Readers who cut their teeth on YA and middle grade fantasy and SF will be thrilled to see adult and new adult titles from some of their favorite authors, including Leigh Bardugo, Stephen Chbosky, and Daniel José Older.
Top 10
Agency
William Gibson. Berkley, Jan. 21, $28, ISBN 978-1-101-98693-6
A new book from Gibson (The Peripheral) is always an event, and his fans will eagerly anticipate this near-future story of a software tester working on a mysterious app and her street-smart, combat-savvy digital assistant.
The Book of Lost Saints
Daniel José Older. Imprint, Nov. 5, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-18581-5
After two years focusing on YA and middle grade fiction, Older (the Bone Street Rumba series) unveils his first hardcover adult fantasy, in which the ghost of a woman who died in the Cuban revolution nags her nephew to dig into their family history.
Full Throttle: Stories
Joe Hill. Morrow, Oct. 1, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-220067-9
This superlative collection, full of complex, fully realized characters, cements Hill’s reputation as a versatile master of scares both subtle and shocking.”
The Future of Another Timeline
Annalee Newitz. Tor, Sept. 24, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-7653-9210-7
Newitz’s mind-rattling second novel (after Autonomous) is a multilayered tale of time travel and human rights, in which tiny actions, both courageous and venal, have large consequences.
Future Tense Fiction
Edited by the editors of Future Tense. Unnamed, Sept. 3, $27, ISBN 978-1-944700-95-9
This impressive anthology of original stories brings together some of the biggest names in speculative fiction to explore the possibilities of the very near future.
Gideon the Ninth
Tamsyn Muir. Tor.com, Sept. 10, $25.99, ISBN 978-1-250-31319-5
In this madcap debut, queer necromancers vie for power, solve ancient puzzles, and cross rapiers while exploring haunted deep-space ruins.
Imaginary Friend
Stephen Chbosky. Grand Central, Oct. 1, $30, ISBN 978-1-5387-3133-8
Celebrated YA author Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) makes a sharp turn to literary horror with this story of a boy who hears an unsettling voice telling him to do odd things.
The Institute
Stephen King. Scribner, Sept. 10, $30, ISBN 978-1-982110-56-7
Horror maven King evokes childhood nightmares with a story of children who are imprisoned so that their supernatural gifts can be harvested by unscrupulous adults.
Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo. Flatiron, Oct. 1, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-31307-2
Unlikely college student Alex Stern gets a free ride to Yale in exchange for investigating its secret societies, which are hotbeds of occult magic, in the first new adult supernatural thriller from YA fantasy star Bardugo (Six of Crows).
A Song for a New Day
Sarah Pinsker. Berkley, Sept. 10, trade paper, $16, ISBN 978-1-984802-58-3
In musician Pinsker’s must-read debut, a fierce story of joy and hope, a rock star playing illegal concerts and a virtual concert promoter aim to help a terrified, isolated world rediscover the pleasure and necessity of human connection.
Listings
47North
The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith (Oct. 1, trade paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-5420-0838-9). For centuries, the vineyards at Château Renard have depended on their vine witches, whose spells help create the world-renowned wine of the Chanceaux Valley. After vine witch Elena breaks the spell that confined her and weakened her magic, she struggles to return to her former life.
Abaddon
Not So Stories, edited by David Thomas Moore (Jan. 21, trade paper, $15.99, ISBN 978-1-78108-780-0), collects culturally diverse short works that respond to both the poetry and the colonialism of Kipling’s Just So Stories.
Ace
Cry Pilot by Joel Dane (Aug. 6, trade paper, $16, ISBN 978-1-984802-52-1). In this military science fiction novel, a tight-knit infantry squad is thrown into battle against a mysterious enemy that appears without warning and strikes without mercy.
The Harp of Kings by Juliet Marillier (Sept. 3, trade paper, $16, ISBN 978-0-451-49278-4). Eighteen-year-old Liobhan and her brother are talented singers and musicians, but Liobhan’s burning ambition is to join the elite warrior band on Swan Island. She and her brother train as spies and are sent to retrieve a precious harp, an ancient symbol of kingship.
