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RSS and Updates
Forthcoming
Small Beer Press
150 Pleasant St., #306
Easthampton, MA 01027
413-203-1636
info@smallbeerpress.comTweets
The Poison Oracle
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Peter Dickinson “I think Peter Dickinson is hands down the best stylist as a writer and the most interesting storyteller in my genre.”
—Sara Paretsky, author of
Spider in a Tree
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Susan Stinson October 2013 · 9781618730695 · trade paper · 336pp | 9781618730701 · ebook Jonathan Edwards is considered America’s most brilliant theologian. He was also a slave owner. This is the story of the years he spent preaching in eighteenth century Northampton, Massachusetts. In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Mr. Edwards [...]
Was
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Geoff Ryman Trade paper · 9781931520737 | ebook · 9781931520386 · 320 pp · New Reader Group Guide · Ebook available. Print edition due June 2013. “A mythic meditation on the enduring power of fantasy and art and on the loss of innocence, both the innocence of childhood lost to the cruel realities of the grown-up world and [...]
Current BooksCurrent Zine
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A Stranger in Olondria
Sofia Samatar“Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”
—Library Journal (*starred review*) -
Trafalgar
Angélica Gorodischer Translated by Amalia Gladhart.” I found it delightful. Thought-provoking. Impressive. Brilliant.”
—Liz Bourke, Tor.com -
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 28
Michael Penkas · Krista Hoeppner Leahy · Kevin Waltman · Erica Hilderbrand · Brian Baldi · Andrea M. Pawley · Kamila Z. Miller · Helen Marshall · Nicole Kimberling · John McKernan · Junyi Wu
Chuntering On and On
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Bookslinger Fri 17 May 2013
Darn it, haven’t kept up with the Consortium Bookslinger app! Every week they post a new story from one of the Consortium publishers and since we publish a fair number of short story collections, a fair number of those stories are from our books. We’ve got new stories scheduled to go out just about monthly. Checkkkk it out: [...]
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Ground Control to Major Tom Mon 13 May 2013
Is Col. Chris Hadfield the geekist astronaut ever? Has there ever been an astronaut who sang and played guitar? Do all the astronauts enjoy themselves this much? I don’t know, but this is fantastic! I think the best part are his special effects, which are just shots of his normal everyday life. I’ve enjoyed a bunch [...]
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Locus awards & this month’s Locus Thu 9 May 2013
Lovely news from Locus that 2 (or 3, depending on how you count) Small Beer books are finalists for this year’s Best Collection Award. Any time something like this happens, I remember what an honor it is to be nominated. It is excellent and reassuring to know that there are readers finding these books. Congratulations to [...]
Latest Eruption of Fiction Into the Universe
A Stranger in Olondria
April 2013 · 300 pp · hardcover · 978-1-61873-062-6 / trade paperback · 978-1-931520-76-8 / ebook · 978-1-931520-77-5
“It’s the rare first novel with no unnecessary parts – and, in terms of its elegant language, its sharp insights into believable characters, and its almost revelatory focus on the value and meaning of language and story, it’s the most impressive and intelligent first novel I expect to see this year, or perhaps for a while longer.”
—Locus
Jevick, the pepper merchant’s son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home—but which his mother calls the Ghost Country. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick’s life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Just as he revels in Olondria’s Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.
In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire’s two most powerful cults. Even as the country simmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of freeing himself by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that most seductive of necromancies, reading.
A Stranger in Olondria was written while the author taught in South Sudan. It is a rich and heady brew which pulls the reader in deeper and still deeper with twists and turns that hearken back to the Gormenghast novels while being as immersive as George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.
Read an excerpt on Tor.com.
More? Download a pdf of the first 70 pages.
Sofia Samatar: The Big Idea. Interview on the Qwillery.
“With characteristic wit, poise, and eloquence, Samatar delivers a story about our vulnerability to language and literature, and the simultaneous experience of power and surrender inherent in the acts of writing and reading.”—Amal El-Mohtar, Tor.com
Advance Praise
“Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”
—Library Journal (*starred review*)
“Sofia Samatar has an expansive imagination, a poetic and elegant style, and she writes stories so rich, with characters so full of life, they haunt you long after the story ends. A real pleasure.”
—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames
“A book about the love of books. Her sentences are intoxicating and one can easily be lost in their intricacy…. Samatar’s beautifully written book is one that will be treasured by book lovers everywhere.”
—Raul M. Chapa, BookPeople, Austin, TX
“Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years.”—Jeffrey Ford, author of The Girl in the Glass
“Mesmerizing—a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar’s characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for far-away, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club
“Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise—a Proustian ghost story.”—Paul Witcover, author of Tumbling After
“Let the world take note of this dazzling and accomplished fantasy. Sofia Samatar’s debut novel is both exhilarating epic adventure and loving invocation of what it means to live through story, poetry, language. She writes like the heir of Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.”
—Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners
“Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows. Sofia Samatar is a merchant of wonders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams.”
—Greer Gilman, author of Cloud & Ashes
Listen to Sofia read a couple of her poems on Stone Telling: “Girl Hours” · “The Sand Diviner”
Sofia Samatar is a fantasy writer, poet, and critic, and PhD in African Languages and Literature. She wrote A Stranger in Olondria in Yambio, South Sudan, where she worked as an English teacher. Her poetry has appeared in several places, including Stone Telling, Goblin Fruit, Bull Spec, and the anthology The Moment of Change. She reviews fiction for Strange Horizons and Islam and Science Fiction, blogs, and is working on a second novel.
More Books
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The Unreal and the Real: Outer Space, Inner Lands
Ursula K. Le Guin“Her stories will pass into legend, to touch many generations to come.”
—The Guardian -
Errantry: Strange Stories
Elizabeth Hand“Each phrase and each sentence carefully shaped and laid in place to create the singular diadem that is a Hand story.”
—Romantic Times Book Review -
Earth and Air
Peter Dickinson“These six new stories are provocative in both variety and ideas. . . . and with Dickinson’s usual command of imaginative imagery and beautifully tooled language, this is a fitting capstone to the series.”—Horn Book
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The Shimmers in The Night
Lydia MilletThe Shimmers in the Night is the second thrilling novel in the Dissenters series following The Fires Beneath the Sea.
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At the Mouth of the River of Bees
Kij Johnson“Johnson’s long-awaited first collection is full of thought-provoking and often emotionally wrenching stories that traverse the spectrum of speculative fiction.”—Publishers Weekly, Best Books of 2012
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Under the Poppy
Kathe KojaNow available in paperback. Gaylactic Spectrum Award winner. Longlisted for the IMPAC Award.
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The Fires Beneath the Sea
Lydia MilletIncludes a sneak preview of the second book in the Dissenters series, The Shimmers in the Night.
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Fountain of Age
Nancy Kress“Kress’s depiction of science is much like her characters’ experiences with love: by turns glorious and terrible, and always a little disturbing, even in triumph.”
—Publishers Weekly -
The Serial Garden
Joan AikenThe first complete collection of Joan Aiken’s beloved Armitage stories including four new, unpublished stories.
The Serial Garden was also the debut title for Big Mouth House our imprint for readers of all ages. -
An A–Z of the Fantastic City
Hal DuncanPublished in limited signed and numbered hardcover and perfectbound trade paperback editions.
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Three Messages and a Warning
Eduardo Jiménez Mayo & Chris. N. Brown, editors“Langorous, edgy, sumptuously beautiful by turns.”
—Debra Castillo, Cornell University -
The Liminal People
Ayize Jama-Everett“A damn good read. It’s a smart actioner that will entertain you while also enticing you to think about matters beyond the physical realm.”
—Annalee Newitz, io9 -
A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2012
Available in two spiralbound or PDF ebook editions. Standard Edition, 134 pages: — order the print edition ($13.95) — ebook: Weightless ($3.99) / Lulu ($3.99) Almanac Edition which includes all the prompts, exercises, reading lists, and articles from the two previous editions, 182 pages: — order the print edition ($15.95) — ebook Weightless ($4.99) / [...]
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The Freedom Maze
Delia Sherman“Adroit, sympathetic, both clever and smart, The Freedom Maze will entrap young readers and deliver them, at the story’s end, that little bit older and wiser.”
—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Out of Oz -
After the Apocalypse
Maureen F. McHugh“Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising.”
—Publishers Weekly Best Books 2011: The Top 10 -
A Slepyng Hound to Wake
Vincent McCaffrey“Henry is a character cut from Raymond Chandler: a modern knight on a mission to save those, and what, he loves.”
—Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen -
Paradise Tales
Geoff Ryman* “Often contemplative and subtly ironic, the 16 stories in this outstanding collection work imaginative riffs on a variety of fantasy and SF themes”—Publishers Weekly (*Starred Review*)
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The Child Garden
Geoff RymanWinner of the John W. Cambell and Arthur C. Clarke Awards.
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The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
Joan Aiken* “Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising . . . a literary treasure.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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Solitaire: a novel
Kelley EskridgeA New York Times Notable Book, Borders Original Voices selection, and Nebula, Endeavour, and Spectrum Award finalist.
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Stories of Your Life and Others
Ted Chiang“Shining, haunting, mind-blowing tales”
—Junot Díaz (author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) -
What I Didn’t See and Other Stories
Karen Joy FowlerA moving and elegant new collection from New York Times bestseller Karen Joy Fowler. Locus and Shirley Jackson Award finalist.
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Meeks
Julia Holmes“One of the most original and readable novels that’s come my way in a long time.”—The New York Times Book Review
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Redemption in Indigo
Karen LordIn this funny, fresh Crawford and Collymore Award winning fable, a villager leaves her husband and finds she can manipulate chaos.