More 2017 Science Fiction & Horror Novels to Look For! (July-Dec)

Back in mid-December 2016, I did a very popular post called 2017 Science Fiction & Horror Novels to Look For. That was a fun list to put together, but it only covered January through June of 2017!  So here is the second edition of this post, put together just to cover upcoming science fiction  and horror releases for July through December of 2017. And of course this time the list isn’t just from me! (Covers lead to Goodreads.)

This post topic was brought to you courtesy of Broke and Bookish.

Note from Gracie:There were quite a few on the yearly coming out list that are making me drool and making my wallet cringe. Because I wants them my precious…. I have to be upfront about this. There are quite a few from Crystal Lake Publishing in this but it’s not a paid for endorsement in any way. I love anthologies and, let’s be honest, they put out some great ones.

 

More 2017 Science Fiction & Horror Novels to Look For

An Oath of Dogs by Wendy N. Wagner – Published by Angry Robot | Picked by LG

Expected Release Date: July 4th, 2017 | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller

An Oath of Dogs Synopsis: Kate Standish has been on Huginn less than a week and she s already pretty sure her new company murdered her boss. But extractions corporations dominate the communities of the forest world, and few are willing to threaten their meal tickets to look too closely at corporate misbehaviour. The little town of mill workers and farmers is more worried about the threat of eco-terrorism and a series of attacks by the bizarre, sentient dogs of this planet, than a death most people would like to believe is an accident. When Standish connects a secret chemical test site to a nearly forgotten disaster in Huginn s history, she reveals a conspiracy that threatens Standish and everyone she s come to care about.”

 

 

Moon Beam by Travis S. Taylor & Jody Lynn Nye – Published by Baen – Picked by LG

Expected Release Date: July 4th, 2017 | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Sci-Fi

Of Interest: Middle Grade Novel

Moon Beam Synopsis: What happens when you get the one thing you wanted most in life? Lonely 16-year-old farm girl Barbara Winton has been following one reality show for years. Then in an instant she goes from fangirl to participant when the call comes from Dr. Keegan Bright: She’s been selected out of a horde of applicants to join him on the Moon.

She’ll be one of his Bright Sparks, six students with expertise in STEM and plenty of their own ingenuity chosen to work with Dr. Bright and given big responsibilities to undertake new projects important to the growth of the colony. Her first task? Build a radar telescope using an entire crater on the far side of the Moon.

But Barbara soon learns that life on a burgeoning frontier outpost like the Moon is a far cry from safe, civilized Earth. The loner from farm country must find a way to weld a functional team out of fiercely independent thinkers. Not only are they a bit trickier to work with than farm robots, not only is the working environment incredibly dangerous—she also has to perform this miracle in front of millions of fans….

The Devil’s Colony by Bill Schweigart – Published by Random House Hydra – Picked by LG

Expected Release Date: July 11th, 2017 | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Horror

The Devil’s Colony Synopsis: Ben McKelvie had a good job, a nice house, a beautiful fiancée . . . until a bloodthirsty shapeshifter took everything away. Ever since, he’s been chasing supernatural phenomena all across the country, aided by dedicated zoologist Lindsay Clark and wealthy cryptozoologist Richard Severance.

Now they face their deadliest challenge yet. In the New Jersey Pine Barrens, a man named Henry Drexler operates a private compound called Välkommen, which is Swedish for “welcome.” Indeed, Drexler welcomes all visitors—so long as they’re racists, neo-Nazis, or otherwise in cahoots with the alt-right. But Drexler is no mere Hitler wannabe. Once he was Severance’s mentor, and his research may well have summoned a monster to the Pine Barrens.

To find out the truth, Ben and Lindsay must enter the camp incognito. There, under the watchful eyes of Drexler’s bodyguards and sociopathic son, they will learn that the most dangerous beasts lurk in the human heart.

Dark Light: Dawn by Jon Land (Created by Fabrizio Baccardi) – Published by Forge Books – Picked by GK

Expected Release Date: July 24th, 2017 (Hardcover) – August 1st, 2017 (Kindle edition) | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Dark Light: Dawn Synopsis: With an uncanny ability to survive any combat situation, Max Younger has built a good life for himself as a Navy SEAL. That is, until a rogue rescue operation plunges him back into the past he thought he’d escaped forever.

