Picking up where Topping’s Rogue Sequence left off, this relentless redemption tale of a genetically modified bad guy going straight mixes an emotional exploration of lifetime regrets with cutthroat bladework. Operative Ander Rade is on the run and trying to live a peaceful life after a government-sponsored mission gone wrong. Then he’s contacted by the Special Activities division for the Genetic Compliance Department and asked to infiltrate a Ghost Cell of fellow mods employed by a shady billionaire who promises the modified safety from both internal and external threats in exchange for their mercenary services. Rade has no choice but to comply. Among the cell members, he’s surprised to find his former team leader, Sevrina Fox, to whom he remains fiercely loyal. To prove himself to the cell, Rade takes on more wetwork even as he repudiates his old life. In muscular prose, Topping adds much emotional detail to the lives of his mercenary supersoldiers and gives their martial exploits both political and personal consequences. Bonds that form under fire become the ligaments that hold Rade’s world together. Readers looking for military SF that leans away from the hand and toward the heart will be rewarded. Agent: Joshua Bilmes, JABberwocky Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/09/2025 | Details & Permalink

Debut author DeFeo crafts a sumptuous folkloric excursion into the depths of human creativity. In the fictional Neapolitan town of Lucerìa in 1747, preteen twins, Oriana and Oriano, both yearn to inherit their father’s smithy. Though Oriana is less physically strong, she excels Oriano in intellect and ambition—and she’s in touch with the Night, a shadowy parallel world, “wild and old” and teeming with Moira, the power to shape human destiny. At a parade honoring St. Anthony, Oriana saves Oriano from an accident by appealing to the Night One, aka the Duke of Under-earth, in a meeting that later leads her to undertake several more visits to his realm, where the dead sell Moira at their Market. Oriana’s hunger to make beautiful things at her father’s smithy drives her further into the Night, where she uncovers her family’s secret dreams and overcomes many steep challenges. Eventually, she learns the most perilous secret of all: that dreams in the Under-earth produce human masterpieces—but at a fearful price. The worldbuilding is lush and extraordinary, and a welter of motives and schemes keep the pages flying. It’s a feast for the imagination. (July)

Reviewed on 05/09/2025 | Details & Permalink

O’Malley’s fourth thriller featuring the Checquy Group, “a covert agency within the British government that dealt with, and was partially staffed by, the supernatural” (after 2022’s Blitz), offers an entertaining blend of fantasy and humor. The Group’s oddball missions—like botanist Alix’s investigation into “a pot of malevolent nasturtiums in Cumbria that had been directing bees to swarm people and also steal their credit card details”—are interrupted when Edmund, the Prince of Wales, dies suddenly of unknown causes. Suspicions that Edmund was assassinated make identifying the cause a Checquy priority. Those fears intensify after Odette Leliefeld, an alchemist and Checquy ally, discovers a small pyramid emerging from the prince’s brain during an autopsy, a bizarre symptom also seen eight years earlier in an American college student. Alix and Odette team up to solve the mystery. As always, O’Malley imbues his imagined world with realistic details and finds plentiful humor in the clash of the supernatural and the bureaucratic. (“For all its astounding capabilities, the Checquy was still a government agency, which meant there were never enough funds or staff for a project.”) Series fans will be delighted. (July)

Reviewed on 05/09/2025 | Details & Permalink

Greek myth, Jewish tradition, and slow-burning queer romance gracefully intertwine in this melancholy treasure from Dawson (The First Bright Thing). Nera’s whole life has been spent in the lighthouse at the edge of Chicago that guides her father as he ferries dead souls across Lake Michigan to the underworld. When grieving Chicagoan Charlie, who has been able to see ghosts since the death of her sister, Samantha, six months ago, hears a fragment of a song Samantha wrote, it leads her to this liminal spot between worlds and the women’s lives collide. Nera stops Charlie from venturing into the underworld and promises to help her find a safer way to ensure that Samantha crossed over and is not lingering among the city’s ghosts, who face threats from a dark force. The women forge a sweet relationship that leads them to some emotional moments of self-discovery—and a high-stakes conflict with a demon. Incorporating historical events like the Great Chicago Fire and contemporary concerns like mass shootings and toxic familial expectations, the carefully crafted story doubles as an emotional love letter to Chicago and to life itself. The result is immersive, bittersweet, and wonderfully original. Agent: Stevie Finegan, Zeno Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/09/2025 | Details & Permalink

Arnold refurbishes the popular premise of The House on Haunted Hill for her pleasantly old-fashioned debut horror thriller. Bestselling horror writer Mortimer Queen has died, and seven of his acquaintances—four men and three women, all of them fellow writers—have been summoned to his Vermont manor for the reading of his will. Too late they realize they’ve walked into a trap: the house is locked down shortly after their arrival, and they are forced, as a group, to solve a succession of riddles in order to escape. For each riddle not solved in an hour’s time, the house (purportedly built on the graves of the author’s ancestors) kills one of the group in grisly fashion. Arnold works her tale’s And Then There Were None formula deftly, giving each of her doomed characters a past indiscretion against Mortimer that explains why he selected them for retribution, all of which shape the riddles posed to them. Though the ending is something of a foregone conclusion, the playfulness of the macabre mystery is sure to hold readers’ attention. It’s good, spooky fun. Agent: Courtney Paganelli, LGR Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/09/2025 | Details & Permalink

