The Fragile Threads of Power by V. E. Schwab
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V. E. Schwab, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, opens another door to a new fantasy series set in the dazzling world of Shades of Magic.

Dreambound by Dan Frey
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In this thrilling contemporary fantasy novel, a father must uncover the secret magical underbelly of Los Angeles to find his daughter, who has seemingly disappeared into the fictional universe of her favorite fantasy series.

The Salvation Gambit by Emily Skrutskie
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A hotheaded hacker must outwit the AI at the heart of a rogue warship–turned–penal colony if she and her crew of con women want to escape with their lives in this electrifying sci-fi thriller from the acclaimed author of Bonds of Brass.

The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft
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The first book in a wildly inventive and mesmerizing new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where magical mysteries abound and only one team can solve them: The Hexologists. 

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
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Enter a land of gods and monsters, soldiers and mercenaries, secrets and wishes—the explosive #1 internationally bestselling fantasy debut in a new trilogy for fans of The Witcher and Gideon the Ninth.

The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth
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Be gay, solve crime, take naps—A witty and quirky fantasy murder mystery in a folkloric world of witches, faeires, vampires, trolls and ghosts, for fans of Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey and T. J. Klune’s Under the Whispering Door.

Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
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A small town is transformed by dark magic when a strange tree begins bearing magical apples in this new masterpiece of horror from the bestselling author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents.

Herc by Phoenicia Rogerson
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A queer revisionist retelling of the story of Hercules, for fans of The Song of Achilles, A Thousand Ships and Ariadne.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi
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Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.

Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo
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The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to be met with both joy and sorrow. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the storied abbey. But not everyone is prepared to leave them to their rest.

A Market of Dreams and Destiny by Trip Galey
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Enter the bazaar of the bizarre—where fate and fortunes are for sale just beneath Covent Garden—in this high-stakes historical fantasy debut set in 19th-century London, perfect for fans of Neverwhere and The Night Circus.

The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan
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The first adventure in the Mirror Realm Cycle, a Spanish Inquisition-era fantasy trilogy inspired by Jewish folklore, with echoes of Naomi Novik and Katherine Arden.

Hex Education by Maureen Kilmer
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A guilt-ridden former coven is forced to tap into the magic of their past . . . if they want to stop their lives from going up in flames again.

The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu
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A lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a locked-room thriller.

The Sky Vault by Benjamin Percy
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The third book in Percy’s innovative and acclaimed Comet Cycle, The Sky Vault, follows an investigation of a mysterious weather phenomena in Fairbanks, Alaska, and a government secret buried since WWII.

The Art of Destiny by Wesley Chu
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A hero once believed to be the chosen one must find a new path with the help of a band of unlikely allies in the sequel to The Art of Prophecy, an epic fantasy ode to martial arts and magic from the #1 New York Times bestselling author Wesley Chu.

The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar
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In a story that is cosmic, inventive, and sly, multi-award-winning author Lavie Tidhar (Central Station) travels from the emergence of life to the very ends of the universe.

The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern
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From environmental journalist and founder of the #TransRightsReadathon Sim Kern, comes the eat-the-rich climate fiction you won’t want to put down.

The Never Wars by David Pedreira
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In The Never Wars–a mind-bending mix of Interstellar and The Expanse–a group of disgraced Special Forces are given one chance to redeem themselves. The question is whether they’ll survive long enough for it to matter.

The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic by Breanne Randall
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For fans of Practical Magic and Gilmore Girls, The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic is a debut novel that explores the shields we build around our hearts to retain our own magic.

What fantasy and sci-fi books will you be picking up this month? Tell us in the comments below!

The post September 2023 Fantasy & Sci-Fi Book Releases appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Hi, Trip! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

Hello! I’m Trip Galey and I write (mostly) fantasy with strong queer elements. I’m addicted to elderflower cordial and mint tea; I bake a truly epic chocolate cake and my snickerdoodles are second-to-none; and I don’t get to dance, roleplay, or read nearly so much as I might like to.

My pronouns are he/him, and my adjectives are cis, gay, and whimsical.

I currently live in London with my husband and my writing partner (two different people, btw) on the top floor of a drafty old Victorian house which we call the Writer Flat. We have some fantastic conversations (usually over breakfast or dessert) and somehow fell into starting a queer small press called Bona Books, focused on sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. I also teach writing as one half of the team at the Underhill Academy for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers.

Yes, I work too much.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

I was a convert to the cult of reading from a very young age. But I didn’t engage in much writerly experimentation until I was at university. Oh sure, I wrote my own version of a Boxcar Children book when I was 10 or so, and in high school I dabbled a bit in writing a story based off of the entirely fictional (magical) adventures I definitively did not have with one of my then-best friends, but it didn’t spark for me then.

My extended family was full a lot of natural storytellers, however, and I was drawn into dungeon-mastering while at uni, so I really started spinning yarns there. Then I took a few writing courses, and it started to click. Though the first moment I recall actually loving the process of writing was for a screenwriting course. I still remember the line that sparked such joy, too! I haven’t managed to turn that script into a prose project yet, but it’s on the list.

Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!

