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Swords & Spaceships

New Science Fiction Fantasy Releases and Houses Filled With Horror

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Alex Acks

Contributing Editor

Alex Acks is a writer, geologist, and sharp-dressed sir. They've written for Six to Start and been published in Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Shimmer, Daily Science Fiction, and more. Alex lives in Denver with their two furry little bastards, where they twirl their mustache, watch movies, and bike. Twitter: @katsudonburi Website: katsudon.net

Here’s a second set of new releases for this first week of September. The recommendations have two books that are definitely more to the horror side of SFF, but I couldn’t resist them despite being an avowed giant weenie. They’re also both, funny enough, centered around houses…if in somewhat different ways.

Bookish Goods

White dragon book and cup holder

White Dragon Book and Cup Holder by LiteraryLootDesigns

This is a cool combo book rest and place to set your tea or coffee cup that’s also a cute dragon. It also makes a nice bookshelf display piece when not in use! $15

New Releases

cover of The Fallen Fruit by Shawntelle Madison; illustration of apples, gold pocket watches on chains, and blue butterflies

The Fallen Fruit by Shawntelle Madison

In May of 1964, history professor Cecily Bridge-Davis uncovers a dark and strange family secret: in every generation, one child of her family is spontaneously transported back in time. The family even has rules to govern these occurrences: search for family survival packs in the orchard and surrounding forest, always carry your free Negro papers, and never interfere with past events.

american ghoul book cover

American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas

In post-Civil War Georgia, Lavinia is a newly freed woman who meets Simone, a white woman who has recently become a vampire. They become friends and agree to head north together since neither has anything to keep them in the South. At first, it seems like a good idea to Lavinia, but she realizes that Simone is reckless and impulsive, and those are personality traits that interact poorly with her also being a vampire. As the bodies begin to pile up and catch the notice of the residents in the small Indiana town they’ve settled in, their friendship may be about to break.

For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.

Riot Recommendations

Cover of The Haunting of Moscow House by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

The Haunting of Moscow House by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

Irina and Lili Golteva survived the Russian Revolution, and they understand why, in the summer of 1921, their ancestral mansion is taken over by Bolsheviks for use as an office; this is simply the way of things. The two sisters content themselves to living in the attic and working for the newly-arrived American Relief Administration. But the house has its own secrets, holding within its walls the ghosts of a traumatic past. And then, when one of the officials occupying the house is murdered by potentially supernatural means, they must dig into a past that only the dead are allowed to remember.

We Came to Welcome You cover

We Came to Welcome You by Vincent Tirado

Sol Reyes, placed on probation at her university after a plagiarism accusation, already doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with visits from her homophobic parents. But when her wife, Alice, finally manages to secure them a house in the beautiful, gated community of Maneless Grove, she hopes perhaps things are looking up. But their new neighbors are a little too friendly, the HOA is extremely pushy, and the microaggressions are endless. That’s even before strange things begin to happen, like stairs disappearing and roots growing inside the house. Then Sol finds a journal hidden in their house, left by a resident who disappeared, and she realizes just why they were able to get this house…

See you, space pirates. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.

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