Category: Deals and Deliveries
- Darren Nash - January 15th, 2010
Well, if that headline doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.
I’m absolutely delighted to announce that Orbit has agreed a three-book World Rights deal with Simon Morden for three superb future noir thrillers. Simon has been the editor of the BSFA’s writers’ magazine Focus, a judge for the Arthur C Clarke Award and is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics – not many SF writers have held a chunk of Mars in their hands! He is also the author of the acclaimed YA novel The Lost Art. Let me assure you, though, that there’s nothing ‘Y’ about these books – they’re all ‘A’!
Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom are set in the Metrozone – a dystopian future London – and feature protagonist Samuel Petrovitch: a Russian émigré with a smart mouth, a dodgy heart and a dodgier past. He’s brilliant, friendless, cocky and – even in a world where the No. 1 rule is ‘don’t get involved’ – stands out as a selfish, miserable b*****d.
The books are fast-paced, wise-cracking, action-packed romps through the overcrowded, decaying urban jungle of a not-so-distant future, featuring – amongst many other ingredients – exiled yakuza, Russian gangsters, gang warfare, virtual reality and a two-metre-tall warrior-nun packing an unfeasibly large automatic pistol. If these books don’t get your adrenaline pumping, you don’t have any!
We’ll publish in the UK, Commonwealth and US in the second quarter of next year – clear a space in your reading schedule.
by Darren Nash • Post a Comment • Posted in: All posts, Deals and Deliveries, News, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US
- Bella Pagan - January 8th, 2010
We are delighted to report that Orbit UK has acquired two exciting new dark fantasy stand-alones from award-winning author Tim Lebbon. These are scheduled for UK and Commonwealth release in Summer 2011 and Spring 2012, in B-format paperback.
Tim Lebbon’s author’s credits include four British Fantasy Society Awards, the Bram Stoker Award for short fiction and a Scribe Award for the author’s novelisation of the movie 30 Days of Night. The latter was also a New York Times bestseller. So, as you can tell, we’re really looking forward to these! And we’ll start out with Echo City Falls, a richly gritty tale of a city in crisis…
It hides below Echo City, a threat that has been growing over generations deep beneath the streets. The corrupt wheels of commerce, the murky cycles of political rise and fall and the rivalries of religious and military sects have intersected efficiently over the ages, filling specialised niches in a rigidly organised society. But this is about to change. As darkness stirs in the depths, a stranger arrives from across the desert that isolates Echo City from the rest of the world. Watchers have long whispered of the destruction of their city and search for something that will keep them from it. Madmen and spirits of the dead have foretold disaster and looked for a saviour. But no one expected either in this lifetime.
Labyrinthine, steeped in violent history and hiding horrors far below, the city starts to unravel as the plot gathers momentum to reach a dramatic and compulsive conclusion.
by Bella Pagan • 1 Comment • Posted in: Deals and Deliveries, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
- Bella Pagan - January 6th, 2010
We are tremendously excited to have acquired world rights in two new books by the talented Philip Palmer for Orbit, to be published on both sides of the Atlantic by Orbit UK and Orbit US. The first book, Hell Ship, will be a dramatic tale of pirates in space and will feature exploring, discovering, scouting and also killing, looting, and annihilating. Hell Ship will be appearing in a book store near you in Spring 2011, with the next book scheduled for Autumn 2011.
However, you don’t have to wait that long to enjoy more of Palmer’s larger-than-life characters, dark humour and cleverly sinister plotting. 
Version 43 is already on our schedules for Autumn 2010 and is an explosive adventure of death and robots on a violent frontier world.
