See Catching Fire. Then read these.

If you’re one of the millions of people who read The Hunger Games series, chances are you’ve thought about heading to the theaters this weekend.  Tonight is the official release of the second movie, Catching Fire, guaranteed to be one of the biggest movies of 2013.

The Hunger Games books are fun, we can’t argue that, but what comes next? What if you don’t like seeing your favorite reads blown up and on fire on the big screen?  What if you've read the books and are hungry (pun totally intended) for more dystopias?

We’ve got a couple awesome, high energy, fast paced series for all you Hunger Game fans who are just dying to get your hands on another book.  If you like action and destruction, then you need to check out Tim Lebbon’s Toxic City trilogy.  In London Eye, the first book in the series, London has been cut off from the rest of the world after a devastating terrorist attack. The government claims it’s now a toxic wasteland, but Jack and his friends know otherwise.   Determined to prove themselves and find their missing families, they risk their lives to sneak inside the city.  They find survivors alright, but they may no longer be human.  They're changing, developing strange powers - evolving. One thing's for sure, if the secrets aren't revealed to the outside world, every one inside may die.

The pulse-pounding conclusion, Contagion, just came out last week.  Check out a sample chapter from London Eye and see what you’re missing!




How about something a little different? Something, a little darker? In Mandy Hager's Blood of the Lamb series, the world has been destroyed by the deadly Tribulation. On the small island of Onewēre in the Pacific, Maryam lives for the day she'll enter adulthood and move to the Holy City.  But once inside, life is not as she had dreamed, and she is quickly faced with the unthinkable: obey the Apostles and very likely die, or turn her back on every belief she once held dear.

Click here to read a sample chapter from the first book, The Crossing, and look for Into the Wilderness in stores this January!

E.C. Myers wins the 2012 Andre Norton Award

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. has announced the recipients of the 2012 Nebula Awards. And...

Drum roll please....

Fair Coin by E.C. Myers, won the 2012 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction/Fantasy Book this past weekend!

The Nebula Awards® are voted on and presented by the active members of SFWA for outstanding science fiction and fantasy published in 2012. The awards were announced at the Nebula Awards® Banquet held at in San Jose, CA, May 16-20.

Congratulations to E.C. and to all the Nebula winners.

For Your Viewing Pleasure: Earth Girl

Earth Girlby Janet Edwards

Cover Illustration (C) Himitsuhana

Cover Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht

 

Just because she’s confined to the planet, doesn’t mean she can’t reach for the stars.

2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. Eighteen-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can’t travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She’s an “ape,” a “throwback” . . . but this is one ape girl who won’t give in.

Jarra crafts a fake military background for herself and joins a class of norms who are on Earth for a year of practical history studies excavating the dangerous ruins of the old cities. She wants to see their faces when they find out they’ve been fooled into thinking an ape girl was a norm. She isn’t expecting to make friends with the enemy, to risk her life to save norms, or to fall in love.

Coming March 2013

A Fair Amount of Coin

Bookseller Ross Armstrong is a bookseller in Toronto at Indigo's Yorkdale Mall location at 3401 Dufferin St. in north Toronto. He recently popped up on the Fair Coin Facebook page, where he posted the following:

 "I have chosen your book to be my CEO 100 choice. If I can sell 100 copies in three months, I get a certificate and a $50 gift card. To date, I have sold 71 copies of your book, Fair Coin, with 5 weeks to go in the three months. In fact, this week I have sold 23 copies alone. The response had been very positive with many purchasers coming back and saying how much they liked the book. Looking forward to Quantum Coin."

We're grateful for booksellers like Ross, and thrilled so many people love this book. Meanwhile, if you are in the Toronto area, you might consider helping Ross get his certificate and gift card. 

Planesrunner: Some Reasons It Should Be On Your Radar

Illustration (c) John Picacio

“Smashing adventure fiction that spans the multiverse without ever losing its cool or its sense of style. Ian McDonald is one of the greats of science fiction, and his young adult debut is everything you could hope for: romantic, action packed, wildly imaginative, and full of heart.”
 —Cory Doctorow
 
"Planesrunner is chock-full of awesome. Ian McDonald's steampunk London blazes on a vast scale with eye-popping towers, gritty streets, and larger-than-life characters who aren't afraid to fight for each other. The kind of airship-dueling, guns-blazing fantasy that makes me wish I could pop through to the next reality over, join the Airish, and take to the skies"
—Paolo Bacigalupi, Michael J. Printz Award–winning author of Ship Breaker
 
