A is for Abraham

It seems appropriate to begin the New Year with an ABC (for those of us who celebrated the Yule so . . . enthusiastically, that they’ve managed to mislay, for the moment, the neurons that deal with such matters). And so, in the finest traditions of children’s television, these are Orbit UK’s new releases for January . . .

A is for Abraham, whose Long Price Quartet has garnered extraordinary praise from the great and good of the literary world – not least, this fulsome endorsement from Junot Diaz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Literature:

‘Daniel Abraham is one of the reasons the fantasy genre continues to haunt my dreams. Abraham is fiercely talented, disturbingly human, breathtakingly original and even on his bad days kicks all sorts of literary ass . . . If you are meeting him for the first time I envy you: you are in for a remarkable journey.’

Orbit is delighted to be publishing Daniel Abraham‘s Long Price novels – A Shadow in Summer, A Betrayal in Winter, An Autumn War & The Price of Spring – in two omnibus editions: Shadow and Betrayal & Seasons of War. You can read extract from Book One here.

Get an extract of Pamela Freeman’s FULL CIRCLE, HERE

As Darren said in his round-up, the fantastic final volume of Pamela Freeman’s beautifully written Castings Trilogy is now here.  Full Circle (UK I ANZ I US) is a tremendous read, set in a troubled land of warlords and outcasts where the echoes of past atrocities taint the present. The Eleven Domains were forged in blood a thousand years ago and old wounds have been reopened as a ghost army marches to avenge ancient wrongs. But don’t just take our word for it, read a free extract HERE and check out just some of the praise we’ve had, below.

Plus, we have our fingers crossed for Pamela this weekend, as her illustrated children’s book Victor’s Challenge is on the shortlist for its category at the prestigious Australian Aurealis Awards.

PRAISE FOR THE CASTINGS TRILOGY

  • ‘Lots of great ideas … A very effective fantasy debut’
    — BookGeeks.co.uk
  • ‘Sometimes, a jewel rises to the top … I loved reading Blood Ties’
    — Grasping for the Wind
  • ‘Freeman shies away from simplistic morality, building elegantly well-rounded characters’
    — Publishers Weekly
  • ‘A rich and magical world where insurgency is definitely brewing’
    — Romantic Times
  • ‘Blood Ties has the feel of Ursula le Guin’s fantasy novels … a wonderfully satisfying series’
    — Aurealis Xpress
  • ‘An impressively different fantasy novel’
    — Sydney Morning Herald
  • ‘There is nothing predictable about Freeman’s storytelling … I was completely hooked’
    — Good Reading Magazine

And see Blood Ties (bk 1, UK I ANZ I US) and Deep Water (bk 2, UK I ANZ I US) here too:

 

Mr. Shivers is here!

Robert Jackson Bennett’s stunning debut novel is finally here!

Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review and said that Mr. Shivers “read[s] like a collaboration between Stephen King and John Steinbeck… Bennett makes dark fantasy feel like gritty realism, achieving a rare laconic eloquence that will captivate horror readers hungry for new voices.”

Not to be outdone, Library Journal also gave it a starred review saying: “Readers who liked Neil Gaiman’s American Gods will find similar themes here, while the setting and bleak inevitability invoke a more readable Cormac McCarthy. Compelling and truly horrifying, this debut novel is highly recommended for all”

Amazon picked for their Best Books of the Month saying: “Sprinkled with hobo folklore, Bennett’s supernatural dust storm of a debut offers a killer premise and may remind readers of vintage Stephen King.”

And The Guardian in the UK weighed in with another stellar review: “Mr Shivers is a startling début, a deft amalgam of thriller, cerebral horror and American gothic, written with a stark and artful simplicity that complements the examination of struggling humanity pushed to its limits”

Find out more at www.mistershivers.com.

Let them eat (Orbit) cake!

Here at Orbit we work very hard to publish the most exciting Science Fiction and Fantasy for the widest possible readership, remaining committed to publishing writers we believe to be exceptional in the best possible way. But did you know we take our food just as seriously?

Recently, as a thank you to our Sales team for supporting us so enthusiastically throughout the year, we put our baking mitts on to produce this tasty Orbit-themed cake.

And for a certain editor’s birthday not so long ago we produced this sugary treat . . . based on the axe awarded to the authors shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy.

We’d love to see any SFF-themed cakes that you’ve come up with, or perhaps you have an idea about what theme you’d like to see in cake form? Robocake anyone? Dark Lord’s dessert? Elvish eccles? We’ll see what the Orbit catering team can come up with, and if our creation is up to scratch it may just appear on the site in a few weeks time!

