Jennifer Jackson – Literary Agent

Pack of Lies by Laura Anne Gilman

Gilman follows 2010’s Hard Magic with another winning mix of snappy writing and a fun and intelligent story about crime-solving magic users. Bonita Torres loves working with Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigations (PUPI), but the team’s latest case, the attempted rape of a magical ki-rin’s human companion, has her on edge. The ki-rin killed one assailant and partially disemboweled the other, and everything looks simple until the survivor claims she was used as bait. Human/nonhuman relations are already unstable and could explode if PUPI can’t figure out what really happened. Riding on the case are a woman’s reputation, a man’s death, and the future of PUPI. Grabbing readers from the get-go, Gilman delivers style and substance with layers of mystery, science, politics, romance, and old-fashioned investigative work mixed with high-tech spellcraft. –Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

God’s War by Kameron Hurley

Readers will be fascinated by the setting of this slow-starting but compelling far-future debut. On a planet settled by Muslims and ravaged by constant war and pollution, Nyx, a former government-sponsored assassin or “bel dame,” gets by as a bounty hunter. Her assistant is the foreign magician Rhys, who can control the ubiquitous insects that drive the planet’s technology. When the government asks them to hunt down an off-worlder who possesses technology that could end the war, they find themselves facing off against foreign agents and their fellow bel dames. Hurley’s world-building is phenomenal, with casual references to insectile technology and the world’s history that provide atmosphere without info dumps. Far too many pages are spent introducing the characters, but the story is highly engaging once it starts, and Hurley smoothly handles tricky themes such as race, class, religion, and gender without sacrificing action. –Publishers Weekly

The White City by Elizabeth Bear

Hugo winner Bear (The Sea Thy Mistress) begins her new short novel with a deceptive catalog of steampunk clichés—alternate history, a plucky heroine, and the obligatory zeppelins—before veering in a radically different direction with a double-threaded detective story plot. Two murders in Moscow, one in 1897 and the other in 1903, are linked to a single woman. But this is no mere costumed crime story: the Tsarist police employ forensic sorcerers, and vampires and their elegant “courts” of human hangers-on are accepted members of society. The pace is brisk, the characters are well-realized, and the resultant delvings into darkness are certain to keep genre readers entertained to the end. The sole cause for disappointment is that things wrap up too quickly and easily, with limited exposure to the strange minds of Bear’s decidedly post-human vampires.

Diving Mimes, Weeping Czars and Other Unsusual Suspects by Ken Scholes

A mysterious voice, an alien songstress, a postapocalyptic Santa Claus, and a host of other bizarre creatures come together in Scholes’s lively, arresting and gleefully offbeat second short story collection (after 2009’s Long Walks, Last Flights), which equally startles with profound emotion and revels in absurd humor. In the brilliant “A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon,” a tearful ruler encounters a strange object and a young woman that bring both doom and renewal. “Invisible Empire of Ascending Light” concerns a violent contest to take the place of a dying god. “Four Clowns of the Apocalypse and the Mecca of Mirth” is a wide-eyed, bizarro-style caper involving the misadventures of four clowns in a wasted, radioactive America. By turns baroque, off-kilter, and haunting, Scholes’s writing will delight lovers of the unusual and wildly imaginative. — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

The House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia

Vimbai, who studies invertebrate zoology because of a fascination with horseshoe crabs, moves into the house on the beach in order to escape her Zimbabwean immigrant mother’s intensity; she finds something strange and beautiful. There are two roommates: Zach, who has a pocket universe where his hair should be, and Maya, who works in an Atlantic City casino. Vimbai’s dead grandmother haunts them, a ghostly presence who tells Zimbabwean children’s stories and does the dishes. When the house comes unmoored and drifts away to sea, Vimbai must bargain with ghostly horseshoe crabs, untangle the many and varied stories that have come loose in the vast worlds of the house, and find a way home. From Maya’s urban nightmares to Vimbai’s African urban legends, the house is filled with danger and beauty and unexpected magic. On one level, this is a reflection of ancient fairy tales and legends; on the other, it’s a perfectly straightforward tale of finding oneself in a bizarre world. Either way, Sedia’s prose is a pleasure, her story a lovely place to have spent time, even with the horrors her characters face. — Kirkus Reviews