Forthcoming titles from Corvus

Yesterday I received the new catalogues for Corvus and Atlantic Books.

Starting with Corvus, here are a couple of the highlights:

The first in a new series from Phil Rickman in February 2010 called The Bones of Avalon:

Religious strife, Glastonbury legends, the bones of King Arthur and the curse of the Tudors...can Renaissance man John Dee help the young Queen Elizabeth to avoid it? It is 1560. Elizabeth Tudor has been on the throne for a year, the date for her coronation having been chosen by her astrologer, Dr John Dee, at just 32 already famous throughout Europe as a mathematician and expert in the hidden arts.

But neither Elizabeth nor Dee feel entirely secure. Both have known imprisonment for political reasons. The Queen is unpopular with both Roman Catholics and the new breed of puritanical protestant. Dee is regarded with suspicion in an era where the dividing line between science and sorcery is, at best, indistinct. And the assignment he's been given by the Queen's chief minister, Sir William Cecil, will blur it further: ride to the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, bring back King Arthur's bones.

The mission takes the mild, bookish Dee to the tangled roots of English magic and the Arthurian legacy so important to the Tudors. Into unexpected violence, spiritual darkness, the breathless stirring of first love...and the cold heart of a complex plot against Elizabeth. With him is his friend and former student, Robert Dudley, a risk-taker, a wild card...and possibly the Queen's secret lover. Dee is Elizabethan England's forgotten hero. A man for whom this world - even the rapidly-expanding world of the Renaissance - was never enough.

Merrily Watkins will return in February 2011.

and Michael Ridpath's first book in the Fire & Ice series, Where the Shadows Lie, will be published in June 2010:


Amid Iceland’s wild, volcanic landscape, rumours swirl about the secret sale of a long-lost ancient manuscript containing a saga about a ring of terrible power. The manuscript, guarded by one family for nearly eight centuries, was shown to J.R.R. Tolkein in the 1930s and was the spark that inspired The Lord of the Rings. That alone is enough to make the manuscript worth killing for...but what if, as some think, the ring exists too?

Untangling murder from myth is Iceland-born, Boston-raised homicide detective Magnus Jonson. Seconded to the Icelandic police force for his own protection after he runs afoul of a drug cartel back in Boston, Magnus also has his own reasons for returning to the country of his birth for the first time in nearly two decades – to investigate the unsolved murder of his father.

Binding Iceland’s landscape and history, secrets and superstitions in a strikingly original plot that will span several volumes, Where the Shadows Lie is a thrilling new series from an established master.

The second book in the series is scheduled for June 2011.

The Corvus catalogue can be viewed as a pdf file.