Kindle Genre Watch: New in Mystery & Fantasy Fiction (16 Sep 2010)
Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases in mystery/thriller and fantasy fiction include:
MYSTERY
Body Work by Sara Paretsky. Putnam. Print length: 464 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is Paretsky's fourteen novel to feature veteran Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski. The series began with Indemnity Only.
"The enigmatic performer known as the Body Artist takes the stage at Chicago's Club Gouge and allows her audience to use her naked body as a canvas for their impromptu illustrations. V. I. Warshawski watches as people step forward, some meek, some bold, to make their mark. The evening takes a strange turn when one woman's sketch triggers a violent outburst from a man at a nearby table. Quickly subdued, the man-an Iraqi war vet-leaves the club. Days later, the woman is shot outside the club. She dies in V.I.'s arms, and the police move quickly to arrest the angry vet. A shooting in Chicago is nothing new, certainly not to V.I., who is hired by the vet's family to clear his name. As V.I. seeks answers, her investigation will take her from the North Side of Chicago to the far reaches of the Gulf War." - Amazon.
Three Stations: An Arkady Renko Novel by Martin Cruz Smith. Simon & Schuster. Print length: 352 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"For the last three decades, beginning with the trailblazing Gorky Park, Renko (and Smith) have captivated readers with detective tales set in Russia. Renko is the ironic, brilliantly observant cop who finds solutions to heinous crimes when other lawmen refuse to even acknowledge that crimes have occurred. He uses his biting humor and intuitive leaps to fight not only wrongdoers but the corrupt state apparatus as well. In Three Stations, Renko’s skills are put to their most severe test. Though he has been technically suspended from the prosecutor’s office for once again turning up unpleasant truths, he strives to solve a last case: the death of an elegant young woman whose body is found in a construction trailer on the perimeter of Moscow’s main rail hub. It looks like a simple drug overdose to everyone - except to Renko, whose examination of the crime scene turns up some inexplicable clues, most notably an invitation to Russia’s premier charity ball, the billionaires’ Nijinksy Fair. Thus a sordid death becomes interwoven with the lifestyles of Moscow’s rich and famous, many of whom are clinging to their cash in the face of Putin’s crackdown on the very oligarchs who placed him in power. Renko uncovers a web of death, money, madness and a kidnapping that threatens the woman he is coming to love and the lives of children he is desperate to protect" - Amazon.
Zero History by William Gibson. Putnam. Print length: 416 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Hollis Henry worked for the global marketing magnate Hubertus Bigend once before. She never meant to repeat the experience. But she's broke, and Bigend never feels it's beneath him to use whatever power comes his way - in this case, the power of money to bring Hollis onto his team again. Milgrim is even more thoroughly owned by Bigend. He's worth owning for his useful gift of seeming to disappear in almost any setting, and his Russian is perfectly idiomatic - so much so that he spoke Russian with his therapist, in the secret Swiss clinic where Bigend paid for him to be cured of the addiction that would have killed him. Garreth has a passion for extreme sports. Most recently he jumped off the highest building in the world, opening his chute at the last moment, and he has a new thighbone made of rattan baked into bone, entirely experimental, to show for it. Garreth isn't owned by Bigend at all. Garreth has friends from whom he can call in the kinds of favors that a man like Bigend will find he needs, when things go unexpectedly sideways, in a world a man like Bigend is accustomed to controlling. As when a Department of Defense contract for combat-wear turns out to be the gateway drug for arms dealers so shadowy that even Bigend, whose subtlety and power in the private sector would be hard to overstate, finds himself outmaneuvered and adrift in a seriously dangerous world." - Amazon.
Warlord: An Alex Hawk Novel by Ted Bell. Harper Collins. Print length: 544 p. Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is Bell's sixth novel to feature British spy Alex Hawke. All are available in Kindle editions, starting with Hawke.
"Bell's fine sixth thriller featuring swashbuckling British spy Alex Hawke mixes action and suspense with just the right amount of humor and old-fashioned boys-book adventure. Hawke, who's been feeling suicidal since a personal tragedy in his last outing (Tsar), snaps out of his depression and back into secret agent mode after receiving a phone call from his old pal, His Royal Highness, the prince of Wales. Someone is targeting the British royal family for assassination, starting years earlier with Charles's uncle, Lord Mountbatten. All clues point to the IRA and the mysterious killer known as Mr. Smith. Meanwhile, a terrorist organization, Sword of Allah, has joined forces with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and is carrying out a string of devastating bombings across the globe designed to establish a worldwide caliphate." - Publishers Weekly.
FANTASY
Ghost of a Chance by Simon R. Green. Ace. Print length: 272 p. Kindle edition $6.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. This is book one of Green's Ghost Finders series.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Book one of The Stormlight Archive. Tor Books. Print length: 1008 p. Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter. It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Wars were fought for them, and won by them. One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable. Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity. Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war." - Publisher.
Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich. St. Martin's Press. Print length: 320 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Elizabeth "Lizzy" Tucker was surprised to inherit Great Aunt Ophelia's house in Marblehead, MA, just outside of Salem, but even more surprised to hear that her own superior cupcake baking skills came from being an Unmentionable. Diesel, agent for the Board of Unmentionable Marshalls, or BUM, drops this information bomb in order to use Lizzy's ability to find empowered objects, specifically the Seven Stones of Power. BUM needs to have possession of all seven stones, each representing a deadly sin, before the 'other side' collects them and brings about Hell on Earth. It's hard to find a reliably humorous author, but Evanovich always delivers. Stephanie Plum fans will recognize Diesel, Wulf, and Carl the monkey from the 'Between-the-Numbers' series, and they'll also recognize some of Lizzy's characteristics, like compulsive eye-rolling, blasting her hair dry, and destroying multiple fancy black cars. But for this reader, those distractions soon fell away, and the book was only put down briefly for mealtimes." - Stacey Hayman for Library Journal.
The Grimrose Path: A Trickster Novel by Rob Thurman. Publisher. Print length: Kindle edition $6.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Bar owner Trixa Iktomi is perfectly comfortable dealing with assorted creatures of light, darkness, and all the beings in between that roam Las Vegas - especially since she’s a bit more than human herself. She’s just been approached with an unusual proposition: a demon needs her help. Normally, the only thing Trixa offers demons involves heavy weaponry and hard-to-remove bloodstains. But there’s something out there even deadlier than fallen angels. It’s slaughtered almost one thousand demons in six months. And the killing isn’t going to stop unless Trixa and her friends step into the fight. But for Trixa, that might be one, final step too far..." - robthurman.net.
Game of Cages: A Twenty Palaces Novel by Harry Connolly. Del Rey. Print length: 368 p. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
This sequel to Connolly's 2009 novel Child of Fire is the second book in the Twenty Palaces series.
"Twenty Palace Society member Catherine Little, a lethal sorcerer committed to keeping supernatural entities and magic out of the possession of anyone but members of the society, contacts ex-convict Ray Lilly at his mundane supermarket job and recruits him to assist her with an emergency situation. Ray's actions are supposed to be limited to assisting his assigned peer, but an interdimensional predator has escaped and the society needs all the help it can get. Connolly doesn't shy away from tackling big philosophical issues - whether good ends justify evil means, how many civilian deaths can be justified in the pursuit of creatures that can destroy the world - amid gory action scenes and plenty of rapid-fire sardonic dialogue." - Publishers Weekly.
Blameless by Gail Carriger. Orbit. Print length: 400 p. Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is book three of the Parasol Protectorate series described by Carriger as "comedies of manners set in Victorian London: full of vampires, dirigibles, and tea." The first two books in the series - both available in Kindle editions - are Soulless and Changeless.
"Quitting her husband's house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season. Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council, and the only person who can explain anything, Lord Akeldama, unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all off, Alexia is attacked by homicidal mechanical ladybugs, indicating, as only ladybugs can, the fact that all of London's vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead. While Lord Maccon elects to get progressively more inebriated and Professor Lyall desperately tries to hold the Woolsey werewolf pack together, Alexia flees England for Italy in search of the mysterious Templars. Only they know enough about the preternatural to explain her increasingly inconvenient condition, but they may be worse than the vampires - and they're armed with pesto." - Amazon.
A word to the wise: It's a good idea to read The Dresden Files in order if you wish to keep track of the characters and plot twists.
Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the 
Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the 
"Kitty Norville, Alpha werewolf and host of The Midnight Hour, a radio call-in show, is contacted by a friend at the NIH's Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology. Three Army soldiers recently returned from the war in Afghanistan are being held at Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs. They're killer werewolves and post traumatic stress has left them unable to control their shape-shifting and unable to interact with people. Kitty agrees to see them, hoping to help by bringing them into her pack. Meanwhile, Kitty gets sued for libel by CEO Harold Franklin after featuring Speedy Mart - his nationwide chain of 24-hour convenience stores with a reputation for attracting supernatural unpleasantness - on her show. Very bad weather is on the horizon." - Amazon.
"Eff Rothmer is the twin sister of a seventh son of a seventh son, growing up on the edge of the 'safe' settled area of the U.S. in the 1850s (though history has not gone quite the way it did in our world - the Civil War, for instance, happened in 1832, and Lewis and Clark never came back...) This is the first book of a fantasy trilogy about settling the West in a world where magic works and the New World was not settled until modern magic (of Columbus' day) made it possible to fend off the dangerous wildlife (which includes both imaginary beasts like steam dragons and spectral bears, and real-life post-ice-age creatures like wooly mammoths)." - www.pcwrede.com.
