Was it just us, or was that the longest summer ever? Things are finally starting to cool down at Tor.com’s home base in New York, and we’re itching to curl up under our blankets with a good book or two, or maybe even thirteen… Below, check out the cover designs and descriptions for all the novellas and novels that Tor.com Publishing will be bring out in Winter 2018, from January through April. Plus, we’ve got a new ebook bundle featuring 5 of our favorite previously published titles!
It’s an exciting new season for us—we’re visiting sugary portal worlds, time-hopping through history, and fending off an apocalypse or two!
All titles will be available world-wide in print, ebook, and audio. As always, our ebooks are DRM-free.
Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3)
Written by Seanan McGuire
Designed by FORT
Photograph by Sean Rodwell
Available January 9, 2018
What’s it about?
Seanan McGuire returns to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children in a stand-alone contemporary fantasy for fans of all ages. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the “real” world.
When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let reality get in the way of her quest—not when she has an entire world to save!
Good thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests…
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Binti: The Night Masquerade (Binti #3)
Written by Nnedi Okorafor
Illustrated by David Palumbo
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Available January 16, 2018
What’s it about?
Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse.
Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her. Once again it is up to Binti and her intriguing new friend Mwinyi to intervene—though the elders of her people do not entirely trust her motives—and try to prevent a war that could wipe out her people, once and for all.
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The Only Harmless Great Thing
Written by Brooke Bolander
Designed by Will Stahle
Available January 23, 2018
What’s it about?
In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.
These are the facts.
Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.
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The Armored Saint (The Sacred Throne #1)
Written by Myke Cole
Illustrated by Tommy Arnold
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Available February 20, 2018
What’s it about?
Myke Cole, author of the military fantasy Shadow Ops series, debuts a new epic fantasy trilogy with The Armored Saint, a tale of religious tyrants, arcane war-machines, and underground resistance that will enthrall epic fantasy readers of all ages.
After witnessing a horrendous slaughter, young Heloise opposes the Order, and risks bringing their wrath down on herself, her family, and her village. She must confront the true risk that wizards pose to the world, and weigh the safety of her people against justice.
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Starfire: Memory’s Blade (Starfire #3)
Written by Spencer Ellsworth
Illustrated by Sparth
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Available February 27, 2018
What’s it about?
At the heart of the Dark Zone, a duel for the universe rages.
In an ancient Jorian temple, Jaqi faces John Starfire, the new ruler of the Empire. He has set all the worlds aflame in his quest to destroy humankind. Jaqi has sworn to stop him. Problem is, Jaqi isn’t much of a fighter.
Meanwhile, the sun-eating cosmic spiders, the Shir, have moved out of the Dark Zone and are consuming the galaxy. Araskar knows that he must hold them back, but to do that, he has to give himself over to the Resistance, under the command of John Starfire’s wife. And she wants him dead more than she wants the stars to live.
If Jaqi and Araskar can fight their way out, they can use a secret at the heart of the Dark Zone to free the galaxy, and end John Starfire’s new tyranny. They lose, and every star in the sky will go dark.
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The Warrior Within
Written by Angus McIntyre
Illustrated by Martin Deschambault
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Available March 6, 2018
What’s it about?
Karsman has a dozen different people living in his head, each the master of a different set of skills and hoping to gain mastery of Karsman’s body. He survives on a backwater planet dominated by the Muljaddy, a mostly ambivalent religious autocracy, where devotion and prayer can be traded in for subsistence wages and enough food to survive. Surrounded by artifacts of a long dead civilization, the population survives off its salvage, with Karsman eking out an uneventful life as the unofficial mayor of his small town.
But that life is soon interrupted, when a group of commandos arrive, coming from the wastelands as only off-worlders could. They’ve come to kill a woman, or so they say. At first the commandos merely threaten as they search. Unable to find what they’re looking for, they begin to ratchet up their measures, separating the men from the women, instigating violent encounters, and eventually staging a coup against the Muljaddy and his Temple.
Faced with the task of protecting his quiet town and a woman he might love from the commandos who could want to kill her, Karsman must balance between maintaining his personality and harnessing the personas whose skills he desperately needs.