Angry Robot
Shrouded Loyalties by Reese Hogan (Aug. 13, trade paper, $12.99, ISBN 978-0-85766-829-5). In a land ravaged by war, Belzene submariner Mila Blackwood guards her nation’s greatest secret, but a foreign spy could upend everything. PW’s review says, “Hogan creates an intriguing mythology with potential for further exploration.”
Atria
Dahlia Black by Keith Thomas (Aug. 13, $27, ISBN 978-1-5011-5671-7). This bittersweet saga of first contact with aliens takes the form of a journalistic account of an extraterrestrial signal that alters 30% of the human race, told from the perspective of the 70% “left behind.”
Baen
The Cunning Man by D.J. Butler and Aaron Michael Ritchey (Nov. 5, $25, ISBN 978-1-982124-16-8). In the 1930s, with the western U.S. sunk in the Depression, cunning man Hiram (master of the lore that defends against witches and other evil powers) and his adopted son try to help the poor—and find demons, curses, and sorcerers behind the nation’s misery.
Uncompromising Honor by David Weber (Sept. 24, mass market, $8.99, ISBN 978-1-982124-13-7). This juggernaut of military science fiction, Weber’s 14th Honor Harrington novel, moves slowly but inexorably as Honor’s Grand Fleet faces the space navy of the Solarian League, as well as the shadowy cabal of the Mesan Alignment.
BFL
Black from the Future, edited by Stephanie Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle (Aug., trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-578-50213-7). Within this revelatory 22-piece anthology of prose and poetry, editors Allen and Cherelle have gathered works by what PW calls “some of the best and boldest voices in African-American speculative writing.”
BHC
Stel Parad by Lisa Menzel (Dec. 12, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-64397-020-2). In the winter of 1847, the canal town of Keepatau is the site of a terrible curse. Edna Hughes, an I&M Canal gravedigger, and her apothecary husband, Keir, must contend with the aftermath, aided by an Ojibwa god.
Blackstone
Trinity Sight by Jennifer Givhan (Oct. 1, $25.99, ISBN 978-1-5385-5672-6). Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Pregnant with twins, she travels across this dangerous landscape with fellow survivors, confronting violent inhabitants, in search of answers—which may lie within the legends told by Calliope’s Puebloan great-grandmother.
Chizine
Little Bones by David Baillie (Nov. 19, trade paper, $17.99, ISBN 978-1-77148-508-1). In 1953 Hamilton, Ontario, a nine-year-old boy is killed. His remains, discovered in a coal mine in 1974, excite the imagination of a mute and tragically lonely boy named Scott Campbell, whose only friend is a child’s playful shadow.
The Savage Deeps by Timothy S. Johnston (Nov. 19, trade paper, $17.99, ISBN 978-1-77148-506-7). Mayor Truman McClusky of underwater Trieste City believes laying claim to the resources of the ocean and its floor is the only way to survive global warming. But when a Trieste City spy ends up dead, McClusky realizes that his city is in mortal danger.
Cosmic Egg
By the Feet of Men by Grant Price (Sept. 1, trade paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-78904-145-3). Climate changes and radiation have ravaged Earth, and humankind’s future depends on a convoy of supply drivers. PW says, “Price (Static Age) employs clever, precise writing that’s evocative and atmospheric without venturing into gory horror. This truly grim version of the future will keep readers riveted.”
Daw
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse: Book One of the Thorne Chronicles by K. Eason (Oct. 8, $26, ISBN 978-0-7564-1529-7). In this introspective space opera, a teenage princess blessed by fairies may be the only one who can keep an ambitious politician from seizing control of two warring interplanetary civilizations.
