New Indie Releases: January 2024

Hello, book friends! It's a new month in the new year — which means it's time to check out new books and new authors! 📚

1 January - Oracle's Vision (Mirror Wars Book 2) by Alan Bayles (@Albay3037)

The battle for the fate of Earth has only begun as Detective Inspector Dave Barnes and his team must fight against a malevolent AI hell-bent on dominating multiple worlds.

With Terra, a counter-Earth in a parallel dimension, under its control, the tyrannical AI known as Oracle continues her relentless march across the multiverse‚ and now she holds Earth Prime in her sights.

While Dave Barnes and members of The Castle battle to stop the dangerous AI from succeeding in her invasion, all is not lost on Terra where a group of resistance fighters are marshalling their forces to free those who have been assimilated as mindless foot soldiers.

With conflict waging on both worlds, and Oracle tightening her grip, hope comes from an unlikely source when the duplicitous Colonel David Barnes offers information that could prove vital. But can this master of deception be trusted to aid in the fight for two worlds?

As Oracle becomes increasingly unhinged, and with the fate of humanity at stake, it becomes clear to those who resist that the AI will stop at nothing to rule the multiverse. In a desperate struggle to survive, can those on opposite sides unite in a mission to save two worlds? And, with the stakes so high, will all who fight live to see freedom from Oracle's reign of terror?

8 January - Hunts (Hunts Trilogy Book 1) by JL Durnie (@JLDurnieWriter)

The untold story of how British policing's most highly-classified operation originated.

It is 1988 in Hackney, east London - a place dubbed the most awful place in Britain.

With the highest crime rates in Europe and a falling conviction rate, a ruthless group of officers are taking the law into their own hands - passing judgments that should be left to the courts.

Ambitious and driven, Detective Inspector Cat Skeldon is on to them and her small team is determined to expose their malpractice.

This could be a major problem for PC Arran Cunningham because he's enmeshed in both camps. And when the vigilante group execute a young man for a crime he didn't commit, Cunningham seems to be the only one that is aware of the mistake. Secretly, he hunts down the guilty man who has escaped justice. What he discovers will change all of their lives forever.

9 January - Equally Wrong (Catching Up Book 4) by Mary Lay (@MaryLayStories)

After an unusual proposal, Caroline Munhead begins 1928 with the world at her feet. However, as the tenancy of her cottage by the sea draws to a close, she makes a decision that surprises many who know her in north Somerset.

This leaves her with more decisions to make; where to live, and with whom. Just when it seems everything is settled, a face from the past reappears…

9 January - How to Share a Cat and Other Life Lessons by Evelyn Fenn (@EvelynFenn)

Seventeen-year-old Nessa Clarkson is full of questions and confusion. How does she fit into the new household Dad is forging with his partner, Cindy, and Cindy’s son? What will being a lesbian mean in practice? And why is their neighbour so reluctant to talk about her past?

Moira Cavendish had been famous for a while, in the 1980s. Then she fled the bright lights of London, leaving only a mystery behind her.

Moira and Nessa shouldn’t have anything in common. But when their paths cross, and they bond over their shared love of knitting and the ginger tomcat that can’t decide whose home is best, they find themselves on intertwining journeys of discovery.

12 January - Draco The Rollie Pollie No Fucks Given Cat by Lou Stardust (@LouBearStardust)

This book is about Draco and his other furry friends. Follow in the adventure of Draco the rollie pollie no fucks given cat. Draco runs into Edgar, Hoppy, Jojo, Kiki, Bernie, Holly and Gabby. Besides Draco's furry friends, you never know which of his fur parents he runs into as well.

15 January - Voyager by Jay Wright Tompkins (@jtompkins318)

Her home is destroyed. Her love has left her. Her old enemy is out for blood. But this can not be the end.

