Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.
The Ape Man’s Brother
by Joe R. Lansdale
Cover and interior illustrations by Ken Laager
Promo copy:
Orphaned by a plane crash, raised in the wilds of a lost world hidden somewhere beneath a constant mist, The Big Guy and his ape-man brother from another mother are living a life of danger amongst rampaging dinosaurs, giant birds, warring ape tribes, and all manner of deadly beasts. It’s a wonderful existence for someone like The Big Guy and his furry brother, except for the flea problem. Then an expedition of explorers from the outside turn his world inside out. Or rather a very blonde beauty called The Woman does. It leads to his and his ape brother being convinced to fly to New York by zeppelin, where they become the toast of the town. They even make Hollywood movies. It seems perfect. At least until The Big Guy does something that comes quite naturally to him in the wild, but leads to public humiliation in this new found world. To make matters worse, his ape brother has grown to not only love the pampered life, meals he doesn’t have to chase down, good cigars, fine wines and statuesque women, he’s come to like the Wrong Woman.
Changes are afoot. They lead to a return to the world beneath the mist, and a deadly and unexpected encounter with a foe that is in many ways far worse than any dinosaur. Envy, jealousy, greed, fleas, and pyramids under the mist, are all part of this rollicking novella of the sort only Joe R. Lansdale could write. And don’t forget dinosaurs.
Lansdale and apes.. need I say more?
The Mark of the Dragonfly
by Jaleigh Johnson
Cover by Nigel Quarless
Promo copy:
For fans of The City of Ember and The School of Good and Evil, The Mark of the Dragonfly is a fast-paced adventure story about a mysterious girl and a fearless boy, set in a magical world that is both exciting and dangerous.
Piper has never seen the Mark of the Dragonfly until she finds the girl amid the wreckage of a caravan in the Meteor Fields.
The girl doesn’t remember a thing about her life, but the intricate tattoo on her arm is proof that she’s from the Dragonfly Territories and that she’s protected by the king. Which means a reward for Piper if she can get the girl home.
The one sure way to the Territories is the 401, a great old beauty of a train. But a ticket costs more coin than Piper could make in a year. And stowing away is a difficult prospect–everyone knows that getting past the peculiar green-eyed boy who stands guard is nearly impossible.
Life for Piper just turned dangerous. A little bit magical. And very exciting, if she can manage to survive the journey.
[STAR] “This magnetic middle-grade debut…[is] a page-turner that defies easy categorization and ought to have broad appeal.”-Publishers Weekly, starred
[STAR] “Heart, brains, and courage find a home in a steampunk fantasy worthy of a nod from Baum.”-Kirkus Reviews, starred
[STAR] “A fantastic and original tale of adventure and magic…Piper is a heroine to fall in love with: smart, brave, kind, and mechanically inclined to boot.”-School Library Journal, starred
Absolutely gorgeous book. One of the finest looking ones to come across my desk in a long time.
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember
How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction
by Annalee Newitz
Cover by Neil Webb
Promo copy:
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in Science & Technology
In its 4.5 billion-year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How? In this brilliantly speculative work of popular science, Annalee Newitz, editor of io9.com, explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Scatter, Adapt, and Remember explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow, from simulating tsunamis or studying central Turkey’s ancient underground cities, to cultivating cyanobacteria for “living cities” or designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever our future holds.
Earth Star
by Janet Edwards
Cover by Himitsuhana
Promo copy:
Romance, science fiction, action, and a look at the false assumptions we make about others combine in this light-hearted, fun, and well-conceived science fiction future.
Only She Can Save the World.
Eighteen-year-old Jarra has a lot to prove. After being awarded one of the military’s highest honors for her role in a daring rescue attempt, she finds herself—and her Ape status—in the spotlight. Jarra is one of the unlucky few born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Derided as an “ape”—a “throwback”—by the rest of the universe, she is on a mission to prove that Earth Girls are just as good as anyone else.
Except now the planet she loves is under threat by what could be humanity’s first ever alien contact. Jarra’s bravery—and specialist knowledge—will once again be at the center of the maelstrom, but will the rest of the universe consider Earth worth fighting for?
Robogenesis
by Daniel H. Wilson
Promo copy:
The stunningly creative, epic sequel to Wilson’s blockbuster thriller and New York Times bestseller Robopocalypse
“The machine is still out there. Still alive.”
Humankind had triumphed over the machines. At the end of Robopocalypse, the modern world was largely devastated, humankind was pressed to the point of annihilation, and the earth was left in tatters . . . but the master artificial intelligence presence known as Archos had been killed.
In Robogenesis, we see that Archos has survived. Spread across the far reaches of the world, the machine code has fragmented into millions of pieces, hiding and regrouping. In a series of riveting narratives, Robogenesis explores the fates of characters new and old, robotic and human, as they fight to build a new world in the wake of a devastating war. Readers will bear witness as survivors find one another, form into groups, and react to a drastically different (and deadly) technological landscape. All the while, the remnants of Archos’s shattered intelligence are seeping deeper into new breeds of machines, mounting a war that will not allow for humans to win again.
Daniel H. Wilson makes a triumphant return to the apocalyptic world he created, for an action-filled, raucous, very smart thrill ride about humanity and technology pushed to the tipping point.
Skinwalkers
Pathfinder Tales
by Wendy N. Wagner
Cover by Michal Ivan
Promo copy:
As a young woman, Jendara left the cold northern isles of the Ironbound Archipelago to find her fortune. Now, many years later, she’s forsaken her buccaneer ways and returned home in search of a simpler life, where she can raise her young son, Kran, in peace. When a strange clan of shapeshifting raiders pillages her home, however, there’s no choice for Jendara but to take up her axes once again to help the islanders defend all that they hold dear. From author Wendy N. Wagner comes a new adventure of vikings, lycanthropes, and the ties of motherhood, set in the world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
The Return of the Discontinued Man
A Burton & Swinburne Adventure
by Mark Hodder
Cover by Jon Sullivan
Promo copy:
Explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton and poet Algernon Swinburne return in a new series of wildly imaginative steampunk adventures.
SPRING HEELED JACK IS JUMPING BACK!
It’s 9 p.m. on February 15, 1860, and Charles Babbage, the British Empire’s most brilliant scientist, performs an experiment. Within moments, blood red snow falls from the sky and Spring Heeled Jack pops out of thin air in London’s Leicester Square. Though utterly disoriented and apparently insane, the strange creature is intent on one thing: hunting Sir Richard Francis Burton!
Spring Heeled Jack isn’t alone in his mental confusion. Burton can hardly function; he’s experiencing one hallucination after another–visions of parallel realities and future history. Someone, or something, is trying to tell him about … what?
When the revelation comes, it sends Burton and his companions on an expedition even the great explorer could never have imagined–a voyage through time itself into a twisted future where steam technology has made a resurgence and a despotic intelligence rules over the British Empire!