‎"Athletic, brilliant, and always ahead of the game, Everett is too perfect, but it doesn't detract from the book's fun. McDonald writes with scientific and literary sophistication, as well as a wicked sense of humor. Add nonstop action, eccentric characters, and expert universe building, and this first volume of the Everness series is a winner."
—Publishers Weekly Starred Review
 
"What joy to find science fiction based on real scientific concepts... In his debut for teens, established science-fiction writer McDonald builds a world just different enough to charm readers into believing... Shining imagination, pulsing suspense and sparkling writing make this one stand out."
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review!

"[Planesrunner's] world is as sharply imagined and inventive as we've come to expect from [Ian] McDonald. And it also may be the first steam-free steampunk novel… first-rate adventure writing… by the cliffhanger ending we're ready to follow [Everett] into whatever new universes McDonald can concoct, and the next one already looks interesting. Planesrunner is not only excellent YA SF in terms of its likeable characters and well-executed setpieces, but is simply good SF in a way which almost reinvents, and possibly makes addictive, the old parallel universe trope. It's fun."
—Locus, November 2011

"Planesrunner is a first class teen science fiction novel, which I believe will appeal to the fans of such boy-oriented books as Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker and Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan… There is hardly anything about Planesrunner to complain about. Quite the opposite, a lot to complement this novel on: First of all, the science. The whole idea of parallel universes is endlessly exciting and Ian McDonald did a fantastic job coming up with alternate versions of Earth's future… Second, the main character with ethnic background… Third, the teen romance has a great dynamic. Both participants are strong and resourceful young people. Planesrunner is a fantastic beginning to a new teen adventure series that will leave you yearning for more. Score: 4.50 / 5 "
—Night Owl Reviews, Reviewer Top Pick

‎"Ian McDonald's Planesrunner is the first in what I hope is a very long series of young adult science fiction novels.... I can't wait for the next book in this series. Planesrunner, scheduled for release in December 2011, is an appealing alternative to the dystopian YA titles lining bookstore shelves these days."
—Portland Book Review

‎"This is science fiction adventure at its best, and at its core is Everett, the heroic little geekling that we all wanted to be as kids... With "Ten Known Worlds" as part of this book's lore…I want an interdimensional passport ASAP… The adventure simply never stops… Snappy dialogue…and fascinating details round out this marvelous series debut."
—The Examiner

Convinced? Now go check out the Infundibulum Facebook page.

For Your Viewing Pleasure: The Full Jacket of Planesrunner

Planesrunner © Ian McDonald

Cover Illustration and Front Cover Design © John Picacio

Spine and Back Cover Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

  Coming in December 2011

There is not one you. There are many yous. There is not one world. There are many worlds. Ours is one among billions of parallel earths.

When Everett Singh’s scientist father is kidnapped from the streets of London, he leaves young Everett a mysterious app on his computer. Suddenly, this teenager has become the owner of the most valuable object in the multiverse—the Infundibulum—the map of all the parallel earths, and there are dark forces in the Ten Known Worlds who will stop at nothing to get it. They’ve got power, authority, the might of ten planets—some of them more technologically advanced than our Earth—at their fingertips. He’s got wits, intelligence, a knack for Indian cooking.

To keep the Infundibulum safe, Everett must trick his way through the Heisenberg Gate that his dad helped build and go on the run in a parallel Earth. But to rescue his dad from Charlotte Villiers and the sinister Order, this Planesrunner’s going to need friends. Friends like Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, her adopted daughter, Sen, and the crew of the airship Everness. 

Can they rescue Everett’s father and get the Infundibulum to safety? The game is afoot!

“Planesrunner is chock-full of awesome. Ian McDonald’s steampunk London blazes on a vast scale with eye-popping towers, gritty streets, and larger-than-life characters who aren’t afraid to fight for each other. The kind of airship-dueling, guns-blazing fantasy that makes me wish I could pop through to the next reality over, join the Airish, and take to the skies”

—Paolo Bacigalupi, Michael J. Printz Award–winning author of Ship Breaker

“Smashing adventure fiction that spans the multiverse without ever losing its cool or its sense of style. Ian McDonald is one of the greats of science fiction and his young adult debut is everything you could hope for: romantic, action-packed, wildly imaginative, and full of heart.”

—Cory Doctorow, author of For the Win