14 more SF/F books to check out this July

I'm having some serious FOMO this month with the coming of San Diego Comic Con. When I was working for a bunch of outlets, I'd see people roll their eyes about attending, but I always loved the energy and excitement of the crowds, the cosplay, and the entire experience. It's a fun time, and I hope that I'll get back someday.

Fortunately, there are a bunch of books – 14 of them – hitting stores in the later half of the month to distract me. Here's the first list for July, and as always, you can see prior lists via the Book List tag.

Here are 11 new SF/F books to check out this July!

Stories space truckers, witches, zombies, and more to add to your TBR

Transfer OrbitAndrew Liptak

The Martian Chronicles Deluxe Collector's Edition by Ray Bradbury (July 15th)

Ray Bradbury's classic fixup novel The Martian Chronicles turned 75 earlier this year, and William Morrow has put together a special edition (ahem) of the book. It features sprayed edges, and new full-color, printed endpapers. It's a handsome edition for one's bookshelf.

Black Brane by Michael Cisco (July 22nd)

A bedridden man escapes from his pain by going into his own memories. He had once worked for the Temporary Institute for the Study of Holes, a think tank that studied black holes, physics, and the occult, where he worked with a range of eclectic individuals.

While going back through his memories, he meets them again in a strange trip that comes together in a story of trippy social and quantum entanglement.

Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon (July 22nd)

A scavenger named Wylla has found herself in dire straits: her ship is in need of repair and business hasn't been all that busy lately. She needs a big job, and jumps at the chance when word goes out that there's some sort of advanced tech to be found on a neighboring planet.

That tech happens to be an advanced prototype mask that fused itself to the body belonging to Sable Alzian, whose consciousness was uploaded into it before she died, and now, the company that made it will stop at nothing to get it back.

Publishers Weekly says "Haddon channels his heroines’ strange double consciousness through narration that cycles between second person and first-person plural, creating a dizzying effect."

Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield (July 22nd)

The Sharp family has traditionally possessed the Second Sight. One of their members, Kit, is in Paris, France, where he's studying the Bayeux Tapestry and carrying on with an affair with a woman named Evelyn Larsen. He, like his father before him, thinks that the tapestry was made before 1066, and that it might have some elements that predict the future.

The Nazi Party is also fascinated with the tapestry as they begin to take over Europe: they're convinced that it'll help with their goal of taking over Great Britain. Meanwhile, Ivy Sharp has joined the Special Operations Executive and uses her powers of perception to aid a dangerous mission into France.

The Deepest Fake by Daniel Kalla (July 29th)

Liam Hirsch is the CEO of a major AI company, and it's a job that's given him and his family plenty of advantages and comforts. Everything comes crashing down when he discovers that his wife has been unfaithful and soon thereafter, he's been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

As this happens, something strange is happening in his company, things that are making him question everything in his life. He turns to a private investigator named Andrea DeWalt for help untangling a conspiracy that threatens to unravel his life.

Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying "Kalla mines contemporary anxieties about technology for a shocking and emotionally satisfying tale that continually defies expectations."

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw (July 22nd)

This is a dark academia novel set in The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted, an academy for dangerous magical users, and promises the potential for redemption and normal life, if they can graduate. Alessa Li is kidnapped and enrolled in the school, and has to survive the school's horrifying graduation ceremony, where the faculty devour the students, and to survive, Alessa and her classmates will have to figure out how to trust one another.

Kirkus Reviews calls it a "secret history that toys with the mythos of dark academia while reveling in its excesses."

The Bloodless Queen by Joshua Phillip Johnson (July 8th)

In the 1980s, half of the world is fenced off to create a nature preserve called the Harbors, and in 1987, the world's leaders called on humanity to celebrate, only for something terrible to happen: more than 132,000 people died, turning into strange fae-like creatures that wrecked havoc before vanishing into the Harbors. Each autumn equinox saw the same thing happen: the dead transform and flee.

Fast-forward to the modern day, and two government workers named Evangeline and Calidore work to fix the Harbor fences and spend their remaining time with their young daughter, Winnie. When that year's equinox approaches, the pair discover a vast conspiracy that stretches across the world, forcing them to confront everything they've known for their entire lives.

Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying "Balancing the dizzyingly high-concept worldbuilding are the very human relationships at the story’s center. Johnson’s writing perfectly fits his unfettered tale, lyrical and lilting at moments and skittering wildly at others."

Killer on the Road / The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones (July 15th)

Back in the day, genre publishers packaged two short novels or novellas together into a single volume. Finish one book, flip it over, and read the other one. Saga Press is doing that with two new novellas from horror author Stephen Graham Jones: Killer on the Road and The Babysitter Lives.

