As 2012's publishing schedule starts becoming clearer, I plan to talk about what books I am looking forward to for the next year. Since I like variation, this time I will do it in several posts for Jan-March (HERE), April-July, the rest of 2012 including presumed but unsure titles.

For the full schedule as known to us at a given time, you can visit the Upcoming Releases page. As usually schedules change unexpectedly, wrong dates spread fast online, so while we try to be as accurate as possible, let us know of any mistakes.

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My top five anticipated releases for April-July 2012 are:

1.“Sharps” by KJ Parker. Release Date: July, 2012. Published by Orbit. (FAN).
2.“Caliban's War” by James S.A. Corey. Release Date: June, 2012. Published by Orbit. (SF).
3.“The Master of Heathcrest Hall” by Galen Beckett. Release Date: April, 2012. Published by Del Rey. (FAN).
4.“The King's Blood” by Daniel Abraham. Release Date: May, 2012. Published by Orbit. (FAN).
5.“The Night of the Swarm” by Robert V.S. Redick. UK Release Date: May, 2012. Published by Gollancz. (FAN).

For the reasons behind choices 1-5, I direct you to the Review Index and my seven reviews of works by KJ Parker plus reviews of all the previous installments in the series that contain the novels ranked 2-5. I also will direct you to the FBC Best Of page and my ranking pretty much all the above mentioned reviewed works in my top 20-25 of their respective year, while in several cases in the top 5 or 10 too.

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My next five anticipated novels from April-July 2012 are:

6.“The Twelve” by Justin Cronin. UK Release Date: May, 2012. Published by Orion. (SF).
7.“Thousand Emperors” by Gary Gibson. UK Release Date: June, 2012. Published by Macmillan. (SF).
8."No Going Back” by Mark L. Van Name. Release Date: May, 2012. Published by Baen. (SF)
9.“Weapons of Flowers” by Liz Williams. Release Date: June, 2012. Published by Prime (SF/FAN?).
10.“Caine’s Law” by Matthew Stover. Release Date: April, 2012. Published by Del Rey. (FAN)."

Here the choices 7/8 are again clear if you check the Review Index, while I am a huge fan of Liz Williams' non UF work and while I have no information about this one, it seems not to be UF/Inspector Chen but the start of a new series.

Despite my reservations about The Passage, it was still a mostly gripping - if way overlong - and superbly written novel and I am really curious where the story goes next.

Caine's Law on the other hand is a bit of a reverse. If you would have asked me in 2008-9 about it, it would have been one my top 5 choices as my reviews of the previous three Caine novels show, but in the meantime I have read much more dark/gritty than at that time and I started getting tired of much of it so I am unsure how the book will stand now.