Books by Seanan McGuire and Complete Book Reviews
Edited by Aaron J. French. JournalStone, $24.95 trade paper (450p) ISBN 978-1-942712-56-5
French’s concept—12 stories, each focusing on a different horrific god—is an original one, but there isn’t much here to justify yet another anthology of cosmic horror inspired by Lovecraft’s fiction. Despite an impressive roster of contributors,...
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Edited by Paula Guran. Prime (prime-books.com), $15.95 trade paper (384p) ISBN 978-1-60701-458-4
Two dozen stories of women warriors form this epic anthology of stories about those forced to fight, those who chose to fight regardless of odds, those who ran from their destiny as warriors, and those who will end war at any cost. In Caitlín R....
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Charlaine Harris et al. St. Martin’s, $26.99 (352p) ISBN 978-1-250-07678-6
Bestseller Harris, best known for her Southern Vampire mysteries (Dead Ever After, etc.), and nine other authors have collaborated on this mixed bag of a fantasy suspense novel, which calls to mind a story told around a campfire, with each...
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Edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe. Saga, $24.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-4814-6239-6
Wolfe and Parisien (Robots vs. Fairies) have compiled an impressively varied compendium of myth reimaginings by numerous well-known speculative fiction writers. Rebecca Roanhorse riffs on the ever-present danger of obsessive love in the futuristic “A
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Edited by Shawn Speakman. Grim Oak, $30 (768p) ISBN 978-1-944145-23-1
This powerhouse addition to the Unfettered series continues the tradition of donating proceeds to authors struggling with medical bills and boasts an incredible lineup of stories by pillars of the fantasy genre, many of whom contributed works set in
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Edited by Tricia Reeks and Kyle Richardson. Meerkat, $16.95 trade paper (282p) ISBN 978-0-9966262-6-2
Reeks and Richardson have pulled together a treasure trove of 20 stories (including four reprints) exploring the lives of superheroes when they’re not saving the world. In Lavie Tidhar’s melancholy “Heroes,” an undercover operative in 1987 Berlin...
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Rachel Caine, Jennifer Estep, Kevin Hearne, et al. S&S/Gallery, $16 trade paper (448p) ISBN 978-1-4767-1415-8
Paranormals of varying temperaments and dispositions amp up the mystery and magic intrinsic to carnival midways in this anthology of 14 new stories, some of which extend their authors’ long-running urban fantasy series. In Kelly Medding’s clever “Fre
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Edited by Joseph Nassise. Gallery, $16 trade paper (448p) ISBN 978-1-5011-5508-6
Fans of urban fantasy can read stories from some of the best-known names in the genre and discover new writers in this well-arranged anthology, which focuses on villains. In Jim Butcher’s “Even Hand,” the human crime lord who has been a thorn in...
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Edited by Christopher Golden. Gallery, $18 trade paper (544p) ISBN 978-1-4767-8309-3
The notion of the romantic vampire is transcended to chilling and even heartbreaking effect in this stellar anthology of tales collected by Golden (Tin Men). The best is Laird Barron’s atmospheric, Alaska-set “In a Cavern, in a Canyon,” in which one
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Seanan McGuire. Tordotcom, $19.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-250-21362-4
McGuire’s outstanding seventh Wayward Children fantasy (following Across the Green Grass Fields) comes in darker than the previous novellas, tackling identity, body image, and trauma. Cora Miller has walked through magical doors, turned from modern...
