Transreal is Closed
Further to my tweet a couple of days ago, Transreal Fiction is closed for business for a while. This includes any deliveries to local customers.
Updates to my situation as necessary.
My twitter handle is @transrealshop should you wish to follow me for other news, etc.
Transreal Opening (& Closing)
Transreal is open today (Saturday 21st) but will be closing in the early afternoon, probably for some time.
I’m fine, so far as I can tell, but the graphs are spiking and my partner’s health is more important to me than whatever sales I might make. She’s in a higher risk category so the choice for me is clear.
I live within walking distance, and will have to be in the shop for various reasons at times, so for the moment I’m continuing to offer a free delivery service within the city (see earlier post).
However, as I won’t be in the shop so much, please use the e-mail address enquiries@transreal.co.uk to contact me. Include a phone number and I’ll get back to you by phone, if you like.
This service is contingent on the continuing health and welfare of my couriers and I, so I can’t guarantee how long I’ll be able to offer the service.
Stay safe, everybody.
Best Wishes, Mike.
New Titles – w/e 21st March 2020
No more deliveries expected this week, so here’s the usual post, a day early!
in large format:
Paul McAuley – War of the Maps on a huge, distant artificial world, one man is hunting a villain too powerful and useful in a bizarre war to be punished by the authorities…
in ‘B’ format:
Elizabeth Bear – Ancestral Night vol 1 of White Space, about a space salvager and the find of a lifetime…
Jim Al-Khalili – Sunfall the Earth’s magnetic field is failing…
Eddie Robson – Hearts of Oak strange sf/fantasy novel involving reality, town planning and talking cats!
Eric Brown – The Martian Menace latest volume in multi-author series The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Aliette de Bodard – The House of Sundering Flames final volume of the trilogy which began with The House of Shattered Wings
Den Patrick– Stormtide sequel to Witchsign and book 2 of The Ashen Torment trilogy, set 75 years after the rule of dragons was overthrown
David Dalgleish – Ravencaller book 2 of The Keepers and sequel to Soulkeeper. The magic has returned and so have the monsters!
Chris Humphreys – Smoke in the Glass Immortals Blood vol 1. Someone is killing the Gods!
E. F. Benson – The Outcast and Other Dark Tales by EFB the latest collection from the British Library in their Tales of the Weird series, edited by Mike Ashley
Christopher Fowler – Lonely Hour the latest case for Bryant & May
Georgina Bruce – Honeybones new novella from the2017 BSFA Best Short Story Award winner, published by TTA Press
Malcolm Devlin – Engines Beneath Us new novella, published by TTA Press
magazines:
Interzone – issue # 286 March/April cover date
Black Static – issue # 74 – March/April cover date
Locus – issue # 710 March 2020 cover date, with Nina Allan, Sue Burke & Gareth L. Powell highlighted on the cover
Free Local Home Delivery
Following on from yesterday’s post, I can say that I’m in a position to offer free home delivery of books bought from Transreal while the shop remains open (and my courier remains healthy also!) The delivery area isn’t completely defined but will basically be Edinburgh & Musselburgh.
The shop doesn’t have a searchable database, or a shopping basket facility, but I put up lists of new titles every week and existing customers know broadly what I’m likely to have. I can also recommend titles.
You can phone 0131 226 6266 or contact me via email at enquiries@transreal.co.uk and I can take all the details I’ll need.
The usual stuff; name, address, card details, contact number for texting (if possible) and, of course, what book/s you’d like!
This isn’t something we’ve done before but we’ll try and keep any hiccups to a minimum!
Transreal Opening Hours, etc.
So far, the shop remains open although I don’t really expect many customers! I’ll be following government and health guidelines and will, I expect, have to close completely for a period in due course. I’m also considering if home delivery is an option in the Edinburgh area; I know some of my customers are self-isolating because of underlying health issues so this might be good for them.
More details on that soon!
