Book Trailer: Low Town

The book trailer for Daniel Polansky’s debut novel Low Town: A novel will be released in the U.S. on August 16th by Doubleday and in the U.K. on August 18th by Hodder & Stoughton under the title The Straight Razor Cure. Read more about the book at the site of the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton.

Cover Art: Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

Jon Sullivan's cover art for Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon by Mark Hodder

Product Description:

"Burton and Swinburne's third adventure is filled with eccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and bizarre events completing the trilogy begun in the Philip K. Dick award nominated novel, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack."

Cover Art: New Spring

Cover Art for the eBook edition of New Spring by Robert Jordan created by Jason Chan

Interview: Brandon Sanderson

2011 Comic Con: Brandon Sanderson from Suvudu

Author Brandon Sanderson stopped by the Suvudu booth at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con to talk about his work on the Wheel of Time series, his forthcoming novel The Alloy of Law, and many other things.

Cover Art: Killing Rites

Killing Rite by M.L.N. Hanover will be published by Pocket Books on November 29th 2011.

Product Description:

Jayne Heller has discovered the source of her uncanny powers: something else is living inside her body. She's possessed. Of all her companions, she can only bring herself to confide in Ex, the former priest. They seek help from his old teacher and the circle of friends he left behind, hoping to cleanse Jayne before the parasite in her becomes too powerful.

Ex's history and a new enemy combine to leave Jayne alone and on the run. Her friends, thinking that the rider with her has taken the reins, try to hunt her down, unaware of the danger they're putting her in. Jayne must defeat the weight of the past and the murderous intent of another rider, and her only allies are a rogue vampire she once helped free and the nameless thing hiding inside her skin.

Progress Report: A Memory of Light

Brandon Sanderson has tweeted that the final Wheel of Time novel, A Memory of Light, is about one-third done. In a further Tweet, Sanderson confirms that he hopes to turn the book in to Tor in November this year. He's caught up with some material he worked on whilst working on the first leg of the final three books back in 2007-09, and the percentage completed bar on his website should move up significantly in the next week or so.

A Memory of Light is currently planned for release in November 2012.

This is one that I've been waiting to read for over a decade.  Let's pray it's as good as we all hope.

Cover Art: Under Heaven

Here is the cover art for the new trade edition of Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay.  Rather than the bright green cover of the original hardcover, this edition will sport a Tang Dynasty era painting.  It will also feature a Book Club readers guide.

Look for this edition to hit shelves in Canada in September 2011.

Panel: Game Of Thrones at Comic Con 2011

Book Trailer: Cinema of Shadows

Here is the book trailer for the novel Cinema of Shadows by Michael West. It plays out more like a film than a standard book trailer. There's even a 'twist' at the very end.

Awards: 2011 Rhysling Winners

This post has been revised from the original announcement. The Science Fiction Poetry Association has re-announced winners of the 2011 Rhysling Awards, originally presented on July 16, 2011, during Readercon 23 and corrected on July 23, 2011.

According to Mike Allen’s blog, “the original first and second place winners in the short category were both ineligible due to previous publication in 2009, facts that weren’t discovered until after the awards were first announced.” So, the final 2011 Rhysling Awards winners are as follows:

Short Poem

• First Place “Peach-Creamed Honey” by Amal El-Mohtar
• Second Place “Binary Creation Myth” by Karen A. Romanko
• Third Place “Dogstar Men” by C.S.E. Cooney

Long Poem Category

• First Place “The Sea King’s Second Bride” by C. S. E. Cooney
• Second Place “Dark Rains Here and There” by Bruce Boston
• Third Place “Wreck-Diving the Starship” by Robert Frazier

Merchandise: SimpleLight for the Kindle

Remember how cool Amazon’s Kindle 3 cover with the built-in reading light was when it first came out last summer? Rather than running on a battery, it draws power from the Kindle itself through the little prong that connects the cover to the device. Grantwood Technology has taken the idea a step further with the SimpleLight, a snap-on book light that does the same thing with significantly more flexibility.


It looks like a cool idea. Perfect for travel. I don’t like that it obstructs the buttons on the left edge, but I do love the idea that you never have to worry about loading it with batteries.

Price: US$22.99
Via: Grantwood store

Cover Art: Outcast Chronicles

Besieged by Rowena Cory Daniells

I just received an email from Solaris announcing new covers for Rowena Cory Daniells' new epic fantasy trilogy, The Outcast Chronicles, which are due out in 2012.

Awards: 2010 Shirley Jackson Winners

The 2010 Shirley Jackson Awards winners were announced on Sunday, July 17th 2011, at Readercon 22, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. The winners are as follows:

NOVEL

Mr. Shivers, Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)

Finalists:

• Dark Matter, Michelle Paver (Orion)
• A Dark Matter, Peter Straub (Doubleday)
• Feed, Mira Grant (Orbit)
• The Reapers Are the Angels, Alden Bell (Holt)
• The Silent Land, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Awards: 2009 Shirley Jackson Winners

The 2010 Shirley Jackson Awards winners were announced on Sunday, July 17th 2011, at Readercon 22, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. The winners are as follows:

NOVEL

Big Machine, Victor LaValle (Speigel & Grau)

Finalists:

• Last Days, Brian Evenson (Underland Press)
• The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters (Riverhead)
• The Owl Killers, Karen Maitland (Delacorte Press)
• The Red Tree, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Roc)
• White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi (Nan A. Talese) 

Bookshelves: Bookcase Booth

An ingenious bookcase-booth for Glocal Design Magazine

Clearly inspired by the Swollen Wall.

Watch a Bookstore Fill with Books

The next time you feel depressed about the future of authors, bookstores or publishing, watch the video embedded above from Half Price Books, How To Build a (New) Bookstore. This time-lapse video shows a bookstore being furnished and stocked from an empty warehouse into a customer-ready store. It’s enough to inspire any book lover.

“We are opening our 113th store on Thursday, and may we just say how grateful we are to be opening stores and not closing them (a thousand thank yous to our customers). To celebrate, we put together this fun video demonstrating all that goes into building and opening a new bookstore– a rare sight these days.”

Table of Contents: House of Fear

Solaris has posted the table of contents of their upcoming horror anthology House of Fear, edited by Jonathan Oliver. The book hits shelves this September in the U.S. and in October in the U.K.

Product Description:
The tread on the landing outside the door, when you know you are the only one in the house. The wind whistling through the eves, carrying the voices of the dead. The figure glimpsed briefly through the cracked window of a derelict house. Editor Jonathan Oliver brings horror home with a collection of haunted house stories by some of the finest writers working in the horror genre...

Cover Art: Sisterhood of Dune

Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson will be released in January 2012. The novel is the story of the foundation of the Bene Gesserit order so prevalent in the Dune universe.

Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle Complete

Christopher Paolini has announced the completion and delivery of the manuscript for the final book in the Inheritance Cycle. The book, Inheritance, hits shelves November 8th.