New Releases June 17-23 & Reader's Choice C*ntest

It’s another “famine” week in the world of speculative fiction, with only a few new releases…but just wait until next week, when it’s huge! Since it’s a small week, if you find a release from another genre coming out this week you’d like to request, just leave it in your comment. As for me, I’m intrigued by Blackmail Earth, an environmental disaster book written by a meteorologist….and how could a book with the name Vacation with a Vampire possibly suck? Heh.

As always, leave a comment telling me the book here you’d most like to win, and maybe random.org will make your wishes come true. International…true dat.

Now, here we go….

Blackmail Earth, by Bill Evans (June 19, Tor)

Chief meteorologist for a national morning TV show, Jenna Withers is appointed to a government task force on climate change because of her acclaimed book on geoengineering. Jenna is stunned to learn that a major oil company has a pilot project to release iron oxide into the sea. Al Qaeda terrorists hijack the iron oxide supertanker, threatening to release the entire load at once. North Korea secretly tells the president that it will launch thousands of tons of sulfates into the atmosphere unless the United States meets their demands. These terrorist acts will hurl the Earth into a new Ice Age. The president, reluctant to act with Election Day looming and his lead dwindling, conceals the Korean threats and stalls negotiations. One of the terrorists’ captives is Rick Birk, a foreign correspondent for Jenna’s network. Tortured, Birk is kept on the air around the clock. Ratings soar! Narrowly escaping a terrorist bombing, Jenna races for the studio with assassins on her tail.

This is Not a Test, by Courtney Summers (June 19, St. Martin's)
It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. 

Burn Mark, by Laura Powell (June 19, Bloomsbury)

Glory is from a family of witches and lives beyond the law. She is desperate to develop her powers and become a witch herself. Lucas is the son of the Chief Prosecutor for the Inquisition—the witches’ mortal enemy—and his privileged life is very different to the forbidden world that he lives alongside. And then on the same day, it hits them both. Glory and Lucas develop the Fae—the mark of the witch. In one fell stroke, their lives are inextricably bound together, whether they like it or not. Young Adult.

The Devil Delivered and Other Tales, by Steven Erikson (June 19, Tor)

A trio of novelettes set outside the author’s vast Malazan world: The Devil Delivered, set in the deadlands of the Lakota Nation in a land blistered beneath a hole in the ozone; Revolvo, detailing a technocrat-dominated arts scene in a fictitious Canada; and Fishing with Grandma Matchie, a children’s story about a boy whose writing assignment goes in unexpected directions.

Dragon’s Curse, by Denise Lynn (June 19, Harlequin)

Only the threat of losing her brother could force Ariel Johnson to break out of her predictable existence and into the stronghold of a changeling’s ancestral estate. Following him from a mystical island to a remote Appalachian resort, she’s trapped between sibling loyalty and an unquenchable desire for a lover who is both beast and man. But when Cameron Drake’s inner beast is awakened by the beauty he would claim for his perfect mate, his human side is not so easily convinced-for he knows Ariel is in the pocket of a sorcerer who wants his family dead. 

Existence, by David Brin (June 19, Tor)

Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades-old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien artifact.” Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

Forged in Fire (Sarah Beauhall, Book 3), by J.A. Pitts (June 19, Tor)

Sarah Jane Beauhall, the blacksmith turned dragon slayer, has it all figured out—little things like dealing with the political intrigue of dragons who secretly run our world, and learning to wield the magic that she has been given by none other than Odin, who has been fighting the dragons for millennia. And then there is the matter of coming to terms with who she is … and how to build a life with her partner, Katie. All these things are forced into the background however when a magic-wielding serial killer starts prowling the Pacific Northwest. And all of his victims have ties to Sarah. 

The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (June 19, Harper)

1916: the Western Front, France. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No man's Land gone? 2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson has returned to the burned-out home of one Willis Linsay, a reclusive and some said mad, others dangerous, scientist. It was arson but, as is often the way, the firemen seem to have caused more damage than the fire itself. Stepping through the wreck of a house, there's no sign of any human remains but on the mantelpiece Monica finds the prototype of an invention that Linsay called a stepper. An invention he put up on the Web for the world to see and use, an invention that would change the way mankind viewed Earth forever.

Vacation with a Vampire, by Michele Hauf, Kendra Leigh Castle and Lisa Childs (June 19, Harlequin)

A holiday with tall, dark, handsome—and immortal. Everyone needs a break sometimes, especially during the summer. After all, what’s more relaxing, and more romantic, than a midnight stroll through Paris? Or the way the moon reflects off the ocean? And if your mesmerizing, sexy date happens to be ready to nibble your neck, who would want to say no? Features “Stay,” by Michele Hauf; “Vivi and the Vampire” by Kendra Leigh Castle, and “Island Vacation” by Lisa Childs.

Now…what do you want to read? Leave a comment and tell me, and I’ll draw one name to win his or her choice. International, as always. And if the book is in a series you haven’t started, you can always pick the first one in the series instead. If there’s a new release in another genre this week you’d like to read, leave that in your comment.

As always, four entries possible: +1 for comment to tell me what book (any book) you want, +1 for blog follow, +1 for Twitter follow @Suzanne_Johnson, and +1 for a Tweet or RT about the contest. This contest is international. Contests end at midnight CDT U.S., and winners are announced on Sunday’s blog. It’s the responsibility of the winner to contact me with their mailing info. Books unclaimed after a month will go into a general giveaway pile.

Now….go!