Lies of Descent by Troy Carrol Bucher (Aug. 20, $26, ISBN 978-0-7564-1545-7). Bucher’s epic fantasy debut features solid prose in the service of a well-worn story: the young protagonist removed from his home who learns that there are secrets concerning his lineage, and that he may possess special powers.
The Unkindest Tide by Seanan McGuire (Sept. 3, $26, ISBN 978-0-7564-1507-5), the first hardcover in the Toby Daye urban fantasy series, sees the Luidaeg, the dangerous sea witch, calling in the debts owed to her by the Selkies—and by Toby.
Del Rey
Malorie: A Bird Box Novel by Josh Malerman (Oct. 1, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-15685-8). Following the events of Bird Box (recently adapted by Netflix), Malorie must confront the dangers of her world head-on.
Diversion
A Dying Machine by Mark Tremonti and John Shirley (Nov. 5, $23.99, ISBN 978-1-63576-657-8). Widowed and reeling from the end of his career, renowned architect Brennan Gibbons wins a beautiful artificial wife in a lottery. He’s thrilled until she develops autonomy—as do other androids, who are ready to defeat their human masters and seize their freedom.
Dundurn
Petra’s Ghost by C.S. O’Cinneide (Aug. 13, trade paper, $21.99, ISBN 978-1-4597-4468-4). Daniel, an Irish expat, walks the lonely Camino de Santiago carrying his wife’s ashes, along with the damning secret of how she really died. He makes a friend, but a nightmare figure begins to stalk them down the pilgrimage road.
Dutton
The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray (Jan. 21, $27, ISBN 978-1-5247-4581-3). In 2059, Earth no longer rotates; half is permanently sunlit, the other half trapped in endless night. A scientist returns to U.S.-occupied England and begins to unravel a secret that threatens the nation’s fragile balance—and the future of the human race.
Edge
Silent Manifest by Sean O’Brien (Nov. 11, trade paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-77053-192-5). Donn Cardenio, damaged veteran of an interstellar war, is charged with caring for 250,000 embryos en route to colonize an extrasolar planet. But his fellow Caretakers do not share his reverence for the lives in their charge.
Flame Tree
Those Who Came Before by J.H. Moncrieff (Oct. 10, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-78758-299-6). As the only survivor of a campground mass murder, Reese is the prime suspect. He claims a voice warned him to leave the night before. Detective Greyeyes is skeptical until she hears the voice herself and has troubling visions of a doomed Native American tribe that once called the campground home.
Graydon House
Followers by Megan Angelo (Jan. 14, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-5258-3626-8) traces the paths of social media celebrities Orla, Floss, and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic act of terrorism that sends America into upheaval. 250,000-copy announced first printing.
Harper Perennial
Anyone by Charles Soule (Dec. 3, $21.99, ISBN 978-0-06-289063-4). A scientist searching for an Alzheimer’s cure throws a switch and finds herself mysteriously transported into her husband’s body. Twenty-five years later, “flash” technology allows individuals to transfer consciousness, creating a black market of bodies. One woman crusades to put an end to the darkness the flash has brought.
Highfire by Eoin Colfer (Jan. 28, $19.99, ISBN 978-0-06-293855-8). A vodka-drinking, Flashdance-loving dragon lives an isolated life in the bayous of Louisiana. Adventures ensue when he crosses paths with a 15-year-old troublemaker on the run from a crooked sheriff.
Harper Voyager
Boundless: A Drizzt Novel by R.A. Salvatore (Sept. 10, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-268863-7) continues the adventures of dark elf warrior Zaknafein. Resurrected hundreds of years after his death, he struggles to navigate a transformed world where his mores and prejudices are dreadfully old-fashioned. But demons and a drow matron still threaten, and Zaknafein still knows how to fight.
Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden (Oct. 8, trade paper, $15.99, ISBN 978-0-06-286773-5) is an imaginative story of humans living within vacuum-breathing beasts that swim through space.