World Fantasy Award winner Parker (the Saevus Corax trilogy) takes another erudite stroll through a Dark Ages–inspired alternate world in this banter-filled fantasy, the first in his Loyal Opposition trilogy. Brother Desiderius, a talented copyist and forger, teams up with Sister Svangerd, a dangerous knife fighter, to visit the capital of the fallen Robur Empire, attend an ecumenical council, and kill Princess Hildigund on orders from their superior officer. Not sharing his partner’s enthusiasm for assassination, scholarly Desiderius is cheered when, along the way to Choris, he stumbles across some incredibly valuable, if heretical, documents. If they’re the real thing, that could be doctrine shattering, but it’s possible someone is setting up Desiderius with fakes. Politics and religious intrigue ramp up at the council, and with the arrival of some semidead monstrous assassins, Desiderius and Svangerd must stay on their toes until the final deal (and knife twist) is done. Parker breezily tosses off bits of invented theology and details of faked manuscript manufacture alongside the sardonic observations of his put-upon monk and sassy religious sister with a dark past, giving the reader a tasty buffet of light but filling bon mots. Parker’s fans and newcomers alike will be excited to see where this series goes next. (July)

Reviewed on 05/09/2025 | Details & Permalink

This action-packed outing from Kressel (the Worldmender series) introduces readers to feisty, profane, and resourceful teenager Jess Darger. Her grifter father, Ignatius, taught Jess from a young age how to con people, but she intends to turn over a new leaf. After Ignatius is arrested mid-con, Jess is left all alone on Chadeisson Station, “the absolute center of nothing cept cosmic dust,” without food, funds, or a place to stay. Jess lands a job fixing starships and hopes to use her savings to buy her own vessel. Her plans change when she learns that Ignatius has been shipped off-station to parts unknown. Despite his mistreatment of her, Jess still cares for Ignatius and gathers all her resources to find him, a mission made more complex by careful efforts to conceal the route his transport had taken. Jess’s scrappy narrative voice will put readers in mind of the television show Firefly, and Kressel skillfully balances suspense and humor in the service of a page-turning adventure set in an inventive universe. A sequel would be welcome news to space opera fans. (July)

Reviewed on 05/02/2025 | Details & Permalink

Set in a climate change–ravaged 2073, Barner’s entertaining debut sci-fi romance mash-up takes both genres equally seriously. Dr. Alex Cole is trying to feed the world. Her research into mutagenic food should allow access to produce and livestock in places that can no longer support farming—but since the Potato Plague of 2061, public opinion of mutagenic food is terrible. So when NASA offers her 10 years of funding in exchange for a year at their moon colony, revamping their failing greenhouse, she doesn’t have any better options. Also heading to the moon is Mansoor Al Kaabi, who’s traveling there to finalize plans for the space-tourist hotel his powerful Emirati family has bankrolled—but who has far loftier ambitions. If Alex can find a way to sustainably feed a hundred colonists, Mansoor believes the colony can be expanded enough for humanity to live off-Earth in earnest. But their success brings danger: many forces don’t share Alex and Mansoor’s vision of the future, and are willing to do whatever it takes to destroy it. It’s a pleasure to watch Alex and Mansoor fall in love with and fight for each other. The result is a unique, exciting, and intelligent novel with a lot of heart. Agent: Jenna Satterthwaite, Storm Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/02/2025 | Details & Permalink

Ryan’s ambitious debut fantasy traverses WWII-era England, France, and Bavaria while juggling plotlines about the struggle against Hitler, mother-daughter drama, and a witch’s coming-of-age. Though Britain has previously brutally suppressed its population of witches, when Winston Churchill calls for them to join the war effort, determined young Lydia Park and her mentor, Isadora, Grand Mistress of the Royal Academy of Witches, respond. After an intruding Nazi witch slashes Isadora’s throat, a traumatized Lydia goes against the orders of the witches council to undertake a dangerous mission that could turn the tide of the war, traveling to France to find and destroy an ancient and powerful book of battle magic, the Grimorium Bellum. Along the way, she meets African American art historian Henry and Jewish Resistance fighter Rebecca, and together they battle a Nazi coven for the book. Gradually Lydia also comes to value her own mother, cherish her new friends, and recognize deceit in her mentors. Some loose narrative ends and a kitchen-sink approach to the magic system make the plot feel somewhat overcrowded. Still, Ryan keeps up a headlong pace and provides plenty of details for history buffs. This is a promising start. (July)

Reviewed on 05/02/2025 | Details & Permalink

A god reunites with the reincarnation of his past lover in this spellbinding standalone sequel to Kim’s The God and the Gumiho. God of deceit Seokga has been fruitlessly following the Red Thread of Fate on his finger in search of the most recent reincarnation of his lost love, Hani, for the past seven years. His ensuing depression prompts his brother, Hwanin, to force him to take a vacation aboard a river cruise that gives deceased guests one last cheery journey before they join the reincarnation queue. Upon their arrival, Seokga is equally thrilled and devastated to discover that the Red Thread leads him to beautiful and intelligent but very dead Yoo Kisa, who, rather than being reincarnated, is stuck working in the cruise ship’s sick bay. Now, Seokga must reconcile Hani with Kisa, who is “his lover and a stranger all at once.” Kisa, meanwhile, has no memories of the trickster god, but can’t help her attraction to him. When Hwanin turns up murdered, the pair strike a deal with the god of death that will allow Kisa to join the reincarnation queue if they can find the culprit. Combining an epic romance with a quirky whodunit, Kim invites readers on a whimsical journey filled with unexpected humor and undeniable love. Fans of K-dramas and romantic fantasies alike will be enthralled. (June)

Reviewed on 05/02/2025 | Details & Permalink