Waiting for him back home in New York are terrible, long-hidden truths rooted in the tragic death of his father. But the origin of those truths lie further back than that, and Max finds himself ensnared in a sinister plot involving nothing less than the biblical apocalypse.

The explosive conflagration of events reunites him with the only woman he ever loved: Victoria Lewin, a brilliant expert in infectious disease who may be the only one who can stop the spread of a deadly pestilence threatening the planet. Max’s reunion with Vicky comes amid a firestorm being unleashed by forces that date back to the very origins of the universe.

Across the globe, the stage is being set for a final, epic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. Sides are chosen, a fearsome army rises, and the lines between science and superstition become increasingly blurred. Max desperately seeks to discover whether he is fated, under the shadow of the Medusa Strain, to help save the world . . . or destroy it.

Bone White by Ronald Malfi – Published by Kensington – Picked by LG

Expected Release Date: July 25th, 2017 | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Horror

Bone White Synopsis: A landscape of frozen darkness punctuated by grim, gray days.
The feeling like a buzz in your teeth.
The scrape of bone on bone. . .
Paul Gallo saw the report on the news: a mass murderer leading police to his victims graves, in remote Dread s Hand, Alaska.
It s not even a town; more like the bad memory of a town. The same bit of wilderness where his twin brother went missing a year ago. As the bodies are exhumed, Paul travels to Alaska to get closure and put his grief to rest.
But the mystery is only beginning. What Paul finds are superstitious locals who talk of the devil stealing souls, and a line of wooden crosses to keep what s in the woods from coming out. He finds no closure because no one can explain exactly what happened to Danny.
And the more he searches for answers, the more he finds himself becoming part of the mystery. . .

 

Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter – Published by Harper Voyager – Picked by LG

Expected Release Date: August 1st, 2017 | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Sci-Fi

Noumenon Synopsis: With nods to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama series, the real science of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, a touch of Hugh Howey’s Wool, and told through echoes of Octavia Butler’s voice, this is a powerful tale of space travel, adventure, discovery, and humanity that unfolds through a series of generational vignettes

In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth’s solar system. But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go?

Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He’s discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something manufactured.

The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind’s greatest ambition—to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy—is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships (designated “Convoy Seven”) changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie’s mysterious star and explore its origins—and implications.

 

Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination by David Nickle – Published by ChiZine Publications – Picked by GK

Expected Release Date: August 27th, 2017 | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Horror

Volk Synopsis: At the dawn of the twentieth century in the Idaho logging town of Eliada, orphaned farm boy Jason Thistledown and black physician Andrew Waggoner came face to face with monsters: the human sort, in the form of American eugenicists seeking to perfect the human race through breeding and culls; and the inhuman, a parasitic species named Juke, that lived off the hopes, dreams, and faith of humanity, even as it consumed it from within.

The year is 1931 . . .

In a remote valley in the Bavarian Alps, the Germanic students of those eugenicists seek to uncover the secret of the Juke and the promise of the Übermensch. In Paris, Dr. Andrew Waggoner enters his third decade of unravelling the mystery of the elusive organism. Jason Thistledown, now a veteran pilot of World War I, gets ready to embark on a new career flying mail and passengers in North Africa and, he hopes, forget the profound horrors that have shaped him.

Soon, they will all have to reckon with one other: a terrible synthesis of those horrors, which moves among humanity with an inexorable and terrible purpose—obliterating and reshaping that humanity until there is only one thing left:

Die volks.

The Ghost Club by William  Meikle – Published by Crystal Lake Publishing – Picked by GK

Expected Release Date: September of 2017

The Ghost Club Synopsis: A Victorian supernatural short story collection from Crystal Lake Publishing. As you can see, information on this title is a bit scanty at this time so I will be updating as more becomes available. It caught my eye because of the Victorian era angle on the supernatural short story stood out. Also, The Ghost Club is a story by John Kendrick Bangs in 1894. William Meikle is very good at pastiches of other books from the era (Carnacki: Heaven and Hell) so I’m interested to see what will come of this book.I promise to give a proper synopsis when it becomes available.

Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns – Published by Saga Press – Picked by LG

Expected Release Date: October 31st, 2017 | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Sci-Fi

Of Interest: GLBT pairings

Barbary Station Synopsis: Adda and Iridian are newly-minted engineers, but in a solar system wracked by economic collapse after an interplanetary war, an engineering degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Desperate for gainful employment, they hijack a colony ship, planning to join a pirate crew at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.

But when they arrive at Barbary Station, nothing is as they expected. The pirates aren’t living in luxury — they’re hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station’s exterior hull. The artificial intelligence controlling the station’s security system has gone mad, trying to kill all station residents. And it shoots down any ship that tries to leave, so there’s no way out.

Adda and Iridian have one chance to earn a place on the pirate crew: destroy the artificial intelligence. The last engineer who went up against the security system suffered explosive decapitation, and the pirates are taking bets on how the newcomers will die. But Adda and Iridian plan to beat the odds. There’s a glorious future in piracy…if they can survive long enough.

Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines – Published by DAW – Picked by LG

Expected Release Date: Nov 7th, 2017 | Preorder on Amazon

Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy

Terminal Alliance Synopsis: The Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. However, they happened to arrive after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know—your standard apocalypse.

The Krakau’s first impulse was to turn around and go home. (After all, it’s hard to have diplomatic relations with mindless savages who eat your diplomats.) Their second impulse was to try to fix us. Now, a century later, human beings might not be what they once were, but at least they’re no longer trying to eat everyone. Mostly.

Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos is surprisingly bright (for a human). As a Lieutenant on the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish, she’s in charge of the Shipboard Hygiene and Sanitation team. When a bioweapon attack wipes out the Krakau command crew and reverts the rest of the humans to their feral state, only Mops and her team are left with their minds intact.

Escaping the attacking aliens—not to mention her shambling crewmates—is only the beginning. Sure, Mops and her team of space janitors and plumbers can clean the ship as well as anyone, but flying the damn thing is another matter.

As they struggle to keep the Pufferfish functioning and find a cure for their crew, they stumble onto a conspiracy that could threaten the entire alliance… a conspiracy born from the truth of what happened on Earth all those years ago.

 

 

Bonus Time!

These books were included on the list because we couldn’t NOT mention them, but for various reasons they didn’t meet the criteria to be listed in the proper list above.

Twice Upon an Apocalypse: Lovecraftian Fairy Tales – Various – Published by Crystal Lake Publishing

Expected Release Date: Today! (May 30th)  — This looks so awesome we had to include it, even though it doesn’t fall within the publishing range. Unfortunately, one of the problems when trying to find stuff from smaller presses is that they don’t have their ‘coming soon’ lists out as far in advance as the bigger publishers do. But we were happy to get this!

Genre: Lovecraftian Horror

Of Interest: Re-Imagined fairy tales, Lovecraftian Horror

Twice Upon an Apocalypse  Synopsis: These aren’t your mother’s fairy tales.

Throughout history parents have told their children stories to help them sleep, to keep them entertained. But we’re pretty sure none of those parents had this in mind. These are the fairy tales that will give you and your children nightmares. From the darkest depths of Grimm and Anderson come the immortal mash-ups with the creations of HP Lovecraft.

These stories will scare and delight ‘children’ of all ages!
• Introduction by Gary A Braunbeck
• “The Pied Piper of Providence” by William Meikle
• “The Three Billy Goats Sothoth” by Peter N Dudar
• “Little Maiden of the Sea” by David Bernard
• “The Great Old One and the Beanstalk” by Armand
Rosamilia
• “In the Shade of the Juniper Tree” by JP Hutsell
• “The Horror at Hatchet Point” by Zach Shephard
• “The Most Incredible Thing” by Bracken MacLeod
• “Let Me Come In!” by Simon Yee
• “The Fishman and His Wife” by Inanna Arthen
• “Little Match Mi-Go” by Michael Kamp
• “Follow the Yellow Glyph Road” by Scott T Goudsward
• “Gumdrop Apocalypse” by Pete Rawlik
• “Curiosity” by Winifred Burniston
• “The Ice Queen” by Mae Empson
• “Once Upon a Dream” by Matthew Baugh
• “Cinderella and Her Outer Godfather” by CT Phipps
• “Donkeyskin” by KH Vaughan
• “Sweet Dreams in the Witch-House” by Sean Logan
• “Fee Fi Old One” by Thom Brannan
• “The King on the Golden Mountain” by Morgan Sylvia
• “The Legend of Creepy Hollow” by Don D’Ammassa
So what makes this Lovecraftian Fairy Tales anthology special?
William Meikle: Lovecraft was working on stirring some base emotions in the reader, asking us to reflect on the depth and wonder of the Universe around us. Fairy tales, whether from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen or from the oral tradition are a similar means of tapping into something old and primal, and a fusion of both gives us added insight into how archetypes and myth might evolve in an age where the most frightening thing is ourselves.
Armand Rosamilia: The mashup of Lovecraft and fairy tales blended together way too easy. It makes you wonder… Reading through these stories you can see how the two parallel and fit nicely together, especially since the base for Cthulhu mythos and fairy tales are so dark and have that underlying gloom to them.

