Ring Shout, by P. Djèlí Clark

Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250767011, October 2020

I really don't read horror, honest.

Except, as I've said before, quite recently I think, when I do. P. Djèlí Clark seems to be getting almost a permanent pass for his horror. I don't look at it and say, no, it's horror; I look at it and say, oh, it's Clark.

It's the 1920s, with Prohibition, Jim Crow, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. But this is an alternate America. D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer, and the movie Birth of a Nation is a spell.

Not all the Klansmen are humans. Monsters are coming through from somewhere else, and they have their onw agenda, for which the KKK is useful.

Three young black women are friends and part of a resistance force against the monsters, which they call Ku Kluxes--Cordelia Lawrence, Sadie Watkins, and Maryse Boudreaux. 

Maryse is our viewpoint character, with a book of African-American folktales, and a magic sword that comes to her when she needs it. Sadie has her rifle, a Winchester 1895, which she calls Winnie. Cordelia is called Chef by everyone, but she doesn't cook food. She served in WWI, disguised as a man, and is an explosives expert.

Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi (author, narrator)

Blackstone Publishing, ISBN 9781094006352, January 2020

This is a novella that really packs a punch. It's very good, very powerful, and I'm not sure that I like it. I'm not sure I should like it; I'm certainly not the intended audience.

On the other hand, I think it's a very good thing for nice white people to listen to what this story, and others like it, are telling us. It's a very real piece of black American experience, and an eloquent expression of the rage that experience can generate.

Ella is just a young child when her brother Kevin is born--in the midst of the Los Angeles riots sparked by the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King. She's already starting to develop psychic powers that she describes as her "Thing." At first she just has dreams, or daydreams, about the futures of people she knows. Given that she obviously knows a lot of black boys and young men, many of those futures are dark and tragic.

The story unfolds in two voices, Ella's, in third person, and Kev's, mostly in first person.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1), by Nghi Vo

Tor.com, March 2020

In an Asian empire that is not China, but perhaps based on it, Cleric Chih and their intelligent, talking bird, Almost Brilliant, are sent on a mission from the Singing Hills abbey to document the history of a former empress's place of exile.

In-yo came to Anh to marry its emperor, as a young woman from the far north, from a different culture, with a rich dowry, but no friends or allies. She learned the customs and ways of her new country, and gave birth to a son to be the heir.

Then she is banished to a rural estate called Thriving Fortune, a house that overlooks Scarlet Lake.

Chih arrives on their assignment after the place has been closed off for half a century, and finds there an old woman, the empress's former handmaid, Rabbit.

Finna (LitenVerse #1), by Nino Cipri (author)

Tor.com, February 2020

Ava and Jules work at a big box furniture store. They're also in the immediate aftermath of a really painful breakup a few days ago.

This chain, LitenVärld, has a little problem with wormholes occasionally opening up and swallowing customers. They don't make a point of telling employees that, especially not new employees. It cold be bad for the bottom line. They used to have a division, Finna, whose job was to go through the wormhole and retrieve the customer--or the nearest available substitute. The Finna division was disbanded for budgetary reasons, so now the policy is to send the two lowest-paid employees after the customer.

In this store, on this day, that's Ava and Jules, who are currently having difficulty even speaking to each other. But these are the only jobs they have, and the alternative to accepting the assignment is termination.

Into the wormhole they go.

Upright Women Wanted, by Sarah Gailey (author), Romy Nordlinger (narrator)

Tantor Audio, ISBN 9781541410176, February 2020

Esther is fleeing the death of her friend, Beatrice, whom she was in love with, and the marriage her father intends to force her into.  To get away, she hides herself in the Librarians' book wagon. The Librarians, she knows, are upright women spreading approved materials and information. She knows that when they find her, she'll have to be very careful not to let slip the true nature of her relationship with Beatrice, because they are upright women and will be appalled.

Boy, does she have a lot to learn about Librarians, and the world they, and she, live in!

Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5), by Seanan McGuire (author, narrator)

Macmillan Audio, January 2020

Jack left Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children carrying the body of her twin sister, Jill, whom she had just killed in righteous rage at Jill's murders among the other residents of the school. She took Jill's body back to the Moors, the world their Door took them to--and where death is not quite so permanent as in ours.

When a Door appears in the basement room that used to be Jack's and is now Christopher's he recognizes it as being from the Moors. He doesn't recognize the young woman who steps through, carrying what is either Jack or Jill, either unconscious or dead.