Ahmad, The Age of Calami­ties (Holt 1/26) Original debut col­lection of nine stories (two reprints) with surreal, fantastic, and historical elements: Anne Boleyn keeps coming back to life whatever Henry does, a choose-your-own-apocalypse story set at the Manhattan Project, and a dinner party mystery with Nefertiti to Marilyn Monroe, among others. “Dazzlingly inventive…. These stories make it clear how ancient history and myths still linger in contemporary life….” [Kelly Link]

 

 

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Samantha Mills, Rabbit Test and Oth­er Stories (Tachyon 4/26) The author’s first collection with 13 stories, two new, originally published from 2018 to now; includes the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus Award-winning title story. Mills provides an afterword and notes on the inspirations for the stories. “In every story here, there is a twist on the familiar that is entirely unexpected.” [Abigail Nussbaum]

 

 

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Terry Dowling, Bedlam Rose and Wormwood (PS Publishing 3/26) Noted Australian author Dowling gets UK publication for his collection Wormwood (originally published by Aphelion in 1991, here with one added story previously collected elsewhere) of ten linked stories from a far-future Earth transformed in strange, mysterious ways by aliens; new novel Bedlam Rose returns to that setting for new adventures and discoveries. “The collection is a very good introduction to Dowling’s stylised, complicated, and also playful prose.” [Alexandra Pierce]

 

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Justin Feinstein, Your Behavior Will Be Monitored (Tachyon 4/26) Satirical near-future SF novel about a man train­ing a revolutionary advertising AI to write emotionally manipulative copy, told through “questionably obtained” company emails, chat transcripts, and more. “In an afterword to [the book], Feinstein notes that he was constantly revising the manuscript to stay ahead of the rapid acceleration of AI.” [Ian Mond] A first novel.

 

 

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Cecile Pin, Celestial Lights (Holt 3/26) “In the beautifully written and achingly realistic Celestial Lights, author Cecile Pin takes readers along on astronaut Oliver Ines’s deep space mission.” [Colleen Mondor] This novel follows a man born the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded who makes it his life’s ambition to become an astronaut, and ends up on a mission to Europa.

 

 

 

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Kim Samek, I Am the Ghost Here (Dial 2/26) A first collection, this offers 12 stories (six reprints) about women in strange yet familiar situations, often involving human connection through technology, in a mix of the weird, witty, and absurd. The collection con­tains elements of magical realism and examines trauma, illness, and grief.

 

 

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Jo Walton & Ada Palmer, Trace Ele­ments (Tor 3/26) Non-fiction collec­tion of 25 essays and five poems, sub­titled Conversations on the Projects of Science Fiction and Fantasy, in which Walton & Palmer share their scholarly and writerly thoughts on the genre, how it is written, how it works, how it has changed over the years, and how it is read. “It offers a lively and sometimes surprisingly personal appreciation of the field today by two of its most distinguished practitioners.” [Gary K. Wolfe]

 

 

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Michael Swanwick, The Universe Box (Tachyon 2/26) Collection of 19 stories, two new, in an eclectic variety of topics and styles. It blends magic and science to create new myths and legends. “For all his narrative ad­venturousness and sly wit, Swanwick can also be a master of evocative, graceful prose.” [Gary K. Wolfe]

 

 

 

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Sara Hashem, Where No Shadow Stays (Holiday House 3/26) Young-adult horror novel about an American-Egyptian homecoming queen who visits Egypt and comes back with a sinister presence following her, part of an old family debt. The story flows through different time periods and multiple points of view to reveal the terrifying truth of the generational curse.

 

 

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Andrew Ludington, Double Shadow (Minotaur 4/26) SF thriller novel, second in the Splinter Effect series about time-traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward, who heads to first cen­tury Jerusalem to track down a deadly time-traveling thief. It contains romance, adventure, and a serial killer.