Or read Red Claw (UK I US), out now, which is ‘hard not to warm to’ and ‘full of ideas’ according to the latest issue of SciFiNow. And we’d certainly agree with SciFiNow that Red Claw ‘deserves the plaudits it has received’ as there have indeed been many most glorious reviews for this book.
by Bella Pagan • Post a Comment • Posted in: All posts, Deals and Deliveries, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US
- Devi Pillai - September 3rd, 2009
Sadly, the summer is over, and with it, (hopefully) the rain, the rain, and the rain. But not to worry, yours truly went to the Caribbean, and got a tan. So not a total waste. But on to the exciting news: Read the rest of this entry »
by Devi Pillai • 2 Comments • Posted in: Deals and Deliveries, Orbit US
- Darren Nash - July 13th, 2009
I’m delighted to announce that Orbit has acquired World English Language rights in The Dagger and the Coin, a new series from Daniel Abraham. Daniel is, of course, the author of the acclaimed Long Price Quartet, which Orbit will publish in the UK at the end of January 2010, in two omnibus-style volumes.
Changing direction a little, The Dagger and the Coin will be epic fantasy on a grand scale, Very much in the tradition of George R. R. Martin‘s wonderful A Song of Ice and Fire - fast-paced and filled with war, intrigue, sex, murder, magic, great fortunes lost and won, dark gods, crime, exotic races, fantastic set pieces, dragons, underground resistance movements and strange occult powers.
In Daniel’s own words: ‘In the way that The Long Price Quartet was a semi-tragic meditation on the epic scale of an individual life, The Dagger and the Coin is a love letter to fantasy adventure intended to keep the reader from getting enough sleep..’
‘I’m very conscious of the influences I’m cultivating going into it – Walter Tevis, Alexandre Dumas, Tolkien, J. Michael Strazinski, Joss Whedon, GRRM, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Dorothy Dunnett, Tim Parks – and I’m trying to take the things that I love about each one of them and make a stew out of it. It’s set right at the friction point between the medieval period and the renaissance, so we’ve got knights and kings, but we also have merchant houses and finance. There’s some magic of the understated sort. There’s political intrigue. There’s a girl who was raised as the ward of a Medici-style bank, there’s a high nobleman who’s gotten himself and his family in over his head, there’s an emotionally scarred mercenary captain straight out of Dumas.
‘The point of it all is to make a book that reads to me now the way that the Belgariad did when I was 16. I’m going to be swimming in everything I think is cool for the next year, and I’m really looking forward to it
And for our part, Orbit is hugely excited to be publishing The Dagger and the Coin internationally. The combination of Daniel’s vision and talent and the grand canvas offered by epic fantasy promises to make The Dagger and the Coin something truly special. But don’t just take our word for it. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Junot Diaz says:
‘Daniel Abraham is one of the reasons the fantasy genre continues to haunt my dreams. Abraham is fiercely talented, disturbingly human, breathtakingly original and even on his bad days kicks all sorts of literary ass. Welcome to the world of the andats, of the haunted extraordinary poets, a world where men enslave ideas, where these slaves scheme to avenge themselves, where every bad deed spawns more, a world where after the treachery, the conspiracies, the journeys, all that’s ever left in the end are the consequences. Welcome to Daniel Abraham. If you are meeting him for the first time I envy you: you are in for a remarkable journey.’
A remarkable journey, indeed. Welcome aboard!
by Darren Nash • 2 Comments • Posted in: All posts, Deals and Deliveries, News, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US
- Bernadette Foley - July 8th, 2009
We are delighted to announce that we have signed with Trent Jamieson for a series of three loosely linked, edgy urban fantasy novels, set in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The books in his Death Works series will be released concurrently by Orbit in Australia, the UK and the US, starting with ‘Death Most Definite’ in August 2010. Sam Bowring’s first novel in his Broken Well Trilogy, ‘Prophecy’s Ruin’, will be in the ANZ bookshops in October and he is about to deliver the second manuscript this week. Look out for the striking cover on ‘Prophecy’s Ruin’. Pamela Freeman concludes the Castings Trilogy in September with the release of ‘Full Circle’, and Joel Shepherd is now writing the last book in his Trial of Blood and Steel quartet. That’s what we’re up to this winter.
