
New Dawn requires only that people conform without exception or face memory erasure and worse. Yet, a minority insists on being individuals.
The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe

Desperate to pay her brother Jasper's way out of Muhlenberg County, Opal accepts a job at an infamously cursed mansion.
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

The latter half of Pyramid's ten-year run, the issues published from November 2013 to December 2018, sixty-two issues in all.
Bundle of Holding: Pyramid 2

Yelling "Get off my lawn!" on an interplanetary scale...
Five Books About Aliens Who Are Fed Up With Humans
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In a city with over a million people per square kilometre, real estate firms will never lack for clients. Good news for the employees of the Wong Loi Realty Company!
Kowloon Generic Romance, volume 1 by Jun Mayuzuki (Translated by Amanda Haley)
Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a friend.
I love planetary settlement novels, and I love alien communication novels, and Cam has given us both. When John Maraintha arrives on the planet Scythia, he has no particular intentions toward its inhabitants. It was never his intention to be there, and now that he is, he expects to serve as a doctor for the colonists. But he's simultaneously shut out of some parts of Scythian society and drawn into the puzzle of its sentient species and their communications. Their life cycles are so different from humans', but surely this gap can be bridged with goodwill and hard work, even in the scrubby high desert that serves as home for human and alien alike?
Science fiction famously touts itself as the literature of alienation; Cameron actually delivers on that here in ways that a lot of the genre is not even trying to do. The layers of alienation--and the layers of connection that can be found between them--are varied and complicated. This book is gentle and subtle, even though there are scenes were John's medical training is put to its bloodiest use. If you're tired of mid-air punching battles as the climax of far too many things, the very personal and very cultural staged climax of What We Are Seeking will be a canteen of water for you in this arid time. Gender, relationship, reproduction, and love mix and mingle in their various forms, some familiar and some new. I expect to be talking about this one for a long time after, and I can't wait for you to be able to join me in that.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
This is another of the novellas featuring Cleric Chih and their astonishing memory bird Almost Brilliant, although Almost Brilliant does not get a lot of page time this go-round. This is mainly the story of hunger, desperation, shame, and unquiet ghosts. It's about what depths people might sink to when famine comes--in this story, a famine demon, personified, but the shape of the story won't be unfamiliar if you've read about more mundane famines.
The lines between horror and dark fantasy are as always unclear, but wherever you place A Mouthful of Dust, I recommend only reading it when you're fully prepared for something unrelentingly bleak.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
This is not a stand-alone book. It's a close sequel to Witch King, and the characters and their situation are more thoroughly introduced in that volume. Unless you're a forgetful reader or specifically like to reread whole series when new installments come out, I think Wells gives you enough grounding to just pick this one up, but not enough for this to stand alone--it's not intended to.
If I had had to pick the title of this book, the word "alliances" would have figured heavily in it. I get that the two titles pair well this way, but this is a book substantially about dealing with one's allies--the ones who are definitely, definitely not friends as well as the ones Kai loves dearly who are not actually as reliable as he might have hoped. The other enemies of Hierarchy are not all immediately eager to team up with an actual demon; some of them require convincing that the enemy of their enemy really is their friend (VALID, because that is not a universally true thing). And of course Kai's own nearest and dearest are growing as people and have the growing pains associated with that. If you enjoyed Witch King, you're in for a treat as this is very much a continuation of all the things it was doing.

Arrogant traffic analyst Boyd Hakluyt is just a pawn in the struggle for Ciudad de Vados' future.
The Squares of the City by John Brunner
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Everything you need for your own GURPS 4E tabletop roleplaying campaign.
Bundle of Holding: GURPS 4E Essentials (from 2022)

Volume 3 (Nov 2008 - Dec 2018) of Pyramid, the Steve Jackson Games magazine for tabletop roleplaying gamers. Sixty issues and more!
Bundle of Holding: Pyramid 1

Why wait around for the throne or the cash when murder can deliver it immediately?
Five Dangerously Impatient Heirs and Successors
Which 2004 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
20 (48.8%)
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
5 (12.2%)
Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
15 (36.6%)
Maul by Tricia Sullivan
5 (12.2%)
Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones
2 (4.9%)
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
19 (46.3%)
Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.
Which 2004 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
Maul by Tricia Sullivan
Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
I've got a fantasy story that's set in early 18th-century Venice. I don't speak Italian, and definitely don't know the difference between the various regional dialects, so I'm looking for some help with a nickname in Venetian.
I have a priest who can use magic, who is not exactly a nice guy. Nobody likes to be around him, he's the kind of person you can just tell will erupt like a magic-spewing volcano the moment something doesn't go his way. My main character is ten when she first meets him and has a very visceral Do Not Like reaction to him, comparing him to a pack of rabid dogs. She is not told his name at the time, so in her mind she dubs him Father Mad Dog (creative, I know).
Several years ago I tried to parse "Father Mad Dog" into Italian/Venetian, and I don't know where I came to the conclusion that it'd be "Don Can' Pazzo" but that's what I've been using. I guess somewhere along the line I was under the impression that cane would get shortened to can when used like this. Is any of this correct? Or do I need another phrase entirely?
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Can the American King's uncanny military genius best an enemy so cunning the enemy loses every battle?
The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun by Christopher Anvil

Four works new to me. One is SF, two fantasy, and the magazine (which I have not yet looked inside) likely both. Two of the novels are series novels, one does not seem to me.
Books Received, June 28 — July 4
Which of these look interesting?
FIYAH No. 35: Black Isekai published by FIYAH Literary Magazine (July 2025)
18 (50.0%)
Aces Full edited by George R. R. Martin (November 2025)
3 (8.3%)
Only Spell Deep by Ava Morgyn (March 2026)
6 (16.7%)
The Damned by Harper L. Woods (October 2025)
3 (8.3%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
29 (80.6%)

Ninety years after her grandmother's family was stalked by a witch, international student Minerva Contrera's studies land her in a similar position.
The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia