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Two Solaris titles shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize!

We’re beyond delighted to share the exciting news that The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed and The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera are both shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction!

In its third year, The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction is an annual $25,000 cash prize awarded to a writer for a single work of speculative fiction. This year’s panel, who will choose the winner from the ten shortlisted books, includes Margaret Atwood, Omar El Akkad, Megan Giddings, Ken Liu, and Carmen Maria Machado. The winner will be announced on 21st October 2024—Ursula K. Le Guin’s birthday.

This is the first award nomination for The Siege of Burning Grass, and another award nomination for The Saint of Bright Doors, which has already won a Crawford, Locus, and Nebula Award. We couldn’t be happier for both authors and their tremendous novels.

You can check out the entire shortlist here!

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OUT NOW: Lady Eve’s Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow

We’re wishing Lady Eve’s Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow a very happy book birthday! It’s out today in the US and will be released in the UK on Thursday 6 June.

Con artist Ruth’s quest for revenge against the man who broke her sister’s heart is complicated when she meets his unfairly attractive sister in this sapphic sci-fi rom-com!

Ruth Johnson and her sister Jules have been small-time hustlers on the interstellar cruise lines for years. But then Jules fell in love with one of their targets, Esteban Mendez-Yuki, sole heir to the family insurance fortune. Esteban seemed to love her too, until she told him who she really was, at which point he fled without a word.

Now Ruth is set on revenge: disguised as provincial debutante Evelyn Ojukwu and set for the swanky satellite New Monte, she’s going to make Esteban fall in love with her, then break his heart and take half his fortune. At least, that’s the plan. But Ruth hadn’t accounted for his older sister, Sol, a brilliant mind in a dashing suit… and much harder to fool.

Sol is hot on Ruth’s tail, and as the two women learn each other’s tricks, Ruth must decide between going after the money and going after her heart.

“A delightful story about what happens when the billionaire target of your galactic revenge plot has a terrifyingly sexy half-sister. It’s got zest, it’s got style, it’s got society balls, dramatic reversals, incredible outfits, and a beach episode. Fraimow knows exactly what she’s doing.” —Emily Tesh, author of Some Desperate Glory

Wildly fun and incredibly romantic, all the glitter of the Jazz Age and the brilliance of space opera in one story.” —Everina Maxwell, author of Winter’s Orbit

“Compulsively readable and totally delightful.” Publishers Weekly, starred review

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OUT NOW: Queen of None by Natania Barron

We’re wishing Queen of None by Natania Barron a very happy book birthday!

A rich and lyrical feminist Arthurian fantasy for fans of Circe and The Witch’s Heart, Queen of None is the first in the Queens of Fate trilogy which revisits Arthurian legend through the eyes of of its women—beginning with King Arthur’s oft-forgotten sister, Anna Pendragon…

“Through all the ages, and in the hearts of men, you will be forgotten.”

Married at twelve, and a mother soon after, King Arthur’s sister Anna did not live a young life full of promise. She bore three strong sons and delivered the kingdom of Orkney to her brother by way of her marriage. She did as she was asked, invisible and useful—for her name, her dowry, and her womb.

Now, twenty years after she left her home, Anna is summoned back to Carelon with the crown of her now-dead husband, to face the demons of her childhood: her sisters Morgen, Elaine and Morgause; Merlin and his scheming priests; and Bedevere, the man she once loved.

Carelon is changing, and Anna must change with it. New threats lurk in the shadows, and a strange power begins to awaken in her. If she is to be more than a pawn in others’ plans, she must bargain her own strength, and family, in pursuit of her ambition—and revenge.

“A captivating look at the intriguing figures in King Arthur’s golden realm.” – Kirkus

“A layered, engaging retelling, sure to please fans of the Arthurian tales.” – Publishers Weekly

“Barron’s take will leave readers with entirely new insights into Arthurian legend.” – Booklist

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The Ten Percent Thief is an Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee!

We’re thrilled to see The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan on the 2024 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist!

The winner will be announced at a ceremony on 24th July 2024 and you can check out the full shortlist here.

