Hi, and welcome.

Simply add any titles you like the look of to your basket on the NewCon Press website. At check out, you’ll see that shipping costs within the UK are suspended for this coming week, while the cost of international shipping has been reduced.

Prices and shipping costs will remain reduced for a limited time only. This launch will end at midnight, UK time, on Friday 10th April (the day the NewCon Press launch would have been held at this year’s Eastercon).

To help you choose, the titles featured in the book launch are detailed below, with short readings and descriptions provided by many of the authors.

Soul Chasers: The Decomposition Comedy – Rachel Armstrong

A remarkable novel that takes the reader on a journey beyond life itself, exploring the fate that awaits us all with humour, imagination, compassion, and a sprinkle or two of wonder.

Songs for the Ecocene: three stand-alone novels that combine to form one cycle, a triptych that explores themes such as love, survival, and co-existence, with environment as a key factor. This is the third entry in Professor Rachel Armstrong’s extraordinary cycle; three songs, each complete in themselves, which combine to form a harmonious whole.

Soul Chasers is available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.

http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=161&referer=Catalogue

Devil’s Road – Gary Gibson

Pacific Rim Meets Fast and Furious.

Nobody has taken part in the Devil’s Run as often as Dutch McGuire and lived to tell the tale. Faced with a choice between being eaten by the monstrous Kaiju that prowl the island’s devastated cities or murdered by her fellow racers, the odds against surviving another Run, let alone winning it, are slim. The odds don’t concern Dutch, however; all she cares about is getting back behind the wheel of her beloved Ford Falcon, so when a crooked billionaire offers to put her back in the race on condition she uses it as cover for a secret retrieval operation, there’s no way she can refuse.

Devil’s Road is available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author. http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=152&referer=Catalogue

Edge of Heaven – RB Kelly

2119: The bi-level city of Creo Basse towers over the wastelands of central France. Built as a permanent relocation centre for the dispossessed, Creo has become a hotbed of simmering resentment and unrest. The authorities keep tight control, not least because outlawed a-nauts (artificial humans) are known to hide among its citizenry.

The tinderbox that is Creo catches light when a deadly plague erupts among the populace. Is it really a terrorist weapon unleashed by the a-nauts as the authorities claim, or does that just hide a deeper, darker secret?

RB Kelly’s stunning debut novel, Edge of Heaven, is the winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair Award.

Edge of Heaven is available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.

http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=154&referer=Catalogue

Water Must Fall – Nick Wood

The year is 2048. Climate change has brought catastrophe and water has become the most precious commodity on Earth. Water companies play god and determine the fate of millions.

In Africa, Graham Mason struggles to come to terms with the changing world and save his marriage to Lizette, who is torn between loyalty to their relationship and to her people. In Northern California, Arthur Green battles to find ways of saving water and root out corruption, even when his family are threatened by those he seeks to expose.

As the planet continues to thirst and slowly perish, will water ever fall?

Water Must Fall is available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.

http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=156&referer=Catalogue

Comet Weather – Liz Williams

Practical magic meets the Witches of Eastwick. A contemporary tale of four fey sisters:

Bee: the practical one, the lynchpin; still living in the family home of Mooncote in Somerset, where she has met an unconventional boyfriend that not even her sisters are aware of.

Stella: a DJ, currently hanging around the Med after a series of gigs in Ibiza, she has vowed never to return to Mooncote following a row with Bee, but that was then…

Serena: a single mother and fashion designer living in Notting Hill, increasingly uncertain of her relationship with long-term boyfriend Ben, a Camden-based rock singer.

Luna: the youngest, head-strong and free-spirited, a wanderer living out of a horse-drawn van while she follows the Gypsy Switch: the route of horse fairs that spans the length of the country.

The four Fallow sisters, scattered like the four winds but now drawn back together, with the comet due, united in their desire to find their mother, Alys, who disappeared without warning or explanation. They have help, of course, from the star spirits and the no-longer-living, but such advice tends to be cryptic and isn’t the most dependable of guides.

