Knopf Doubleday at SDCC

The Knopf Doubleday group returns to this year’s San Diego Comic-Con (July 21-24). They're at booth #1520, along with the other Penguin Random House groups. A reminder that Knopf Doubleday is comprised of Pantheon & Schocken Books, Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, and Vintage Anchor Books.

Sydney Padua, author of THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF LOVELACE AND BABBAGE (Pantheon Books), will be appearing at SDCC, where she is nominated for two Eisner Awards this year (Best Graphic Album and Best Writer/Artist). THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF LOVELACE AND BABBAGE is a graphic novel debut that transforms the unrealized invention of the computer in the 1830s by eccentric polymath Charles Babbage and his accomplice Ada Lovelace into an unexpected and hilarious series of adventures. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly hails “the immensity of Padua’s research and the wit and allusions of her prose striking…permeated by delightful illustrations, obsessive foot- and endnotes, and a spirit of genuine inventiveness.” Sydney appears on the Graphic Novels As Medium panel on Thursday, July 21 in Room 29AB at 10 am. 

KDD TITLES AT SDCC 2016

The boxed paperback set MADDADDAM TRILOGY BOX (Vintage, 8/12/2014) by Margaret Atwood, of the internationallycelebrated speculative fiction trilogy (ORYX & CRAKE; THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD; MADDADDAM), is set in a darkly plausible future shaped by plagues, floods, and genetic engineering. Called “towering and intrepid” (The New Yorker), “gripping” (The New York Times), and “just about everything you could want” (The Washington Post), this trilogy confirms the ultimate endurance of humanity, community, and love.  

THE WATER KNIFE (Vintage, 4/5/2016) is the eagerly anticipated follow-up novel by the best-selling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Windup Girl. A scorching thriller born out of today’s front-page headlines that preys on our worst fears about potential catastrophic failures awaiting us in our resource-starved future, this “fresh, genre-bending thriller…weaves page-turning action with zeitgeisty themes… His use of water as sacred currency evokes Frank Herbert’s DUNE.” (Denise Hamilton, Los Angeles Times)

STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS (Vintage, 6/14/2016) by Ted Chiang is a collection of masterpieces that has taken Hollywood by storm. The lead story in the collection is soon to be a major motion picture starring Amy Adams, while another story has been optioned by Fox and is in development. Offering readers the dual delights of the very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, “shining, haunting, mind-blowing tales…this collection is a pure marvel.” (Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao).

THE FAMILIAR, VOLUME 3: Honeysuckle & Pain (Pantheon, 6/14/2016) by Mark Z. Danielewski is the third episode of the multi-volume novel from the universally acclaimed, genre-busting author of House of Leaves. This is a beautiful and singular reading experience with the spectacular visuals and vibrant wordplay that are Mark Z. Danielewski’s – “America’s foremost literary magus” (The New York Times Book Review) – trademark.

BATS OF THE REPUBLIC (Doubleday, 10/6/2015) by Zachary Thomas Dodson is an illuminated novel set in 1843 about fragile naturalist Zadock Thomas, who must leave his beloved in Chicago to deliver a secret letter to an infamous general on the front lines of the war over Texas. Three hundred years later, the world has collapsed and the remnants of humanity cling to a strange society of paranoia and Zeke Thomas has inherited a sealed envelope from his grandfather, an esteemed senator. When that letter goes missing, Zeke engages a fomenting rebellion that could free him—if it doesn’t destroy his relationship, his family legacy, and the entire republic first. As their stories overlap and history itself begins to unravel, a war in time erupts between a lost civilization, a forgotten future, and the chaos of the wild. BATS OF THE REPUBLIC is a masterful novel of adventure and science fiction, of elliptical history and dystopian struggle, and, at its riveting core, of love, called "a novel with a steampunk aesthetic and a Philip K. Dick heart" (A.V. Club).

THE ART OF CHARLIE CHAN HOCK CHYE (Pantheon, 3/1/2016) by Sonny Liew is a brilliantly conceived graphic novel that tells the history of Singapore through the lens of its greatest—though not entirely successful—comic book artist Charlie Chan Hock Chye. Splicing together a dizzying array of art styles, genres and forms, Sonny Liew's multilayered graphic novel is a celebration of life, comics and storytelling, hailed as “a startlingly brilliant tour de force… Although the premise sounds simple—it purports to be the biography of a fictional comic book artist—what Liew does with it is anything but. At once dizzyingly meta and deeply heartfelt, the book spans 80 years, and in its complicated layering, reminded me of everything from Maus and…believe it or not, Ulysses… Probably the greatest work of art ever produced in Singapore” (John Powers,Fresh Air).

THE BIG BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION (Vintage, 7/12/2016) is a canon-defining anthology of science fiction from Jeff VanderMeer & Ann VanderMeer, sci-fi wunderkinds, “literary power couple” (Boing Boing), and custodians of the strange and wonderful. Encompassing hard science fiction, soft (social) science fiction, space opera, alternative history, apocalyptic stories, tales of alien encounters, near-future dystopia, far-future myths, and a host of other modes, The Big Book of Science Fiction brings together authors from all over the world and from both the genre and literary ends of the spectrum. It is a must have for any science fiction fan.

SMOKE (Doubleday, 5/24/2016) by Dan Vyleta is a wildly imaginative, irresistibly page-turning novel set in an alternate historical England, in which the emission of Smoke marks the sinful and poor. Named one of Entertainment Weekly’s “Best Books of 2016 So Far,” SMOKE is written with “intricacy and imagination and skillful pacing; never once would I have considered putting his book down. In the manner of both a Dickens novel and the best young adult adventure stories (the Harry Potter series among them), the children run away together to uncover the dark secrets of the grown-up world... His ending, which I wouldn’t dare reveal here, is a real firecracker, and the lessons Mr. Vyleta wishes to impart are large-hearted” (Jennifer Senior, The New York Times)

EVERYTHING IS TEETH (Pantheon, 5/10/2016) by Evie Wyld, award-winning author of All the Birds, Singing, is “a rite-of-passage memoir that has powerful poetry in its ellipses” (Kirkus, starred review) as a young Evie passes her summers in the heat of coastal Australia. Her fascination with sharks – their innate ruthlessness, stealth, and immeasurable power – have never released their hold on her imagination, “the darkly poetic voice Wyld evoked in her previous work reveals itself in a different way here... the power of prose in EVERYTHING IS TEETH is magnified by Joe Sumner’s illustrations, which combine primitive yet delicate portraits of the girl and her surroundings with viciously realistic renderings of sharks swimming through the pages” (Jean Zimmerman, NPR.org).