Waiting on Wednesday

This is a blog meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine to spotlight upcoming books. This week we're featuring picks chosen by SQT and Jim.

SQT's can't wait to read selection is:



The Archived by Victoria Schwab

Publisher: Hyperion Book CH

Date: January 22, 2013

Pages: 336 pages



Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn't just dangerous-it's a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da's death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.



This has such in interesting premise. My only regret is that it's YA because the subject being described here, the lines between life and death, seem like they need an adult setting to be fully explored. That said, a lot of YA doesn't shy away too much from adult themes, so I'll definitely be checking this out.



Jim's can't wait to read selection is:





Edge of Infinity ed. Jonathan Strahan

Publisher: Solaris

Date: November 27, 2012

Pages: 384



"One giant leap for mankind". Those were Neil Armstrong’s
immortal words when he became the first human being to step onto another
world. All at once, the horizon expanded; the human race was no longer
Earthbound. Our destiny would now be to reach out to eternity. 



Brought
to you by the creators of Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity is an
exhilarating new SF anthology that looks at the next giant leap for
humankind: the leap from our home world out into the Solar System. From
the eerie transformations in Pat Cadigan’s “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out
for Sushi” to the frontier spirit of Sandra McDonald and Stephen D.
Covey’s “The Road to NPS,” and from the grandiose vision of Alastair
Reynolds’ “Vainglory” to the workaday familiarity of Kristine Kathryn
Rusch’s “Safety Tests,” the thirteen stories in this anthology span the
whole of the human condition in their race to colonise Earth’s nearest
neighbours. 



Featuring stories by Hannu Rajaniemi, Alastair Reynolds,
James S. A. Corey, John Barnes, Stephen Baxter, Kristine Kathryn Rusch,
Elizabeth Bear, Pat Cadigan, Gwyneth Jones, Paul McAuley, Sandra
McDonald, Stephen D. Covey, An Owomoyela, and Bruce Sterling, Edge of
Infinity is hard SF adventure at its best and most exhilarating.



What's this doing coming out in the fall - I like my short story compilations in the summer! Despite that, this book has a great list of contributors, pursuing a subject matter that I particularly love in science fiction - near future exploration of our solar system.