In the 2190's, Earth has become a foggy, distant memory for most of humanity. But for the unlucky survivors on the surface, every day reminds them of the atrocities that led to Earth's downfall. The great cities of Earth have descended into a complex, interweaving web of gang wars and despotic opportunists. In the remnants of Malibu, a small group of young people, orphaned by the great tragedy, have created a humble commune, where they live collectively and act as a peacekeeping force for the ruined city of Los Angeles.

A young woman named Sarasvati, who grew up in the commune, has made a name for herself as a ruthless warrior who fights for justice. Her relationship with her girlfriend, Zoe, is strained when the Vanguard, the hate group that persecuted her when she was a teenager resurfaces and wants her, and the rest of the commune, dead.

Among the chaos, an affluent family from the planet Venus, seemingly falls out of the sky and begs Sarasvati and her friends for help in escaping the dangers of Earth and going to Titan, where patriarch Everett Lambert hopes to find a promising career in politics.

When the Vanguard learns that the Lambert Family is on the surface, they focus all of their efforts into eradicating them, lest they escape with the fugitives and spread word of the conspiracy keeping Earth's demise a secret from the rest of humanity.

15 January - Never Be a Saint: A Mythos Novel by Mark Jonathan Runte (@AuthorMarkRunte)

1767, the colonies stand at a tipping point with England but only a seer or the Moirai know how those cards may fall. And they keep to their own affairs. Joanna Blackburn knows this all too well even as she tries to keep her only surviving child safe from the coming storm. The heart goes its own way though, with an encounter with an English messenger to the settlement. Malachi’s path no longer lies with New Lyonesse and its residents but James Gray, for better or worse – and she knows how fickle the sisters can be.

20 January - Postcards from San Michele by Alan Gorevan (@AlanGorevan)

Jennie Walsh has done her best to ignore her husband’s criminal activities. But when he murders two men, she can no longer turn a blind eye.

She’s on holiday in Venice when a gangland war erupts back home - and her husband is at its centre. The handsome Italian pilot Jennie has just met only makes things more complicated.

In Dublin, ambitious young detective Cara Slattery is tasked with investigating the killings. This case can make her career - if she can avoid catching a bullet too.

Can these two women put a stop to the killings and find peace?

Take a journey from the blood-soaked streets of Dublin’s gangland to the elegant palazzos of the Grand Canal, and to San Michele, Venice’s island of the dead.

21 January - The Black Cat Bookshop by E.M. McConnell (@McconnellEryn)

"The bookshop offers people knowledge, and it feeds from what you learn. But everyone must make a payment for the knowledge they have taken. Even you, Brandon. Even you."

An entity was born into smoke and rage, a destructive force that was bound into a Bookshop, sentient, feral, and hungry. It offers knowledge and power, enough to fulfil their wildest dreams, but there is always a price. Payment will always be due.

The Black Cat Bookshop is a Gothic Horror story that explores what it is to find knowledge, and if it is really worth the price, in the end.

22 January - The Pike Boys by Danny Cherry Jr. (@DeeCherryWriter)

It’s 1920 New Orleans and Jesse Pike is slowly ascending the New Orleans upper-class social scene. He’s the owner of the most popular brothel in the entire city, and rubs shoulders with businessmen, corrupt politicians, and stage stars alike. He’s also the leader of a violent street gang that pulls off the biggest heist of liquor since the beginning of prohibition. Jesse sets up a scheme to sell the booze, and use the profits to help him start a legitimate business. However, several obstacles get in his way: Clyde, the mentally disturbed oldest Pike sibling, is released from prison and takes issue with how Jesse runs things; Jesse's aging mentor refuses to let him leave behind crime; and an overzealous young DA decides to reopen an investigation into the liquor heist to increase his chances of being elected mayor. Jesse is forced to make a decision: does he walk away from a life of crime and his family forever? Or will he continue down the road of violence that has begun to erode his psyche, much as it has Clyde's?

