Out This Week! 22nd January 2024
23rd January 2024 – Womb City – Tlotlo Tsamaase
This genre-bending Africanfuturist horror novel blends The Handmaid’s Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, cyberpunk body-hopping ghost story exploring motherhood, memory, and a woman’s right to her own body.
Nelah seems to have it all: fame, wealth, and a long-awaited daughter growing in a government lab. But, trapped in a loveless marriage to a policeman who uses a microchip to monitor her every move, Nelah’s perfect life is precarious. After a drug-fueled evening culminates in an eerie car accident, Nelah commits a desperate crime and buries the body, daring to hope that she can keep one last secret.
The truth claws its way into Nelah’s life from the grave.
As the ghost of her victim viciously hunts down the people Nelah holds dear, she is thrust into a race against the clock: in order to save any of her remaining loved ones, Nelah must unravel the political conspiracy her victim was on the verge of exposing―or risk losing everyone.
Set in a cruel futuristic surveillance state where bodies are a government-issued resource, this harrowing story is a twisty, nail-biting commentary on power, monstrosity, and bodily autonomy. In sickeningly evocative prose, Womb City interrogates how patriarchy pits women against each other as unwitting collaborators in their own oppression. In this devastatingly timely debut novel, acclaimed short fiction writer Tlotlo Tsamaase brings a searing intelligence and Botswana’s cultural sensibility to the question: just how far must a woman go to bring the whole system crashing down?
25th January 2024 – Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road – Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson
“I’ve been waiting, all this time, for my life to begin. Maybe it’s time to stop waiting. Maybe it’s time to start living.”
Chance. Misfortune. Coincidence. These are the weapons of choice for the Doctor’s latest enemies. And those enemies are very, very hungry…
For Ruby Sunday, this Christmas Eve is a birthday she’ll never forget. It’s the day she joins the Doctor onboard a Goblin ship. The day she learns of dangers from beyond the universe. The day her life really begins… or, perhaps, the day it ends.
The Target novelisation of the first full adventure featuring the Fifteenth Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa, and the introduction of his new best friend, Ruby Sunday played by Millie Gibson. Russell T Davies’ original script has been novelised by up-and-coming literary talent Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson.
28th January 2024 – Klova – Karen Langston
All language is artificial. And it has started to disappear.
Ink had cut himself off after the death of his partner, Neav, a decade ago. However, he wakes one day to find he has no concept of the past and can only think of Neav in the present tense. Social media reports two dozen cases in a so-called ‘amnesia crisis’. Ink knows his new loss has nothing to do with memory. As does Ihlo.
Ihlo, a votary in the Order, has sworn an oath to protect Klova – the artificial language that enables everyone to think, speak and know. She’s certain the impossible has happened: a corruption in the code. However, her sudden suspension forces her to act alone.
As case numbers steadily rise, the Order’s security agency race to find the fault and stem the spread. Ink and Ihlo’s own desperate efforts to locate the source bring them together and cause them to confront loss and the vulnerability of truth through the lens of perception.
When the corruption mutates, all are forced to ask: what next? Where will this end? Which concepts will we lose? What words will we have left?
If you’re an author, agent or publisher (or just a fan) that would like to add an upcoming release to our Out This Week feature then get in touch with our editor on Pete@ZealotScript.co.uk with the details.
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