Not your mother, but tall and blonde. A bit, er, bony. And bleeding.”
“Oh, well. I should have expected you’d be a medium. Come along!” I bounded up the stairs. “The ghosts will wait.”
***
About the authors: Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver live in Saint Paul, Minnesota with their two small birds. Emily is a Twin Cities bookseller whose reviews have been published in The Riveter magazine. Find her on Twitter @eudaemaniacal. Kat’s short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Lackington’s, Timeworn Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She is a senior fiction editor at Strange Horizons. Her art can be found at kathrynmweaver.com and on Twitter @anoteinpink.Happy International Women’s Day! To celebrate, here are some great books that celebrate friendship, companionship, sisterhood, and other group dynamics among (primarily) women.
From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of The Gods of Tango, a revolutionary new novel about five wildly different women who, in the midst of the Uruguayan dictatorship, find one another as lovers, friends, and ultimately, family.
In 1977 Uruguay, a military government has crushed political dissent with ruthless force. In an environment where citizens are kidnapped, raped, and tortured, homosexuality is a dangerous transgression. And yet Romina, Flaca, Anita “La Venus,” Paz, and Malena–five cantoras, women who “sing”–somehow, miraculously, find on another and then, together, discover an isolated, nearly uninhabited cape, Cabo Polonio, which they claim as their secret sanctuary. Over the next thirty-five years, their lives move back and forth between Cabo Polonio and Montevideo, the city they call home, as they return, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow, or alone. And throughout, again and again, the women will be tested–by their families, lovers, society, and one another–as they fight to live authentic lives.
Buy it: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound
Keeping your magic a secret is hard. Being in love with your best friend is harder.
Alexis has always been able to rely on two things: her best friends, and the magic powers they all share. Their secret is what brought them together, and their love for each other is unshakeable—even when that love is complicated. Complicated by problems like jealousy, or insecurity, or lust. Or love.
That unshakeable, complicated love is one of the only things that doesn’t change on prom night.
When accidental magic goes sideways and a boy winds up dead, Alexis and her friends come together to try to right a terrible wrong. Their first attempt fails—and their second attempt fails even harder. Left with the remains of their failed spells and more consequences than anyone could have predicted, each of them must find a way to live with their part of the story.
Buy it: B&N | Amazon | IndieBound
Casey Plett’s 2018 novel Little Fish won a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award. Her latest work, A Dream of a Woman, is her first book of short stories since her seminal 2014 collection A Safe Girl to Love. Centering transgender women seeking stable, adult lives, A Dream of a Woman finds quiet truths in prairie high-rises and New York warehouses, in freezing Canadian winters and drizzly Oregon days.
In “Hazel and Christopher,” two childhood friends reconnect as adults after one of them has transitioned. In “Perfect Places,” a woman grapples with undesirability as she navigates fetish play with a man. In “Couldn’t Hear You Talk Anymore,” the narrator reflects on her tumultuous life and what might have been as she recalls tender moments with another trans woman.
An ethereal meditation on partnership, sex, addiction, romance, groundedness, and love, the stories in A Dream of a Woman buzz with quiet intensity and the intimate complexities of being human.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Arsenal Pulp Press
When Becca transfers to a high school in an elite San Francisco suburb, she’s worried she’s not going to fit in. To her surprise, she’s immediately adopted by the most popular girls in school. At first glance, Marley, Arianna, and Mandy are perfect. But at a party under a full moon, Becca learns that they also have a big secret.
Becca’s new friends are werewolves. Their prey? Slimy boys who take advantage of unsuspecting girls. Eager to be accepted, Becca allows her friends to turn her into a werewolf, and finally, for the first time in her life, she feels like she truly belongs.
But things get complicated when Arianna’s predatory boyfriend is killed, and the cops begin searching for a serial killer. As their pack begins to buckle under the pressure—and their moral high ground gets muddier and muddier—Becca realizes that she might have feelings for one of her new best friends.
Buy it: Amazon | IndieBound
This first book in a feminist space opera duology follows seven resistance fighters who will free the galaxy from the ruthless Tholosian Empire–or die trying.
When Eris faked her death, she thought she had left her old life as the heir to the galaxy’s most ruthless empire behind. But her recruitment by the Novantaen Resistance, an organization opposed to the empire’s voracious expansion, throws her right back into the fray.
