King Bullet

March 1, 2021

In Adams's debut, teenage library worker Aleisha shares The Reading List she's found (all scrunched up) with a widower trying to relate to his book-obsessed granddaughter (75,000-copy first printing). Alderson's Sisters in Arms tells the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black battalion of the Women's Army Corps during World War II (150,000-copy first printing). Buxton's Feral Creatures reintroduces us to S.T., the fabulously cheeky crow who starred in the multi-best-booked Hollow Kingdom. Ferguson, the Duchess of York, tells the Victorian-era story of Lady Margaret Montagu Scott in Her Heart for a Compass (150,000-copy first printing). Second in a spin-off from Hearne's New York Times best-selling "Iron Druid Chronicles" series, Paper & Blood features wily Scottish detective Al MacBharrais. In Jio's latest, Seattle-based librarian Valentina Baker receives news sent With Love from London that she's inherited an apartment and bookshop from the mother who abandoned her. Wealthy newcomers wreak havoc to the point of horror in a lakeside rural town in Bram Stoker Award winner Jones's My Heart Is a Chainsaw (100,000-copy first printing). New York Times best-selling Kadrey wraps up his iconic "Sandman Slim" series with the Shoggot gang, led by King Bullet, overrunning a virus-undone Los Angeles (75,000-copy first printing). Debuter Lange's We Are the Brennans features almost-30 Sunday Brennan returning from Los Angeles to New York to explain to both family and ex-fianc� why she left them five years ago (100,000-copy first printing). Author of the LJ best-booked Mexican Gothic, Moreno-Garcia returns with Velvet Was the Night, featuring a romance magazine-reading secretary in 1970s Mexico City obsessed with the disappearance of her beautiful next-door neighbor. Switching from big-hit dystopias, Mott sends his Black protagonist on one Hell of a Book tour in which he confronts police violence. In Pearce's Yours Cheerfully, first in a new series, advice columnist Emmeline Lake helps keep World War II London safe A(150,000-copy first printing). "Bridgerton" series author Quinn joins forces with her illustrator sister to create a graphic novel telling the story of Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron, first hinted at in the seventh book in the series (50,000-copy first printing). After a four-year renovation, Paris's glamorous Hotel Louis XVI reopens, with Steel allowing Complications to erupt.

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Starred review from August 9, 2021
Kadrey concludes his bestselling Sandman Slim series (after Ballistic Kiss) with a knockdown magical slugfest between antihero James Stark and the mysterious King Bullet. Stark and his close-knit group of friends and allies are living through a viral epidemic that has stricken Los Angeles, leaving many dead and others deranged, suffering from autophagia and extreme violent tendencies. Some of these plague victims pledge themselves to King Bullet, attacking Stark and his friends Fuck Hollywood (so named because of the T-shirt she was wearing when she first met Stark) and Carlos, the bartender of the Bamboo House of Dolls. Thomas Abbot, the leader of the Sub Rosa council of magicians, repeatedly pits Stark against King Bullet and his Shoggot thugs—fights that Stark loses, forcing him to doubt Abbot’s help and to seek other, even more powerful backup. Kadrey doesn’t shy away from the horror of pain and madness here, nor does he spare Stark’s companions, so much so that he begins with a trigger warning. The result is a phenomenal finale to Sandman Slim’s saga, perfect for Dresden Files fans who want their hero to be even more damaged. Agent: Ginger Clark, Curtis Brown.