Dead Set

September 16, 2013
Sixteen-year-old Zoe, grieving the death of her father, is miserable in a new home and a new school as her mother struggles to make ends meet. Zoe’s father taught her to be a fan of classic punk bands, and the music is her one connection to him and to her fellow students. Then Ammut, a mysterious record store owner, promises he can reunite Zoe with her father’s spirit. Soon Zoe finds herself in Iphigene, a city full of souls trapped on their way to the afterlife, as she’s guided by the ghost of her dead brother on a quest to free her father’s soul and return to the world of the living. Aiming for a mythic story about grief and loss, Kadrey (the Sandman Slim series) hits some extremely familiar beats, but he does it with an easy grace. Nothing about this book is unexpected or surprising, but perhaps it doesn’t need to be. This bittersweet and elegiac fantasy will appeal to both fantasy fans and mainstream readers. Agent: Ginger Clark, Curtis Brown.

June 1, 2013

New York Times best-selling author Kadrey, soon to be a guest of honor at the San Diego Comic-Con International 2013, takes a break from his Sandman Slim novels with this story of Zoe, bereft after her father's death and a move to the Big City with her mother. For solace, she escapes to a dreamscape where she can visit her lost brother, though the atmosphere is subtly disturbed by a new, unseen presence. Then, at a used record store, she discovers vinyl discs whose grooves hold not music but lost souls and realizes that she might be able to reach her father. It will cost her, though. Stop by to hear Kadrey speak at a United for Libraries panel at ALA; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

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