Jennifer Jackson – Literary Agent

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

Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee

A tourist town in Maine hosts a war of faerie magic in this engaging urban fantasy. The fireworks begin when Kate Archer returns to Archers Beach, Maine, to search for her vanished grandmother, Bonny Pepperidge, and to assume Bonny’s role as Guardian of Fun Country, an amusement park whose carousel animals are actually exiled fae criminals. Almost immediately, Kate runs afoul of neighbor Joe Nemeier, a drug smuggler who sets his assassins after her. Then she learns from the local earth spirits that Bonny may have discovered the whereabouts of Kate’s mom, newly escaped form a pursuing demonic captor. Lee brings these disparate subplots together in a pyrotechnic finale that plays out magically behind the ordinary facade of smalltown Maine life, evoking much of the romance and magic of her popular Liaden series. — Publishers Weekly

Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

Eleven tales, 2002-2010, complete with author’s notes and chronology, embellishing the exploits of Chicago’s Harry Dresden, licensed PI and professional wizard, ranging from an apprentice piece written two years before the Dresden Files series achieved liftoff to an unpublished novelette set hours after the end of Changes (2010).

All the regular cast members feature­Bob the Skull, long-suffering Karrin Murphy of the Chicago PD, Harry’s vampire half-brother Thomas, Molly the apprentice, Harry’s werewolf allies Billy and Georgia­as Harry (or, occasionally, somebody else) fends off attacks from an ever-lengthening list of evil supernatural entities. Jenny Greenteeth of the sidhe, for instance, abducts Billy the Werewolf’s bride to be, Georgia. Harry helps Thomas combat another vampire, while gleefully demolishing a shopping mall. A young wife turns out to have been abducted by a son of Grendel the monster (it’s breeding time). Poor Harry tries to take a day off, only to get involved with psychic parasites, as Molly sets his lab on fire. Another tale stars Thomas, with Harry convinced that his magically disguised brother is the bad guy. A renegade priest threatens a former Knight of the Cross. Enchanted beer paradoxically brings Murphy and Dresden together while forcing them apart. Finally, there’s the splendid, aforementioned original novella. In all, the book is of no great depth, but it’s witty, fast-moving and well worked-out. Butcher’s yarns go along with the standard supernatural repertory while providing enough twists to keep things fresh and intriguing.

Sidelights on the Dresden mythos, which no true fan will want to miss.

Kirkus, Starred Review

The Bone Palace (The Necromancer Chronicles) by Amanda Downum

In a spectacular freestanding sequel to 2009’s The Drowning City, Downum jumps a few years forward to find forensic necromancer Isyllt Iskaldur investigating the death of Forsythia, a young prostitute with stolen royal jewelry sewn into her clothes, in the haunted city of Erisin. As Isyllt follows the trail of death and theft to the sewers and their vampiric inhabitants, Savedra Severos, the crown prince’s beautiful transgender mistress, struggles to defeat assassins and unravel plots involving her own uncle and a demonic sorceress mysteriously allied with Isyllt’s mentor and former lover, the spymaster Kiril. Finely drawn characters love and betray with enthralling passion and pain, and the taverns and gardens of plague-ridden Erisin and the titular ruined palace at its center make a dark and richly detailed background for this complex and bloody tale of sorcery, madness, and intrigue. –Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Also available: The Drowning City (The Necromancer Chronicles)