Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2006, Fantasy

Publishers Weekly has announced their picks for the Best Books of 2006. Among them are 2 books of fantasy.

The Empire of Ice Cream, by Jeffrey Ford. A collection of fantastic short stories by an acknowledged master of the genre.

No Present Like Time, by Steph Swainston. The follow-up to her novel The Year of Our War. An Emperor and his Immortal supporters fight to protect a kingdom from monstrous creatures.

World Fantasy Award Winner

The winners of the World Fantasy Awards (covering works published in 2005) were announced this weekend at the World Fantasy Convention in Austin, Texas. The winner of the Best Novel was Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami.

Kafka on the Shore is a surreal fantasy, set in present-day Japan. There are 2 parallel narratives running through the work. The first is that of 15-year-old Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home to find his mother and sister. The other is elderly Satoru Nakata, whose long-ago accident has left him able to speak with cats, but who is otherwise feeble-minded. A disturbing, and sometimes violently and sexually explicit, masterpiece of the fantastic.

If you enjoy Kafka on the Shore, the Somerset County Library System has many of his other novels and story collections.

New Fiction: The Ladies of Grace Adieu

One of the most acclaimed fantasy novels of 2004 was the book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This novel was set in the 1800's, in an England where magic was real. Some called the book "Harry Potter for grown-ups."
Clarke has just come out with a collection of fantastic short stories, titled The Ladies of Grace Adieu, illustrated by Charles Vess. Most of these stories are also set in the early 1800's, and include another Jonathan Strange story. The only one that is not is one set in the world of Neil Gaiman's Stardust.
If you enjoy Jane Austen or more "literary" fantasy fiction, consider checking out The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.