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Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach
Written by Kelly Robson
Illustrated by Jon Foster
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Available March 13, 2018
What’s it about?
Discover a shifting history of adventure as humanity clashes over whether to repair their ruined planet or luxuriate in a less tainted past.
In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity’s ancestral habitat. She’s spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.
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Stone Mad (Karen Memory #2)
Written by Elizabeth Bear
Illustrated by Micah Epstein
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Available March 20, 2018
What’s it about?
Karen Memory has more stories to tell.
Her latest adventure features spiritualists, magicians, con-men, and an angry lost tommy-knocker—a magical creature who generally lives in the deep gold mines of Alaska, but has been kidnapped and brought to Rapid City, a steampunk Victorian setting in the Pacific Northwest.
Karen and Priya are out for a night on the town, celebrating the purchase of their own little ranch and Karen’s retirement from the Hotel Ma Cherie, when they meet the Arcadia Sisters, spiritualists who unexpectedly stir up the tommy-knocker in the basement. The ensuing show could bring down the house, if Karen didn’t rush in to rescue everyone she can.
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Void Black Shadow (Voidwitch Saga #2)
Written by Corey J. White
Illustrated by Tommy Arnold
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Available March 27, 2018
What’s it about?
Mars Xi is a living weapon, a genetically-manipulated psychic supersoldier with a body count in the thousands, and all she wanted was to be left alone. People who get involved with her get hurt, whether by MEPHISTO, by her psychic backlash, or by her acid tongue. It’s not smart to get involved with Mars, but that doesn’t stop some people from trying.
The last time MEPHISTO came for Mars they took one of her friends with them. That was a mistake. A force hasn’t been invented that can stop a voidwitch on a rampage, and Mars won’t rest until she’s settled her debts.
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The Barrow Will Send What it May (Danielle Cain #2)
Written by Margaret Killjoy
Illustrated by Mark Smith
Designed by Jamie Stafford-Hill
Available April 3, 2018
What’s it about?
Now a nascent demon-hunting crew on the lam, Danielle and her friends arrive in a small town that contains a secret occult library run by anarchists and residents who claim to have come back from the dead. When Danielle and her crew investigate, they are put directly in the crosshairs of a necromancer’s wrath—whose actions threaten to trigger the apocalypse itself.
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Taste of Wrath (Sin du Jour #7)
Written by Matt Wallace
Designed by Peter Lutjen
Photographs © Getty Images
Available April 10, 2018
What’s it about?
Allensworth has been manipulating Bronko and his team from Day One, and the gang at Sin du Jour have had enough.
Old debts are called in, and an alliance is formed with the unlikeliest of comrades.
Some will die. Some will descend. And some will rise.
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The Atrocities
Written by Jeremy Shipp
Illustrated by Sam Araya
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Available April 17, 2018
What’s it about?
When Isabella died, her parents were determined to ensure her education wouldn’t suffer.
But Isabella’s parents had not informed her new governess of Isabella’s… condition, and when Ms Valdez arrives at the estate, having forced herself through a surreal nightmare maze of twisted human-like statues, she discovers that there is no girl to tutor.
Or is there…?
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Time Was
Written by Ian McDonald
Designed by Christine Foltzer
Photograph of two soldiers on a rural road © Stephen Mulcahey/Arcangel; Photograph of night sky © Getty Images
Available April 24, 2018
What’s it about?
A love story stitched across time and war, shaped by the power of books, and ultimately destroyed by it.
In the heart of World War II, Tom and Ben became lovers. Brought together by a secret project designed to hide British targets from German radar, the two founded a love that could not be revealed. When the project went wrong, Tom and Ben vanished into nothingness, presumed dead. Their bodies were never found.
Now the two are lost in time, hunting each other across decades, leaving clues in books of poetry and trying to make their desperate timelines overlap.
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Future Dreams
Available January 30, 2018
What’s it about?
Experience five stunning science fiction visions of the future. From pay-to-play immortality to simulated reality, from crowdsourced AI to multiverse theory, these novellas have everything you could ask for.
This ebook bundle features:
- The Burning Light by Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob Ziegler
- The Warren by Brian Evenson
- Proof of Concept by Gwyneth Jones
- Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny
- Patchwerk by David Tallerman
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