June Publications

Bestseller Matthew Stover (Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Traitor) takes the Star Wars franchise boldly into new territory with Star Wars: Shatterpoint: A Clone Wars Novel, the first of a projected sextet. After the battle of Geonosis, Jedi Master Mace Windu returns home to the jungle planet of Haruun Kal to look for his former trainee, Depa Billaba. A mysterious recording Depa left behind at the scene of a terrible massacre is the only clue to her fate. 5-city author tour. (Del Rey, $25.95 352p ISBN 0-345-45573-8)

Bestseller Richard A. Knaak (The Legend of Huma) returns to Krynn, the world of the minotaurs, in Night of Blood: The Minotaur Wars: Volume One, the first in a new Dragonlance trilogy. In a bloody coup that would put any modern dictator to shame, General Hotak rises to power with the aid of his mate, Lady Nephera, high priestess of the Temple of Forerunners. The cliffhanger ending will leave fans eagerly awaiting the next installment. Author tour. (Wizards of the Coast, $24.95 352p ISBN 0-7869-2938-3)

Brighten to Incandescence: 17 Stories, by Michael Bishop (Blue Kansas Sky), includes uncollected, in many cases revised, tales that run from "A Tapestry of Little Murders" (1971) to "Last Night Out," written especially for this volume a week after September 11. In his introduction, Lucius Shepard extols the truth and moral honesty in Bishop's wide-ranging speculative fiction. (Golden Gryphon, $24.95 312p ISBN 1-930846-16-9)

Masters of Midnight gathers four erotic vampire novellas: "His Hunger," by William J. Mann, "Sting," by Michael Thomas Ford, "Brandon's Bite," by Sean Ford, and "Devoured," by Jeff Mann. As the cover art of one man embracing another suggests, this all-original anthology is aimed at gay male readers. (Kensington, $14 paper 368p ISBN 0-7582-0421-3)

Fans of Rosemary Edghill will welcome Paying the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a collection of 17 fantasy stories by the author of Leopard in Exile. In her introduction, Edghill comments wittily on the challenges of the short story form. (Five Star, $25.95 317p ISBN 0-7862-5345-2)

Allen Steele, two-time Hugo winner for best novella, collects 10 of his stories in American Beauty. The cover, showing a male robot literally offering his heart to a female robot, captures the whimsical, good-natured spirit of Steel's fiction perfectly. (Five Star, $25.95 242p ISBN 0-7862-5339-8)

Snake's-Hands: The Fiction of John Crowley, edited by Alice K. Turner and Michael Andre-Driussi, includes appreciative essays on this underrated author by such eminent scholars and writers as John Clute, Thomas M. Disch and James Hynes. Harold Bloom provides an admiring introduction. (Cosmos [www.cosmos-books.com], $49.95 405p ISBN 1-58715-509-5)