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Seanan McGuire. Subterranean, $40 (376p) ISBN 978-1-59606-928-2
McGuire shows off the versatility and creativity that have become her hallmarks in this excellent selection of stories from the past decade. All McGuire’s passions—medical marvels and terrors, apocalyptic scenarios, mermaids, portal fantasies—are on
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Seanan McGuire. Daw, $17 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1689-8
The impeccable third Ghost Roads urban fantasy (after The Girl in the Green Silk Gown) explores and expands on McGuire’s modern-day mythology, brilliantly marrying old traditions and more recent urban legends to create an enthralling tapestry of...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (448p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1181-7
McGuire continues the adventures of the extended Healy-Price clan of cryptozoologists in this entertaining 10th InCryptid novel (following Imaginary Numbers), injecting her unique mix of pop culture awareness, sly humor, and creepy weirdness into an
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Seanan McGuire. Tor.com, $19.99 (176p) ISBN 978-1-250-21359-4
Hugo and Nebula award–winner McGuire pulls off another hit with her sixth Wayward Children fantasy (after Come Tumbling Down). Horse-obsessed Regan Lewis spends her childhood struggling to “thread the needle of normalcy” after her best friend shames
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $27 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1508-2
Fourteen books into the consistently enjoyable October Daye urban fantasy series, McGuire shows no signs of slacking. This volume (following 2019’s The Unkindest Tide) finds changeling private investigator October planning her wedding to Tybalt,...
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Seanan McGuire. Subterranean, $40 (304p) ISBN 978-1-59606-997-8
Hugo Award winner McGuire (the Wayward Children series) gets at the essence of high school—its pressures, hierarchies, and otherworldly horrors—in this cackle-inducing collection following the misadventures of the demon slaying Fighting Pumpkins...
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Seanan McGuire. Tor.com, $19.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-7653-9931-1
The dark, beguiling fifth entry in McGuire’s Wayward Children series, about a boarding school for visitors from portal worlds, continues the story of polar opposite twin sisters Jack and Jill Wolcott from the second book, 2017’s Down Among the...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (432p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1040-7
In the highly entertaining seventh installment of the InCryptid urban fantasy series, cryptozoologist Antimony Price is on the run from the ruthless monster-slaying group known as the Covenant of St. George, unable to contact her family or friends...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $17 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1183-1
McGuire switches focus to a new member of the Price-Healy clan of cryptozoologists for her fun 11th InCryptid fantasy (after Calculated Risks). After several fleeting appearances in previous entries, Alice Price-Healy, the grandmother to the modern...
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Seanan McGuire. Tordotcom, $29.99 (496p) ISBN 978-1-250-76826-1
McGuire’s intricate, dense companion to 2020’s Middlegame delves ever deeper into the hidden alchemical history of her world, populating it with incarnate concepts and sinister agendas. Teen Harry March has been madly devoted to his girlfriend,...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $28 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1686-7
Sixteen installments into the October Daye series (after When Sorrows Come), McGuire proves that her capacity to play the long game remains unparalleled. This tense tale picks up on seeds planted since the very beginning, while also delivering jaw-dr
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Seanan McGuire. Tordotcom, $21.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-250-21363-1
Hugo Award winner McGuire manages to make some extreme tonal shifts work together beautifully in her bittersweet eighth Wayward Children novella (after Where the Drowned Girls Go). By the age of seven, Antoinette “Antsy” Ricci has lost many...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $17 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1857-1
In many ways a capstone to all that’s come before, McGuire’s entertaining 12th InCryptid urban fantasy (after Spelunking Through Hell) draws together numerous characters and threads from earlier installments, offering updates on previous...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $28 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1683-6
How does one keep a long-running series feeling fresh? McGuire answers this question in her fun 17th October Daye urban fantasy (after Be the Serpent) by catapulting her characters into an alternate reality, examining what October “Toby” Daye’s life
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $28 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1680-5
The plot of McGuire’s fascinating 18th October Daye urban fantasy runs concurrently to the events of 2023’s Sleep No More, exploring a world where the vengeful Faerie Queen Titania has trapped several Fae kingdoms in a massive spell that rewrites...
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Seanan McGuire. Subterranean Press, $50 (512p) ISBN 978-1-64524-192-8
Hugo and Nebula Award winner McGuire’s staggering second limited-edition collection with Subterranean takes a somewhat darker tone than 2019’s Laughter at the Academy, but these 24 stories still offer a sense of twisted whimsy and cautious optimism.
