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Revealing the paperback cover of Saint Death’s Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney!

We’re delighted to share the cover for the paperback of C. S. E. Cooney’s stunning debut novel, Saint Death’s Daughter!

The wicked abandon of Gideon the Ninth meets the whimsy of The Last Unicorn in this tale of a necromancer with an allergy to violence who chooses gentleness again and again.

Saint Death’s Daughter will be released in paperback on 14 February 2023.

Nothing complicates life like Death.

Lanie Stones, the daughter of crown-appointed killers, was born with a gift for necromancy—and a literal allergy to violence. For her own safety, she was raised in isolation in a crumbling mansion by the family’s mouldering revenant.

When Lanie’s parents are murdered, she and her psychotic sister Nita must settle their extensive debts or lose their ancestral home. When Liriat’s ruler, too, is murdered, it throws the whole nation’s future into doubt.

Hunted by Liriat’s enemies, terrorised by family ghosts and tortured by a forbidden love for a childhood friend, Lanie will need more than luck to get through the next few months—but when the goddess of Death is on your side, anything is possible.

“Grisly, dark, lovely, funny, heartfelt.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Saint Death’s Daughter exemplifies what fantasy can do in the best of ways.” — Strange Horizons

“Every character arrives in a burst: fully-realized, always finding their mark, dripping with detail and a fire in their heart.” — Tor.com

“I loved Saint Death’s Daughter to pieces.” — Katherine Addison

“Saint Death’s Daughter is a tumultuous, swaggering, cackling story, a gorgeous citrus orchard with bones for roots. Miscellaneous Stones’ journey into adulthood and power, sorting knowledge from wisdom and vengeance from justice, has an ocean’s breadth and depth, its storms and sparkles and salt. Soaring with love and absolutely fizzing with tenderness and joy–I have never read anything so utterly alive.” — Amal El-Mohtar

“I don’t want to tell you much about this book. I want you to experience it the way I did; a cake whose every layer is more delicious than the last; a gemstone that always has another glittering facet when you turn it over in your hands; a gift that never stops giving. This is a book you should go into unprepared – and unarmed.” — Every Book A Doorway

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Why Necromancy? C. S. E. Cooney on Saint Death’s Daughter

As the spookiest time of the year approaches, we asked C. S. E. Cooney to tell us why she was inspired to write about necromancy in her stunning debut, Saint Death’s Daughter

Author Sharon Shinn once said: “We all have our things we write about. You write about death. And what comes after.” She said this just after my collection Bone Swans came out.

I admit, I got a little salty at that. I went right for a rebuttal. I was going to cite my sources, quote my texts. So I stopped and counted up all the stories in Bone Swans that were “about death and what comes after.”

Four out of five. Sharon Shinn got me.

And, of course, I’d been writing my novel Saint Death’s Daughter for longer than any of the Bone Swans stories had been around. She hadn’t even read that one, and it was about a freaking necromancer, so.

I started Saint Death’s Daughter to answer a particular “what if” question that tickled me: “What if you have a character who grows up in a family of assassins who is allergic to violence?”

The greater “what if” is genre-specific. What if we have an epic fantasy with a protagonist who cannot—physically cannot—solve her problems with violence? Epic fantasy often revels in violence as a solution. Or, if it doesn’t revel, it at least perpetuates the idea that a climactic and bloody clash between two opposing forces (pivoting on the protagonist and their choices) is unavoidable.

It was a knotty enough “what if” to keep me puzzling at it for twelve years. And in the end, I was only partly successful.

My protagonist can’t get mad and hit people. Not without consequences: she gets an “echo-wound,” a painful mirror of the hurt she inflicts, reflected upon her own person. And echo-wounds don’t just happen when Lanie hits people, either. If anyone near her commits a violent act in her presence, or talks about having done so, or threatens to do so in the future—heck, if Lanie Stones even touches an object that has recently bashed, beaned, or beheaded someone—she will have an allergic reaction to it. This can be anything from nosebleeds to projectile vomiting to losing consciousness.

She has strong motivations for peacekeeping. For her, it’s survival.

There are many violent aspects to this book. There are indulgent passages about weaponry, gleeful footnotes about decortication via oyster shell, and the various and sundry sudden (or otherwise) deaths suffered by the infamous Stones family. But Lanie Stones herself is gentle. She’d prefer to run and hide than stay and fight. She’d prefer to wait tables and read books than solve national crises.

Also, she loves the dead. She can’t help it. If she didn’t have living friends constantly pulling her back out into the sunlight, she’d live in the catacombs and commune only with the non-living natives of her fair city. Love of the dead—and the reciprocal love that the dead give her—makes her powerful. Lanie Stones is a rare thing: a priest of Doédenna, god of Death, in a world where all priests are wizards. Her early allergy to violence was a sign of Saint Death’s favor: that Lanie was destined to be a necromancer. After all, is there any more natural an evolution of a violent reaction against violence than the overturning of death itself?

