On My Wishlist is where I share a couple of books that have recently made it onto my wishlist. These are the books that have recently caught my eye!
Doors of Sleep by Tim Pratt
Expected publication:
January 12th 2021
by Angry Robot
What would you do if you woke up and found yourself in a parallel universe under an alien sky? This is the question Zax Delatree must answer every time he closes his eyes.
Every time Zax Delatree falls asleep, he travels to a new reality. He has no control over his destination and never knows what he will see when he opens his eyes. Sometimes he wakes up in technological utopias, and other times in the bombed-out ruins of collapsed civilizations. All he has to live by are his wits and the small aides he has picked up along the way - technological advantages from techno-utopias, sedatives to escape dangerous worlds, and stimulants to extend his stay in pleasant ones.
Thankfully, Zax isn't always alone. He can take people with him, if they're unconscious in his arms when he falls asleep. But someone unwelcome is on his tail, and they are after something that Zax cannot spare - the blood running through his veins, the power to travel through worlds...
I love multiverse stories and the main character wakes in a different universe each time he falls asleep. I'm so curious about this one!
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana EnrÃquez
Expected publication: January 12th 2021 by Hogarth Press
Following the "propulsive and mesmerizing" ( New York Times Book Review ) Things We Lost in the Fire comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author who has earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre: populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her next collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken -- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history -- with unsettling urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly.
Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with resounding tenderness towards those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, this new collection from one of Argentina's most exciting writers finds Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.
I have been slowly making my way through the original Spanish edition of Mariana Enriquez's Things We Lost in the Fire (Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego). I really need to get back to it so I can follow it up with her new book of stories.
Have you read or are you planning to read any of these? What books have recently made it onto your wishlist?
This post is being shared as part of Can't-Wait Wednesday over at Wishful Endings.
