“The fast-paced and compelling 12th book in Butcher’s bestselling series (after 2009’s Turn Coat) is aptly titled. Beginning with the revelation that wizard detective Harry Dresden has a daughter, Butcher throws one high-stakes curveball after another at his hero. Harry’s ex-girlfriend, Susan Rodriguez, discloses young Maggie’s existence after vampire Red Court duchess Arianna Ortega kidnaps the child. Ortega holds Harry responsible for the death of her husband and is planning to offer Maggie as a human sacrifice. With a fragile peace in place between the Red Court and the White Council of wizards, Harry is unable to count on them for support in his rescue mission, and he must compromise almost everything he believes in to save his daughter. Butcher is deft at relieving some of the tension and grimness with bursts of gallows humor that keep readers coming back for more.” –Publishers Weekly

Few family feuds feature gem-studded automatons facing off against zombies, but this quirky short fantasy by Hugo-winner Bear (By the Mountain Bound) is the exception. When aging wizard Bijou the Artificer starts encountering people and animals infected with a flesh-decaying spell, she prepares for a long-delayed confrontation with her ex-lover, Kaulas the Necromancer. Each desires the allegiance of Brazen the Enchanter, Bijou’s former apprentice, and their weapons include Emeraude, a feral child raised by jackals. Bear provides a sympathetic portrait, drawn in part through Emeraude’s nonverbal perceptions, of a dedicated master coming to terms with the end of her life and determined to honor her commitments to the end. The vagueness of the (Persian? Turkish? Provençal?) setting distracts only a little from the exploration of love and loyalty at the core of this engaging tale. –Publishers Weekly

Southampton attorney Jackie Swaitkowski, a supporting character in Knopf’s Sam Acquillo series (Head Wounds, Two Time), takes center stage in this series debut as she is hired to help a man resolve an unpleasant domestic situation. His sister-in-law has moved into and taken over his house, convinced she’s the owner because she loaned her late sister money. But the case is not as simple as it appears. Jackie’s client is fatally run down, and when she’s hired to settle his estate, things turn really ugly as it becomes clear to the killer that Jackie is no pushover. VERDICT Readers, fasten your seatbelts for a roller-coaster ride as Knopf’s intelligent, savvy protagonist works her wiles solving whodunit and why. – Library Journal, Starred Review

Having survived the events of 2007’s Dust, the crew of the generation starship Jacob’s Ladder, marooned for centuries, find themselves once more racing though space. Unfortunately, the ship is badly damaged, large sections are out of communication with the central computer, and the highly augmented Exalt who rule the ship and its merely human occupants have lost the knowledge of how to select a destination. Antagonist Arianrhod is still alive, free, and a potential threat. Dealing with these problems involves epic journeys across a massive, poorly mapped spacecraft and confrontations with forgotten and suppressed relics of the past. Bear enhances the usual generation ship themes—social amnesia, decaying infrastructure, and mission-threatening grand calamities—with enough new flourishes, including a biotechnology-based class system and cruel experiments based on misapprehensions of Darwin, to keep readers happily engaged. –Publishers Weekly

Jay Lake’s Madness of Flowers, the sequel to 2006’s Trial of Flowers, is by far Lake’s best novel yet, a sustained accomplishment that would appear to signal a major advance in this talented and prolific author’s career….

Lake demonstrates impressive control as he juggles the action in Port Defiance, the far north, and the City Imperishable, deftly drawing his plot lines and his characters slowly back together, as a mysterious threat, the Eater of Forests, moves from enigmatic rumor to horrific reality. But what makes the novel memorable is the depth of characterization, the myriad relationships between the characters and the tangled roots of the emotions that bind them for good or ill.

–Paul Witcover, Locus Magazine (January 2010)

Guilt can be a powerful motivator. After lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski ignores a call from pesky client Sergey Pontecello, who is found dead hours later, she becomes obsessed with determining how the recently-widowed man died. Eventually, her investigation turns up a tangled mess of strange financial transactions, dysfunctional family relationships, a fatal hit-and-run, mysterious body parts, and an extortion plot—not to mention that Jackie herself is threatened with disbarment by various big-wigs who prefer to leave the dirt under the carpet. She’s aided by her best friend, engineer-turned-carpenter Sam Acquillo, and her ex-boyfriend Harry Goodlander, but it’s Jackie, persistent to the point of bull-headedness, who sweeps up the dirt and puts the pieces together. This spin-off features the same vividly evoked Hamptons setting and the same crisp prose, brisk plotting, and sharp dialogue as Knopf’s critically acclaimed Sam Acquillo series, but here center stage switches from ex-boxer and construction worker Acquillo to a resolute first-person female protagonist who was widowed in her 20s but likes living alone just fine. More engaging hard-boiled crime fiction from a rising star. — Booklist

Pot-smoking Jackie Swaitkowski, attorney to sleuthing Southampton carpenter Sam Acquillo (Hard Stop, 2009, etc,), gets a wild, wacky case of her own.

Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but few can rival Sergey Pontecello, his sister-in-law Eunice Wolsonowicz, and her daughter Wendy and adopted son Oscar, aka Fuzzy. His late wife’s sister has taken up residence in his home and won’t budge, Sergey tells Jackie; he wants to evict her. In a subsequent late-night phone call, he complains that Eunice has now locked him out of the master bathroom. Jackie soothes her client only to learn the next day that he’s been found dead, “pretty chewed up,” as Southampton Town cop Joe Sullivan puts it. In one pocket Pontecello is carrying Jackie’s business card, in another a severed nipple that turns out to have been the property of Edna Jackery, a scuba-shop bookkeeper and hit-and-run victim whose body parts have a disconcerting way of escaping the ministrations of family mortician Alden Winthrop III and his son Denny.

Clearly, Watson, these are deep waters, and although no case that kicks off with this kind of a bang can possibly maintain such a sublime level of invention, Knopf does his best to keep his motor-mouthed heroine from stealing the show. All in vain. Manic Jackie may have a law degree and a place in the Hamptons, but she’s still worthy kin to her more downscale Trenton sister Stephanie Plum.

–Kirkus Reviews

Lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski, Sam Acquillo’s friend, turns a brief contact with client Sergey Pontecello into a personal crusade in Knopf’s entertaining fifth mystery set in the Hamptons (after 2009’s Hard Stop). Hapless Sergey, whose battered body turns up one night in a Sagaponack street shortly after he retains Jackie, was involved in an unequal battle with his sister-in-law, Eunice Wolsonowicz, over the house he and his wife, Elizabeth, shared until her death. Eunice and Elizabeth’s family tree contains some pretty twisted limbs, and Jackie, who has limited respect for the speed of the law, presses her own investigation even after someone runs her off the road. Readers should be prepared for some shocks as body parts from an old hit-and-run victim occasionally pop up. While Knopf offers a vivid setting, sharp characterizations and devious plotting, Jackie’s starring role doesn’t entirely compensate for the bit part played by Sam, hitherto the series’ lead character. –Publishers Weekly

Congratulations to Jim Butcher for First Lord’s Fury (Codex Alera, Book 6) making #7 on the New York Times hardcover bestselling list!

And Princeps’ Fury (Codex Alera, Book 5) garnered #18 on the mass market bestselling list.

Bonus: This volume of Codex Alera comes with the long-awaited map, illustrated by Priscilla Spencer. Desktop wallpaper sizes available here.