• Go, Dog. Go! by P. D. Eastman
• The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Your debut novel, A Market of Dreams and Destiny, is out September 12^th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Extra. Tricksy. Otherworldly. Queer. Shenanigans.

What can readers expect?

A Market of Dreams and Destiny will deliver a clever protagonist being clever (if he does say so himself!), a surreal and otherworldly goblin market full of wonder and terror, strange bargains and intangible merchandise, cameos from famous and nearly-forgotten characters from Victorian literature, nascent workers rights movements, two young men in love and in trouble, and various and assorted shenanigans. Always shenanigans.

There is also a talking cat. Everyone seems to love the talking cat. This will no doubt be no surprise at all to her (she’s called Bess, btw).

Where did the inspiration for A Market of Dreams and Destiny come from?

There’s a simple way to answer that and a complex way to answer that and I am absolutely going to choose the complex way!

So, the world of the Untermarkt came long before the book, and it had the seed of its inspiration in October 2010, in a Broadway theatre, where I saw a fantastic musical with full-on Edward Gorey-esque aesthetics whose vibes were off the chart and set my brain fuzzing about the metaphysical and emotional cost of creating art.

The inspiration for the story grew out of my academic research into the goblin market trope (also sometimes referred to as the Bazaar of the Bizarre), colliding with my personal experiences with (agricultural) child labour and in working retail. The economic systems that pervade the world around us are brutal and insidious and what better way to process some of that trauma than via creepy fey magic and characters trying to cleverly use loopholes to break exploitative contracts?

Deri as a character was inspired by the folktale of Dick Whittington (see how many parallels and references you can find!) and my obsession with Newsies. A narrative with exploited child workers forming a resistance movement, extreme queer subtext between the teen male leads, and extravagant dance numbers? What possibly could I have taken from that?

I’m very much a magpie as a writer. I gather up shiny things (both in terms of inspiration and in terms of techniques and process) and then brood over them until they move themselves into aesthetic alignment.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I really love writing the twisty bits. There’s a moment where Deri gets clever with a bargain, setting it up so that the other party has two choices and whichever one they elect to go with, he wins. Then there’s the moment at the end which I won’t spoil, but yeah. Give me loopholes and split hairs and things like that. Love it. It can be mind-melting at times, but when it works, it’s just SO satisfying.

With this being a historical fantasy, can you tell us a bit about your research into the 19^th century?

So actually a lot of my research was into elements which, though I used them in the 19^th century, were more common in other periods (like contracts of indenture and street markets). The most interesting bit of research related to the 19^th century would be the workhouses. I knew I would be drawing on a lot of Dickensian vibes for the story, and that the major themes would resonate with economic exploitation, so workhouses were the obvious place to go.

I actually pulled up plans for various workhouses and used those for the basis of the one owned and operated by the Graspars. It’s even located in the same location as an actual workhouse of the period, on what is now Gray’s Inn Road. I walked the same route Owain walks early in the book when he returns from the Untermarkt. That was honestly one of my favourite parts about writing this book. Living in London, I was able to find bits of that history and go to what remains of it in person.

What’s next for you?

Hopefully by the time you are reading this, I will have completed the manuscript for the next novel set in the world of the Untermarkt. Once more the story will revolve around trading in an intangible item, though this time the consequences are, if anything, even more convoluted!

As I mentioned earlier, the Writer Flat has started a small press called Bona Books, and our first Kickstarter is live here and now, in the month of September (Unless things have gone very wrong, that is.)! It’s called I Want That Twink OBLITERATED! and will feature non-masculine heroes and villain in pulp-inspired science fiction and fantasy stories. You can find out more by checking the links.

For other projects and shenanigans that I either can’t talk about now or have yet to fully take shape, you can keep track of me via the links!

Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?

Always! I’m going to recommend something old, something new, something borrowed, and something true (By ‘borrowed’, I mean a book a friend introduced me to that I love, and by ‘true’, I mean a work of non-fiction, truth occasionally being debatable).

The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany. (All of his short story collections, really!). An inspiration to and influence on Tolkien, Lovecraft, and Le Guin, Dunsany is arguably a core text of the genre. Read this if you want surreal and dream-like short fiction that often packs what could be 400 pages worth of story into about 400 words.

Teach the Torches to Burn by Caleb Roehrig. A queer take on Romeo and Juliet that is more than a re-telling, it’s a full-on re-imagining, and a rich and intelligent one (that not only keeps Juliet as a character, but also as a queer woman herself). Read this if you want a moving M/M romance that both comments on and is in dialogue with Shakespeare, queer love, and the pressures of the closet.

White Trash Warlock by David Slayton. The start of an urban fantasy trilogy that features a queer protagonist and a queer love subplot, but also addresses class issues in America as well. Read this if you want a fun and fresh urban fantasy with a working-class protagonist, a danger that threatens two worlds, and a M/M romance you can really root for.

Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language by Paul Baker. The “Bona” in Bona Books is from Polari. “Bona” means “good” (and we’re all about good, queer books). Fabulosa! is a fantastic introduction to a nearly-lost language and gives so much great context about the period it thrived in. Read this if you love learning more about queer history and queer culture.

Will you be picking up A Market of Dreams and Destiny? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Q&A: Trip Galey, Author of ‘A Market of Dreams and Destiny’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.