Orbit Books » Deals and Deliveries

Deals and Deliveries (9!!!)

Devi Pillai — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:13:28 +0000

Sadly, the summer is over, and with it, (hopefully) the rain, the rain, and the rain. But not to worry, yours truly went to the Caribbean, and got a tan. So not a total waste. But on to the exciting news:

New Deals.

First, Orbit US/UK has acquired KATE ELLIOTT in a new three-book deal. She’s doing a totally new series for us and the first book is titled COLD MAGIC. A Victorian fantasy novel set in an alternate world of trolls, dragons, and darker magic, this is a combination of steampunk and adventure fantasy at its most fast—and furious.

Orbit US has acquired KRISTEN PAINTER’s debut novel BLOOD RIGHTS, also in a three-book deal. Gothic fantasy meets a new twist on vampire fiction—full of politics, intrigue, and blood.

Deliveries.

Alexia Tarabotti #1

CHANGELESS by Gail Carriger, the awesome follow up to SOULLESS (out in October!). A missing husband, preternaturals and a dirigible trip full of hats, parasols and attempted murder… April 2010

Sabina Kane #1

THE MAGE IN BLACK, the follow up to the much talked about RED-HEADED STEPCHILD by Jaye Wells, is the second book in the Sabina Kane series and it’s even better than the first. Demon Fight Club. Need I say more? Coming in April 2010.

Rachel Neumeier’s LORD OF THE CHANGING WINDS—A novel of griffins and mages, blood and kings and a young girl whose power is at the center of it all. This will be out next summer in MAY 2010, with the follow up, THE LAND OF BURNING SANDS in June 2010.

Out in December 2009

STEALING FIRE by Jo Graham is the tale of Alexander’s soldier, Lydias of Miletus, who having survived the final campaigns of the Alexander the Great’s life now has to deal with the chaos surrounding his death. May 2010. (Her first two books, BLACK SHIPS and HAND OF ISIS are out in mm in December 2009 and January 2010!)

Jane True #1 Out in November

TRACKING THE TEMPEST by Nicole Peeler, Ms. Jane True goes to Boston and almost gets burned to a crisp by another Halfling. Lovely lovely stuff about a young woman new to the supernatural world. July 2010 (Her first novel, TEMPEST RISING is out this November!)

Rachel Aaron has just given us THE SPIRIT THIEF—a fun adventure fantasy about a thief who kidnaps the king of a minor kingdom and gets into more trouble than he could dream of. October 2010.

Out in February 2010

N.K. Jemisin’s THE BROKEN KINGDOMS—a dark fantasy where a young blind woman finds something a bit more than she expected in the trash heap. November 2010. The first book, THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS.

New Series from Daniel Abraham!

Darren Nash — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:42:42 +0000

I’m delighted to announce that Orbit has acquired World English Language rights in The Dagger and the Coin, a new series from Daniel Abraham. Daniel is, of course, the author of the acclaimed Long Price Quartet, which Orbit will publish in the UK at the end of January 2010, in two omnibus-style volumes.

Changing direction a little, The Dagger and the Coin will be epic fantasy on a grand scale, Very much in the tradition of George R. R. Martin’s wonderful A Song of Ice and Fire - fast-paced and filled with war, intrigue, sex, murder, magic, great fortunes lost and won, dark gods, crime, exotic races, fantastic set pieces, dragons, underground resistance movements and strange occult powers.

In Daniel’s own words: ‘In the way that The Long Price Quartet was a semi-tragic meditation on the epic scale of an individual life, The Dagger and the Coin is a love letter to fantasy adventure intended to keep the reader from getting enough sleep.

‘I’m very conscious of the influences I’m cultivating going into it – Walter Tevis, Alexandre Dumas, Tolkien, J. Michael Strazinski, Joss Whedon, GRRM, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Dorothy Dunnett, Tim Parks – and I’m trying to take the things that I love about each one of them and make a stew out of it. It’s set right at the friction point between the medieval period and the renaissance, so we’ve got knights and kings, but we also have merchant houses and finance. There’s some magic of the understated sort. There’s political intrigue. There’s a girl who was raised as the ward of a Medici-style bank, there’s a high nobleman who’s gotten himself and his family in over his head, there’s an emotionally scarred mercenary captain straight out of Dumas.