Eris has been assigned a new mission: to infiltrate a spaceship ferrying deadly cargo and return the intelligence gathered to the Resistance. But her partner for the mission, mechanic and hotshot pilot Cloelia, bears an old grudge against Eris, making an already difficult infiltration even more complicated.
When they find the ship, they discover more than they bargained for: three fugitives with firsthand knowledge of the corrupt empire’s inner workings.
Together, these women possess the knowledge and capabilities to bring the empire to its knees. But the clock is ticking: the new heir to the empire plans to disrupt a peace summit with the only remaining alien empire, ensuring the empire’s continued expansion. If they can find a way to stop him, they will save the galaxy. If they can’t, millions may die.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | IndieBound
It doesn’t matter what the prize for the Sun City Originals contest is this year.
Who cares that’s it’s fifteen grand? Who cares about a gig opening for one of the greatest bands to ever play this town?
Not Dia, that’s for sure. Because Dia knows that without a band, she hasn’t got a shot at winning Sun City. Because ever since Hanna’s drinking took over her life, Dia and Jules haven’t been in it. And ever since Hanna left — well, there hasn’t been a band.
It used to be the three of them, Dia, Jules, and Hanna, messing around and making music and planning for the future. But that was then, and this is now — and now means a baby, a failed relationship, a stint in rehab, all kinds of off beats that have interrupted the rhythm of their friendship. No contest can change that. Right?
But like the lyrics of a song you used to play on repeat, there’s no forgetting a best friend. And for Dia, Jules, and Hanna, this impossible challenge — to ignore the past, in order to jumpstart the future — will only become possible if they finally make peace with the girls they once were, and the girls they are finally letting themselves be.
Rebecca Barrow’s tender story of friendship, music, and ferocious love asks — what will you fight for, if not yourself?
Danny didn’t know what she was looking for when she and her mother spread out a map of the United States and Danny put her finger down on Tempest, California. What she finds are the Grays: a group of friends who throw around terms like queer and witch like they’re ordinary and everyday, though they feel like an earthquake to Danny. But Danny didn’t just find the Grays. They cast a spell that calls her halfway across the country, because she has something they need: she can bring back Imogen, the most powerful of the Grays, missing since the summer night she wandered into the woods alone. But before Danny can find Imogen, she finds a dead boy with a redwood branch through his heart. Something is very wrong amid the trees and fog of the Lost Coast, and whatever it is, it can kill.
Buy it: Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
Every sorority has its secrets…
And college freshman Ginger Carmichael couldn’t care less. She has more important things on her mind, like maintaining her perfect GPA. No matter how much she can’t stand the idea of the cliques and the matching colors, there’s something about the girls of Alpha Beta Omega–their beauty, confidence, and unapologetic sexuality–that draws Ginger in. But once initiation begins, Ginger finds that her pledge is more than a bond of sisterhood, it’s a lifelong pact to serve six bloodthirsty demons with a lot more than nutritional needs.
Despite her fears, Ginger falls hard for the immortal queen of this nest, and as the semester draws to a close, she sees that protecting her family from the secret of her forbidden love is much harder than studying for finals.
It has been a year since the mysterious godsgem cured Cadrium’s king and ushered in what promised to be a new golden age. The heroes who brought the gem home are renowned in story and song, but for two fellows on the quest, peace and prosperity do not come easily.
Apprentice Knight Kalanthe Ironheart wasn’t meant for heroism this early in life, and while she has no intention of giving up the notoriety she has earned, her reputation does not pay her bills. With time running out, Kalanthe may be forced to betray not her kingdom or her friends, but her own heart as she seeks a stable future for herself and those she loves.
Olsa Rhetsdaughter was never meant for heroism at all. Beggar, pick pocket, thief, she lived hand to mouth on the city streets until fortune–or fate–pulled her into Kalanthe’s orbit. And now she’s quite reluctant to leave it. Even more alarmingly, her fame has made her recognizable, which makes her profession difficult, and a choice between poverty and the noose isn’t much of a choice at all.
Both girls think their paths are laid out, but the godsgem isn’t quite done with them and that new golden age isn’t a sure thing yet.
