Golden Gryphon Press - Forthcoming Books

Forthcoming Books

Forthcoming books: Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Hardcover, $24.95, May 2010
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy writer. She has written many novels under various names, including Kristine Grayson for romance, and Kris Nelscott for mystery. She is well known for her short stories and novellas as well as her novels, and this collection highlights her recent award-nominated and award-winning (and collected in various Year’s Vest anthologies) short fiction. In “Recovering Apollo 8,” a Sidewise Award winner for Best Alternate History and a Hugo Award finalist, examines a very near-future where Apollo 8 would float forever in the darkness of space; far from ending the space program, this propelled it and spade-faring became almost routine. An eight-year-old at the time of the loss, a wealthy pioneer of this space age devotes his life to recovering the capsule and the three lost astronauts. A companion short story also shows inspiration from Apollo 8 in “The Taste of Miracles.” In “The Strangeness of the Day,” winner of France’s Fantasy Award: Le Prix Imaginales 2003, a shy, successful lawyer is hired by a near immortal to battle a witch to save his love. Dying to the sound of banjo music—that’s how it’s done with Death’s helper in “Substitutions.” An alternate history of the death of J Edgar Hoover, and dark secrets about the man, is related in “G-Men.” A large pile of bones is discovered at a renovation of a resort, which do not seem to be human or animal; what secret lies hidden in “The End of the World”? If you could peek into the past at any day, why would it be “June Sixteenth at Anna’s”? Suicide bombings are taken to a new, horrifying level, with the bombers chosen at birth in “Craters.” The collection finishes with a 22,000-word novella where salvaging a 5000-year-old spaceship is neither easy nor without dangers, as a crew finds out in “Diving into the Wreck.”
The Called by Warren Rochelle
Hardcover, $24.95, September 2010
Reconvergence: December 21, 2012
The four changelings from Harvest of Changelings, after vanquishing the Fomorii, settled in Faerie with the other changelings and learned to use their fey powers. On Earth, intolerance toward the “different” began to grow om a worldwide scale again. Sensing this, two of the four changelings, Malachi and Hazel, are called to return to Earth to help those who had not crossed over into Faerie. The other two members of their tetrad, Russell and Jeff, chose to remain in Faerie, thereby physically splitting their tetrad. On Earth, the Fomorii are hidden but influential, organizing humans into anti-magical groups, particularly in religions and government. As 2012 opens, the Fomorii become more active, kidnapping magicals, including Malachi, then using their human pawns in the US and state governments, and in the military, to overthrow the US and state governments in a military coup. Jeff and Russell return to Earth to re-unite with Hazel and gather allies to rescue Malachi. Their “army” includes Cherokee, Tlanuwa, Little People, Tuatha de Danaan, Talking Beasts — all those who are different and who oppose evil. Celtic “gods” fight one another over taking sides, as well as the inhabitants of Faerie. The ultimate goal: control the Gate to the universes between Earth, Faerie, and Fomorii before December 21, 2012 at 6:11 a.m. — the reconvergence.
Blasphemy by Mike Resnick
Hardcover, $24.95, October 2010
Blasphemy contains all things blasphemous from Mike Resnick: two short novels and five short stories. Walpurgis III is a novel about a world populated by covens and Satanists that is suddenly confronted by the very Evil it's been giving lip service to, when a genocidal maniac who makes Hitler look like a choir boy shows up and demands asylum. The killing doesn't stop just because they worship him, and eventually an assassin is hired to terminate him...and the book examines an uncomfortable philosophical question: who is the more evil, the man who kills from compulsion, because no other alternative ever presents itself to him; or the man who kills from calculation, who sees all the alternatives but chooses to kill anyway? The Branch is the story of the true Messiah of the Old Testament, who shows up at the end of the 21st century...and as the Old Testament makes clear, this guy is not a prince of peace. The five short stories are all conversations elaborating the philosophies of God, Jesus, and the Wandering Jew, from the perspective of Resnick.
Holiday by M. Rickert
Hardcover, $24.95, November 2010
This mysterious, holiday-themed collection starts off, of course, with New Year’s Day and “Memoir of a Deer Woman,” where a woman’s transformation into a deer is a metaphor for her struggle and acceptance of terminal cancer. Valentine’s Day is celebrated with a “Journey into the Kingdom,” winner of the World Fantasy Award, where a young, lonely girl falls in love with a ghost. A May wedding in “The Machine” is a tale of innocence lost and terrible revenge, a story not for the faint of heart. Mother’s Day brings us a not-so-sweet tale set in the near future where women who have had abortions are punished, in “Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment One Daughter's Personal Account.” Even if you lost a son and gain a wolf, it’s still Father’s Day in “Don’t Ask”—just be sure you fill the water bowl! No Independence Day celebration is complete unless you tell the tale of a “Traitor,” or in this case a nine-year-old girl that doesn’t want to do what Mommy wants her to do. When the heat is summer is upon us, it’s best to leave the garden fairies alone, or at least not torture them, or suffer the fate of the little girl in “Was She Wicked? Was She Good?” A surreal Halloween story, “You Have Never Been Here,” leaves one wondering if it was all a dream, in a tight, tension-filled mystery. A Vietnam veteran is featured for Veteran’s Day, in “War is Beautiful.” Tortured by his term in Vietnam, a solder befriends a local Vietnamese girl—or is she a ghost? The collection ends with a Halloween to Christmas tale, “The Christmas Witch,” where all the children of a town collect bones, and the darker side of childhood is told.
These eleven tales will lead to eerie, mysterious, and downright creepy visions of little girls and their secret thoughts, imaginations, and capabilities.