I don’t believe in life after death (except, perhaps, in the microbial and memorial senses). But I do believe in gentleness. Ultimately, I find the stabby-stabby stuff of epic fantasy, while choreographically appealing, ethically tiresome. I could use a little less problem-solving via edged weapons and uppercuts and world wars, and more creative problem solving by people whose priorities are deescalation and diplomacy, people who, when their backs are to the wall and they finally snap under the enormous, bloody, violent, terrifying forces around them, have yet enough infrastructure of a loving community in place to call them back from the brink of destruction and set them on a path of healing once again.

A fallen family of assassins, divine necromantic powers, tombs full of skeletons and the girl who can wake them: these are all ways of engaging not just with the idea of death, but what it means to be alive. When Lanie Stones finally turns around and confronts her ghosts head-on, she realizes, for the first time, that those who came before her—her cruel teachers, her vicious ancestors—were not always better or wiser or even right. She learns, to her surprise, that what she has always accepted as truth she must now unlearn.

As a writer, I found in Lanie Stones an aspirational character: someone who finds power not in surrendering to authority-sanctioned, historically-approved bloodthirsty displays of might, but in wading counter to it, standing against it, choosing another way. And that’s why, in a nutshell, necromancy. That’s why I wrote Saint Death’s Daughter.

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Revealing the cover of The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan!

We’re so excited to share the stunning UK cover of The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan, designed by the brilliant Micaela Alcaino!

In a mystical 15th century Spain at the height of the Inquisition’s power, young Jews Toba and Naftaly must fight for survival by unravelling the mysterious connections they have to a magical world of the immortal Maziks whose fates are tied to their own.

The Pomegranate Gate will be released in June 2023 and is available to preorder now!

Two worlds bound by a pomegranate gate…

Toba Peres can speak but she can’t shout; she can walk but she can’t run; and she can write in five languages… with both hands at the same time.

Naftaly Cresques dreams every night of an orange-eyed stranger; when awake, he sees things that aren’t real; and he carries a book he can never lose and never read.

When the Queen of Sefarad orders all the nation’s Jews to leave or convert, Toba and Naftaly are forced to flee, but an unlucky encounter leaves them both separated from their caravan. Lost in the wilderness, Toba follows an orange-eyed stranger through a mysterious gate in a pomegranate grove, leaving Naftaly behind.

With a single step, Toba enters an ancient world that mirrors her own. There, she finds that her fate—and Naftaly’s—are bound to an ancient conflict threatening to destroy both realms.

For PR and marketing enquiries, contact Jess Gofton: jess.gofton@rebellion.co.uk

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OUT NOW: The Godbreaker by Mike Brooks

We’re so excited to be wishing The Godbreaker by Mike Brooks a very happy book birthday!

The stunning conclusion to The God-King Chronicles, The Godbreaker is epic fantasy in the truest sense, brimming with war-dragons, armoured knights, seafaring raiders and dangerous magic…

War comes to Narida and nothing will be the same again.

As the Black Keep Council prepares for war, journeying far to protect their lands and friend, The God-King and his sister try to keep Narida together in the face of betrayal while the Splinter King remains at large.

The Golden and his hordes of raiders press their advantage and sweep across the land with unholy powers.

Sacrifices will be made, and not everyone will make it back to Black Keep alive…

“Any fan of epic fantasy will find something to love here.” — Publishers Weekly on The Black Coast

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OUT NOW: Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

We’re delighted to be wishing Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia a very happy book birthday!

Discover a tale of music, witchcraft and second chances in this stunning reissue of Moreno-Garcia’s debut novel, for fans of The Craft and Magic for Liars.

Mexico City, 1988. Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said “I love you” with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, discovers how to cast spells using music, and with her friends Sebastian and Daniela will piece together their broken families, and even find love…

Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns for her estranged father’s funeral, reviving memories from her childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? Is there any magic left?

“In many ways, Signal to Noise is a coming-of-age tale, but it’s also the tale of what comes after – and what happens when forces beyond our control, magical or otherwise, are better left that way.” — NPR

“Haunting and beautifully nuanced, Signal to Noise is a magical first novel. ” — The Guardian

“Vibrantly new.” — Locus

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Revealing the paperback cover of The Carnival of Ash by Tom Beckerlegge

We’re delighted to reveal the stunning paperback cover of The Carnival of Ash by Tom Beckerlegge!

An Instance of the Fingerpost meets The Binding in this gorgeous mosaic novel of an Italian city that never was.

The Carnival of Ash is out in paperback in January 2023!

Welcome to the City of Words…

Tommaso Cellini, celebrated ruler of Cadenza, is dead. For Carlo Mazzoni, an aspiring poet, it is the worst possible moment to arrive at the city gates, his dreams of literary fame turning to disappointment and disgrace.