by Bernadette Foley • Post a Comment • Posted in: Contents, Deals and Deliveries, Orbit Australia
- DongWon Song - July 1st, 2009
I’m very pleased to announce that we have acquired a new science fiction trilogy from new author Seanan McGuire writing as Mira Grant. The first book in the series, called FEED, tells the story of a small group of journalists living in an America infested with zombies. Twenty years after The Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are invited to cover a rising political star in the race for the White House and find themselves on the trail of the biggest story of their lives. This is a delightful, action-packed read that presents a fully-realized dystopia—a future America ruled by fear where the people don’t leave their houses and the truth is harder to find than ever before.
Mira Grant is an amazing new talent and we are delighted to be publishing her. We’ve barely announced and already the buzz is rolling: Look for this in stores in the US and the UK in Summer 2010.
by DongWon Song • 1 Comment • Posted in: All posts, Deals and Deliveries, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US
- DongWon Song - May 12th, 2009
I’m very pleased to announce that we have acquired Terry DeHart’s debut novel, THE UNIT. Set in Northern California just after the bombs fall, the Sharpe family takes up arms to defend themselves in a world gone mad. This is the gripping story of one suburban family fighting off a band of savage opportunists, struggling to survive a nuclear winter, and testing the limits of family bonds. Terry shows us a global catastrophe through the eyes of the smallest players and the bloody struggle of survival in the actions of the most ordinary, nuclear family.
We have acquired two books from Terry DeHart and will be publishing in Summer of 2010.
by DongWon Song • 1 Comment • Posted in: All posts, Deals and Deliveries, Orbit US
- Bella Pagan - March 20th, 2009
Ever since I read The Poison Throne I’ve been wanting to share my great enthusiasm for this book, so I’m delighted to pass on news of our deal for the Moorehawke trilogy. Betrayal, torture, murder, an emerging rebellion and a beautifully pitched emerging romance all make for a robust, absolutely compulsive and beautifully written fantasy adventure. Without doubt, this is an Absolutely Compelling Read and I finished it in almost one sitting. So I was pretty hungry when I’d finished, I don’t mind telling you.
And to the plot … we follow young Wynter Moorehawke as she returns to Court with her dying father, finding her old home shadowed with fear and riddled with dangerous secrets. King Jonathan has become a violent despot, terrorising those he once loved, and his son Alberon has fled into exile to plan a royal coup. Meanwhile, Wynter’s half-brother Razi has been elevated to heir, and struggles to meet King Jonathan’s increasingly untenable commands while retaining his sanity. And at the heart of matters lies a war machine so lethal that no one dares speak of it. The kingdom would belong to the machine’s master, yet the consequences of using it are too appalling to consider.
The talented Celine Kiernan trained as an animator and has spent most of her career in the film business. She’s also a freelance illustrator – and writer of course! We’ll be launching this series internationally in the States and Australia as well as in the UK and we’ll be going out in mass market paperback with book one being scheduled for April 2010. Can’t wait!
by Bella Pagan • Post a Comment • Posted in: Deals and Deliveries, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US
- Bella Pagan - February 27th, 2009
On the subject of the talented Jim Butcher, we’ve just acquired the last two books in his traditional fantasy series.
The Codex Alera sequence is set in a colourful Roman-esque world, where Alerans fight against the aggressive races that inhabit this world and against each other, helped by their unique bonds with elemental creatures of fire, water, earth and air. It’s a brutal land at times, the action being set against a background of ambition and power as the First Lord of Alera grows old and lacks an heir. Noble houses manoeuvre to place their people in influential positions, and a war of succession looms on the horizon.
Princep’s Fury (book 5) will appear in the UK in December 2009 and First Lord’s Fury (book 6) will be out in May 2010.
And as a reminder, the first four books will appear in Orbit from May this year. There’s plenty of drama to come and click here for more on book one, plus see the fantastic cover art here!
by Bella Pagan • 3 Comments • Posted in: Deals and Deliveries, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