In a tale both sweepingly epic and intensely personal, Kalanthe and Olsa fight to maintain their newfound independence and to find their way back to each other.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It’s the highest honor they could hope for…and the most cruel.
But this year, there’s a ninth girl. And instead of paper, she’s made of fire.
In this lush fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most oppressed class in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards still haunts her. Now, the guards are back, and this time it’s Lei they’re after–the girl whose golden eyes have piqued the king’s interest.
Over weeks of training in the opulent but stifling palace, Lei and eight other girls learn the skills and charm that befit being a king’s consort. But Lei isn’t content to watch her fate consume her. Instead, she does the unthinkable–she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens the very foundation of Ikhara, and Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide just how far she’s willing to go for justice and revenge.
TW: violence and sexual abuse.
In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself—and Marie—to a danger all too real.
Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject—classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity.
In this novel told in dual narratives, New York Times-bestselling author Robin Talley weaves together the lives of two young women connected across generations through the power of words. A stunning story of bravery, love, how far we’ve come and how much farther we have to go.
A reimagining of Little Women set in the spring of 1942, when the United States is suddenly embroiled in the second World War, this story, told from each March sister’s point of view, is one of grief, love, and self-discovery.
In the spring of 1942, the United States is reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor. While the US starts sending troops to the front, the March family of Concord, Massachusetts grieves their own enormous loss: the death of their daughter, Beth.
Under the strain of their grief, Beth’s remaining sisters fracture, each going their own way with Jo nursing her wounds and building planes in Boston, Meg holding down the home front with Marmee, and Amy living a secret life as a Red Cross volunteer in London–the same city where one Mr. Theodore Laurence is stationed as an army pilot.
Each March sister’s point of view is written by a separate author, three in prose and Beth’s in verse, still holding the family together from beyond the grave. Woven together, these threads tell a story of finding one’s way in a world undergoing catastrophic change.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | IndieBound
An epic graphic novel about a girl who travels to the ends of the universe to find a long lost love, from acclaimed author Tillie Walden.
Throughout the deepest reaches of space, a crew rebuilds beautiful and broken-down structures, painstakingly putting the past together. As Mia, the newest member, gets to know her team, the story flashes back to her pivotal year in boarding school, where she fell in love with a mysterious new student. When Mia grows close to her new friends, she reveals her true purpose for joining their ship—to track down her long-lost love.
An inventive world, a breathtaking love story, and stunning art come together in this new work by award-winning artist Tillie Walden.
Today on the site, we’re revealing the cover for the Greek mythology-inspired PI noir fantasy (yes, all of those things!) No Gods for Drowning by Hailey Piper, releasing September 20th from Polis Books! Here’s the story:
IN THE BEGINNING, MAN WAS PREY.
WITHOUT THE GODS, THEY’LL BE PREY AGAIN.
The gods have fled. Monsters threaten to invade the city of Logos, hunting mankind as they did in the olden days. In the midst of it all, a serial killer has begun ritually sacrificing victims—to lure the gods back and stop the imminent destruction, or for a more sinister purpose?
Lilac Antonis wants to stop the impending destruction of her city by summoning her mother, a blood god—even if she has to slit a few throats to do it. But evading her lover Arcadia and her friends means sneaking, lying, and even spilling the blood of people she loves.
Alex and Cecil of Ace Investigations have been tasked with hunting down the killer, but as they close in—not knowing it is their close friend they’re hunting—the detectives realize the gods may not have left willingly, and must uncover the truth before Lilac summons the wrong god, who may have come back just to destroy them all.
Set in an alternate reality which updates mythology to near-modern day, NO GODS FOR DROWNING is part hunt for a serial killer, part noir detective story, and unlike anything you’ve ever read before.
Here’s the luminous cover, designed by Mimi Bark!
Preorder: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
And finally, here are some words on the cover from author Hailey Piper!
This might sound a little cliché, but my breath caught in my throat when I first saw the cover to No Gods for Drowning from my editor at Polis Books and Agora. We were only playing with ideas and possibilities before, batting around images for inspiration. And then came the cover, and it grabbed onto me the moment I opened that email, rich with mood and elegance.