New Titles – w/e 14th March 2020
in hardcover:
Ken Lui – The Hidden Girl and Other Stories collection of 19 stories from the past 9 years
Matt Ruff – 88 Names John is an online ‘sherpa’, helping rich, but not very good, players around various VR games, but he begins to suspect that his customers are actually powerful politicians playing their own wars against each other…
in large format:
Roger Taylor – Travellers fleeing refugees find a planet they could take over, but that will mean defeating the indiginous population…
in ‘B’ format:
Evan Winter – The Rage of Dragons Tau would rather seek revenge than help save his people…
Patrick Edwards – Echo Cycle in 2070 Winston appears to have been sleeping rough for years, but had actually time-slipped back to Roman days…
Zoran Zivkovik – Impossible Encounters six short fantastical stories, translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tosic. I enjoyed his collection 12 Collections & a Teashop several years ago.
Zoran Zivkovik – The Library six short fantastical stories, translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tosic. Excellent, strange stuff!
Marie Brennan – New Worlds: Year One – subtitled ‘A Writer’s Guide to the Art of Worldbuilding‘ and consists of 50+ short chapters, each with common sense info & suggestions about a specific aspect of worldbuilding, from Folk Magic or The Etiquette of Names to the Structure of Marriage, Where Does the Food Come From? etc.
Marie Brennan – New Worlds: Year Two another 50+ chapters of good sense about Codes of Honor, Taboos, Clothing and Status, Armor, etc. Aimed at fantasy world creators, but much of the info would be adaptable for sf scenarios…
in paperback:
art, etc:
Shaun Tan – The Bird King: An Artist’s Sketchbook should have had it a bit sooner, but never mind! Hardcover with hundreds of sketches, both colour and b&w
Lightbox Film Center – Dreamdance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller great hardcover with 7 illustrated essays about aspects of Emsh’s life and career, from his earliest drawings through to his experimental films. Includes dozens of his sf&f magazine covers. Contribuors include his daughter Susan Emshwiller and Bill Griffith (creator of Zippy!)
Austin Briggs – AB: The Consummate Illustrator hardcover with classic pulp & hardboiled crime magazine art, etc
Hugo Pratt – Ballad of the Salty Sea the latest volume of the complete Corto Maltese; winner of the first Best Graphic Novel award at Angouleme in 1976 and set in the South Pacific in 1913
magazines:
Heavy Metal – issue # 298 a ‘Furthest Reaches Special‘ issue
Cirsova – issue # 3: Spring 2020 modern pulp science fantasy, with 2 novellas and half a dozen short stories…
New Titles – w/e 7th March 2020
in hardcover:
Lavie Tidhar – By Force Alone life after the Romans left was grim, and King Arthur and his cronies didn’t make it any better…
Jane Healey – The Animals at Lockwood Manor as WW2 looms, a museum’s mammal collection has to be evacuated to safety at a spooky old manor
Sarah J. Maas – House of Earth and Blood half-fae Bryce & Hunt (a fallen angel) must solve the mystery of her past, before terrible things awake… Set in the Crescent City
in large format:
David Hair – Mother of Daemons 4th in his Sunsurge Quartet, which began with Empress of the Fall
in ‘B’ format:
Ian McDonald – Luna: Moon Rising the 3rd book in his Luna trilogy
Charlie Jane Anders – The City in the Middle of the Night half the city is in perperual darkness, the other in constant sunlight!
J. T. Nicholas – Re-Coil while salvaging a derelict spaceship, Carter is murdered – and then someone tries to kill his cloned back-up body on a space station weeks away!
M. G. Wheaton – Emily Eternal an artificial consciousness fights for her life, and tries to save humanity at the same time! I enjoyed this in hardcover…
Premee Mohamad – Beneath the Rising a child prodigy invents a clean reactor which will change the world but in the process awakens ancient ones from the deeps!