To Be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers (Sept. 3, trade paper, $12.99, ISBN 978-0-06-293601-1). With what PW calls “technical prowess and outstanding visceral imagery,” Chambers (the Wayfarer Series) packs an immense amount of story into a novella of interstellar voyagers who traverse time, change physical forms, and confront the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten them.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Adams
Half Way Home by Hugh Howey (Oct. 1, trade paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-0-358-21158-7). A ship housing 500 vat-grown colonists suffers an explosion that kills all but 60. The survivors are adolescent, terrified, and clueless. Somehow they must survive on a hostile alien world.
Lethe
The Trans Space Octopus Congregation by Bogi Takács (Oct. 1, trade paper, $20, ISBN 978-1-59021-693-4). The stories in this collection include magical space opera, cheerful body horror, and historical fantasy, always with a sense of hope amid adversity.
Morrow
After the Flood by Kassandra Montag (Sept. 10, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-288936-2). Montag’s debut, which PW calls “an intriguing and innovative woman-centered swashbuckling quest narrative,” centers on the social impact of climate change a little over a century from now as a mother fights to rescue her 12-year-old daughter from possible internment aboard a “breeding ship.” 100,000-copy announced first printing.
Orbit
A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie (Sept. 17, $27, ISBN 978-0-316-18716-9) opens a fantasy trilogy in which the age of the machine dawns, but the age of magic refuses to die. On the blood-soaked borders of Angland, Leo dan Brock struggles to win fame on the battlefield and defeat the marauding armies of Stour Nightfall, while the slums boil with rage against the elite.
The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North (Nov. 12, trade paper, $15.99, ISBN 978-0-316-31684-2). In 1880s South Africa, a young and naive English doctor, William Abbey, witnesses the lynching of a local boy by white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William, and the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world.
Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender (Nov. 12, trade paper, $15.99, ISBN 978-0-316-45493-3). An ambitious young woman with the power to control minds seeks vengeance against the royals who murdered her family in a Caribbean-inspired fantasy world embattled by colonial oppression.
Rebel Base
A Jewel Bright Sea by Claire O’Dell (Sept. 3, e-book, $3.99, ISBN 978-1-63573-079-1). Anna Zhdanov, a scholar’s daughter sold as a bond servant, has a talent for tracking magic. She takes a chance to earn her freedom by finding a stolen jewel, but soon she’s the captive of a pirate, hunted by the emperor’s guard, besieged by a brigand queen, and at odds with her only friend.
Redhook
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (Sept. 10, $27, ISBN 978-0-316-42199-7). Harrow imbues her debut, set primarily in early-20th-century Vermont, as well as in an alternative world called the City of Nin, with genealogical mystery. PW says, “Harrow’s novel will hold strong appeal to readers who enjoy portal fantasies featuring adventuresome women.”
Saga
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher (Oct. 1, trade paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-5344-2956-7). When a young woman clears out her deceased grandmother’s home in rural North Carolina, she finds long-hidden secrets about a strange colony of beings in the woods. Alone in the woods with her dog, she finds herself face to face with a series of supernatural terrors. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
Severn House
Kill Monster by Sean Doolittle (Sept. 1, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-7278-8931-7). A golem created to assassinate a criminal in 1856 is reawakened 150 years later. With the original target long since dead, it sets its sight on the man’s closest surviving descendants: burned-out IT technician Ben Middleton and his estranged teenage son, Charley.
Small Beer
And Go Like This: Stories by John Crowley (Nov. 5, $25, ISBN 978-1-61873-163-0). A compassionate, ruminative eye frames the sepia-tinted worlds of the fifth collection from fantasist Crowley (Ka). The stories are drawn from the last 20 years of Crowley’s long career and span the breadth of speculative and literary short fiction.
Soho Press
The Seep by Chana Porter (Jan. 21, $25, ISBN 978-1-64129-086-9). Through the alien called the Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible. A trans woman, left bereft when her wife chooses to be reborn as a baby, embarks on an unexpected quest.