An Extract from Charlie Huston’s My Dead Body

In case you hadn’t noticed, vampires are very much the In Thing at the moment, pretty comfortably dominating the worlds of literature, television and movies. Yes, indeed – with a twinkle in the eye and a disturbingly pointy smile, the debonair bloodsuckers are doing very nicely, thank you.

With one exception: Joe Pitt. Joe’s not doing so well, as it happens. (more…)

A Great Year for Historical Fiction

MEMO FROM THE PUBLISHER IN CHIEF, NTROPBOOKS, JANUARY 31, 2110.

It was, I am pleased to report, another great year for historical fiction.  The bestseller charts over the last twelve months have been dominated by Alrick Moloney’s saga about the life and times of a typical British family in the years between 2050 and 2090, entitled Floods, Earthquakes, Solar Flares,  Suburban Riots and School Fees. And this year’s Booker Prize winner Why My Life Lacks Quiddity  by Martin Amis was a tour de force realist exploration of the angst and anomie experienced by a middle class family in Islington after becoming infected by the zombie plague and was written, of course, by a third generation cyborg reincarnation of the son of the great novelist Kingsley Amis.  (more…)

Nun With A Gun!

Well, if that headline doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.

I’m absolutely delighted to announce that Orbit has agreed a three-book World Rights deal with Simon Morden for three superb future noir thrillers.  Simon has been the editor of the BSFA’s writers’ magazine Focus, a judge for the Arthur C Clarke Award and is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics – not many SF writers have held a chunk of Mars in their hands!  He is also the author of the acclaimed YA novel The Lost Art. Let me assure you, though, that there’s nothing ‘Y’ about these books – they’re all ‘A’!

Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom are set in the Metrozone – a dystopian future London – and feature protagonist Samuel Petrovitch: a Russian émigré with a smart mouth, a dodgy heart and a dodgier past. He’s brilliant, friendless, cocky and – even in a world where the No. 1 rule is ‘don’t get involved’ – stands out as a selfish, miserable b*****d.

The books are fast-paced, wise-cracking, action-packed romps through the overcrowded, decaying urban jungle of a not-so-distant future, featuring – amongst many other ingredients – exiled yakuza, Russian gangsters, gang warfare, virtual reality and a two-metre-tall warrior-nun packing an unfeasibly large automatic pistol. If these books don’t get your adrenaline pumping, you don’t have any!

We’ll publish in the UK, Commonwealth and US in the second quarter of next year – clear a space in your reading schedule.

Cover Launch – The Map of All Things

My lords, ladies and gentlemen . . .

At this midpoint of the first month of the first year of the second decade of the twenty-first century, I declare 2010 to be the International Year of the Sea Serpent. 

And in celebration of said august occasion, I bid you all behold: The Map of All Things!

The Map of All Things

Very nice, isn’t it?  We certainly think so, and so does international bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson, who described it as ‘absolutely breathtaking’. 

Coming soon: a sneak preview of the fantastic new cover style for The Edge of the World mass market paperback . . .

How a Story Works

Stories are interesting things. Trying to figure out how they work has been one of the more pleasant obsessions of my recent (and so far, brief) life.

I used to think that a story was just a chain of events, arranged and presented in a manner meant to be interesting to the reader. This was back when my thinking process was pretty rudimentary. I still thought No Fear shirts were cool, for example. My concept of stories was limited mostly to “How does A get from point B to point C?” I pretty much thought of them as a math problem, but with interesting setpieces and maybe, if I was lucky, some sex.

But at some point in time this changed. (more…)

Available now, your extract of Ian Irvine’s THE DESTINY OF THE DEAD

Ian Irvine has been impressing with his latest mighty trilogy, as you can see from SFX’s review for The Destiny of the Dead, the fabulous conclusion to The Song of the Tears books:

‘Thanks to Irvine’s light prose and insane sense of entertainment the story fairly flies off the page … Even the ending doesn’t let up — the series of dastardly twists leave you frazzled and you’re grateful for the warm fuzzy feeling on the last page. For sheer excitement there’s just no one else like Irvine around at the moment’

But Ian Irvine is no stranger to great reviews, as these comments on previous books show:
‘ Epic, non-stop action adventure’ — Starburst
‘An intense story … a worldbuilding labour of love with some truly original touches’ — Locus
‘A page-turner of the highest order … Irvine can now consider himself comfortably ranked next to the works of Robert Jordan and David Eddings. Formidable’ — SFX

And to find out what all the fuss is about, click HERE for your Destiny of the Dead extract.