With thanks to Jussi, who posted it on Westeros: Tor's winter 2013 catalogue is now online. Interesting document, as always. Couple surprises, couple books that were expected. I'd urge y'all to check out the whole thing, but here are some books I personally thought were worth taking particular note of:

-- Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, A Memory of Light [of course]: I ... was going to post this blurb they've got in the catalogue here, but honestly it is all publicity waffling. There is a better blurb, written by Harriet Rigney I believe, on amazon. Release date still January 8th.

-- Steven Gould, Impulse: I've not read any Gould myself, but Jumper's supposed to be great and very popular. Here's the blurb for his latest. [January 8th.]:

Steven Gould returns to the world of his classic novel Jumper

Cent has a secret. She lives in isolation, with her parents, hiding from the people who took her father captive and tortured him to gain control over his ability to teleport, and from the government agencies who want to use his talent. Cent has seen the world, but only from the safety of her parents’ arms. She’s teleported more than anyone on Earth, except for her mother and father, but she’s never been able to do it herself. Her life has never been in danger.

Until the day when she went snowboarding without permission and triggered an avalanche. When the snow and ice thundered down on her, she suddenly found herself in her own bedroom. That was the first time.

-- L. E. Modesitt Jr., Imager's Batallion: For the Imager fans amongst us, a blurb for the sixth book in the overall series. Though I fear it's unlikely to tell you much you don't know; much like the Gould blurb it reads like somebody came into work all enthusiastic, but then sort of wandered away from their desk to get coffee or a doughnut or whatever and forgot to write the second half of that cover copy they were working on until it was too late. [January 22.]:

The newest novel of the New York Times bestselling Imager Portfolio follows Quaeryt into war

The sequel to the New York Times bestselling Princeps follows magical hero Quaeryt as he leads history's first Imager fighting force into war. Given the rank of subcommander by his wife's brother, Lord Bhayar, the ruler of Telaryn, Quaeryt joins an invading army into the hostile land of Bovaria, in retaliation for Bovaria's attempted annexation of Telaryn. But Quaeryt has his own agenda in doing Bhayar's bidding: to legitimize Imagers in the hearts and minds of all men, by demonstrating their value as heroes as he leads his battalion into one costly battle after another.

Making matters worse, court intrigues pursue Quaeryt even to the front lines of the conflict, as the Imager's enemies continue to plot against him.

-- R. S. Belcher, The Six-Gun Tarot: Now here, ladies and gentlemen, we have a blurb written by someone who was seriously into what they were doing. Or trying to imagine every phrase they wrote as narrated by Samuel L Jackson. Whichever. Gets me kinda intrigued, I must admit. [January 22.]:

Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker’s wife belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose fingers are in everyone’s business, may know more about the town’s true origins than he’s letting on.

A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn…and so will all of Creation.

-- Cory Doctorow, Homeland: I'm a sucker for Doctorow's brand of inspirational indignation; I think fiction of that kind's important, so long as it doesn't become a simple excuse to preach, and Doctorow's usually pretty good about making the message iceing fit the story cake. Here's the blurb for the Little Brother sequel. [February 5.]:

The direct sequel to Little Brother—in which Marcus finds himself once again risking everything to take on creeping tyranny and surveillance

Just a few years after Little Brother, Marcus's problems are back: California's economy has collapsed, taking his parents and his university tuition with it. But M1k3y's political past saves him and lands him a job as webmaster for a muckraking politician who promises reform.

Things are never simple, though, as Marcus discovers when his onetime girlfriend Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump full of hard evidence of conscious corporate and governmental perfidy. It’s incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world.

But Marcus can’t out himself as the Bradley Manning of this leak, because if he does he’ll cost his employers the election. And he’s surrounded by friends and acquaintances who regard him as a hacker hero. He can’t even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. Nobody—his current girlfriend, his weary parents, his progressive-minded employer, his hacker admirers—knows just how unsure of himself he really is.

Meanwhile, hard people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they’ve got plenty of experience inflicting pain until they get the answers they want. Inflicting it on Marcus…or, worse, on people he loves.

Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother—a paen to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.

This is getting too long. More in next post. Promise I won't reproduce the entire catalogue.