Chris Beckett – Beneath the World, A Sea a British policeman is sent to investiget a series of murders of a humanoid, but non-human, species…
M. T. Hill – The Breach urban explorers find a weird nest, which may be linked to a death reporter Freya is investigating…
D. K. Fields – Widow’s Welcome investigating the murder of a Storyteller in a Federation where elections are won by the best stories… I enjoyed this a lot in hardback
Ed McDonald – Crowfall the 3rd in his Raven’s Mark series
Katy Rose Pool – There Will Come a Darkness disgraced knight Bershad has been sentenced by the King to slay dragons until one kills him…
Brian Naslund – Blood of an Exile 1st volume of Dragons of Terra
Mike Shackle – We Are the Dead Dinnstra deserted during the war with the inhuman Egril, but now she’ll have to fight…
Anna Stevens – Bloodshild sequel to Godblind & Darksoul
Maya Motayne – Nocturna a prince & a faceshifter team up to try to find his older brother, who has apparently been kidnapped…
G. Willow Wilson – The Bird King historical fantasy set in 15th C Moorish Spain with a mapmaker who can make reality match his maps!
Jamie Lee Moyer – Brightfall Robin & Marion become involved in a struggle for the Fey throne…
Peter Tremayne – Blood in Eden the latest Sister Fidelma historical mystery
T. Kingfisher – The Twisted Ones how bad can cleaning out your gran’s old house be!? That depends on what you might find!
Carrie Vaughn – The Immortal Conquistador origin story for Ricardo “Rick” de Avila, partner of the vampire, Kitty Norville, in her long-running series
Tim Waggoner – The Forever House a family who feed on negative emotions move into a quiet cul-de-sac…
Tim Gambrell – The Brigadier & the Bledoe Cadets the latest of the Lucy Wilson Mysteries, set in the world of Doctor Who
Jonathan Strahan (editor) – Made to Order: Robots and Revolution a century after the play R.U.R. was written comes this anthology, with new stories from the likes of Peter Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds & Peter Watts
Tobias Buckell – It’s All Just a Draft advice on all sorts of aspects of writing and publishing. Looks interesting.
art, etc:
Frank Cho – DC Poster Portfolio outsize volume with 20 of his best character illustrations, many in full colour.
magazines:
Cirsova – Summer Special 2019 subtitled ‘Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense‘. Good, old-fashioned pulp adventure! Other issues can be ordered…
New Titles – w/e 29th February 2020
in hardcover:
Natasha Pulley – The Lost Future of Pepperharrow sequel to The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and it’s companion volume The Bedlam Stacks.
Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor – Castaway Resolution the 6th book in the series that started with Boundary and sequel to Castaway Planet & Castaway Oddyssey.
Sarah J. Maas – House of Earth and Blood not for sale until Tuesday 3rd March
Martin Arnold – Dragon new in stock. Serious book about dragons & their mythology throughout history
in large format:
C. L. Polk – Stormsong sequel to Witchmark and volume 2 of the Kingston Cycle
Nino Cipra – Finna novella about the search for a woman who goes missing in a store much like IKEA…
in ‘B’ format:
Meatspace Press – How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables anthology of short stories illustrating how various modern tech companies might run a city! Edited by Mark Graham, Rob Kitchin, Shannon Mattern & Joe Shaw. Satire about Disney, Uber, Instagram, IKEA, and many others!
Muriel Jaeger – The Man With Six Senses a British Library Science Fiction Classic reprint from 1927
H. P. Lovecraft – The Randolph Carter Tales 5 stories collected in one volume:The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Statement of RC, The Silver Key, Through the Gates of the Silver Key & The Unnameable
Olga Wojtas – Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar time travel adventure back to 19th C Russia with an ex-pupil who thinks Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie gave her school a bad name!