The Pike Boys, according to a reviewer, is a "compelling story of the Pike family's struggles against poverty, violence, substance abuse, mental illness, and their quest to rise above it all while living in the crime-ridden New Orleans of the gangster era." It has all the thrills, plot twists, and quick pace of conventional gangster fiction, with the heart, depth, and nuance of a literary novel. In between the shootouts, violence, and debauchery, there is the overarching question of "can people actually change?" The reader will see that the answer is not so simple—especially when you live in a place like New Orleans.

23 January - Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke (@christinajcooke)

Tired of not having a place to land, twenty-year-old Akúa flies from Canada to her native Jamaica to reconnect with her estranged sister Tamika. Their younger brother Bryson has recently passed from sickle cell anemia—the same disease that took their mother ten years prior—and Akúa carries his remains in a small wooden box with the hope of reassembling her family.

Over the span of two fateful weeks, Akúa and Tamika visit significant places from their childhood, but time spent with her sister only clarifies how different they are, and how years of living abroad have distanced Akúa from her home culture. “Am I Jamaican?” she asks herself again and again. Beneath these haunting doubts lie anger and resentment at being abandoned by her own blood. “Why didn’t you stay with me?” she wants to ask Tamika.

Wandering through Kingston with her brother’s ashes in tow, Akúa meets Jayda, a brash stripper who shows her a different side of the city. As the two grow closer, Akúa confronts the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family, and what being a gay woman in Jamaica actually means.

By turns diasporic family saga, bildungsroman, and terse sexual awakening, Broughtupsy is a profoundly moving debut novel that asks: what do we truly owe our family, and what are we willing to do to savor the feeling of home?

29 January - Heritage of Blood and Magic by Mirna Chandrakumar (@mirna0722)

Asira can destroy souls, but must she sacrifice her own?

A hundred years after the Blood War, there is an uneasy peace. Feelers, wielders of elemental powers, are still feared by the rest of society even though they wish only for harmony. A new president, one of the Thinkers, who lacks elemental powers, is working to bring the people together.

However, not everyone wants unity.

A young Feeler, Asira, senses an overpowering energy. It is intimately familiar and alluring, yet grotesque. Meddling with death and time, forbidden blood magic resurrects a fearsome warrior. Driven by bloodlust and vengeance, this threat seeks to vanquish the Thinkers and establish a new Feeler dynasty.

Horrified, Asira gathers allies to fight back against this new, otherworldly foe. Through betrayal, grief, death, and darkness, Asira’s powers grow and coax her to unleash her wrath.

How much of herself is Asira willing to sacrifice to preserve a peace many don’t want?

31 January - The Timeless Legion (The Everlands Cycle Book 2) by J.C. Rycroft (@JCRycroft)

A dragon stolen. A love betrayed. A legion lost to time...

Des is a mess.

The sellsword has been betrayed yet again by her ex-lover, and separated from her bonded dragon, Squid. And now she’s been turfed out of her last sanctuary. Lost without her dragon, her only comfort lies at the bottom of a glass of ale. Or nine.

But as much as she might long for it, her death would only give the Emperor what he wants: the opportunity to bond with her dragon and use its power to become immortal. To mount a rescue, Des must cross a militarised border. When her oldest friend appears carrying permission to travel to Ascelin, she knows she’ll do whatever it takes to get her dragon back - even play the man she couldn't marry.

In Ascelin, though, she finds everything she's ever held dear is at risk. The Emperor’s avarice will no longer be satisfied with using the dragons’ mastery of time only to avoid death, and he's turning to conquest. Des must save Squid, confront old mistakes and unravel the threads of time to find the secret at the heart of the world before the Emperor uses the force of history to wreak his will.

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Hi! I'm Marie, a Filipino fantasy author and book reviewer currently based in the UK. I’m the co-author of The Prophecies of Ragnarok, a Norse myth new adult urban fantasy trilogy, and I also have short stories published in anthologies and literary journals.

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