Solaris
Age of Legends by James Lovegrove (Nov. 26, trade paper, $11.99, ISBN 978-1-78108-577-6). Post-Brexit, the U.K. government’s affable-seeming prime minister, Colin Dubois, purges the country of “undesirables.” Ajia Ryker, a young mixed-race graffiti artist, runs afoul of the authorities and finds herself in the world of eidolon, mythical beings who are incarnations of an idea—and Dubois seeks to crown himself as the new King Arthur.
Subterranean
A Pilgrimage of Swords by Anthony Ryan (Sept. 30, $40, ISBN 978-1-59606-924-4). Pilgrim, a stoic warrior, undertakes a dangerous journey across a wasteland to seek out the Mad God. Ryan offers readers a conflicted anti-hero and an action-packed, bloody trip through a harrowing, war-ravaged landscape.
Tachyon
Ivory Apples by Lisa Goldstein (Sept. 15, trade paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-61696-298-2). Ivy and her sisters have a secret. Their reclusive great-aunt Maeve is actually Adela Madden, author of the fantasy classic Ivory Apples. Shy and bookish, Ivy is the first in her family to discover the even deeper secret that her great-aunt protects: magic is real.
Meet Me in the Future: Stories by Kameron Hurley (Aug. 20, trade paper, $16.95, ISBN 978-1-61696-296-8). According to the PW review, “Hugo-winner Hurley (The Light Brigade) offers 16 hard-edged pieces that gleam like gems in a mosaic.... Readers will eagerly follow Hurley into these possible worlds and many more.”
Titan
The Silver Wind by Nina Allan (Sept. 10, trade paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-78909-169-4). Martin Newland is fascinated by time. Watches and clocks are for him metaphorical time machines, a means of coming to terms with the past and voyaging into the future. But soon his obsession takes a surprising turn.
Tor
Blood of an Exile by Brian Naslund (Aug. 6, trade paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-250-30964-8). Naslund’s debut wraps action, a mystery, and the environment into classic fantasy. When dragonslayer “Flawless” Silas Bershad evinces an unusual ability to heal, the princess he once loved and the king who exiled him offer to let him return home if he rescues the princess’s kidnapped sister and assassinates an emperor.
Gamechanger by L.X. Beckett (Sept. 17, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-16526-8). The Clawback project is beginning to rejuvenate an ecologically ruined Earth, but public responsibilities are still unsettled and fluid. As this exuberant, exciting near-future yarn keeps reinventing itself, the action gets wilder and the scope wider, until the future of humankind is at stake.
Supernova Era by Cixin Liu, trans. by Joel Martinsen (Oct. 22, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-30603-6). Eight light years away, a star has become a supernova that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Soon everyone over the age of 13 will die. Parents try to pass on their knowledge, but the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents’ world.
Warrior of the Altaii by Robert Jordan (Oct. 8, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-24765-0) is the never-published early novel by the late creator of the Wheel of Time epic fantasy series. Wulfgar, a leader of the Altaii people, must contend with twin queens, warlords, prophets, and magic in hopes of protecting his people and securing their future.
Tor.com
The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Z. Hossain (Aug. 13, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-250-20911-5). Hossain (Djinn City) spins satire out of myth and science fiction in the near-future postapocalyptic paradise of Kathmandu. Djinn ruler Melek Ahmar arises from eons of slumber to find that humans have long since forgotten magic in favor of technology. Desperate for a good party and some worshippers, Melek Ahmar attempts to start a revolution, only to find the humans weirdly reticent.
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi (Jan. 21, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-250-21475-1). Siblings Ella and Kev are gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world.
Turner
Diabhal (Book 1) by Kathleen Kaufman (Oct. 29, trade paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-68442-319-4). Kaufman (The Lairdbalor) puts an unusual spin on the diabolic possession story by evoking sympathy for the embodiment of evil. Members of a Satanic temple are awed by a super-powerful witch and decide to bring her into their fold so she can be worshipped properly. Events don’t go as planned.
This article has been updated with new bibliographic information.
