Weekly Bestsellers, 5 August 2024
The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves & China Miéville (Del Rey) debuts on all four print lists compiled here, ranking among the top ten on three of them.
The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves & China Miéville (Del Rey) debuts on all four print lists compiled here, ranking among the top ten on three of them.
Three titles debut this week, most prominently Deborah Harkness’s The Black Bird Oracle (Ballantine), fifth book in her All Souls series that began with A Discovery of Witches in 2011. It ranks among the top ten on the four print lists compiled here. Also debuting: Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword (Viking), on three lists, and Stephen Graham Jones’s I Was a Teenage Slasher (Saga), on two.
Two books debut in the top ten on lists at New York Times and Publishers Weekly this week. Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop (Bramble) ranks #7 and #6 respectively, on fiction hardcover lists. And Tricia Levenseller’s The Darkness Within Us – second in a trilogy, following The Shadows Between Us, being released at monthly intervals by Feiwel & Friends – is #1 and #4 respectively, on young adult lists.
A new fantasy novel by K.X. Song, The Night Ends with Fire (Ace), debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #10 on the Publishers Weekly list.
Meanwhile, Powerless and Powerful by Lauren Roberts have disappeared from New York Times‘ Young Adult Hardcover list, after ranking there for many weeks. With the publication of a third book in that series, Reckless, NYT has combined them into a single entry
Echo of Worlds, M. R. Carey (Orbit 978-0316504690, trade paperback, 512pp, $19.99) June 2024
I pled for the author’s and publisher’s mercy in my review of the first captivating book in this series—Infinity Gate—begging for a quick sequel. Well, about fourteen months later, a reasonable interval, here we are. Prayers answered!
I also mentioned then that Infinity Gate was billed as the first book in a series. ...Read More
Read moreTomi Adeyemi’s Children of Anguish and Anarchy (Henry Holt), third and concluding volume in the author’s Legacy of Orisha series, debuts on two lists, ranking #1 on Publishers Weekly‘s Children’s Frontlist Fiction list.
Pulsifer: a Fable, Wm. Michael Mott (Spatterlight Press 978-1619474918, trade paperback, 306pp, $16.95) Jan 2024
Land of Ice, a Velvet Knife, Wm. Michael Mott (Spatterlight Press 978-1619474932, trade paperback, 306pp, $16.95) Feb 2024
It is very seldom—perhaps almost never—that one opens up one’s copy of the Sunday New York Times and discovers that the lead article in the Magazine section is devoted to a still-living author whose roots ...Read More
Read moreGhost of the Neon God, T. R. Napper (Titan 978-1803368115, hardcover, 128pp, $17.99) June 2024
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and, arguably, 1984 can serve as the birthday of the cyberpunk genre as well or better than any adjacent year. I think at this point, we can cease debating about the nature of cyberpunk, its utility and whether it’s here ...Read More
Read moreThe latest Mercy Thompson novel by Patricia Briggs, Winter Lost (Ace), debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #12 on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly lists.
Two fantasy novels debut this week: Carissa Broadbent’s The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King (Bramble), Book 2 of the Nigthborn Duet; and K.A. Linde’s The Wren in the Holly Library (Entangled: Red Tower Books). Both rank on the NY Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly lists, as high as 5th and 6th places, respectively.
Bumped out of first place by the latest John Grisham novel, Stephen King’s You Like It Darker: Stories ranks #2 on the three lists it debuted on last week, and debuts at #8 on the LA Times list this week.
As anticipated, Stephen King’s new collection, You Like It Darker: Stories debuts on print lists this week, ranking #1 on three of the four compiled here.
Stephen King’s new collection, You Like It Darker: Stories (Scribner), published last week, still ranks respectfully on the three Amazon lists today; look for it on print bestseller lists next week.
Escape Velocity, Victor Manibo (Erewhon Books 978-1645660842, hardcover, 368pp, $28.00) May 2024
The Jacobean Revenge Tragedy is a mode not unprecedented in SF. The instance that comes most readily to mind is Bester’s The Stars My Destination, modeled on one of the most famous such, The Count of Monte Cristo. And now, with Victor Manibo’s sophomore novel, the field gets another vivid enactment of injustices avenged. Except ...Read More
Read more» NY Times, 10 May: Talking to Leigh Bardugo, Fantasy Superstar (audio interview hosted by Gilbert Cruz)
» Esquire, Jonathan Russell Clark, 7 May: Why We Love Time Travel Stories, discussing Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time and others
» NY Times, Amal El-Mohtar, 8 May: The Teenage Witches Are Growing Up, subtitled “New books by H.A. Clarke, Robert Jackson Bennett and Micaiah Johnson.”
