Thanks to Windup Girl publisher Night Shade Books, people participating in this month’s book club can write in to get a free PDF of the novel, which you can read on your computer and most eBook readers. (Fine print: You will be signed up for Night Shade Books’ email newsletter when you get the free PDF – you can unsubscribe later if you don’t like it.)

To get your free ebook, write to Night Shade Books. (Click the link for the address.) If you want a hard copy with the gorgeous cover, you can order that here. Or buy it from your nice local bookseller.

Remember: Get the book read by Tuesday, Feb. 23, and we’ll start our meeting that day. The meeting will continue until the end of that week.

Viliren: a city of sin that is being torn apart from the inside. Its underworld is violent and surreal. Hybrid creatures shamble through shadows and there is a trade in bizarre goods. The city’s inquisition is rife with corruption. Barely human gangs fight turf wars and interfere in political upheavals. The most influential of the gang leaders, Malum, has nefarious networks spreading to the city’s rulers, and as his personal life falls down around him, he begins to embrace the darkness within.

Amidst all this, Commander Brynd Adaol, commander of the Night Guard, must plan the defence of Viliren. A race that has broken through from some other realm and already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of the Empire’s people. As the enemy gather on the next island, Brynd must muster the populace – including the gangs. Importing soldiers and displacing civilians, this is a colossal military operation, and the stress begins to take its toll.

After a Night Guard soldier is reported missing, it is discovered that many citizens have also been vanishing from the streets of Viliren. They’re not fleeing the city, they’re not hiding from the terrors in the north – they’re being murdered. A serial killer of the most horrific kind is on the loose, taking hundreds of people from their own homes. A killer that cannot possibly be human.

It is whispered that the city of Viliren is about to fall – but how can anyone save a city that is already a ruin?

Tina Bennett at Janklow and Nesbit has closed on a sequel to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (Viking, Aug. 2009). Molly Stern at Viking (who edited The Magicians) bought North American rights to The Magician King. The new book picks up with protagonist Quentin Coldwater five years after the original—at the end of The Magicians Coldwater is 23—when he and his friends have become royalty in the fantasy world of Fillory. Coldwater, who is dealing with the challenges of being a member of the ruling class, embarks on a dark quest in the novel, which Bennett called “Voyage of the Dawn Treader [book 5 in the Chronicles of Narnia] as rewritten by Raymond Chandler.” Viking is aiming for a fall 2011 release.