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Seanan McGuire. Tordotcom, $29.99 (464p) ISBN 978-1-250-33355-1
Bestseller McGuire’s astonishing third Alchemical Journeys novel, following 2020’s Seasonal Fears, delivers a complex and thoughtful exploration of the intersections of mythology, philosophy, alchemy, and faith. Though the gods have mostly faded...
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Seanan McGuire. Tordotcom, $22.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-250-84833-8
For the sensitive and eerie 10th standalone portal fantasy in the Hugo Award–winning Wayward Children series (after Mislaid in Parts Half-Known), bestseller McGuire expands the backstory of Russian orphan Nadya Sokolov. Nadya was born with a stump...
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Seanan McGuire. Tor, $19.99 trade paper (432p) ISBN 978-1-250-37511-7
Following on the heels of 2024’s Aftermarket Afterlife, the deeply satisfying 14th installment of McGuire’s InCryptid series finds ghostly babysitter Mary Dunlavey attempting to redefine her purpose, powers, and relationship to the family she’s...
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Seanan McGuire. Tordotcom, $24.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-250-33940-9
Bestseller McGuire’s breathtaking 11th novella in her Wayward Children series of interconnected portal fantasies revisits Nancy Whitman, heroine of the Hugo Award–winning first installment, Every Heart a Doorway. Following that adventure, Nancy...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $26 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1476-4
The intricate 12th urban fantasy featuring October Daye, a changeling private investigator who handles cases related to the land of Faerie, sees Toby and her friends recovering from the traumatic events of 2017’s The Brightest Fell, which has...
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Seanan McGuire, Author DAW $7.99 (387p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0596-0
McGuire follows 2009’s Rosemary and Rue
with a fast-paced cross between a murder mystery and a slasher film, liberally spiked with magic and technology. Half-faerie PI October “Toby” Daye leaves San Francisco for the nearby County
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Seanan McGuire, DAW, $7.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0626-4
McGuire hits her stride with this fast-paced, sharply plotted, tense urban fantasy, the third featuring half-fae detective Toby Daye (after 2009's A Local Habitation). Toby is dismayed to encounter her frighteningly upbeat Fetch, May Daye, a magical
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Seanan McGuire, DAW, $7.99 mass market (400p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0666-0
In October "Toby" Daye's fourth outing, following 2010's An Artificial Night, the half-Fae private detective is once again run through the wringer when problems plaguing the San Francisco Fae community strike home on a personal level. First, in an...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0713-1
McGuire (the October Daye series) launches a new series with a fast, funny adventure involving cryptids (semimythical entities like Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster) and the researchers who love them. Cryptozoologist Verity Price belongs to a...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (332p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0749-0
The zippy sixth October Daye urban fantasy (after the bestselling One Salt Sea) sees the changeling detective hired to locate a missing teenage girl. Chelsea, daughter of Toby’s acquaintance Etienne, has inherited his Fae ability to teleport, but...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0792-6
The second in McGuire’s InCryptid series (after Discount Armageddon) returns to a thoroughly monster-infested New York and hereditary cryptozoologist Verity Price. Price has more than monsters on her mind this go-round, as her boyfriend’s superiors...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0814-5
In the seventh installment of McGuire’s increasingly entertaining urban fantasy series (after Ashes of Honor), half-Fae private detective October “Toby” Daye is up against her old nemesis, the Queen of the Mists. The queen gives Toby three days to...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $16 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0961-6
McGuire (the InCryptid series) brings empathy, complexity, and a shivering excitement to this well-developed campfire tale. Many stories have been told about a hitchhiker, a young woman—sometimes dressed in a prom dress or jeans and a T-shirt—who...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0811-4
McGuire's exciting third Incryptid installment (after Midnight Blue-Light Special) opens with a new protagonist, cryptozoologist Alexander Price, currently studying Ohio swamp wildlife while posing as a visiting researcher for the West Columbus Zoo.
