Late summer is here, with its golden ripeness and the Perseid meteor shower in full glory. But like all small businesses, Candlemark knows little repose – nor is there a pause in the accolades for our titles.

Last week we found out that Booklist has ranked A. M. Tuomala’s unique, riveting, deeply researched Drakon as one of their Top Ten Books of SF/Fantasy for 2017. This is even more amazing when one sees the other names in that list (Connie Willis, Jeff VanderMeer, Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow…) and the size of the presses that published these works.

Of course, this is not the first time Tuomala’s stellar talent has been recognized: both Drakon and her debut novel, Erekos, got starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. Erekos was additionally pronounced the best SF/Fantasy book of 2011 by Publishers Weekly, and won a Benjamin Franklin silver medal by the Independent Book Publishers’ Association; whereas Drakon also got a starred review in Booklist and is on the American Library Assocation’s long list of Year’s Best Fiction (it may migrate to the short list, but we won’t know that till early 2018).