ICYMI: Travis Baldree and Lavie Tidhar on Best of 2023 Lists!


Even though 2023 is now behind us, and most are looking forward to what 2024 will bring (especially all of the great books that are in the pipeline!), we just wanted to take a moment to recognize some appearances on Best of 2023 lists.

After a truly spectacular year, Travis Baldree‘s acclaimed and #1 best-selling second novel, BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST not only ended 2023 back on the best-seller lists (at #9 in the US!), but was also selected by the Los Angeles Public Library as one of the best fiction books of the year! Published by Tor Books in North America and in the UK, here’s the synopsis…

When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn’t always what we seek.

Set in the world of New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree’s Bookshops & Bonedust takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and secondhand books.

Viv’s career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned.

Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it.

What’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn’t possibly imagine.

Still, adventure isn’t all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.

Travis’s debut novel, LEGENDS & LATTES — also published by Tor Books in North America and in the UK — was also selected by Huffington Post as one of the best Books of 2023!

The LAPL also selected Lavie Tidhar‘s THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE WORLD as one of their best fiction books of 2023! Here’s what they had to say about the novel…

‘This novel is an homage to the golden age of science fiction; the authors who provided the genesis of the genre; and the fans who turned their love of the literature into a sub-culture. The author weaves rational thought, a bit of fanaticism, madness and mysticism into a tapestry that will fascinate contemporary readers and would have made the writers who came before him proud.’

THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE WORLD was also selected as a Publishers Weekly Best of 2023. The novel is published by Tachyon Publication. Here’s the synopsis…

Caught between realities, a mathematician, a book dealer, and a mobster desperately seek a notorious book that disappears upon being read. Only the author, a rakish sci-fi writer, knows whether his popular novel is truthful or a hoax. In a story that is cosmic, inventive, and sly, multi-award-winning author Lavie Tidhar (Central Station) travels from the emergence of life to the very ends of the universe.

Delia Welegtabit discovered two things during her childhood on a South Pacific island: her love for mathematics and a novel that isn’t supposed to exist. But the elusive book proves unexpectedly dangerous. Oskar Lens, a science fiction-obsessed mobster in the midst of an existential crisis, will stop at nothing to find the novel. After Delia’s husband Levi goes missing, she seeks help from Daniel Chase, a young, face-blind book dealer.

The infamous novel Lode Stars was written by the infamous Eugene Charles Hartley: legendary pulp science-fiction writer and founder of the Church of the All-Seeing Eyes. In Hartley’s novel, a doppelganger of Delia searches for her missing father in a strange star system. But is any of Lode Stars real? Was Hartley a cynical conman on a quest for wealth and immortality, creating a religion he did not believe in? Or was he a visionary who truly discovered the secrets of the universe?

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