Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.
DC Comics Classic Library: Roots of the Swamp Thing by Len Wein and Berni Wrghtson
Promo copy:
The tales that made Swamp Thing a fan-favorite are collected in hardcover for the first time! Featuring the first appearance from HOUSE OF SECRETS #92 along with SWAMP THING #1-13 and featuring moody art by legendary artist Bernie Wrightson!
The definitive and only hardcover edition of these beautiful stories.
Fragment by Warren Fahy
Promo copy:
In this powerhouse of suspense—as brilliantly imagined as Jurassic Park and The Ruins—scientists have made a startling discovery: a fragment of a lost continent, an island with an ecosystem unlike any they’ve seen before . . . an ecosystem that could topple ours like a house of cards.
The time is now. The place is the Trident, a long-range research vessel hired by the reality TV show Sealife. Aboard is a cast of ambitious young scientists. With a director dying for drama, tiny Henders Island might be just what the show needs. Until the first scientist sets foot on Henders—and the ultimate test of survival begins . . .
For when they reach the island’s shores, scientists are utterly unprepared for what they find—creatures unlike any ever recorded in natural history. This is not a lost world frozen in time, an island of mutants, or a lab where science has gone mad: this is the Earth as it might have looked after evolving on a separate path for half a billion years.
Soon the scientists will stumble on something more shocking than anything humanity has ever encountered: because among the terrors of Henders Island, one life form defies any scientific theory—and must be saved at any cost.
Wolfbreed by S. A. Swann
The Drowning City by Amanda Downum
Promo copy:
Symir — the Drowning City. home to exiles and expatriates, pirates and smugglers. And violent revolutionaries who will stop at nothing to overthrow the corrupt Imperial government.
For Isyllt Iskaldur, necromancer and spy, the brewing revolution is a chance to prove herself to her crown. All she has to do is find and finance the revolutionaries, and help topple the palaces of Symir. But she is torn between her new friends and her duties, and the longer she stays in this monsoon-drenched city, the more intrigue she uncovers — even the dead are plotting.
As the waters rise and the dams crack, Isyllt must choose between her mission and the city she came to save.
The Map of Moments: A Preview by Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon
Promo copy:
Weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Max returns to the devastation of New Orleans to bury the woman he once loved. But in death, he discovers more about her than he ever knew in life: how she was involved with a mysterious, feared organisation; how that organisation is still alive and thriving in the ruins; and how, if Max immerses himself in the city’s hidden magic, there may be a chance for him to get her back.
This preview, limited to 650 signed copies, was sent to reviewers by Bantam Spectra editor Anne Lesley Groell as a promotion for the trade paperback edition of the full novel.
Promo copy for The Map of Moments: A Novel of the Hidden Cities:
What if you were given a map to a magic that could change the worst moment of your life…for a price?
From two all-stars of dark fantasy, Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, coauthors of Mind the Gap, comes this terrifying new thriller of magic and dangerous passions, where an ordinary man searches the magical landscape of an extraordinary city for the chance of a lifetime.
Barely six months after leaving New Orleans, history professor Max Corbett is returning to a place he hardly recognizes. The girl he’d loved—and lost—is dead, and the once-enchanted city has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Max has not thought much beyond Gabrielle’s funeral—until a strange old man offers him a map, and an insane proposition . . .
“Forget all the stories about magic you think you know. . . .”
It looks like an ordinary tourist map, but the old man claims that it is marked with a trail of magical moments from New Orleans’s history that just might open a door to the past. But it is a journey fraught with peril as Max begins to uncover dark secrets about both his dead love and the city he never really got to know. How is Gabrielle linked to an evil group from the city’s past? And can Max evade them long enough to turn back the clock and give Gabrielle one last chance at life?