Comet Weather is available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.

http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=151&referer=Catalogue

Rise – Kim Lakin-Smith

Denounced by her own father and charged with crimes against the state, Kali Titian – pilot, soldier, and engineer – is sentenced to Abbandon prison camp, where she must somehow survive among her fellow inmates the Vary, a race she has been raised to consider sub-human; a race facing genocide; a race who until recently she was routinely murdering to order.

A story told from the heart, a book released to coincide with the UN’s International Day of Tolerance (November 16th); Rise is a potent tale of courage against the odds and the power of hope in the face of racial intolerance.

Rise is available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.

http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=150&referer=Catalogue

Dark Angels Rising – Ian Whates

The concluding volume of the Dark Angels Trilogy, which began with the Amazon UK #1 best seller Pelquin’s Comet.

The Dark Angels – a notorious band of brigands turned folk heroes who disbanded a decade ago – are all that stands between humanity and disaster. Reunited with their ship, The Ion Raider, Drake, Leesa, Jen, and their fellow Angels must prevent Mudball – a resurrected Elder, last of a long dead alien race – from reclaiming the scientific marvels of its people. Mudball has discovered the whereabouts of the ultimate Elder cache, long considered to be a myth, and is intent on using the scientific marvels stored there to establish itself as God over all of humankind.

Can one ship of reluctant heroes hope to prevail against an alien, the criminal organisation that worships it and the mercenary regiment that supports it? The Dark Angels know they have to try.

Dark Angels Rising is available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.

http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=155&referer=Catalogue

Robot Dreams

What do Robots dream of?
Four leading science fiction authors explore this intriguing question in four stand-alone novellas, linked by their shared cover art.

According to Kovac – Andrew Bannister

Andrew Bannister introduces us to Kovac, an agent of the Mandate, assigned to a world whose inhabitants have no idea that their whole society is an experiment. When a young pregnant woman turns up at his door fearing for her life, Kovac is drawn into deadly intrigues that soon make it apparent there are agencies at work on the world that have no right being there…

Available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.

http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=157&referer=Catalogue

Deep Learning – Ren Warom

Function through Malfunction:

Unit 5709 is a success – a new high-line model of robot that works precisely as intended. The military soon deployed 5709 on the battle field. But all is not as it seems; the robot prefers to be called ‘Niner’ and is unique, working only because of an undetected glitch. Every further model fails.

Ren Warom deftly guides us through Niner’s many lives, from military killing machine, to body double, to a lady’s companion and jailor, to scrap dealer. Society changes around it, as Niner finally comes to terms with its nature and its place in the world.

Available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.  http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=158&referer=Catalogue

Paper Hearts – Justina Robson

Are humans to be trusted with the important things: the structure of society, governing their own lives, meting out justice, etc, or would an AI be better suited to the job? If an AI really cared about humanity, would it be willing to sit back and watch us bumble along, making a mess of things, or would it step in to help us, to make things better?

Despite the best of intentions, could such intervention ever work? After all, we humans are flawed, limited by our vision and by the dictates of the society that helped shape us, and an AI is limited by its programming, which is carried out by humans… At the end of the day, are any of us – human or AI – truly free?

Available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback. http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=159&referer=Catalogue

The Beasts of Lake Oph – Tom Toner

Long ago, a precious object was lost between the stars…

The Ghipheth tunnels are 258 million years old, and their walls were once lined with Gleam, the most precious substance in the world. When a cave-in exposes two ancient skeletons that defy all rational explanation, Roh is sent to investigate.

It soon becomes clear that all is not well amongst the workforce, and there, in the shadow of a carnivorous forest on the shores of Lake Oph, where monsters are said to dwell, Roh encounters intrigue and danger beyond his wildest imagining…

Available as a numbered limited edition hardback, signed by the author, and a paperback.   http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=160&referer=Catalogue

Thank you for attending this virtual launch. We hope that some of the new titles are of interest and help provide you with some new reading material.

All the best to you in these troubling times,

Ian