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0808-4
McGuire continues the misadventures of changeling PI October Daye in this intense eighth urban fantasy novel (after Chimes at Midnight), which serves to wrap up and tie together many storylines from the previous installments. Toby Daye gets the...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0809-1
Following 2014's The Winter Long, this ninth installment in the October Daye urban fantasy series sees its heroine once again caught up in Fae politics. The illegitimate Queen of the Mists has been deposed. When the neighboring Kingdom of Silences...
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Seanan McGuire. Tor.com, $17.99 ISBN 978-0-7653-8550-5
A boarding school offering sanctuary for very special teens is threatened by a series of murders in McGuire’s darkly hypnotic standalone fantasy. Eleanor West has spent her life helping kids who discover secret doors to beguiling worlds and long to...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0813-8
For the fifth installment of her InCryptid series (following Pocket Apocalypse), McGuire revisits cryptozoologist Verity Price, last seen as a primary character in 2013's Midnight Blue-Light Special. When Verity's alter ego, professional ballroom...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $7.99 mass market (432p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0810-7
In the 10th installment of the October Daye series (after 2015’s A Red-Rose Chain), changeling detective October “Toby” Daye is caught up in a murder mystery involving the most powerful fae in North America. A cure for elf-shot, a poison that puts...
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Seanan McGuire. Tor.com, , $15.99 ISBN 978-0-7653-9142-1
Prolific Hugo-winner and bestseller McGuire (Once Broken Faith) displays her typical mix of endearing characters inside a world constructed with thoughtfully deployed speculative elements in this standalone meditation on ghosts and time. After...
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Seanan McGuire. Tor.com, $19.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-7653-9203-9
“Everything comes down to blood” in McGuire’s bittersweet, heartbreaking novella. Identical twin sisters Jacqueline and Jillian Wolcott (introduced in Every Heart a Doorway) were raised to behave and obey. Only their grandmother, Gemma Lou, told...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $26 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1331-6
This impressive 11th entry (following 2016’s Once Broken Faith) in the saga of October “Toby” Daye, changeling private detective, sees Toby enjoying a rare moment of peace and happiness as she and her friends celebrate her engagement to Tybalt, King
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Seanan McGuire. Tor.com, $17.99 (176p) ISBN 978-0-7653-9358-6
McGuire’s delicious third book (after 2017’s Down Among the Sticks and Bones) to feature the teens of Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children—kids who have found doors to fantastical worlds and are desperate to return to them—opens with a girl...
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Seanan McGuire, Author . DAW $7.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0571-7
Singer-songwriter McGuire adeptly infuses her debut with hardboiled sensibilities and a wide array of mythological influences, set against a moody San Francisco backdrop. October “Toby” Daye is half-human, half-faerie, a changeling PI...
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Seanan McGuire. DAW, $16 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7564-1380-4
In McGuire’s beautifully written second story featuring hitchhiking ghost Rose Marshall (after 2014’s Sparrow Hill Road), set in the same world as the InCryptid series, Rose must confront her most dangerous foe: Bobby Cross, the immortal who ran her
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Seanan McGuire. Tor, $29.99 (528p) ISBN 978-1-250-19552-4
McGuire (the Wayward Children series) puts a genuinely innovative spin on the magical child horror novel in this mesmerizing story of two gifted, telepathic children and the unsettling source of their powers. Massachusetts seven-year-old Roger...
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Edited by Jonathan Strahan. Solaris, $18.99 trade paper (420p) ISBN 978-1-78618-509-9
The 16 stories in this star-studded anthology, all but two original to this volume, inventively explore the science fictional possibilities of the time-travel romance. Strahan (The Book of Dragons) assembles a stellar lineup of talents who work...
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Edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek. Caezik SF and Fantasy, $27.99 (288p) ISBN 978-1-64710-042-1
Though largely entertaining, this anthology of 24 stories from women and nonbinary authors lacks editorial clarity and is burdered with some confusing inclusions. If it’s meant to reexamine gender roles, a story like Devin Miller’s “Photosynthesis,...
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