In The Babysitter Lives, a high school babysitter is watching the Wilbanks twins. She's hoping for a quiet night: put the kids to bed and prepare to take the SATs. Her last job went poorly when the child wandered off, and this time, she's making sure that won't happen. But the house is strange and has a history, and it soon becomes clear that she's not alone in the house. In The Killer on the Road, a 16 year old girl named Harper runs away from home, but her friends, sister, and ex stop her from hitchhiking by staging a road trip. That trip goes sideways when they encounter a serial killer who's been trawling the road for years.

Kirkus Reviews calls it "a one-two punch of grindhouse horror from one of the craft’s most inventive practitioners."

Echoes of Silence: A Frontlines Novella by Marko Kloos and Robin Kloos (July 15th)

I'm a big fan of Marko Kloos' Frontlines series: they're excellent and fun military science fiction. While the main series has effectively ended and he's been working on a spinoff (Evolution, with Scorpio out now and Corvus coming next month), he's returned to the series with a novella, Echoes of Silence. This one takes place not from Andrew Grayson's perspective, but from his wife Halley's POV. Andrew and the mission to the Capella system goes missing (during Orders of Battle and Centers of Gravity), she has to come to terms with the thought that he might never come back home again.

A Covenant of Ice by Karin Lowachee (July 29th)

The final installment of Karin Lowachee's Crowns of Ishia trilogy is here. I really dug the first book, The Mountain Crown, and need to get to the second, The Desert Talon, soon.

In this installment, Havinger Lilley has reunited with his lover, Janan, and he's hoping to recover from the experience of being bonded to the soul of a King Dragon. That bond has taken over, and he's now compelled to return to the frozen northlands that was once his friend Raka's home, towards a confrontation that could kick off another war.

Revealing Karin Lowachee’s The Mountain Crown

A Q&A with one of my favorite writers

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It Was Her House First by Cherie Priest (July 22nd)

Years ago, silent film star Venita Rost inhabited a mansion on the side of a cliff. She's since passed, but her spirit lives on, claiming countless lives over the years. She trapped her nemesis, Inspector Bartholomew Sloan, who's had to watch her evil deeds play out, unable to stop them.

When Ronnie Mitchell, a distraught woman who bought the house unseen, arrives to begin renovating the place, she's unaware of its past, but her presence begins to stir up the dust and memories. When a man arrives with an unexpected connection to the house, it sets everyone on a path of violence and death.

Publishers Weekly says "Finding fresh angles on a familiar premise, Priest delivers an eccentric haunted house thriller with plenty of surprises up its sleeve."

Minds in Transit by Joan Slonczewski (July 29th)

In this followup to Joan Slonczewski's Brain Plague, the city of Iridis is one of wonders: its rulers recycle valuable gems to the Underworld, intelligent machines perform complicated tasks and pilot ships, and scientists and artists have their minds expanded with microbial enhancements. One artist, Chrysoberyl of Valedon, uses her microbes to paint amazing installations and design smart buildings, and she's just had a world-sized AI commission her to build a city on another planet.

But when flaws creep into her designs and criminals invade her brain to take over her microbes. It's part of a growing movement that's beginning to undermine Iridis, a threat that the city's leaders ignored for too long.

The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai (July 29th)

Kiana "Key" Strade is a talented archeologist who can delve deep into blood memories, but rather than lead her temple, she'd rather conduct research for the Museum of Human Memory and stay out of the spotlight.

Her friend Valerian IV serves as her body guard to protect her from rivals, and needs the job so she can support her family. Everything gets upended when Key discovers a memory that departs from the official history, and Vale realizes that they're in for serious problems. As Key begins losing moments of time and becomes obsessed with her search for answers, they make a stunning discovery and one that serves as a betrayal for the two of them – they have to make the decision to stand by their work and lives, or remain complicit with some long-held secrets.

Publishers Weekly says "Tsai subtly brings the details of a brutal world to light across two distinctly different social milieux: the formal manipulations of Key’s family and colleagues, and the jocular if violent world of Valerian and her fellow guardians. The result works both as postapocalyptic adventure and a meditation on the nature of history, told with remarkable richness and depth."

The Memory of the Ogisi by Moses Ose Utomi (July 15th)

Moses Ose Utomi concludes his Lies of the Ajungo trilogy (preceded by The Lies of the Ajungo and The Truth of the Aleke) with The Memory of the Ogisi. The City of a Thousand Stories sits at the edge of the Forever Desert, and while it's endured much since its founding, its inhabitants are prosperous.

Yet nobody can remember the city's past, and a historian named Ethike has been trying to uncover the story of a figure from its past, Osi. While he thinks that Osi's story might be able to tell him more about his home city, what he finds only raises more questions. When Ethike heads into the Forever Desert to find Osi's tomb, he discovers a power that's been buried in the sands for an eternity, one that wants to escape.

Library Journal gave the book a starred review, saying that "this is the close of a great epic and a beautiful but terrible-to-hear story about oppression, repression, suppression, and the discovery of truths that only lead to more terrible lies."

As always, let me know what catches your eye, and what you've been reading lately.