Set in a futuristic Bangalore known as Apex City, where a person’s rights are dictated by their usefulness to society, The Ten Percent Thief is a fresh, dystopian mosaic novel following the city’s inhabitants from across the social spectrum—and the rebellion that’s brewing underneath it all…

For fans of Red Rising and Poster Girl, The Ten Percent Thief is out now in paperback, and Lavanya’s brand new novel, Interstellar MegaChef, is available to preorder!

Nothing has happened. Not yet, anyway. This is how all things begin.

Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore, where everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve.

With the right image, values and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Twenty Percent – the Virtual elite – and have the world at your feet. Otherwise you risk falling to the precarious Ten Percent, and deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water or even humanity.

The system has no flaws. Until the elusive “Ten Percent Thief” steals a single jacaranda seed from the Virtual city and plants a revolution in the barren soil of the Analog world.

Previously published in South Asia only as Analog/Virtual, The Ten Percent Thief is a striking debut by a ferocious new talent.

“Lavanya Lakshminarayan breathes new life into dystopia” — The Washington Post

“Smart, vivid, engaging” — The Guardian

“A new masterpiece”SciFiNow

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Solaris to publish horror western Red Rabbit for the UK

Against a red desert background, the cover for RED RABBIT by Alex Grecian

Solaris is delighted to announce the acquisition of Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian for the UK.


A rip-roaring horror romp for fans of Stephen Graham Jones and The Magnificent Seven, Red Rabbit follows an unlikely group racing along the drought-stricken plains in a stolen stagecoach in pursuit of a witch named Sadie Grace. As their posse grows, so too does the danger, but this hodgepodge crew are determined to get the bounty on Sadie’s head—or die trying.


UK/BC Rights (excluding Canada) were acquired by Chiara Mestieri from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein, in association with The Gernert Company


Red Rabbit will be released in September 2024. Cover design by Sam Gretton.


Author Alex Grecian on the acquisition:


“I’m both proud and incredibly delighted to join Solaris in bringing Red Rabbit to a new readership.”


Acquiring Editor Chiara Mestieri:


“I am so thrilled to be bringing Red Rabbit to the UK! Alex blends the horror and Western genres so cleverly, and I couldn’t tear myself away from the cracking pace and epic scope of its narrative, its quick-witted characters, and the delightfully folky horrors they encounter along the journey. I can’t wait for new readers to saddle up for the ride.”

Alex Grecian is the New York Times bestselling author of The Yard and its sequels The Black Country, The Devil’s Workshop, The Harvest Man, and Lost and Gone Forever, as well as the contemporary thriller The Saint of Wolves and Butchers, and the ebook The Blue Girl. He has also written multiple award-winning graphic novels, including Proof and Rasputin.


For press enquiries please contact Jess Gofton, PR & Marketing Manager: jess.gofton@rebellion.co.uk.

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OUT NOW: Snowblooded by Emma Sterner-Radley

Happy book birthday to Snowblooded by Emma Sterner-Radley!

The Princess Bride meets Six of Crows in this queer Scandinavian fantasy romp, where a pair of rival assassins must team up to kill the mysterious leader of their city’s illegal magic trade.

Valour and Petrichor are esteemed members of the Order of Axsten, an assassin’s guild tasked with keeping order in the rough city of Vinterstock. Plucked from the streets as children and raised to compete for their guild’s approval, Valour uses her brawn to survive, while Petrichor strives to be a gentleman assassin. When they’re given their biggest job yet—to kill Brandquist, the mysterious leader of the city’s illegal magic trade—it’s a recipe for disaster. If they can quell their rivalry long enough, the reward will be enough to settle their debts with the Order and start new lives.

If this job wasn’t dangerous enough, Valour is saddled with protecting the aristocrat, Ingrid Rytterdahl. Valour finds her dangerously attractive, but Petrichor can’t wait to be rid of them both. He begrudgingly accepts Ingrid’s knowledge and connections as they navigate the city’s criminal underbelly in pursuit of Brandquist.

As secrets bubble to the surface, the duo must outwit the thugs on their tail, keep Ingrid alive, and—hardest of all—work together without murdering each other.

