The weather is finally cooling down at Tor.com’s home base in New York, and we’re itching to curl up under our blankets with a good book or two, or maybe even eleven… Below, check out the cover designs and descriptions for all the novellas and novels that Tor.com Publishing will be bring out in Winter 2019, from January through April. Plus, we’ve got 5 new ebook bundles—each compiled by one of our editors—featuring some of our favorite previously published titles!
It’s an exciting new season for us—we’re visiting goblin markets, navigating a magical Milan, and solving a paranormal mystery or two!
In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children #4)
Written by Seanan McGuire
Cover art by Robert Hunt
Cover design by Fort
Available January 8th, 2019
What’s it about?
A stand-alone fantasy tale from Seanan McGuire’s Alex award-winning Wayward Children series, which began with Every Heart a Doorway. This fourth entry and prequel tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should.
When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she’s found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.
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In An Absent Dream
All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1 — Hardcover)
Written by Martha Wells
Cover art by Jamie Jones
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Available January 22rd, 2019
What’s it about?
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
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All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries
Vigilance
Written by Robert Jackson Bennett
Cover art by Brian Stauffer
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Available January 29th, 2019
What’s it about?
The United States. 2030. John McDean executive produces “Vigilance,” a reality game show designed to make sure American citizens stay alert to foreign and domestic threats. Shooters are introduced into a “game environment,” and the survivors get a cash prize.
The TV audience is not the only one that’s watching though, and McDean soon finds out what it’s like to be on the other side of the camera.
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Vigilance
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You
Written by Scotto Moore
Cover photo © Shutterstock
Available February 5th, 2019
What’s it about?
I was home alone on a Saturday night when I experienced the most beautiful piece of music I had ever heard in my life.
Beautiful Remorse is the hot new band on the scene, releasing one track a day for ten days straight. Each track has a mysterious name and a strangely powerful effect on the band’s fans.
A curious music blogger decides to investigate the phenomenon up close by following Beautiful Remorse on tour across Texas and Kansas, realizing along the way that the band’s lead singer, is hiding an incredible, impossible secret.
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Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You
The Test
Written by Sylvain Neuvel
Cover design by Jonathan Gray
Available February 12th, 2019
What’s it about?
Britain, the not-too-distant future.
Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test. He wants his family to belong.
Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress. When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death.
How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?
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The Test
The Haunting of Tram Car 015
Written by P. Djéli Clark
Cover art by Stephan Martinere
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Available February 19, 2018
What’s it about?
Cairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities—handling a possessed tram car.
Soon, however, Agent Hamed Nasr and his new partner Agent Onsi Youssef are exposed to a new side of Cairo stirring with suffragettes, secret societies, and sentient automatons in a race against time to protect the city from an encroaching danger that crosses the line between the magical and the mundane.
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The Haunting of Tram Car 015
Alice Payne Rides (Alice Payne #2)
Written by Kate Heartfield
Cover art by Cliff Nielsen
Cover Design by Christine Foltzer
Available March 5th, 2019
What’s it about?
After abducting Arthur of Brittany from his own time in 1203, thereby creating the mystery that partly prompted the visit in the first place, Alice and her team discover that they have inadvertently brought the smallpox virus back to 1780 with them.
Searching for a future vaccine, Prudence finds that the various factions in the future time war intend to use the crisis to their own advantage.
Can the team prevent an international pandemic across time, and put history back on its tracks? At least until the next battle in the time war…
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Alice Payne Rides
Permafrost
Written by Alastair Reynolds
Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill
Photographs by Tim Robinson/Arcangel Images and mahos/Shutterstock
Available March 19th, 2019
What’s it about?
2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment. Their goal: to make a tiny alteration to the past, averting a global catastrophe while at the same time leaving recorded history intact. To make the experiment work, they just need one last recruit: an ageing schoolteacher whose late mother was the foremost expert on the mathematics of paradox.