For Vittoria – known to all but a handful as the notorious ink maid Hypatia – Tommaso’s death is overshadowed by the disappearance of her creative spark, while Vittoria’s impulsive sister Maddelina seeks to make her own name with a daring conspiracy.

As Cadenza descends into anarchy amid rumours of war with its rival Venice, Carlo and the two sisters become entangled in intrigue, murder and revolution.

“A gorgeous, immersive triumph of Renaissance-flavored worldbuilding” — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“The zest and wit that Beckerlegge infuses into his fantastical Decameron is marvelous” — Locus

“This is a fabulous book” — The Historical Novels Review, Editor’s Choice

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Signal to Noise: The Playlist

Which song would you use to cast a spell? Whether it’s “Running Up That Hill” or “Gangnam Style”, music has an unparalleled ability to take us back to a specific time or place, but the teenagers in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s dazzling debut, Signal to Noise, discover a knack for literally making magic with their vinyl records.

Now you can dive into the musical soul of the book ahead of its re-release with this Signal to Noise playlist, curated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia herself!

Mexico City, 1988. Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said “I love you” with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, discovers how to cast spells using music, and with her friends Sebastian and Daniela will piece together their broken families, and even find love…

Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns for her estranged father’s funeral, reviving memories from her childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? Is there any magic left?

“The book is this rich, elaborate symphony of awesome that defies simple definitions.” — Kirkus

“In many ways, Signal to Noise is a coming-of-age tale, but it’s also the tale of what comes after – and what happens when forces beyond our control, magical or otherwise, are better left that way.” — NPR

“Haunting and beautifully nuanced, Signal to Noise is a magical first novel.” — The Guardian

“Numerous ’80s musical references make this unusual story a welcome blast from the past.” — Publisher’s Weekly

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OUT NOW: Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy by Sam J. Miller

We’re over the moon that the first of our 2022 Solaris Satellites novellas, Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy by Sam J. Miller, is out now!

Each of our Solaris Satellites novellas is available in eBook, audiobook and as a limited signed paperback, available directly from our webstore! Treat yourself to a digital or print season pass to buy all three of this year’s novellas.

In Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy, Sam J. Miller invites you to a 1920s New York brimming with queer love, societal change and tattoo magic…

“Kid” Wolffe is an up-and-coming boxer in 1920s New York. An honest fighter’s got little chance at success on the mob-controlled circuit—until ambitious lieutenant “Hinky” Friedman starts making moves to take over her boss’s business, and sees a use for the kid.

Teitelstam is a struggling tattoo artist, whose natural talent for ink magic won’t amount to much without formal training. So he’s got no idea why Hinky would offer him ten times what he’s worth to come work for her.

But Hinky has a vision for a better world, and her high-stakes plan to make it reality requires both Wolffe’s fists and Teitelstam’s magic. What neither Wolffe nor Teitelstam expects is to fall in love; and in this world, love might be more dangerous than deadly magic or an underworld turf war…

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OUT NOW: Flames of Mira by Clay Harmon

We’re thrilled to be wishing Flames of Mira by Clay Harmon a very happy book birthday!

What would you risk to overthrow a tyrant? For fans of Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie, Flames of Mira invites you into an unforgiving world of elemental magic, where disobedience means death.

Magic and redemption in a world of fire and ice.

Among boiling volcanoes under Mira’s frozen lands, people like Ig are forced to undergo life-threatening trials that bind chemical elements to the human body. One of Mira’s most powerful elementals, Ig serves as an enforcer for Magnate Sorrelo Adriann, but is cursed with flesh binding magic that will kill him at the first sign of disobedience.

When Sorrelo is overthrown, Ig quickly learns he can do far worse than what has been asked of him so far. If he can’t escape the flesh binding in time, he will have to kill friend and foe alike to stop his master reclaiming the throne, or sacrifice himself trying.

“With some of the most unique and fascinating worldbuilding I’ve ever seen in a fantasy novel, Flames of Mira is a captivating read from start to finish.” — Nick Martell, author of The Two-Faced Queen

“An extraordinary world unlike any you’ve read before.” — FanFiAddict

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OUT NOW: The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addision!

We’re delighted to wish The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison a very happy book birthday!

Return to Amalo in this sequel to The Witness for the Dead, where an investigation into a school for foundling girls leads Thara Celehar on his most sinister journey yet. But it’s a journey he doesn’t need to take alone…

Celehar’s life as the Witness for the Dead of Amalo grows less isolated as his circle of friends grows larger. He has been given an apprentice to teach, and he has stumbled over a scandal of the city—the foundling girls. Orphans with no family to claim them and no funds to buy an apprenticeship. Foundling boys go to the Prelacies; foundling girls are sold into service, or worse.

At once touching and shattering, Celehar’s witnessing for one of these girls will lead him into the depths of his own losses.

The love of his friends will lead him out again.