The books coming out in 2013

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Trucksong by Andrew Macrae (Twelfth Planet Press) (September 2013)

In a post-apocalyptic Australian landscape dominated by free-wheeling cyborgs, a young man goes in search of his lost lover who has been kidnapped by a rogue AI truck – the Brumby King.

Along the way, he teams with Sinnerman, an independent truck with its own reasons for hating the Brumby King.

Before his final confrontation with the brumbies, he must learn more about the broken-down world and his own place in it, and face his worst fears.

The strange and playful voice of the first-person narrator keeps the story kicking along as he comes to his final realisation that the only meaning to be found in a world in slow decay is that which you make for yourself.

This genre-bending work of literary biopunk mixes the mad fun of Mad Max II with the idiosyncratic testimony of works like Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang or Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting.

http://www.twelfthplanetpress.com/products/novels/trucksong

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Datura by Leena Krohn (Cheeky Frawg Books) (October 2013)

Datura by Leena Krohn, translated by Anna Volmari and Juha Tupasela. Our narrator works as an editor and writer for a magazine specializing in bringing oddities to light, a job that sends her exploring through a city that becomes by degrees ever less familiar. From a sunrise of automated cars working in silent precision to a possible vampire, she discovers that reality may not be as logical as you think—and that people are both odder and more ordinary as they might seem. Especially if you’re eating datura seeds. Especially when the legendary Voynich Manuscript is involved. Where will it all end? Pushed by the mysterious owner of the magazine, our narrator may wind up somewhere very strange indeed.

“Datura is luminous–at once a secret history of losers, dreamers, and quacks, and a lyrical argument on the nature of reality. I thoroughly enjoyed it.” – Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria

The Explorer & Other Stories by Jyrki Vainonen (Cheeky Frawg Books) (October 2013)

This sly book showcases the quietly strange, unsettling short fiction of this acclaimed Finnish writer. Vainonen is renowned for his Finnish translations of the works of Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Swift, and William Shakespeare. Vainonen’s first collection of short stories was awarded the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize and his work has been featured in such iconic collections as the Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy. This first English-language collection includes stories from Jyrki Vainonen’s three collections and is translated by J. Robert Tupasela and Anna Volmari, with one story translated by Hilde Hawkins. Introduction by Johanna Sinisalo.

“Vainonen’s deceptively cool voice lured me into a world where horrors and wonders lurk just beneath the surface.” – Karin Tidbeck, Jagannath

It Came from the North edited by Desirina Boskovich (Cheeky Frawg Books) (November 2013)

This anthology of Finnish fantasy features fiction from Jyrki Vainonen, Leena Krohn, Johanna Sinisalo, Hannu Rajaniemi, Anne Leinonen, Tiina Raevaara and many more—also including Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen, author of the critically acclaimed The Rabbit Back Literature Society. What will you find within these pages? A photographer stumbles on a wounded troll, and attempts to nurse it back to health. A lonely girl discovers the flames in the family smithy are tied to an ancient portal between worlds. A modern woman excavates something sickening from the shower drain…and falls in love. A peculiar swamp holds restorative powers, for its avian and human inhabitants alike. It Came From the North offers a diverse selection of fifteen fantastical tales from some of Finland’s most respected writers, alongside up-and-coming talents who are redefining the rules of contemporary literature. Are you ready for a journey into the uncanny? Then come discover the strangeness lurking in the land of a thousand lakes.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

The Circle By Dave Eggers (Knopf) (October 8, 2013)

The Circle is the exhilarating new novel from Dave Eggers, best-selling author of A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award.

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Eggers' previous books include A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Picador). He has been nominated for the National Book Awards, the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the founder of McSweeney's, a publishing house and quarterly journal based in San Francisco

http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-Dave-Eggers/dp/0385351399/