‘The point of it all is to make a book that reads to me now the way that the Belgariad did when I was 16. I’m going to be swimming in everything I think is cool for the next year, and I’m really looking forward to it.’

And for our part, Orbit is hugely excited to be publishing The Dagger and the Coin internationally. The combination of Daniel’s vision and talent and the grand canvas offered by epic fantasy promises to make The Dagger and the Coin something truly special. But don’t just take our word for it. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Junot Diaz says:

‘Daniel Abraham is one of the reasons the fantasy genre continues to haunt my dreams. Abraham is fiercely talented, disturbingly human, breathtakingly original and even on his bad days kicks all sorts of literary ass. Welcome to the world of the andats, of the haunted extraordinary poets, a world where men enslave ideas, where these slaves scheme to avenge themselves, where every bad deed spawns more, a world where after the treachery, the conspiracies, the journeys, all that’s ever left in the end are the consequences. Welcome to Daniel Abraham. If you are meeting him for the first time I envy you: you are in for a remarkable journey.’

A remarkable journey, indeed. Welcome aboard!

Winter in Australia…an ideal time for writing & reading fantasy

Bernadette Foley — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:11:53 +0000

We are delighted to announce that we have signed with Trent Jamieson for a series of three loosely linked, edgy urban fantasy novels, set in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The books in his Death Works series will be released concurrently by Orbit in Australia, the UK and the US, starting with ‘Death Most Definite’ in August 2010. Sam Bowring’s first novel in his Broken Well Trilogy, ‘Prophecy’s Ruin’, will be in the ANZ bookshops in October and he is about to deliver the second manuscript this week. Look out for the striking cover on ‘Prophecy’s Ruin’. Pamela Freeman concludes the Castings Trilogy in September with the release of ‘Full Circle’, and Joel Shepherd is now writing the last book in his Trial of Blood and Steel quartet. That’s what we’re up to this winter.

The zombies aren’t coming… they’re already here.

DongWon Song — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:56:14 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce that we have acquired a new science fiction trilogy from new author Seanan McGuire writing as Mira Grant. The first book in the series, called FEED, tells the story of a small group of journalists living in an America infested with zombies. Twenty years after The Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are invited to cover a rising political star in the race for the White House and find themselves on the trail of the biggest story of their lives. This is a delightful, action-packed read that presents a fully-realized dystopia—a future America ruled by fear where the people don’t leave their houses and the truth is harder to find than ever before.

Mira Grant is an amazing new talent and we are delighted to be publishing her. We’ve barely announced and already the buzz is rolling: Look for this in stores in the US and the UK in Summer 2010.

DEALS AND DELIVERIES — The Unit

DongWon Song — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:48:56 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce that we have acquired Terry DeHart’s debut novel, THE UNIT. Set in Northern California just after the bombs fall, the Sharpe family takes up arms to defend themselves in a world gone mad. This is the gripping story of one suburban family fighting off a band of savage opportunists, struggling to survive a nuclear winter, and testing the limits of family bonds. Terry shows us a global catastrophe through the eyes of the smallest players and the bloody struggle of survival in the actions of the most ordinary, nuclear family.

We have acquired two books from Terry DeHart and will be publishing in Summer of 2010.

Deals and Deliveries: THE POISON THRONE by Celine Kiernan

Bella Pagan — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:09:03 +0000

Ever since I read The Poison Throne I’ve been wanting to share my great enthusiasm for this book, so I’m delighted to pass on news of our deal for the Moorehawke trilogy. Betrayal, torture, murder, an emerging rebellion and a beautifully pitched emerging romance all make for a robust, absolutely compulsive and beautifully written fantasy adventure. Without doubt, this is an Absolutely Compelling Read and I finished it in almost one sitting. So I was pretty hungry when I’d finished, I don’t mind telling you.

