Jennifer Jackson – Literary Agent

Bone and Jewel Creatures by Elizabeth Bear

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

Short Squeeze by Chris Knopf

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

Chill

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

Madness of Flowers by Jay Lake

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)

Short Squeeze: A Mystery

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