In 1991, writer Paul Russell made his literary debut with his first novel, The Salt Point. Twenty-four years and five very different novels later, Russell is revisiting that book and the characters in it with Immaculate Blue (hardcover, digital), a sequel of sorts that set twenty-five years after the original. Though in talking to Russell about this new novel, he revealed that this wasn’t some grand plan a quarter century in the making.
A dark and stormy night. A double-crossing jerk. Booze, bullets, and babes. These are the tenets of hardboiled crime novels, and they, like the heroes of such books, still pack a punch. But after talking to author Marc Rosenberg about his own crime drama Headcase (paperback, Kindle), while he may be familiar with the crime classics, he tried to write a whole new caper.
In Craig DiLouie’s new novel, Suffer The Children, (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), vampires aren’t suave guys in capes or teenagers with sparkly skin, they’re children, all the children of the world, who died a few days earlier. But while this book deserves to be shelved in the horror section of your local bookstore, DiLouie says this isn’t just another book about bloodsuckers.
Some people treat kids with kid gloves. But not Nick Cutter who, in his horror novel The Troop (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), subjects a bunch of scouts to an unspeakable horror you wouldn’t wish on someone twice their age. Though in talking to Cutter — whose real name is easily found online — it’s clear this Canadian writer actually likes children…well, when it comes to his books, at least.
For many writers, penning a story about an astronaut stranded on Mars would ultimately lead to some such sci-fi elements as little green men or an ancient civilization destroyed by some unknown danger.
But in his first novel, The Martian (paperback, Kindle), Andy Weir is taking a different approach; a more realistic one that eschews sci-fi tropes, and makes this more of a thriller and a disaster movie in book form.