 

 

 

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Edward Ashton, After the Fall (St. Mar­tin’s 2/26) This humorous SF novel is set more than a century after Earth’s civiliza­tion collapses, some 100 years aliens took over. John is bonded to Martok Barden, one of the “good” alien grays, but things start to go wrong when John’s bond is put up as collateral for a messed up business deal. “Entertaining, smart, fast-paced, and funny, this is science fiction for people who like their alien stories with a side of chuckles but also profoundly human.” [Gabino Iglesias]

 

 

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Amal El-Mohtar, Seasons of Glass & Iron (Tordotcom 3/26) El-Mohtar’s new collec­tion offers 14 stories and four poems, all originally published between 2008 and 2023, including the title story, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. Inspirations range widely, from folklore and murder ballads to present day issue, united by a “stylistic thread that runs through all eighteen of these selections… a kind of intense lyricism, mediated by a degree of intellectual rigor.” [Gary K. Wolfe]

 

 

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Jeffrey Ford, Pandemonium Waltz (Lethe 2/26) Ford, an ever-surprising author with a distinctive knack for mixing the real world with the weird, is in fine form in his eighth collection, offering 17 stories, most from the last five years and one new, plus “a delightful and incisive interview with Kelly Link” [Gary K. Wolfe]

 

 

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Darkly Lem, Transmentation | Transgression (Blackstone 3/26) This follow-up to Transmentation | Transience picks up soon after, following people body-hopping between universes, all with their own agendas, not all of them clear. Notably, those of Burel Hird want to bring order to all worlds, but predictably face some opposition. This volume digs a bit deeper into the mechanics of body-hopping, but leaves much still to be investigated. “This series is doing bold and clever new things with many-worlds narratives and anyone with an interest in such ideas needs to be reading it.” [Alexandra Pierce] Lem is a writ­ers’ collective consisting of Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and M. Darusha Wehm.

 

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Richard K. Morgan, No Man’s Land (Del Rey 3/26) Morgan’s latest novel is a stand­alone hardboiled fantasy, set just after WWI was ended by a fae invasion (with accom­panying magical reforestation) in Britain. Ex-soldier Duncan Silver, scarred by the war and furious, is determined to recover the children the fae have stolen. “A reader expecting a retread of Altered Carbon or The Steel Remains may be disap­pointed in No Man’s Land; no outrageous technology, no great prophecies. I, however, loved it.” [Alexandra Pierce]

 

 

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Francis Spufford, Nonesuch (Faber & Faber UK 2/26; Scribner 3/26) Spufford returns to London and the Blitz for his latest literary fantasy novel, where an independent young woman must thwart time-traveling fascists trying to change history. “As much as I loved the spectacle – which at one point has Iris hundreds of feet in the sky as German bombers ham­mer London – it’s the authentic moments, grounded in history, that hit home.” [Ian Mond]

 

 

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A.D. Sui, The Iron Garden Sutra (Ere­whon 2/26) Sui’s first novel mixes philoso­phy and an involving SF mystery, as Vessel Iris, a death monk of the Starlit Order, sets out to do rites for the long-dead crew of a recently recovered spaceship, only to find something stalking the academic explorers in the vegetation-covered ship interior.

 

 

 

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Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife (Orbit US 3/2026) This far-future SF novel, fourth in the acclaimed Children of Time series, combines new ideas with series history and some familiar characters, from terraformers playing god who accidentally produce something terrible that destroys them; generations later, a research vessel rediscovers that lost world, but soon most of the crew disappears, leaving a single human, the uplifted mantis shrimp captain, and an AI to figure out what’s going on. “Tchaikovsky ends on that note of Roddenberry excitement and optimism that promises many new Children books to come.” [Paul Di Filippo]

 

 

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Sheree Renée Thomas, Mojorhythm (Third Man 11/25) Thomas introduces The Root and Sky series, a trio of collections that opens with this volume of 14 stories (eight new), a multi-genre mix focusing on Hoo­doo, fantasy, myths, and folklore. “Thomas wields literary tools to induce a heady sense of wonder… in the amalgamation of multiple ideas, styles, conventions, histories and forms into a vibrant, beautiful collage that connects past, present and future, and makes reality feel more magical, full of the potential for change.” [Wole Talabi]

 

 

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Makana Yamamoto, The Obake Code (Harper Voyager US 2/26) Yamamoto returns to the world of their popular first novel Hammajang Luck for this entertaining standalone heist novel. Set for life after the big heist, Malia has retired as the notorious hacker, the Obake – only she gets bored and crosses some gangsters, who demand she take down a crooked politician, which gets her embroiled in a conspiracy that might be too big for her.

 

 

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