The White Road will creep under your skin, fill your mind with all the ghastly things and make you leery of participating in activities like, oh, let’s say caving or mountain climbing. I was totally going to go climb Everest next year, really!  Never mind that I have a bum knee, a bum ankle, and maybe I’m scared of heights and also am a wimp, maybe I could have considered it anyway. But nope. Not now. None of my more rational reasons for never climbing Everest are nearly as convincing as reading this book. My knee may hurt, but it doesn’t haunt me night and day and give me the creeps. Maybe this is fiction, maybe there really aren’t haunted caves or mountains, either way, I am very content staying planted on the ground (not beneath or above) letting other people figure that out. I will bask in the experience vividly given to me via Lotz’s book. Kind of like how I felt about cruises after reading Day Four. Lotz has cemented herself as one of my favorite horror authors with this book. The characters are real and fascinating. The book is just downright creepy! I love it! The dark sense…

Here’s a rundown of the books we think you should look out for in coming in the week. See any that you are really looking forward to? Find any you had not heard of yet? Know of books we missed? We know we don’t have everything and would love to hear what you feel we may have overlooked.   FANTASY          SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR   FANTASY       SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR     FANTASY            SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR   Department Zero Crilley, Paul 1/24/2017 A Conversation in Blood Paul S. Kemp 1/24/2017 Anno Dracula 1899 & Other Stories Kim Newman 1/24/2017 Dreadnought April Daniels 1/24/2017 Passing Strange Ellen Klages 1/24/2017 The Fifth Petal Brunonia Barry 1/24/2017 The Prometheus Man Reardon, Scott 1/24/2017 The Skill of Our Hands Steven Brust and Skyler White 1/24/2017 The Weight of the World Tom Toner 1/24/2017

Underground Airlines is a modern day setting with many of the familiarities of our every day lives. But in this version of our world, slavery still exists in four southern states, referred to as The Hard Four. It’s an America that does not pretend that all people are equal. Amendments were added to the Constitution to not just make slavery legal, but also prevent those amendments from ever being updated or removed. It was a permanent decision guaranteeing The Hard Four will always be able to continue to practice slavery. The idea of any amendment being permanent and unmodifiable is really scary. When it is one that is discriminatory and inhumane, it is horrifying. First, I love the prose of this book. The descriptive quality and pacing, all of it is incredibly well done, not too much, but definitely vivid. And for the record, I don’t consider this a fast paced book, I really think it is a book whose strengths lie in its ideas. I also never felt it was slow. It’s the type of book where it is easy to just enjoy the words, picture and atmosphere the author creates. Victor has an interesting position. One would think that…

Here’s a rundown of the books we think you should look out for in coming in the week. See any that you are really looking forward to? Find any you had not heard of yet? Know of books we missed? We know we don’t have everything and would love to hear what you feel we may have overlooked.   FANTASY          URBAN FANTASY           SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR   FANTASY                   URBAN FANTASY         SCIENCE FICTION             HORROR         FANTASY          URBAN FANTASY           SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR   A Conclave of Shadows Alyc Helms 7/5/2016 Angry Robot Beyond the Woods : Fairy Tales Retold Paula Guran 7/5/2016 Night Shade Books Deserts of Fire : Speculative Fiction and the Modern War Douglas Lain 7/5/2016 Night Shade Books Flameout Keri Arthur 7/5/2016 Signet Heroine Complex Sarah Kuhn 7/5/2016 DAW Paper and Fire Rachel Caine 7/5/2016 NAL Sacrifices Jamie Schultz 7/5/2016 Roc The Copper Promise Jen Williams 7/5/2016 Angry Robot The Dinosaur Knights Milán, Victor…

  One of the perks I’ve found with working with several bloggers is that we can cover more books than we have time to read on our own. So, when it came time to make our Best of 2015 list, I decided to ask each of the contributors to submit a ranked list of their favorite books (yep, I’m mean like that. Choosing favorites can be hard, ranking is even harder). I then used a scaled points system to calculate an over all list. So, the end result features a variety of books that either several of us agreed belong in the top 10, or books that perhaps just one reviewer read, but placed in their high on their ranked choices of the year. With so many great choices we had to expand our collaborative list past just 10 books to 25. Since our blog started late in the year, many of these books do not currently have reviews here. But we do plan on adding them, so keep your eye out. So here it is, Speculative Herald’s list of our absolute favorite books from 2015! And because I like to get straight to the good stuff, I am listing them in order starting with…