» NPR, Caitlyn ...Read More
Read moreTwo books debut prominently on lists this week. Mai Corland’s Five Broken Blades (Entangled: Red Tower Books), first in a series by an author who also publishes as Meredith Ireland, debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #3 on the NY Times fiction hardcover list. And Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time (Simon & Schuster/Avid Reader Press) debuts on four lists, ranking as high as #11 on the same
The Downloaded, Robert J. Sawyer (Shadowpaw Press 978-1989398999, trade paperback, 199pp, $14.95) May 2024
It’s a testament to Robert Sawyer’s skill—and his generational wisdom—that he has created, with his latest book, a novel that is at once exuberantly old-school and utterly au courant. It reads like Greg Egan rebooting Neil R. Jones’s Professor Jameson cycle. This book exemplifies the “best of both worlds” approach that charts a viable future ...Read More
Read moreLost Ark Dreaming, Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Tordotcom 978-1250890757, hardcover, 192pp, $19.99) May 2024
Thrillers confined to a single stage set or venue have an admirable lineage. One has only to think of the original Die Hard film or David Morrell’s novel Creepers to provide strong examples. In SF, this approach is often conflated with the Big Dumb Object trope: let’s explore Ringworld or Rama. James Cambias’s The Scarab Mission ...Read More
Read moreLauren Roberts’s Powerful (Simon & Schuster), set in the world of earlier novel Powerless, debuts on three lists this week, ranking as high as #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover list.
Stephen King’s next book, You Like It Darker: Stories (Scribner), due May 21, ranks this morning on the three Amazon lists compiled here.
I Cheerfully Refuse, Leif Enger (Grove 978-0802162939, hardcover, 336pp, $28.00) April 2024
Brian Aldiss famously coined the label “cozy catastrophe” to designate such books as John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, wherein civilization crumbles, but our protagonist manages to carve out a relatively safe and rewarding existence for himself and his posse, a harbor from the storm. Aldiss characterized the plot and atmosphere of such novels ...Read More
Read moreSlipping only a bit in the rankings, Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar remains among the top 10 fiction hardcovers on all four print lists compiled here.
A View from the Stars, Cixin Liu (Tor 978-1250292117, hardcover, 224pp, $27.99) April 2024
Most authors segregate their fiction from their non-fiction, compiling the two classes of work into separate collections. I always recall one exception I read as a teen, a minor Frederik Pohl volume titled Digits & Dastards, which featured two essays along with the stories. And I suppose that Harlan Ellison’s inclusion of long anecdotal ...Read More
Read moreIn Universes, Emet North (Harper 978-0063314870, hardcover, 240pp, $26.99) April 2024
I never would have predicted that the fantastika genre would be graced in 2024 with a novel that resonated so vibrantly with two classics from the 1970s: Joanna Russ’s The Female Man and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. And yet that is precisely the vibe that I feel confident in proclaiming emanates from Emet ...Read More
Read moreLeigh Bardugo’s standalone fantasy novel The Familiar (Flatiron) debuts strongly, ranking #1 or #2 on all four print lists compiled here. Further down the lists is one other debut: Hannah Whitten’s The Hemlock Queen (Orbit), second in her Nightshade Crown series, ranking as high as #14 on the NYT list.
Three titles debut on lists this week. Kelly Andrew’s Your Blood, My Bones (Scholastic) ranks #9 on the New York Times‘ Young Adult Hardcover list; F.T. Lukens’s Otherworldly (McElderry) is #10 on the same list; and Jennifer Thorne’s Diavola (Tor Nightfire) is #114 on the USA Today list.
Stephen Graham Jones’s The Angel of Indian Lake (Saga), third in his Indian Lake Trilogy, debuts on two lists this week.
The third book in Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series, Onyx Storm (Entangled: Red Tower Books), is now available on the Amazon sites for pre-publication sales — it will be published Jan. 21, 2025. This morning it ranks #1 on Amazon.com and Amazon Canada, #10 on Amazon UK.
Those Beyond the Wall, Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey 978-0593497500, hardcover, 384pp, $28.99) March 2024
It seems safe to say that the evergreen SF trope of a high-tech city or culture besieged by low-tech outsiders or “barbarians” goes back at least to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) with its depiction of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Of course, Wells had myriad historical examples to inspire his conception, ...Read More
Read moreJay Kristoff’s Empire of the Damned (St. Martin’s), sequel to his Empire of the Vampire (2021), debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #4 on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly lists.
Meanwhile, just as editions of Frank Herbert’s Dune have returned to bestseller lists in recent weeks, the trade paperback of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem ranks on several lists today, as high as #7 on the
The Morningside, Téa Obreht (Random House 978-1984855503, hardcover, 304pp, $20.00) March 2024
Is the New Weird still a going concern? Dating roughly from the turn of the century (China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station is the Monolith that enlightened the hominid readers), with the term itself harking to the year 2002 (courtesy of M. John Harrison), the subgenre with famously leaky borders and hazy definitions is approaching its 25th birthday. ...Read More
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