The new Tor catalog arrived last week and there are several titles that are must haves for me. Here's a rundown:

Wings to the Kingdom by Cherie Priest. I missed Four and Twenty Blackbirds but read so many good things about it that when I saw Priest's name for a new title in the catalog I jumped at it. Wings involves the battlefield at Chickamauga, Georgia and an old ghost, Old Green Eyes, who does not harm those who respect the park. Tour guides know he is there but no one knows what to make of new ghosts, dressed in ragged uniforms who show themselves and point off to the distance. Why are they marching and what has become of Old Green Eyes? Eden Moore is the go-between they need, someone who can speak to them, and for them.

And it doesn't matter that she's not interested.

Man - how do you pass that up?!!!

(I see from her site that Priest has some projects with Subterranean Press in the works; must follow up on those and see what else I've been missing from this amazing sounding author.)

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Tom is a contemporary historian and his girlfriend Sharon is a theoretical physicist. They learn about the village of Eifelheim that disappeared six hundred years ago, in 1349. Tom becomes obsessed about discovering what was so special about this village. In a parallel storyline set in 1348, Father Deitrich sees his village threatened by the plague and is shocked to find himself first contact between humanity and an alien race that crashes an interstellar ship in a nearby forest. The book won the Robert Heinlein award and sounds amazing - I love the fact that part of it occurs during the plague years and can't resist all of the possibilities. (I loved what Connie Willis did during this period and I'm so glad to see it mined again by another SF author.)

Blindsight by Peter Watts. An old space probe has picked up whispers from a distant comet and alien objects fall screaming down to earth. The planet sends a group out to meet this unknown alien : a linguist with multiple-personality disorder, a biologist more machine than human, a pacifist warrior and a vampire brought back from grave by voodoo - oh, plus a man whose mind has been half gone since childhood. What will they find on the edge of the universe and can they survive it and save the world?

Well, hell - how do you resist a group like that?!

Mathematicians in Love by Rudy Rucker. Described as a romantic comedy with a "corkscrew of SF twists". The two mathematicians are friends and roommates who love the same woman, the girlfriend of one of them. They fight for her by changing reality using math to see who gets the girl. Their world is like ours but not quite and their advisor is a mad math genius who can affect the future with equations. I have no idea how this can be pulled off, but if it makes math fun (or funny) then I'm all over it. I hated math in high school and I need something to remind me just how interesting it can be.

The Prestige by Christopher Priest. Now optioned as a movie with Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson, The Prestige is about two stage magicians in 1878 who clash during a fraudulent seance. Their lives become "webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another."

The Prestige won the World Fantasy Award and the book is slated for release in October. I see a chance to take a look at something I overlooked and hopefully bring it to the attention of other readers. Priest also has an essay in Locus this month.