And to the plot … we follow young Wynter Moorehawke as she returns to Court with her dying father, finding her old home shadowed with fear and riddled with dangerous secrets. King Jonathan has become a violent despot, terrorising those he once loved, and his son Alberon has fled into exile to plan a royal coup. Meanwhile, Wynter’s half-brother Razi has been elevated to heir, and struggles to meet King Jonathan’s increasingly untenable commands while retaining his sanity. And at the heart of matters lies a war machine so lethal that no one dares speak of it. The kingdom would belong to the machine’s master, yet the consequences of using it are too appalling to consider.

The talented Celine Kiernan trained as an animator and has spent most of her career in the film business. She’s also a freelance illustrator – and writer of course! We’ll be launching this series internationally in the States and Australia as well as in the UK and we’ll be going out in mass market paperback with book one being scheduled for April 2010. Can’t wait!

Deals and Deliveries: Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series – plus cover art news!

Bella Pagan — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:25:34 +0000

On the subject of the talented Jim Butcher, we’ve just acquired the last two books in his traditional fantasy series.

The Codex Alera sequence is set in a colourful Roman-esque world, where Alerans fight against the aggressive races that inhabit this world and against each other, helped by their unique bonds with elemental creatures of fire, water, earth and air. It’s a brutal land at times, the action being set against a background of ambition and power as the First Lord of Alera grows old and lacks an heir. Noble houses manoeuvre to place their people in influential positions, and a war of succession looms on the horizon.

Princep’s Fury (book 5) will appear in the UK in December 2009 and First Lord’s Fury (book 6) will be out in May 2010.

And as a reminder, the first four books will appear in Orbit from May this year. There’s plenty of drama to come and click here for more on book one, plus see the fantastic cover art here!

Deals and Deliveries: new Runelords novels by David Farland

Bella Pagan — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:20:24 +0000

We have just bought two new books in David Farland’s fabulously imaginative Runelords series, which began with The Sum of all Men. Berserker (Runelords book eight) and Runelords book nine continue the story of a world that was torn into damaged shadows of itself in ages past, creating a multitude of worlds all corrupted by darkness. Fallion, a powerful flameweaver, is trying to banish evils from his world by uniting these broken pieces. But the healing goes badly wrong. Instead of a harmonious binding of many lands, only two worlds are merged, with the greatest ills of each vying for supremacy. Now monstrous beasts known as wyrmlings haunt the nightmares of men.

We plan to publish Berserker in September 2010, and you can catch up on all previous Runelords books by clicking here.

New Book Deal with Leading Australian Author Ian Irvine

Bernadette Foley — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:18:38 +0000

Hello and Greetings from Australia. This is my first contribution to the Orbit blog and I’m delighted to start with news of an exciting acquisition. We have bought the rights to Ian Irvine’s new trilogy, which we’ll be publishing around the Orbit world, beginning in 2010.

Ian is an outstanding and well-loved author of bestselling fantasy novels and futuristic eco-thrillers, including the Three Worlds Cycle and the Runcible Jones Quintet. He is also a highly regarded marine scientist who has developed some of Australia’s national guidelines for the protection of the oceanic environment. You can check out his website at www.ian-irvine.com.

We’ll tell you more about the trilogy over the next few months, and let you know when the first book will be available.

Deals and Deliveries – Pamela Freeman

Bella Pagan — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:09:20 +0000

I’m delighted to say that we’ve bought ASH AND EMBER by the talented (and lovely!) Pamela Freeman. This atmospheric stand-alone adventure will feature ancient gods of lake, fire and river, and their clash with newer spirits. The people of the Twelve Domains will be caught in an escalating conflict governed by blood, belief and family loyalties shaped over ages past.

The new novel will be set in the same beautifully-crafted world of Pamela’s previous trilogy, which started with BLOOD TIES, but we will follow new protagonists. Plus the action will be set some time in the future of the Castings books. ASH AND EMBER is currently scheduled for publication in October 2010, so don’t forget – but we will remind you!