“Swashbuckling adventure, sweeping romance, and wit as sharp as an assassin’s knife come together to create a quintessentially delightful read.” —S.T. Gibson, author of A Dowry of Blood

“Oceans Eleven meets queer nordic assassins in this thrillride fantasy debut. Valour and Petrichor are a fatally flawed (and flawlessly fatal) duo who must overcome their distaste and distrust of each other in order to outwit a target who will otherwise destroy both of them.” —Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters

“Bursting with twisty intrigue, fascinating worldbuilding and two leads whose tongues are as sharp as their knives, Snowblooded is a banter-filled fantasy delight.” —Frances White, Sunday Times bestselling author of Voyage of the Damned

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Revealing the cover of The Unkillable Princess by Taran Hunt!

We’re so excited to share the cover of The Unkillable Princess by Taran Hunt, sequel to beloved 2022 favourite The Immortality Thief, designed by Martin Stiff at Amazing15!

Sean grapples with family – the one he’s found and the one that’s found him – in this rollicking sequel which will hit bookshelves in February 2025.

How far would you go for family?

Having escaped the dangers of the Nameless with the Philosopher Stone data, Sean thought his troubles were over. Until he gets a call for help from his sister Brigid–his long-dead sister.

Brigid is sparse on the details, but she needs Sean to go to the Republican city of Illin to retrieve something called a “Purifier” for her. Reeling from the desperate hope that his sister is alive, Sean aims for Illin, dragging his new companions, Tamara Gupta formerly a Republican soldier, and Indigo, the Minister responsible for the destruction of Sean’s home, into the fray.

But as usual, Sean hasn’t quite thought this through. The three of them are all wanted by Republican authorities, and Illin happens to be on the same planet as Sean’s old friend Senator Ketel. Y’know, the one who blackmailed and nearly murdered Sean. With every move Sean makes he discovers more intrigue, more people on his tail, and more ways that his little adventure could be the spark for war between the Republic and the Ministers. And to what end? Is it really his sister, a chance for family, and safety, on the other side?

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Why Solaris authors write science fiction

It’s no secret that we love science fiction here at Solaris – and that we’re lucky enough to publish so much of it! – but what is it about the genre that entices our authors?

Well, to celebrate Star Wars Day, we asked some of them just that! And here’s what they had to say…

Lavanya Lakshminarayan

Science fiction holds endless possibilities; it’s as limitless as spacetime, as reflective as an infinity mirror. It can bend and reshape perspectives on reality, and it can frame our visions for the future.

I grew up in India, and we didn’t always have access to a ton of science fiction, but I was lucky enough to have a family that raised me with a sense of wonder. When I was very young, my mother introduced me to Star Wars. The first show I was allowed to stay up late to watch on a school night was Star Trek. One summer, I stumbled upon stacks of science fiction novels in my grandparents’ library—all the classics from the 60’s and 70’s—and I devoured them all.

I didn’t realize until I was much older that I’d seldom encountered characters with names like mine. I possessed a deep-rooted sense of wonder, but while I was tracing the outlines of all these futures, the vastness of the universe didn’t seem to have room for people like me…

And so, I write science fiction to envision the lives of people like me in the future, where our backgrounds and histories and cultures influence the shape of the future, so we get to live that sense of wonder for ourselves, instead of being on the outside looking in.

Science fiction is a place of freedom, where all things are possible, and everyone can belong. This is what keeps me coming back to the page, every single time.

Derek Künsken

Sure, the world is an interesting place, but are there lightsabers here? Phasers? Monsters to trick or fight? Does the real world have cool helmets? What about shiny Cylons? Sure, there’s danger in the world, but is it containable? Defeatable? Punchable? Does real world danger come in bright laser blasts with special effects sounds? Sure, there’s heroism in the world, but do the actions of one person tip the scales, save the good guys? There are cool places in the world, but are they forest moons, gas giants, asteroids, and the dark vacuum of space? There are lots of readers looking for detective mysteries, heart-racing romances of yesteryear or the here and now, political thrillers and so on, but I’ve always wanted to be transported in books and film to other worlds, peopled with strange aliens, to adventures unknown in my world. That’s what I need to see. I don’t know why I write. I just always have – I’ve always needed to. And in writing, I transport myself to other places, other times, and other realities, and hopefully bring along some readers too.

