Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and I’m coming at you with a couple new releases to check out and some cataclysmic indie science fiction. I am sorry to report on a personal level that indeed it snowed over the weekend (curse you, Colorado!) and I don’t think my freshly planted lavender made it, along with a bunch of tree branches. May your weather be a little less irregular than mine! Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Friday!
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process.
Volcano Topography Coasters
Is this strictly SFF? No, but there’s a book that involves a volcano this week, and I am a geologist and these are super cool. These are printed topographic maps (the rings on them indicate elevation change) of real world volcanoes in the state of Oregon, sized to be coasters. I love this! $35
New Releases
City of Orange by David Yoon
A man who believes he once lived in a place called California wakes in the desert, injured and alone, a bottle of pills in his pocket. He cannot remember important facts of his life, like the name of his daughter or what his own face looks like. He must journey through a strange landscape in which nothing is as it seems, trying to answer the most important of questions: who am I?
Primal Animals by Julia Lynn Rubin
Arlee is a daughter struggling in the shadow of a successful mom who expects an unattainable level of perfection. She gets enrolled in Camp Rockaway to get her “back on track” for college prep after some less than satisfactory years in school. Arlee doesn’t like the North Carolina wilderness… or the numerous bugs that occupy it and the camp. But when the one friend she makes, Winnie, proves to something of a freak, it outs Arlee, too, for all her strange “glitches”—and draws her into a secret sisterhood that swear to protect each other, no matter what.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter!
Riot Recommendations
In the mood for an apocalypse right now? Here are a couple of indie SFF books to scratch that particular itch!
Mage of Fools by Eugen Bacon
The land of Mafinga is ruled by a dictator who hates books and, with the help of his pet sorcerer, has made the environment almost uninhabitable to the point that the sun has killed all of the able men. Jasmin has been widowed by this catastrophe, but she has her lost husband’s magical story machine, which tells her of a better world. When her children are claimed by the dictator’s childless queen, Jasmin can do little to save them… until she discovers the secrets behind the rulers and their sorcerer.
My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi
A volcano mysteriously begins growing–not erupting, but growing–in the Central Park Reservoir; after three weeks, it is almost two and a half miles tall. As this geological impossibility is happening, a cast of characters across the world begin to undergo their own personal environmental cataclysms and eruptions.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
See you, space pirates. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.