Why should readers give this horror anthology a try?
Armand Rosamilia: If you love fairy tales or Lovecraft or horror or reading or… There are so many levels to this anthology. So many stories you’ll read and then go back to read the original fairy tale to gain a new perspective on what you remember (or thought you remember) as a child. I went back and read all of the original tales and was a bit creeped out. Adding Lovecraft to the mix only makes it better!

 

 

Whispered Echoes by Paul F. Olson – Published by Crystal Lake Publishing

Expected Release Date: June 23rd, 2017 (It was so close to the cut-off we had to include it.)

Genre: Horror Collection

Whispered Echoes Synopsis: An ancient voice speaks from the depths of a long-forgotten cave…

As a violent storm rages overhead, the scratching sounds begin in the cellar below…

A man inherits the family talent, but what price does that legacy demand…?

A return to the family homestead brings overwhelming memories, but the darkest memory of all still waits in the ravine out back…

An unassuming tourist quietly strolls through town, leaving devastation in his wake…

A late-night call from an abandoned camp brings a frightened cop face-to-face with his darkest fears…

A wild joyride ends with a surprise reunion and an encounter with the impossible…

A man searches for answers at an abandoned lighthouse and uncovers an unspeakable past…

Listen closely. You can hear them. The whispered echoes of your darkest fears. In this stunning new collection, Paul F. Olson delves into the quiet heart of terror. Featuring eleven long out-of-print tales from the ’80s and ’90s, and the debut of “Bloodybones,” a brand new novella of loss, longing, and chilling horror. With a foreword by Chet Williamson and an introduction by the author, Whispered Echoes abounds with subtle shivers that linger long after the last page is turned.

 

Horror in Space: Critical Essays on a Film Sub-genre edited by Michele Brittany

Expected Release Date: August 20th, 2017

Genre: Non-Fiction

Of Interest: Movie study and Analysis

Horror in Space: Critical Essays on a Film Sub-genre Synopsis: In sharp contrast to 1960s cinema which created an idolized view of space exploration, Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) redefined filmic horror by terrifying audiences with the oppressive nature of space. The Alien films launched a new generation of horror films set in the great unknown, while also inspiring genre filmmakers to take Earth-bound franchises like Leprechaun and Friday the 13th to space. This unique collection of essays analyzes the space horror sub-genre and its rise as a cinematic phenomenon since the 1950s. With a focus on films including Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon, Duncan Jones’ Moon, Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires, John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, and numerous others, these essays provide a historical retrospective of the genre’s cinematic journey and an in-depth examination of how genre filmmakers explored the concepts of the final girl/survivor, the uncanny valley, the isolationism of space travel, religion, and supernatural phenomenons to terrify audiences within the confines of space.

Tales of the Lake: Volume 4 by Various – Published by Crystal Lake Publishing

Expected Release Date: October

Again, not much is known about this title yet and I will update as it comes. I wanted to bring it to your attention because I’ve read volumes 1 and 3 and they were both very solid, good anthologies so I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of this volume.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland – Published by William Morrow

Expected Release Date: June 13th, 2017

Genre: Science Fiction Fantasy

The Rise and Fall of DODO Synopsis: When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the rather large sum of money.

Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace—the world’s fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world “jams” the “frequencies” used by magic, and it’s up to Tristan to find out why.

And so the Department of Diachronic Operations—D.O.D.O. —gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive . . . and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial—and treacherous—nature of the human heart.

Well, there’s our list of books we’re looking forward to for the last half of the year. Where’s yours?! Go on, share!