Rebecca Fraimow

Fiction can do a lot of incredible things, but for my money, two of the most powerful are the shock of the new and the shock of the familiar: when a book presents you with a thought, image, or idea that you’ve never had before; when a stranger on a page expresses something that immediately makes you think ‘oh, me too’. I love speculative fiction because it lets you imagine all kinds of different lives that people might live — every possible ‘what if’ under the sun — and the stranger it gets, the more powerful those moments of connection and recognition become. I love the moments when a character who lives in a galaxy far far away experiences something that feels indescribably strange to me, and I love the moments when they experience something that’s so profoundly human that it could have happened to me yesterday buying groceries.

Yoon Ha Lee

It’s 90% true that I’m in sci-fi for the big space battles, because I can be counted on to lower the discourse. But the other reason is that I am very boring and health prevents me from having adventures, and I suspect “trapped in a desperate no-win situation by a maniacally cackling author” is way more fun to read (write?) than to experience. I love that sci-fi allows me to imagine adventures in extraordinary circumstances; that it lets me pose the terrible over-the-top questions, inhabit the terrible over-the-top scenarios, that I would never go near in real life. In real life, I want hot running water, kthx (I have lived in a house without it). I experience the ordinary everyday by existing. It’s the extraordinary, the outright impossible, that I crave.

Also I was that extremely gullible kid who spent years searching my grandma’s closets for Narnia, so there’s that, too.

Ren Hutchings

Science fiction takes us on adventures to worlds both familiar and strange, from eerily-possible near-futures to fantastical alternate realities, and I love it in all its flavours. I adore worldbuilding, and I love discovering more about a fictional universe as a series or franchise expands. But so much of what I love about all genre fiction is the character journeys. Throw in some of my favourite character tropes and I’m all in.

I love a rag-tag crew suddenly pulled into an adventure, I love bickering opposites who’ve lived vastly different lives being thrown together to cooperate, I love an ordinary person called upon to do something extraordinary. Placing a compelling character story against a sci-fi backdrop is the recipe for many of my favourite movies, shows and books, and the original Star Wars trilogy was definitely a formative part of my inspiration to create sci-fi stories of my own.

As I work on the next books in my own series, I’ve thought a lot about how to craft fictional universes that feel like they expand far beyond what’s seen on the screen or on the page. And by contrast, the way a small moment or a tiny corner of that universe can feel immense when seen through a certain character’s lens. Because sci-fi is not only the discovery of new worlds and experiences, but their discovery specifically through the eyes of the characters that live in them.

Edward Ashton

I didn’t set out to be a science fiction writer. I first made a (small) name for myself writing the sort of stories that are published in journals with names like The Southern Missouri Literary Review. After my first child was born, though, I took a break from writing, and when I came back to it years later I decided to try writing the kinds of stories I really loved to read rather than the ones that my writing professors had drilled into my head.

Science fiction has two great virtues that have drawn me to it as both a reader and a writer. First and most obviously, the genre permits incredible creativity. Contemporary fiction is constrained by the contemporary world. That has its own virtues—the defined form of a haiku or a sonnet forces the poet to express herself with far greater precision than free verse—but speculative fiction allows the writer to invent a world purpose-built to illustrate whatever message she’s trying to communicate.

More importantly, the fact that science fiction allows the writer to set a story in a time and place that has no obvious connection to the contemporary world allows the writer to speak directly to the reader about contemporary issues without having emotional blinders get in the way. If I write a critique of modern capitalism set in contemporary New York, some large fraction of my readers will take what I’m saying as a direct criticism of themselves and their lifestyle, and at that point all communication stops. If I set that same critique a thousand years in the future and a dozen light years away, though? Now I’ve at least got a chance of getting my point across.

Also, of course, science fiction has dragons. Who doesn’t love dragons?

Taran Hunt

There are so many reasons to appreciate and enjoy science fiction that I could not narrow down the appeal to a single cause. Instead, here are five reasons that I love science fiction:

  1. I watched Star Trek: Voyager as a child and imprinted like a baby duck.
  2. I studied physics in college. Calculating time dilation makes me feel alive.
  3. Every author must have something inexplicably wrong with them. Art comes from this unresolvable fault in the soul. The fault in my soul involves aliens, somehow.
  4. Science fiction allows the exploration of what might exist: either elsewhere in the universe, or in our own future. Familiar inter- and intrapersonal conflicts can be represented by unfamiliar and fantastic settings and concepts. The hypothetical and the unfamiliar focus on the familiar in an exciting way.
  5. Only in science fiction can you find swords on spaceships. Swords. On spaceships.

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Solaris to publish Tlingit epic fantasy by Caskey Russell

Solaris is delighted to announce the acquisition The Raven and Eagle Series, consisting of The Door on the Sea and its two sequels, by Caskey Russell.

From member of the Tlingit Nation of Alaska, Caskey Russell, The Door on the Sea is a Tlingit answer to Tolkien in which a bookish outcast must lead a crew including warriors, a giant wolf, and the mythical Raven to steal the only weapon that can defeat the shapeshifting colonists that threaten his community.

A modern, Indigenous reclamation of the quest fantasy genre, an ode to the power of storytelling, and an alternate-history retelling of white missionary colonialism, The Door on the Sea is a rich, adventurous debut for fans of Black Sun and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi.

World All Languages Rights were acquired by Amy Borsuk from Lauren Bajek at Liza Dawson Literary Agency. The Door on the Sea will be released in September 2025.

Author Caskey Russell on the acquisition:

“I am thrilled and delighted to be working with Solaris on The Door on the Sea and my entire Raven and Eagle Series. And I’m very grateful for Solaris for providing a way to share these stories, which are grounded in Tlingit culture, with the world. I want to thank Amy Borsuk and the entire Solaris team for working with me to bring these books to life!”

Acquiring Editor Amy Borsuk:

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be bringing Caskey’s fun, magical and epic Tlingit fantasy series to the world. Caskey’s nautical quest tale draws from Tlingit mythos and his own personal sense of Tlingit identity as shared with his family and his clan. This wonderful story has a fantastic cast of characters, featuring a particularly crude yet wise raven, bear humans, wolf cousins, a bookish hero and the warriors holding him up. But it is also much more than that: it is a captivating and original portal fantasy adventure that comes from the heart and explores the messy, harmful and tangled reality of what happens when one’s world is shaken by the invasion of those claiming everything you know is a lie.”

Caskey Russell is from Seattle Washington, and has lived in Oregon, Iowa, Wyoming, and New Zealand. He is a father, a professor, a musician, and an enrolled member of the Tlingit Nation (Eagle / Kooyu Kwáan) of Alaska.

For press enquiries please contact Jess Gofton, PR & Marketing Manager: jess.gofton@rebellion.co.uk.

For rights enquiries please contact Sam Birkett, Rights Manager: sam.birkett@rebellion.co.uk

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

We’re delighted to be sharing the stunning cover of Saint Death’s Herald by C. S. E. Cooney, designed by the fabulous Kate Forrester!

Sequel to the critically-acclaimed and World Fantasy Award-winning Saint Death’s Daughter, Saint Death’s Herald continues the adventures of necromancer-with-heart, Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones, and will be released in April 2025.

Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones is the necromancer that Doédenna, god of Death, has been praying for.

True, she’s always been more interested in books and pastries than in creating abominations and raising armies of the undead. But still—she lives to love and serve Saint Death. And damn it duodecifold, Saint Death needs her! Lanie has many talents—her powers of death magic are growing more complex and stranger every day—but first and foremost is her ability to lay the unrestful dead to their unending slumber.

Unfortunately for Lanie, the most restless of these “unrestful dead” happens to be her own great-grandfather, the powerful necromancer Irradiant Stones. After having escaped from his temporary prison, he is possessing people from all over the realms, sucking them dry of their magic and discarding their bodies when there’s nothing left to take, growing stronger and stronger all the time. His ultimate goal? To return to the icy country of Skakmaht, where he died, and finish conquering the North for his own. First the North—then the world! After Irradiant takes care of his pesky great-granddaughter Lanie, that is: the only person on Athe who can stop him.

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