Tordotcom Publishing is proud to present a sneak peek of its 2021 debut novel and novella authors. In the tradition of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, debut author S. Qiouyi Lu has written a multifaceted story of borders, power, diaspora, and transformation with In the Watchful City. Lee Mandelo's debut Summer Sons is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by hungry ghost. Red White & Royal Blue meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in debut author Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light, featuring an Edwardian England full of magic, contracts, and conspiracies. In Aimee Ogden's Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters, one woman will travel to the stars and beyond to save her beloved in this lyrical space opera that reimagines The Little Mermaid. Flowers for the Sea is a dark, dazzling debut novella from Zin E. Rocklyn that reads like Rosemary's Baby by way of Octavia E. Butler In Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces readers to a fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own. A Canticle for Leibowitz meets The Hunt for Red October in We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep, a lyrical and page-turning coming-of-age exploration of duty, belief, and the post-apocalypse from breakout newcomer Andrew Kelly Stewart. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Tordotcom Publishing is proud to present a sneak peek of its 2022 debut novel and novella authors. In modern day Los Angeles, a shadowy faction led by the Governor of California develops the arcane art of combat linguistics, planting the seeds of a future totalitarian empire in Scotto Moore's Battle of the Linguist Mages. Marion Deed's Comeuppance Served Cold is a hard-boiled historical fantasy of criminality and magic, couched in the glamour of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. In the tradition of Mira Grant and Stephen Graham Jones, Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up is a creepy, layered, literary story about false narratives and their ability to divide us. Celebrated short fiction author Rachel Swirsky returns with January Fifteenth, a gut-wrenching, near-future novella humanizing the experimental, practically science fictional policy of universal basic income. Margaret Atwood meets Kazuo Ishiguro in Joma West's Face, a sci-fi domestic drama that reimagines race and class in a genetically engineered society fed by performative fame. Meet the cure for the human disease in this dark and infectious debut from Hiron Ennes. Leech is Edgar Allen Poe mixed with Ridley Scott, Jeff VanderMeer with a side of Charlotte Brontë, The Thing from the thing's point of view. It will worm its way deep into your bones and hold you hostage to your own insatiable human fascination. Pepper Rafferty has lived her entire adult life knowing two things: that the famous artist, Ula Frost's, paintings are purported to harbor magical powers and that Ula Frost is the woman who gave her away. Aimee Pokwatka's Self-Portrait with Nothing is a heartstopping quest for truth written for a post-modern age with the world-melding of David Mitchell and the intimacy of Marilynn Robinson. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"This masterful work positions Lu among the vanguard of contemporary futurism and speculative fiction."—Publishers Weekly, starred review In the tradition of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, debut author S. Qiouyi Lu has written a multifaceted story of borders, power, diaspora, and transformation with In the Watchful City. The city of Ora is watching. Anima is an extrasensory human tasked with surveilling and protecting Ora’s citizens via a complex living network called the Gleaming. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from harm. When a mysterious outsider enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around with the world with a story attached to each item, Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—æ never before imagined to exist. But such knowledge leaves Anima with a question that throws into doubt ær entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"A breathtaking romp of a plot, prose as sparkling and luxuriant as a diamond sautoir, and at the heart of it all a sense of wondrous possibility."—The New York Times Now an International Bestseller, a New York Times Editors' Choice Pick​, an Indie Next pick, ​a Bookpage Best Book of the Year, and a LibraryReads pick—with three starred reviews! A Restless Truth is the second entry in Freya Marske’s beloved, award-winning Last Binding trilogy, the queer historical fantasy series that began with A Marvellous Light. Magic! Murder! Shipboard romance! Maud Blyth has always longed for adventure. She expected plenty of it when she volunteered to serve as an old lady’s companion on an ocean liner, in order to help her beloved older brother unravel a magical conspiracy that began generations ago. What she didn’t expect was for the old lady in question to turn up dead on the first day of the voyage. Now she has to deal with a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and the lovely, dangerously outrageous Violet Debenham, who’s also returning home to England. Violet is everything that Maud has been trained to distrust yet can’t help but desire: a magician, an actress, and a magnet for scandal. Surrounded by the open sea and a ship full of suspects, Maud and Violet must first drop the masks that they’ve both learned to wear before they can unmask a murderer and somehow get their hands on a magical object worth killing for—without ending up dead in the water themselves. The Last Binding Trilogy: A Marvellous Light A Restless Truth A Power Unbound At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Lee Mandelo's debut Summer Sons is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost. Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn’t know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom that hungers for him. As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie’s death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble. And there is something awful lurking, waiting for those walls to fall. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In Aimee Ogden's Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters, one woman will travel to the stars and beyond to save her beloved in this lyrical space opera that reimagines The Little Mermaid. Gene-edited human clans have scattered throughout the galaxy, adapting themselves to environments as severe as the desert and the sea. Atuale, the daughter of a Sea-Clan lord, sparked a war by choosing her land-dwelling love and rejecting her place among her people. Now her husband and his clan are dying of a virulent plague, and Atuale’s sole hope for finding a cure is to travel off-planet. The one person she can turn to for help is the black-market mercenary known as the World Witch—and Atuale’s former lover. Time, politics, bureaucracy, and her own conflicted desires stand between Atuale and the hope for her adopted clan. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

'A superbly told tale of folklore-infused fantasy, full of rising dread, set in a sharply observed Australian outback town.' Garth Nix Strange what chooses to flourish here. Which plants. Which stories. Bettina Scott lives a tidy, quiet life in Runagate, tending to her delicate mother and their well-kept garden after her father and brothers disappear - until a note arrives that sends Bettina into the scrublands beyond, searching for answers about what really happened to this town, and to her family. For this is a land where superstitions hunt and folk tales dream - and power is there for the taking, for those willing to look. WINNER OF THE BRITISH FANTASY AWARDS: THE SYDNEY J. BOUNDS AWARD FOR BEST NEWCOMER 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE COURIER-MAIL PEOPLE'S CHOICE QUEENSLAND BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2021 PRAISE FOR FLYAWAY 'Jennings' prose dazzles, and her magic feels real enough that you might even prick your finger on it.' Kelly Link 'Half mystery, half fairy tale, all exquisitely rendered and full of teeth.' Holly Black 'Brilliant light washes through these pages, a perfect foil for the novella's shadowy, all-too-serious battles of class, community and family. Sly visitations from imported, half-naturalised folklore add further layers of mystery and wonder to a more-than-magical tale of history's grip, the land's memory, and the harm we cannot help but do to ourselves and each other.' Margo Lanagan 'In spellbinding, lyrical prose Jennings lulls readers into this rich, dreamlike world. Lovers of contemporary fairy tales and magical realism will find this a masterful work.' Publishers Weekly

“Spectacular—I've been waiting years for this book to exist.” —Maria Dahvana Headley, author of Beowulf: A New Translation "If Le Guin wrote a Camelot story, I imagine it would feel like Spear: humane, intelligent, and deeply beautiful. It's a new story with very old bones, a strange place that feels like home." —Alix E. Harrow, author of A Spindle Splintered She left all she knew to find who she could be . . . She grows up in the wild wood, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake drift to her on the spring breeze, scented with promise. And when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she decides her future lies at his court. So, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and sets out on her bony gelding for Caer Leon. With her stolen hunting spear and mended armour, she is an unlikely hero, not a chosen one, but one who forges her own bright path. Aflame with determination, she begins a journey of magic and mystery, love, lust and fights to death. On her adventures, she will steal the hearts of beautiful women, fight warriors and sorcerers, and make a place to call home. The legendary author of Hild returns with an unforgettable hero and a queer Arthurian masterpiece for the modern era. Nicola Griffith’s Spear is a spellbinding vision of the Camelot we've longed for, a Camelot that belongs to us all. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"Brilliantly structured . . . with a delicious tension carefully developed among the wonderful characters." —The New York Times Experience this far-reaching, mind-bending science fiction adventure that uses time travel to merge climate fiction with historical fantasy. From Kelly Robson, Aurora Award winner, Campbell, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon finalist, and author of Waters of Versailles Discover a shifting history of adventure as humanity clashes over whether to repair their ruined planet or luxuriate in a less tainted past. In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity's ancestral habitat. She's spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Bold, lyrical and imaginative, this space opera is a must for fans of Becky Chambers and Alastair Reynolds Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. The captain of a transport ship contracted to the Umbrai corporation, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky. A boy, broken by his past, and hunted by his present. For he is one of the few born with the gift of the Jaunt. The ability to travel instantly anywhere in the universe. An ability that threatens the vicelike control of the settled worlds by corporations such as Umbrai. Fumiko Nakajima, the great scientist responsible for the design of bird-like Stations that Umbrai uses to control vast tracts of space, has been searching for one such as he for a thousand years. Together, they set out to protect the boy, a journey that will cross the decades and light years all the way out to the fringes of settled space where the laws of civilisation do not apply, and they will have only each other to rely on.