Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.
by Mike Resnick
Cover and interior illustrations by J. Seamas Gallagher
Promo copy:
The epic, adventure-filled ‘Wild West’ meets Steampunk’ adventure continues. It’s August 1884. The consumptive Doc Holliday is preparing to await his end in a sanitarium in Leadville, Colorado, when the medicine man Geronimo enlists him on a mission. The time the great chief has predicted has come, the one white man he’s willing to treat with has crossed the Mississippi and is heading to Tombstone – a young man named Theodore Roosevelt. The various tribes know that Geronimo is willing to end the spell that has kept the United States from expanding west of the Mississippi. In response, they have created a huge, monstrous, medicine man named War Bonnet, whose function is to kill Roosevelt and Geronimo and keep the United States east of the river forever. And War Bonnet has enlisted the master shootist John Wesley Hardin. So the battle lines are drawn: Roosevelt and Geronimo against the most powerful of the medicine men, a supernatural creature that seemingly nothing can harm; and Holliday against the man with more credited kills than any gunfighter in history. It does not promise to be a tranquil summer.
by Allen Steele
Cover by Paul Young
Promo copy:
Jamey Barlowe has been crippled since childhood, the result of being born on the Moon. He lives his life in a wheelchair, only truly free when he is in the water. But then Jamey’s father sends him, along with five other kids, back to the Moon to escape a political coup d’état that has occurred overnight in the United States. Moreover, one of the other five refugees is more than she appears.
Their destination is the mining colony Apollo.
Jamey will have to learn a whole new way to live, one that entails walking for the first time in his life. It won’t be easy and it won’t be safe. But Jamey is determined to make it as a member of Lunar Search and Rescue, also known as the Rangers. This job is always risky but could be even more dangerous if the new US president makes good on her threat to launch a military invasion. Soon Jamey is front and center in a political and military struggle stretching from the Earth to the Moon.
by Tom Lloyd
Cover by Todd Lockwood
Promo copy:
The final reckoning has come. The future of the Land will be decided now, written in the blood of men.
After his pyrrhic victory at Moorview, King Emin learns the truth about the child Ruhen. Powerless to act, he must mourn his friends and watch his enemy promise a new age of peace to the beleaguered peoples of the Land. While the remaining Menin troops seek revenge, daemons freely walk the Land, and Ruhen’s power grows, a glimmer of hope remains.
One final, desperate chance for victory remains and failure has become unimaginable. The fanatical rulers of Vanach hide a secret at the heart of their nation; a weapon so terrible only a dead man could wield it and only a madman would try, but without it Narkang will be obliterated. The past year has taken a grave toll and Ruhen’s millenniaold plans are about to bear terrible fruit. There can be only one outcome if he continues unchecked: total dominion over the Gods themselves.
by Paul Crilley
Cover by Cliff Nielsen
Promo copy:
An alternate 1895… . A world where Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace perfected the Difference Engine. Where steam and Tesla-powered computers are everywhere. Where automatons powered by human souls venture out into the sprawling London streets. Where the Ministry, a secretive government agency, seeks to control everything in the name of the Queen.
It is in this claustrophobic, paranoid city that seventeen-year-old Sebastian Tweed and his conman father struggle to eke out a living.
But all is not well.
A murderous, masked gang has moved into London, spreading terror through the criminal ranks as it takes over the underworld. As the gang carves up more and more of the city, a single name comes to be uttered in fearful whispers.
Professor Moriarty.
When Tweed’s father is kidnapped by Moriarty, Tweed is forced to team up with information broker Octavia Nightingale to track him down. But he soon realizes that his father’s disappearance is just a tiny piece of a political conspiracy that could destroy the British Empire and plunge the world into a horrific war.
by Dave Freer
Cover by Paul Young
Promo copy:
The rip-roaring steampunk adventure for young adults continues in this exciting new story with an environmental conscience. Tim Barnabas is a submariner from the Cuttlefish, a coal-fired submarine. Clara Calland is the daughter of a scientist who carries a secret formula that threatens British Imperial power. After a daring chase across the globe, they have brought the secret to Westralia. Here, much of Australia is simply too hot to be habitable by day. People are nocturnal, living underground and working outside at night. To cross the deserts they use burrowing machines known as “steam moles.” With the Cuttlefish out of action, her crew take jobs on these submarine like craft. Duke Malcolm, of the Imperial Security Service, transports Clara’s rebel father to a prison in Eastern Australia, hoping to bait her into attempting a rescue. Clara looks to Tim for help, only to find he has fled from a racist incident into the desert. She takes a steam mole in search of him. The two head to Eastern Australia, where they discover an invading force with plans to take Westralia. Forced to survive in the desert, they encounter the intolerance meted out to the aboriginal people. Can they save Westralia from falling under British rule? And should they?