Olga Wojtas – Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace time travel & mysterious murders in turn of the Century France!
in Paperback:
Larry Correia – House of Assassins sequel to Son of the Black Sword. Volume 2 of The Forgotten Warrior
Larry Niven (creator) – Man-Kzin Wars XV another 7 stories…
art, etc:
Studio Ghibli – My Neighbour Totoro: 30 Postcards nice little book with images from the film
Octavia Butler‘s Parable of the Sower hardcover graphic novel adaptation by Damian Duffy & John Jennings
Jim Henson‘s Beneath the Dark Crystal: Volume Three full colour hardcover by Adam Smith & Alexandria Huntington
John Kerschbaum – Skyscrapers: The Heights of Engineering the latest in First Second‘s Science Comics series
magazines:
LAAB Magazine #04 Outsize colour magazine in several fold out sections (think slim broadsheet supplements) in it’s own cardboard folder, subtitled LAAB: This Was Your Life. Comic strips, etc. by Ben Passmore. Reminds me of RAW & other experimental magazines of the 1980s…
Illustration – Issue Number Sixty Seven heavily illustrated lead article on Vincent Di Fate. Also pieces on Samson Polen & Ray Prohaska
New Titles – w/e 22nd February 2020
in hardcover:
Ben Aaronovitch – the latest Peter Grant/Rivers of London novel
Marc-Uwe Kling – QualityLand in this Utopian future, the algorithms are a step ahead of you in knowing what you want!
Katharine Kerr – Sword of Fire return to the world of Deverry, first visited in Dragonspell back in 1986! This is part 1 of The Justice War series arc
Elizabeth Bear – The Best of EB large signed & numbered collection of 27 stories, from Subterranean Press
in large format:
Bernd Perplies – Black Leviathan an obsesive hunt for a particular dragon in the whiteness of the cloudmere, translated from German by Lucy van Cleef
Frank Chadwick – Ship of Destiny an alien probe secretly reprograms an Earth warship’s stardrive and sends it 3,000 light years off course…
Anne Charnock – Bridge 108 with climate change worsening, even southern Europe is emptying out and heading north…
Eleanor Arnason – Ring of Swords reprint of her 1993 novel about Earth’s defenders finally finding an enemy to fight! 2018 Introduction by Ursula K. LeGuin
Jim LeMay & Charles Eugene Anderson (editors) – A Fistful of Dinosaurs 16 recent stories featuring more recent interpretations of dinosaurs. Includes James Patrick Kelly, Steve Rasnic Tam, Mario Acevedo & others. Copyright 2018 by Mad Cow Press
Pierre V. Comtois – Goat Mother And Others – short story collection with all 20 of the Cthulhu Mythos tales by this author
Jamers Lowder (editor) – Madness of the Orient Express anthology with 16 train-based Lovecraftian horror stories!
Glynn Owen Phillips & Brian M. Sammons (editors) – Atomic-Age Cthulhu anthology with 19 Cthulhu Mythos stories set in the 1950s
Orrin Grey & Silvia Moreno-Garcia (editors) – Fungi short fiction inspired by William Hope Hodgson
Ivan Phillips – Once Upon a Timelord subtitled The Myths and Stories of Doctor Who. A serious look at the nature of Doctor Who and his many adventures
in ‘B’ format:
Gareth L. Powell – Light of Impossible Stars the final volume of his Embers of War trilogy
Neal Stephenson – Fall, or Dodge in Hell sequel of sorts to Reamde, although knowledge of the earlier book isn’t required…
Sam Peters – From Divergent Suns 3rd in the series which began with From Darkest Skies, about an off-planet émigré
Temi Oh – Do You Dream of Terra-Two? on board the first extra-solar space flight, which will take 23 years just to get there…
Anthony Ryan – The Wolf’s Call volume 1 of The Raven’s Blade, which I think continues the story of The Raven’s Shadow & The Draconis Memora trilogies
S. A. Chakraborty – The Kingdom of Copper sequel to The City of Brass
Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Signal to Noise returning to Mexico City after decades away, Meche wonders if she really did cast spells using old vinyl records back when she was 15…
Robert Brockway – The Unnoticeables, The Empty Ones & Kill All Angels trilogy of horror/crime novels featuring an ex-punk with a chequered history from New York City…
Nick Mamatas – The Nickronomicon short story collection which first came out in 2014, although I haven’t had it in until now…
Wink Taylor – The Bandril Invasion the latest of the Lucy Wilson Mysteries, set in the world of Lethbridge-Stewart & Doctor Who
in paperback:
Seanan McGuire – Imaginary Numbers the 9th in her Incryptid series
Timothy Zahn – Knight the 2nd Chronicle of the Sibyl’s War. Nicole has been kidnapped from Earth to train as an engineer on a giant alien spaceship…
Shannon Lee & Steve Miller – Carpe Diem apparently a re-print of the 3rd in their Liaden Universe series…
art, etc:
R. J. Ivankovic – H. P. Lovecraft’s Dagon (for beginning readers) nicely illustrated hardback version of the Lovecraft story, retold in simple, Dr. Seuss-like verse!