2028: a young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery. In the days following her operation, she begins to hear another voice in her head… an unwanted presence which seems to have a will, and a purpose, all of its own – one that will disrupt her life entirely. The only choice left to her is a simple one.
Does she resist… or become a collaborator?
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Permafrost
Miranda in Milan
Written by Katharine Duckett
Cover art and design by David Wardle
Available March 26th, 2019
What’s it about?
After the tempest, after the reunion, after her father drowned his books, Miranda was meant to enter a brave new world. Naples awaited her, and Ferdinand, and a throne. Instead she finds herself in Milan, in her father’s castle, surrounded by hostile servants who treat her like a ghost. Whispers cling to her like spiderwebs, whispers that carry her dead mother’s name. And though he promised to give away his power, Milan is once again contorting around Prospero’s dark arts.
With only Dorothea, her sole companion and confidant to aid her, Miranda must cut through the mystery and find the truth about her father, her mother, and herself.
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Miranda in Milan
Perihelion Summer
Written by Greg Egan
Cover art and design by Drive Communication
Available April 16th, 2019
What’s it about?
Taraxippus is coming: a black hole one tenth the mass of the sun is about to enter the solar system.
Matt and his friends are taking no chances. They board a mobile aquaculture rig, the Mandjet, self-sustaining in food, power and fresh water, and decide to sit out the encounter off-shore. As Taraxippus draws nearer, new observations throw the original predictions for its trajectory into doubt, and by the time it leaves the solar system, the conditions of life across the globe will be changed forever.
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Perihilion Summer
Ragged Alice
Written by Gareth L. Powell
Cover design by Fort
Cover photo © Andrew Davis/Trevillion Images
Available April 23rd, 2019
What’s it about?
A small Welsh town. A string of murders. And a detective who can literally see the evil in people’s souls.
Orphaned at an early age, DCI Holly Craig grew up in the small Welsh coastal town of Pontyrhudd. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away to London and joined the police. Now, fifteen years later, she’s back in her old hometown to investigate what seems at first to be a simple hit-and-run, but which soon escalates into something far deadlier and unexpectedly personal—something that will take all of her peculiar talents to solve.
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Ragged Alice
Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #1: A Selection of Novellas
Edited by Carl Engle-Laird
Cover design by Esther Kim
Available January 22, 2019
A curated selection of novellas by Tor.com Publishing editor Carl Engle-Laird, featuring:
- The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
- Runtime by S.B. Divya
- The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson
- Killing Gravity by Corey J. White
- The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson
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Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #1
Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #2: A Selection of Novellas
Edited by Lee Harris
Cover design by Esther Kim
Available February 26, 2019
A curated selection of novellas by Tor.com Publishing editor Lee Harris, featuring:
- Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
- Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell
- Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire
- All Systems Red by Martha Wells
- The Atrocities by Jeremy C. Shipp
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Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #2
Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #3: A Selection of Novellas
Edited by Ellen Datlow
Cover design by Esther Kim
Available March 12, 2019
A curated selection of novellas by Tor.com Publishing editor Ellen Datlow, featuring:
- The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
- The Twilight Pariah by Jeffrey Ford
- Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
- Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson
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Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #3
Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #4: A Selection of Novellas
Edited by Ann VanderMeer
Cover design by Esther Kim
Available April 9, 2019
A curated selection of novellas by Tor.com Publishing editor Ann VanderMeer, featuring:
- Mandelbrot the Magnificent by Liz Ziemska
- The Warren by Brian Evenson
Buy the Book
Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #4
Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #5: A Selection of Novellas
Edited by Jonathan Strahan
Cover design by Esther Kim
Available April 30, 2019
A curated selection of novellas by Tor.com Publishing editor Jonathan Strahan, featuring:
- The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
- Passing Strange by Ellen Klages
- Agents of Dreamland by Caitlin R. Kiernan
- Proof of Concept of Gwyneth Jones
- Time Was by Ian McDonald
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Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #5
