June Publications

Fans of Gordon R. Dickson's Childe Cycle will welcome Dorsai Spirit, the posthumous omnibus edition containing the novels Dorsai! and The Spirit of Dorsai. The former, published in 1959, tells the heroic tale of Dorsai warrior and "superman" Donal Graeme, whose "courage was unquestioned" and who became a legendary leader; the latter, published two decades later and set 100 years after Donal's day, focuses on the Dorsai women, especially a trifecta of powerful Amandas. Introduction by David Drake. (Tor, $25.95 432p ISBN 0-312-87764-1)

L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter's Further Chronicles of Conan continue with a re-release of 1979's Conan the Liberator, which pits the by-now 40-year-old hero with the "python grip" against the tyrannical and mad king Numedides. Leading a rebel army that hacks its way through the country, Conan's success seems imminent, until the evil sorcerer Thulandra Thuu, his beautiful and deceitful servant, Alcina, and a mysterious illness threaten to destroy his ranks. (Tor, $24.95 256p ISBN 0-765-30070-2)

In A Stainless Steel Trio, Harry Harrison offers three of the 10 novels featuring Slippery Jim diGriz, aka the Stainless Steel Rat, an expert crook with his own highly developed moral code (who also sometimes investigates crimes and rescues damsels). Readers whom wooden dialogue doesn't stop will enjoy the picaresque hero's myriad adventures: his origins get probed in A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born (which won a prize for "most incredible book title" in 1985), his mettle tested in The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted (in which he seeks revenge for a murder), and his performance abilities honed in The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues (in which the hero goes undercover as a rock star). (Tor, $26.95 432p ISBN 0-765-30277-2)

When Dorel Everly inherits a mysterious sword from her grandfather, it brings her a lover she's known in another life, but his passion has a dangerous edge. Melinda Rucker Haynes's The Eternal Trust was originally released as an e-book, but with four stars from Romantic Times Magazine, it seemed like a good bet for print—which it is: Haynes crafts a highly readable romance complete with a "trained psychic spy," a magical samurai sword, time travel and a lesson about the "transformational power of love." (Five Star, $26.95 277p ISBN 0-7862-4208-6)

In New Mexico, in the year 2434, 16-year-old Glendyl Fenderwell has rather unwillingly embarked on a quest to discover the Last Nevergate, a "mechanism which made possible travel between a virtually infinite number of parallax universes." Though the 249 seekers before her failed, Glendyl bears a resemblance to Madonna 13—who might be a clone of the original Madonna—and therefore might share her powers and "remarkable" good fortune in E.T. Ellison's highly imaginative The Luck of Madonna 13 (the first in a series). Extensive supplementary text can be found at www.lastnevergate.com. (Wynderry [www.wynderry.com], $29.95 408p ISBN 1-931347-13-1)

It's a rock world roman à clef in Stephen Shepherd's novella The Last Chord Concert, which imagines, three centuries from now, intergalactic gigs, "robotan" roadies, the familiar slick manager-types and the climactic death of rock and roll. The evil Click Dark's a gimme, but who are the talentless McBison Brothers, and who is protagonist Michael Molecule, the guy from Neptune who wants to put an end to it all "by playing the last chord at a rock quarry"? That's for astute fans of popular music (especially those who decry the greed of big record labels) to determine. (Bellwether-Cross [www.bellweathercross.com], $8.95 paper 76p ISBN 1-881795-19-5)

In wunderkind (he's 18) Christopher Paolini's impressive epic fantasy, Eragon, the titular hero (who's 15) and Saphira, the dragon he's raised from a baby, set out to avenge the murder of Eragon's uncle and soon find themselves pursued by the fanatical king Galbatroix. The fantasy bildungsroman has the brave youngster learning about exile, magic, love and his own destiny, and Paolini promises his saga will continue in two more volumes of the planned Inheritance series. (Paolini Int'l, 52 Cascade Lane, Livingstone, Mont. 59047], $22.95 475p ISBN 0-9666213-3-6)

Sex and death, lyricism and brutality mingle in the story (not for the faint of heart) of a brain-eating reanimated corpse's love for a half-human, half-rat princess on a dying future earth. Duane Duarte and his virginal lover Princess Frenzetta, aka Frenzy, travel across continents doing violence to those who stand in their way (the decaying hero, for instance, punches a man so hard that his spinal chord ends up in Duane's fist, and the man's neck snaps "like wet hickory") as they seek passage to the moon, which was once used as a prison and is now rumored to be a sanctuary in Richard Calder's Frenzetta. (Four Walls Eight Windows, $13.95 paper 192p ISBN 1-56858-229-3)

Exit Strategy, the much-hyped open source novel by columnist and commentator Douglas Rushkoff (Coercion, Ecstasy Club), is both a moral allegory and a "hypertext labyrinth of references and cross-references" creating a "community riff on our bizarre age." It can be as daunting as it sounds: the tale of a modern Joseph who's caught between the opposite worlds of hackers and venture capitalists sometimes nearly gets buried beneath the footnotes added by readers of the novel's online version, who were told to imagine that the novel had been discovered in the 23rd century ("wedgie: an attack meant to cause pain and embarrassment simultaneously," writes a helpful contemporary reader to future humans). (Soft Skull, $16 paper 340p ISBN 1-887128-90-5)

May Publication

"Jumping Jehosephats": When Billy Caldwell's adopted mother, lying on her deathbed, confesses that Billy's real mother is the "crazy Alma Sue" and his half-sister the "spooky" Bonnie May, he embarks on a quest to discover his past in this clumsy but heartfelt generational tale of natural family and supernatural forces. Though it's Billy's journey, Alma ("mebbe Ah'll hav' a bed ta mahself") Duhaime is the tough center of Franklyn Conway's Alma and the Poltergeist, as the fiery redneck Billy thought was his aunt copes with just about every punch life can toss her way, especially her daughter's "recalcitrant id," which appears in ghostlike form to do violence. (Little Duck [P.O. Box 56145, Sherman Oaks, Calif. 91403], $14.95 paper 365p ISBN 0-9720093-0-2)