And honestly, I cried a little. This novel has been growing inside me for the longest time. Its first seeds came when I was only a teenager, and they hadn’t connected into much of anything yet. Really, I hadn’t connected to myself yet. I had a lot of growing up to do, with struggles through depression that often suffocated the creativity out of me. Only after many years and really allowing myself to just be myself could I start writing my truths, and these seeds at last sprouted. They weren’t a garden, but pieces of one big tree that sort of developed into a genre stew of mystery, noir, horror, and dark fantasy.
No Gods for Drowning follows multiple lives across a noir-punk dark fantasy world of killers and detectives, sea monsters and blood-drinking gods. Those gods used to protect and feed off mankind, but they’ve been gone for ten years when the novel picks up, and one woman decides the only way to bring them back is to remind them what they’ve been missing—mortal sacrifice. Doing this means dodging the suspicions of the woman she loves and their friends, a pair of detectives on the hunt for whoever’s behind these ritual killings. But what seems like a simple give and take of blood and gods grows more complicated as the clues point to a grander plot involving which gods could even return, why they left, and who might really be pulling the strings behind all this bloodshed.
That’s a lot to consider when it comes to cover art! But the ultimate result arrives not in a roar of waves about to drown the city where No Gods for Drowning takes place, but instead in the beautiful texture of this deep blue sea, and the clamshell patterns to remind of its life, and the moon above that guides the cycles of a merciless tide. Central to it all is the nine-pointed star of Logoi the Many-Headed, goddess of reason, seen beneath the title. You’ll find this same star painted in blood within the book, same as our private detectives find it glaring at them from every crime scene. It’s also important to several characters personally, be it their shame, their loved ones, their sense of abandonment, their unresolved trauma, or their hope for a brighter future against the bloodshed and doom surrounding them all.
The combination of sea and star form a perfect distillation of the book’s sense of mystery, its visceral horrors, and its fantastical elements too. I’m so pleased to see it all come together this way, and I can’t wait for readers to discover the drowning city and all the people trying to save it, in the best and worst of ways, when No Gods for Drowning releases this September from Polis Books!
***
Two-time Stoker nominee Hailey Piper is the author of The Worm and His Kings, Queen of Teeth, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, and Benny Rose the Cannibal King. She is an active member of Horror Writers Association, with over sixty short stories appearing in publications such as Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Flash Fiction Online, Dark Matter Magazine, and elsewhere. Hailing from the haunted woods of New York, she now lives with her wife in Maryland, where their paranormal investigations are top secret. Find Hailey at www.haileypiper.com or on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays.
What’s Left of the Night by Ersi Sotiropoulos, translated into English from Greek by Karen Emmerich (1897)
The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher (1919)
The Last Nude by Ellis Avery (1927)
The Book of Salt by Monique Truong (1929)
The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert (1941)
Bonus: For a more recent historical set in France but not Paris, check out Lie With Me by Philippe Besson, translated into English from French by Molly Ringwald (1984)
As I prepare this post on December 5, 2021, I have just tweeted about The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake and found that waaaay too many people either don’t know about it, or don’t know how great it is, or don’t know that it’s a contemporary reimagining of Twelfth Night, or that it’s full of found family and the most stunning, lyrical writing. So consider this my shoving it in your face and saying READ IT because it is just so absolutely beautiful and even though it might make you cry, you won’t be sorry.
The Larkin family isn’t just lucky—they persevere. At least that’s what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great-grandmother didn’t drown like the rest of the passengers. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine, the town Violet and Sam returned to every summer.
But wrecks seem to run in the family: Tall, funny, musical Violet can’t stop partying with the wrong people. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life.
Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment, Violet is haunted by her family’s missing piece-the lost shipwreck she and Sam dreamed of discovering when they were children. Desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric, lain hidden in a watery grave for over a century.
She finds a fellow wreck hunter in Liv Stone, an amateur local historian whose sparkling intelligence and guarded gray eyes make Violet ache in an exhilarating new way. Whether or not they find the Lyric, the journey Violet takes-and the bridges she builds along the way-may be the start of something like survival.
Epic, funny, and sweepingly romantic, The Last True Poets of the Sea is an astonishing debut about the strength it takes to swim up from a wreck.
Buy it: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound
