ARC Book Haul

Ordinarily I am not the fastest of readers but, when I had a few books offered my way that were all due out within a 4-week period, and all sounded pretty awesome to me, I decided I had to get my reading speed up.

Frustratingly, of the two of these I have already finished … neither of them are the one that is released first. Nothing like putting your own back up against the wall with self-imposed deadlines 😉

All four are titles from Titan Books.

 

The Library of the Unwritten by A. J. Hackwith

Release date: 11th February 2020

Every book left unfinished by its author is filed away in the Unwritten Wing, a neutral space in Hell presided over by Claire, its head librarian. Along with repairing and organizing books, her job consists of keeping an eye on restless stories whose characters risk materialising and escaping the library.

When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto. But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong, in a chase that threatens to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell… and Earth.

 

The Golden Key by Marian Womack:

Release date: 18th February 2020

1901. After the death of Queen Victoria, England heaves with the uncanny. Séances are held and the dead are called upon from darker realms.

Helena Walton-Cisneros, known for her ability to find the lost and the displaced, is hired by the elusive Lady Matthews to solve a twenty-year-old mystery: the disappearance of her three stepdaughters who vanished without a trace on the Norfolk Fens.

But the Fens are an age-old land, where folk tales and dark magic still linger. The locals speak of devilmen and catatonic children are found on the Broads. Here, Helena finds what she was sent for, as the Fenland always gives up its secrets, in the end…

 

Recoil by J. T. Nicholas:

Release Date: 3rd March 2020

Carter Langston is murdered whilst salvaging a derelict vessel – a major inconvenience as he’s downloaded into a brand-new body on the space station where he backed up, several weeks’ journey away. But events quickly slip out of control when an assassin breaks into the medbay and tries to finish the job.

Death no longer holds sway over a humanity that has spread across the solar system: consciousness can be placed in a new body, or coil, straight after death, giving people the potential for immortality. Yet Carter’s backups – supposedly secure – have been damaged, his crew are missing, and everything points back to the derelict that should have been a simple salvage mission.

With enemies in hot pursuit, Carter tracks down his last crewmate – re-coiled after death into a body she cannot stand – to delve deeper into a mystery that threatens humanity and identity as they have come to know it.

 

Echo Cycle by Patrick Edwards:

Release date: 10th March 2020

Gladiator meets 1984 in this near-future thriller featuring timeslips, ancient magic and a disturbingly plausible dystopian Britain…

68 CE
Fleeing disaster, young Winston Monk wakes to find himself trapped in the past, imprisoned by the mad Emperor Nero. The Roman civilization he idolized is anything but civilized, and his escape from a barbaric home has led him somewhere far more dangerous.

2070 CE
As the European Union crumbled, Britain closed its borders, believing they were stronger alone. After decades of hardship, British envoy Lindon Banks joins a diplomatic team to rebuild bridges with the hypermodern European Confederacy. But in Rome, Banks discovers his childhood friend who disappeared without a trace. Monk appears to have spent the last two decades living rough, but he tells a different story: a tale of Caesars, slavery and something altogether more sinister.

Monk’s mysterious emergence sparks the tinderbox of diplomatic relations between Britain and the Confederacy, controlled by shadowy players with links back to the ancient world itself…