magazines:
Character Design Quarterly – CDQ # 11. Issues 7, 8, 9 & 10 also in stock
New Titles – w/e 15th February 2020
in hardcover:
A. K. Larkwood – The Unspoken Name to avoid becoming a sacrifice to the death cult which has raised her, Csorwe agrees to become apprenticed to a sorcerer…
Michael J. Sullivan – Age of Death the 5th volume of The Legends of the First Empire
Sarah Galley – Upright Women Wanted in a future, alternate, rural American South West, Esther stows away on the visiting library wagon to escape an arranged marriage…
Sophie Aldred – Doctor Who At Childhood’s End Ace meets up with the 13th Doctor!
in ‘B’ format:
Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of Ruin sequel to the award winning Children of Time
Valerie Valdes – Chilling Effect Captain Eva Innocente scratches a living shipping dodgy caroes in her spaceship, La Sirena Negra, whose present cargo consists of psychic cats… and it’s about to get complicated…
H. J. Pang– The Last Server after a geomagnetic storm wipes most of the Earth’s computer data, the search is on for a rumored data cache that could solve a lot of problems!
Sarah Davis-Goff – Last Ones Left Alive the Irish mainland has been occupied by the skrake and Orpen must leave her little island home and search for other survivors…
Catherine Cavendish – The Garden of Bewitchment in 1893 two sisters decide they’d rather live up on the moors instead of their little Yorkshire town, but then they come across the titular garden…
Count Collin Van Reenan – The Spaces In Between a poverty-stricken student takes a temporary job as a tutor to a teenager living in a very old-fashioned house (electricity is banned from use!) in the aftermath of the Paris riots of 1968.
Hassan Blasim (editor) – Iraq+100 recent anthology imagining what Iraq will be like in 2103, a century after the US/UK-led invasion. 10 new stories by Iraqi authors
S. J. Huang (editor) – The New Singapore Horror Collection 13 stories
art, etc:
Dave Cooper – Pillowy Art of DC hefty hardcover of mainly full colour art, along with cartoon strips, an interview and more!
Basil Gogos – The Monster Art of BG a mix of b&w and full colour sketches, etc. of iconic horror actors, monsters & villains!
Jim Ottaviani & Maris Wicks – Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier digest-sized full colour graphic novel about the women who have been in the various space programmes
Graphic Classics # 4 – H. P. Lovecraft appears to be a re-print of the 2007 2nd edition. The lead story is The Shadow Over Innsmouth but also includes The Shadow Out of Time & Herbert West: Reanimator among others… b&w, with a colour cover
Andy Runton – Owly: The Way Home new full colour edition of his first adventure. Good fun, and the speech pictograms now have English translations beside them.
magazines:
Locus – issue # 709 February cover date with their 2019 Year in Review highlighted oon the cover
Hi-Fructose – volume # 54 of the quarterly art magazine
