Harper Voyager Books

Richard Kadrey at the LA Festival of Books

Richard Kadrey, author of the acclaimed noir urban fantasies SANDMAN SLIM and KILL THE DEAD, will be at the LA Festival of Books this Sunday, May 1st!

1:00pm SIGNING at the Mysterious Galaxy Booth

3:00pm PANEL     Mystery: The Unexplained

-- Diana

BURN DOWN THE SKY on sale now!

James Jaros' gritty apocalyptic thriller is on sale now. Read an excerpt here and check out some of the early buzz:

“Takes the idea of the post-apocalyptic men’s adventure tale and turns it on its head, with the simple idea that it focuses on female leads...Jaros’s characters are not two-dimensional stereotypes or caricatures...With truly stand-out moments, BURN DOWN THE SKY never falters.”— Bruce Grossman of Bookgasm.com

"Never before have I read such a vivid, intense novel ... took my breath away." — Black Lagoon Reviews

“This grim fascinating futuristic thriller extrapolates present global trends to make a case that the reckoning point of no return for planet earth is soon...readers will appreciate James Jaros’ bleak cautionary tale as Sager and Evans sang in 2525, “...Now man’s reign is through.” — Harriet Klausner, Genre Go Round Reviews

“BURN DOWN THE SKY is one of those books I could not stop reading...Thinking about it, even now, makes my heart pound.” — Amanda Makepeace, Imagination Run Amok

Lois McMaster Bujold a Hugo Nominee!

We're thrilled to announce that Lois McMaster Bujold's latest Vorkosigan novel, Cryoburn, has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel! This is Lois's 9th nomination in the Best Novel category; she has won the award four times, for The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance, and our own Paladin of Souls (click through there to read a sample).

The Hugos are voted by the membership of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, this year to be held in Reno, August 17 --21.

Full list of Hugo Nominees

 

Now on-sale: PHOENIX RISING, Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris

Out now, the first Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novels, PHOENIX RISING, by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris. This very fun steampunk romp is a bit Sherlock Holmes, a bit the Avengers, and all fun.

These are dark days indeed in Victoria’s England. Londoners are vanishing, then  washing up as corpses along the Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences—the Crown’s clandestine organization whose bailiwick is the strange and unsettling—will not allow its agents to investigate. Fearless and exceedingly lovely Eliza D. Braun, however, with her bulletproof corset and a disturbing fondness for dynamite, refuses to let the matter rest . . . and she’s prepared to drag her timorous new partner, Wellington Books, along with her into the perilous fray.

For a malevolent brotherhood is operating in the deepening London shadows. And Books and Braun—he with his encyclopedic brain and she with her remarkable devices—must get to the twisted roots of a most nefarious plot . . . or see England fall to the Phoenix!

You can read the first several chapters of PHOENIX RISING.

Want more? Visit the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences itself.

The authors discuss what, exactly, is a peculiar occurrence at RT Book Reviews, while Pip Ballantine talks about gadgets as over on Steamed.

Be a part of Kim Harrison's world of the Hollows

Love Kim Harrison's Hollows series featuring Rachel Morgan? Here's your chance to be a part of it! She's looking for reader-submitted photographs to be included in THE HOLLOWS INSIDER (coming out this November)--the upcoming world guide with everything you ever wanted to know about the Hollows, plus a fabulous framing story.

Winners will have their photography featured within THE HOLLOWS INSIDER, and receive a signed page from her upcoming graphic novel BLOOD WORK.

All the information (including entry elibility and requirements) is here:
http://kimharrison.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/hollows-insider-photo-contest-2011/

-- Diana

Thoughts on Game of Thrones

Not having cable, much less HBO, I'm at a huge disadvantage when it comes to tv shows. Usually I discover a show about 3 years after it ends (Veronica Mars, The Wire), or a year before it ends (BSG), and then run around obssessed with it while friends and colleagues smile indulgently. 

So the hype about the HBO Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin's fabulous Age of Ice and Fire saga, was both fabulous and awful.  Fabulous, because the books are amazing, and the trailer felt right. Awful, because fantasy epics are so rarely done well on screen--for every LOTR there are 10 painful, sophomoric special effects sequences masquerading as stories.

I adore the books, but given precious little free reading time (not for work) and the scope/complexity of the saga, I'm pretty much waiting until the series is ended (and I have a loong vacation).  So I was coming in to the first episode with knowledge of the characters and their story arcs to come, but without having read the books in several years.

The cinematography is gorgeous, and I loved the opening sequences (of course, I also adore maps). This first episode, like the Lord of the Rings movies, hits exactly what epic fantasy should feel like--grand, sweeping, and epic. It's bigger than you can contain, stark terror and brutality besides honor and moments of beauty. We're barely into the series, but it gets the feel right--I want to make everyone who thinks fantasy is all pink and purple glitter unicorn sparkles watch this. 

The Philip K. Dick Awards will be announced tonight at Norwescon 34, and we have our fingers crossed for Sara Creasy's excellent SONG OF SCARABAEUS.

http://www.norwescon.org/PK-Dick-Award/

The Ministry of Peculiar Occurences

Like steampunk? The Avengers? Fun adventure romps?  We do, and if so we think you will love PHOENIX RISING: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurences novel by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris.

As an archivist for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurences, Wellington Books is most content when left alone to catalogue information and work on his beloved difference engine. Unfortunately when Miss Eliza D. Braun, a fiery field agent with a fondness for both dynamite and derring-do, ends up assigned to work with him, his tranquility is forever broken.

Secret societies, carriage chases and explosions are so very hard to catalogue properly, after all, to say nothing of a) Corsets! b) Mechamen! c) Skullduggery! d) Knife Fights d.1) at the Opera, no less! e) Orgies (sort-of)! f) And Conspiracies (lots)!

It’s enough to drive any decent archivist to something far stronger than tea, and that’s before matters of the heart make things even more complicated.

Check out the fabulous trailer.

 Read the first few chapters of PHOENIX RISING here.

HEIR OF NIGHT a finalist for two Sir Julius Vogel Awards!

We are so pleased to announce that Helen Lowe's The Heir of Night is a finalist for the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel -- and the map by Peter Fitzpatrick that appears at the front of the book is a finalist for Best Professional Artwork!

Philippa Ballantine's Geist is also up for Best Novel -- we here at Voyager know her as "Pip", co-author of our forthcoming Phoenix Rising.

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards celebrate New Zealand fantasy, science fiction and horror. The full list of finalists is here. To read a piece of either The Heir of Night or Geist, click through the links above. 

io9 Exposes how Megan Lindholm became Robin Hobb

Love Robin Hobb? Always been intrigued by the writing of Megan Lindholm?  Ever wonder how one talented author could write in two such lyrically different voices?

Well, io9 tells the tale -- and if you are like us, and can't wait for The Inheritance to come out On May 3, you'll love getting a sneak peak at the excerpts from two of the stories told within this gorgeous collection.  Click here to read!