| | | |  | | | | Polybius by Collin Armstrong | | | | Inspired by Greek urban legend, “Polybius” is a fun and wild ride, packed with cinemotographic-like prose and small-town ‘80s nostalgia à la “Stranger Things” and Stephen King’s “It.” It’s 1982, and Andi Winston has just moved to the Northern California seaside town of Tasker Bay with her mother. When she’s not attending Tasker Bay High and avoiding any form of human interaction, Andi is working at the town’s Home Video World, servicing gaming cabinets, taking apart their contents, and dissecting the intricate codes that make them run. But when a new and unfamiliar arcade game called “Polybius” gets delivered onto the shop floor, the town is turned upside down. Players are immediately drawn to the game’s hyper-futuristic graphics and immersive renderings that set anyone who watches it into a deep trance. It’s not long after the arrival of “Polybius” that many Tasker Bay residents begin to complain of hallucinatory thoughts and unsettling paranoia, effectively exacerbating the already growing tensions between longtime locals and the encroaching influx of Silicon Valley transplants aiming to push them out with their new money. After a string of uncharacteristic violent crimes rock the community and a dead body turns up, Andi can’t help but connect the dots back to “Polybius.” It’s now up to Andi and her new potential love interest and friend, Ro Kemp, to do some digging and uncover the true purpose of the mysterious and sinister arcade game. | | | |
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 | | | | Vulture by Phoebe Greenwood | | | | “Vulture” is Jerusalem-based reporter Phoebe Greenwood’s fictional debut following Sara Byrne, an ambitious journalist from London who finds herself covering the 2012 Gaza War. Sara’s father was an esteemed reporter and left a very long shadow for his struggling freelancer daughter to live under. But when she’s sent to Gaza to cover Israeli airstrikes, she’s determined to make this the story that finally catches up to his memory. Accompanying her is Nasser, a translator, and she plans on using his connections to hopefully land an interview with a senior member of Hamas, but Nasser declines, and she’s left grappling to find a new way in. She then turns to a much more connected source, Fadi, whose uncle is a Hamas resistance commander, and he agrees to pull Sara through the underground “terror tunnels” to find her story. Nasser tries to dissuade Sara, but she’s naively relentless in proving herself, not only to a shadow of her past, but to her former boyfriend and critical mother. Set to release in August, Greenwood’s debut has already been praised by early reviewers for its tinges of dark humor, brutally open writing, and satirical approach to war journalism.
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 | | | | Katabasis by R.F. Kuang | | | | Renowned for the massive success of her books “Yellowface” and “Babel,” R.F. Kuang has been churning out some of this century’s most notable works of fiction. Her latest, “Katabasis,” is set to release in August and is a dark academia fantasy that takes readers on a humorous descent into the realm of the dead. Two rival academics head to the depths of hell in order to get the final recommendations needed to graduate from a freshly deceased professor. One of them is Alice Law, a student pursuing a grueling and, at times, dangerous education of Magik at Cambridge. The personification of a type-A student, Alice is determined to become the best student that the sadistic Professor Jacob Grimes could ever wish for. But when Professor Grimes is found with his corporeal body splattered across his office’s interior, Alice knows she’ll need to head down to hell and bring him back, or risk her prime academic standing with Grimes. Except Peter Murdoch, her only true rival at the university, walks right into Law’s plan. And with Peter’s big nose, careless good looks and effortless charm, she’s forced to drag him down to hell with her. This anticipated tale is a hilarious and succinct take on all-consuming academia, sexism, power struggles, love, seduction, hubris and so much more. | | | |
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 | | | | King of Ashes by S.A. Crosby | | | | In S.A. Crosby’s latest Southern crime fiction, “King of Ashes,” Roman Carruthers is duty-bound to return home to his family, and the family’s central Virginia business — Carruthers Crematorium. Roman’s father has fallen into a coma after a car accident, and his sister Neveah is struggling to run affairs on her own. There’s also the issue of Roman’s brother, Dante, who has fallen into an impossible amount of debt with a dangerous group of people. Soon, it’s revealed that their father’s accident was no accident after all, and it was Dante’s recklessness and distressing financial standing that got them where they are. Roman is now forced to barter for Dante’s debts using his own financial ingenuity. Already the recipient of high praise from an endless list of acclaimed voices, this “Godfather”-inspired thriller reads like a bloody and modernized Shakespearean tragedy about family dynamics and loyalties. | | | |
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 | | | | The Knight and The Moth by Rachel Gillig | | | | “The Knight and The Moth” is the first in Rachel Gillig’s new “Stonewater Kingdom” series, a Gothic romance with vivid world-building and flawed yet fascinating characters. Gillig is adept at crafting original dark fairy tales with haunting and dreamlike prose, and her latest is also deeply seductive and romantic. Six has been a Diviner for as long as she can remember, and even if she hates drowning in a pool of Aisling Cathedral to see prophecies, she’s going to be the best at her sacred role. The gift of seeing was supposedly given to the Diviners by one of the six gods, known as the Omens, and each Diviner must serve in the role of seer for several years before being released. They also must wear a gossamer wrap around their eyes, adding further to the mystery surrounding their gift. But when the new king of Traum, Benedict III, arrives to have Six read his fortunes, she only sees a destructive and grim path ahead for the young monarch. Before Six divines for the king, one of his knights, Rory, scuffs and mocks Six’s sacred task. He’s a nonbeliever, and his existence begins to pull at cracks in Six’s world and faith. The royal and knights leave, and life for the Six and her sisters goes back to mostly normal, at least until, one by one, they are mysteriously abducted while they sleep. As the only remaining sister, Six has no choice but to seek out help from the very king whose fate she marked as grim, and the knight who seems hell-bent on mocking every god in existence. | | | |
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