Today on the site, we welcome CT Liotta, who’s revealing the cover of his upcoming novel No Good About Goodbye, releasing November 24, 2021 from St. Ire Press/Rot Gut Pulp! Here’s the story behind this coming-of-age thriller/action-adventure pulp:
Fifteen-year-old Ian Racalmuto’s life implodes when his older brother vanishes and his mother, a vodka-drunk spy, dies in a military uprising in Algiers.
Forced to live with his cantankerous grandfather in Philadelphia, Ian has seven days to find his brother and locate a smartphone that could start a war – all while adjusting to life in a troubled urban school and dodging assassins sent to kill him.
Ian soon meets William Xiang – an undocumented immigrant grappling with poverty, a tough family, and hateful classmates. The boys find they make a formidable team. Together they resist school bullies, thwart sociopathic killers, and design a heist at the State Department to foil World War III.
An even greater problem lurks, however: one of the boys has a crush on the other. Will it ruin their friendship and roll up their mission?
CT Liotta was born and raised in West Virginia before moving to Ohio for college, where he earned a degree in biology. He now uses Philadelphia as his base of operations. You can find him the world over.
A younger member of Generation X, Liotta takes interest in writing, travel, personal finance, and sociology. He likes vintage airlines and aircraft, politics, news, foreign affairs, science, classic film, ’80s pop culture and ’40s pulp and film noir. He can be reached on Twitter @CTLiotta and at www.CTLiotta.com.
You may remember Lindsay Smith from one of my favorite bi YA thrillers, A Darkly Beating Heartor her excellent queer historical story in A Tyranny of Petticoats. Well, now she’s back with something entirely different but still wildly queer, and we get to reveal the cover! The Shadow War is a new YA fantasy releasing on October 13th from Philomel/Penguin, and it’s pitched as Inglorious Basterds meets Stranger Things, which !!! Here’s the official blurb:
World War II is raging, and five teens are looking to make a mark. Daniel and Rebeka seek revenge against the Nazis who slaughtered their family; Simone is determined to fight back against the oppressors who ruined her life and corrupted her girlfriend; Phillip aims to prove that he’s better than his worst mistakes; and Liam is searching for a way to control the portal to the shadow world he’s uncovered, and the monsters that live within it–before the Nazi regime can do the same. When the five meet, and begrudgingly team up, in the forests of Germany, none of them knows what their future might hold.
As they race against time, war, and enemies from both this world and another, Liam, Daniel, Rebeka, Phillip, and Simone know that all they can count on is their own determination and will to survive. With their world turned upside down, and the shadow realm looming ominously large–and threateningly close–the course of history and the very fate of humanity rest in their hands. Still, the most important question remains: Will they be able to save it?
And here’s the electrifying cover, designed by Kristie Radwilowicz!
Fires raged, purple and blue and savage, flowing like liquid through the trees. The sky glowed with unnatural light against a swallowing gulp of darkness. And in the distance, a column of flaming stones soared skyward—a pillar. Shadows circled it like giant bats, impossibly long wings scraping against one another in their jagged dance.
Daniel shrank back, pulse racing. What had happened to his world, his life? The wings beat louder, threatening to drown out his thoughts. “What have you done to me?”
“To you? Not a damn thing. In fact, I think we might be able to help each other.”
Daniel turned toward him. Liam smiled so easily, as if his earlier black rage had never happened. He’d said the rules were different here, without explaining, yet, where here was.
Liam appeared to be in total control. He was confident—calm, even—despite the strangeness surrounding them. He was just an ordinary college student, a little disheveled, though nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a hot bath. His tweed jacket, his satchel, his tidy leather loafers—nothing about him hinted he could unleash hell from his palm.
But Daniel was used to monsters that wore the plainest faces.
In the distance, something howled, slavering and cruel.
“What is this place?” Daniel asked again, though he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know the answer.
“This,” Liam said, “is how we’re going to win the war.”
***
Lindsay Smith is the author of Sekret and other novels for young adults. She writes for Serial Box’s Marvel’s Black Widow: Bad Blood, Orphan Black: The Next Chapter, and The Witch Who Came In From the Cold. She has also written for comics, RPGs, and more. She lives in Washington, DC, where she works in international cybersecurity.
