John Joseph Adams Books

JJA_colophon John Joseph Adams Books was the science fiction and fantasy imprint I ran for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2015-2020). The imprint is now defunct, having closed when HMH was acquired by HarperCollins. All of the books acquired for the imprint are now HarperCollins titles and should all still be readily available.

Collected Excerpts

from John Joseph Adams Books

John Joseph Adams Books is a science fiction and fantasy imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt dedicated to publishing best-selling and award-winning science fiction and fantasy from a diverse range of voices, both new and established—fiction that is literary and accessible, sometimes experimental, and always full of a sense of wonder. If that sounds like it’s up your alley, then lucky you! You can try for free all of the titles we have to offer in our John Joseph Adams Books Collected Excerpts ebook sampler!

Half Way Home

by Hugh Howey

Five hundred colonists have been sent across the stars to settle an alien planet. Vat-grown in a dream-like state, they are educated through simulations by an artificial intelligence and should awaken at thirty years old, fully-trained, and ready to tame the new world. But fifteen years in, an explosion on their vessel kills most of the homesteaders and destroys the majority of their supplies. Worse yet, the sixty that awaken and escape the flames are only half-taught and possess the skills least useful for survival. Naked and terrified, the teens stumble from their fiery baptism ill-prepared for the unfamiliar and harsh alien world around them. Though they attempt to work with the colony A.I. to build a home, tension and misery are rampant, escalating into battles for dominance. Soon they find that their worst enemy isn’t the hostile environment, the A.I., or the blast that nearly killed them. Their greatest danger is each other.

Reentry

by Peter Cawdron

After almost dying on Mars, astronaut Liz Anderson returns to Earth, but not to a hero’s welcome. America is in turmoil. The war is over, but the insurgency has just begun. So while life on Mars may have been deadly, at least up there she knew who the enemy was. Along with her, Anderson has brought the remnants of the artificial intelligence that waged war on two planets. Buried somewhere deep within the cold electronic circuits lies the last vestiges of her dead partner, Jianyu. Liz is torn, unsure whether he’s somehow still alive in electronic form or if this is just a ploy by an adversary who will go to any length to win. Heartbroken and treated with suspicion, she finds herself caught up in the guerrilla war being waged on Earth, wondering if the AI threat is truly gone, or if it has only just begun.

Gather the Fortunes

by Bryan Camp

Crescent City #2

Renaissance Raines wound up dead, resurrected, and then abandoned—stuck in the shadows between the worlds of the living and the dead. She’s now a psychopomp, one of the guides who lead the souls of the recently departed through the Seven Gates of the Underworld. But when a young boy named Ramses St. Cyr manages to escape the moment of his foretold death, she finds herself at the center of a deity-thick plot unfolding in the streets of New Orleans.It seems someone helped Ramses evade his fate, someone willing to risk the delicate balance of life and death just to steal a little slice of power for themselves. And when the Underworld’s newest psychopomp finds the one responsible, there’s going to be all kinds of hell to pay. Because there are scarier things than death in the Crescent City, and Renaissance Raines is one of them.

Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

The Burnt Empire Saga #1

From international sensation Ashok K. Banker, pioneer of the fantasy genre in India, comes the first book in a ground-breaking, epic fantasy series inspired by the ancient Indian classic, The Mahabharata

In a world where demigods and demons walk among mortals, the Emperor of the vast Burnt Empire has died, leaving a turbulent realm without a sovereign. Two young princes, Adri and Shvate, are in line to rule, but birthright does not guarantee inheritance: For any successor must sit upon the legendary Burning Throne and pass The Test of Fire. Imbued with dark sorceries, the throne is a crucible — one that incinerates the unworthy. Adri and Shvate pass The Test and are declared heirs to the empire. But there is another with a claim to power, another who also survives: a girl from an outlying kingdom. When this girl, whose father is the powerful demonlord Jarsun, is denied her claim by the interim leaders, Jarsun declares war, vowing to tear the Burnt Empire apart — leaving the young princes Adri and Shvate to rule a shattered realm embroiled in rebellion and chaos…

The Chaos Function

by Jack Skillingstead

Olivia Nikitas, a hardened journalist whose specialty is war zones, has been reporting from the front lines of the civil war in Aleppo, Syria. When Brian, an aid worker she reluctantly fell in love with, dies while following her into danger, she’ll do anything to bring him back. In a makeshift death chamber beneath an ancient, sacred site, a strange technology is revealed to Olivia: the power to remake the future by changing the past. Following her heart and not her head, Olivia brings Brian back, accidentally shifting the world to the brink of nuclear and biological disaster. Now she must stay steps ahead of the guardians of this technology, who will kill her to reclaim it, in order to save not just herself and her love, but the whole world.

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones

by Micah Dean Hicks

Jane is haunted. Since she was a child, she has carried a ghost girl that feeds on the secrets and fears of everyone around her, whispering to Jane what they are thinking and feeling, even when she doesn’t want to know. Henry, Jane’s brother, is ridden by a genius ghost that forces him to build strange and dangerous machines. Their mother is possessed by a lonely spirit that burns anyone she touches. In Swine Hill, a place of defeat and depletion, there are more dead than living. When new arrivals begin scoring precious jobs at the last factory in town, both the living and the dead are furious. This insult on the end of a long economic decline sparks a conflagration. Buffeted by rage on all sides, Jane must find a way to save her haunted family and escape the town before it kills them.

Creatures of Want and Ruin

by Molly Tanzer

The Diabolist's Library #2

Amityville baywoman Ellie West fishes by day and bootlegs moonshine by night. It’s dangerous work under Prohibition—independent operators like her are despised by federal agents and mobsters alike—but Ellie’s brother was accepted to college and Ellie’s desperate to see him go. So desperate that when wealthy strangers ask her to procure libations for an extravagant party Ellie sells them everything she has, including some booze she acquired under unusual circumstances.

What Ellie doesn’t know is that this booze is special. Distilled from foul mushrooms by a cult of diabolists, those who drink it see terrible things—like the destruction of Long Island in fire and flood. The cult is masquerading as a church promising salvation through temperance and a return to “the good old days,” so it’s hard for Ellie to take a stand against them, especially when her father joins, but Ellie loves Long Island, and she loves her family, and she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure neither is torn apart.

In the Night Wood

by Dale Bailey

American Charles Hayden came to England to forget the past. Failed father, failed husband, and failed scholar, Charles hopes to put his life back together with a biography of Christopher Hollow, the long-dead author of a legendary Victorian children’s book, In the Night Wood. But soon after settling into Hollow’s remote Yorkshire home, Charles learns that the past isn’t dead.

In the neighboring village, Charles meets a woman he might have loved, a child who could have been his own lost daughter, and the ghost of a self he thought he’d put behind him. And in the primeval forest surrounding Christopher Hollow’s ancestral home, an ancient power is stirring. The horned figure of a long-forgotten king haunts Charles Hayden’s dreams. And every morning the fringe of darkling trees presses closer. Soon enough, Charles will venture into the night wood. Soon enough he’ll learn that the darkness under the trees is but a shadow of the darkness that waits inside us all.

The Spaceship Next Door

Gene Doucette

Three years ago, a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts. It never opened its doors, and for all that time, the townspeople have wondered why the ship landed there, and what—or who—could be inside.

Then one day, a government operative—posing as a journalist—arrives in town, asking questions. He discovers sixteen year old Annie Collins, one of the ship’s closest neighbors, and a local fixture, known throughout the town, has some of the answers.

As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn’t know it.

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