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Afifi, Nadia: A Fugitive’s History of the Known Universe (Flame Tree Press UK 978-1787589483, $26.95, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/11/2026)

SF novel. Azad is being hunted across the galaxies by the Vitruvian Authorities because he exposed the dark past of his world. Azad and his team need to team up with a space pirate to start a revolution.

 

 

Anonymous: Critical Role: The Mighty Nein: Stories Untold (Penguin Random House/Random House Worlds 979-8217298488, $30.00, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Tie-in anthology of Critical Role, stories based on the livestreamed roleplaying game. Nine different tales of some of the most memorable characters, including: Essek Thelyss, Isharni, and Pumat Sol. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK edition.

 

 

Ayinde, M.H.: A Dance of Burning Blades (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668086858, $22.00, 688pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Epic fantasy novel, the second in the A Song of Legends Lost series. Tension is growing everywhere across the nine lands. The people hope to find out the secrets the king has been keeping from them.

 

 

Bennett, Robert Jackson: A Trade of Blood (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 978-0593723852, $32.00, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Fantasy mystery novel, third in the Shadow of the Leviathan series. Ana Dolabra must prove the innocence of the heir of one of the Empire’s most powerful families, and if she doesn’t, the Empire will fall apart. Simultaneous with the Hodder & Stoughton UK edition.

 

 

Kim, Bo-Young & Bowman, Sophie: A Plagued Sea (Tor/Nightfire 978-1250380753, $24.99, 102pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Horror novel. An earthquake on the coast of Haewon, a small seaside village, released a plague that turns its victims into fish monsters. Mu-young has been doing everything she can to survive here for the past three years.

 

 

Chapman, Clay McLeod: Devil Inside (Harlequin/Mira 978-0778306214, $18.99, 384pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Horror romance novel. After an accident that nearly cost his life, Jordan’s grip on reality seems to be slipping. After getting ghosted by a woman named Lilith, things start to get even weirder. Simultaneous with the Titan Books UK edition.

 

 

Dade, Olivia: World’s Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon (Penguin Random House/Berkley Romance 978-0593818220, $20.00, 458pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Supernatural romantic comedy novel, the second in the Supernatural Entanglements series. Gwen Wexloff can see the future, but not when it matters, until one day, she experiences a world-changing vision, and she needs to find help.

 

 

Doty, Max: The House that Eats the Dead (Macmillan/Tor Nightfire UK 979-8217092239, $20.00, 336pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Horror novel. Claire discovers that her family’s new house eats anything that used to be alive. When she exploits this power, she forms a bond with the house, but its hunger starts to grow.

 

 

El-Arifi, Saara: Earthbound (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 978-0593723067, $29.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Fantasy novel. Alder returns to the cave he was born in to discover more about his past, and the truth has him shaken. In the fae court, Yeeran is trying to create a peace treaty with the elven army.

 

 

Goodman, A.B.: House of Atreus: Orestes’ Return (Planetary Books 979-8188214753, $19.99, 144pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, 07/20/2026)

SF novel, third in the House of Atreus series. Agamemnon’s exiled son, Orestes, has finally come of age, and must prove himself to Apollo, as he returns home to the kingdom.

 

 

Hanrahan, Gareth: The Dungeon Book (Orbit US 978-0316595421, $19.99, 352pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Fantasy novel. After Bait is captured by a dragon, and left for dead in a dungeon, she’s taken in by a family of goblins, and is given the chance to decide where she belongs. Simultaneous with the Orbit UK edition.

 

 

Jafari, Sara: Heavensent & Hellbent (Penguin Random House/Delacorte 979-8217028634, $20.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Young-adult fantasy romance novel. After seeing Zain kill a man, Roxana realizes that demons (and also angels) exist, but she can’t help her attraction towards him.

 

 

Johnston, E.K.: The Third Period Comeback (Penguin Random House/Dutton 979-8217110421, $17.99, 176pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Upper middle-grade “magic-tinged” novel. Hayley Rilko is cursed to ruin any hockey team she plays for, but it doesn’t go into effect until she’s no longer a kid, so she becomes determined to break the curse.

 

 

Kelly, James Patrick: The Book of Bots (Fairwood Press 978-1958880418, $19.99, 302pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 08/14/2026)

Collection of 12 stories about robots and AI that come in all different forms. Some are in the shape of a car, some are from the far future, and some only exist in cyberspace.

 

 

Keslowitz, Steven: Traveling the Yellow Brick Road: What We Learn from The Wizard of Oz and Wicked (McFarland 978-1476699646, $39.95, 236pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 08/13/2026)

Critical non-fiction focusing on the films, looking at the world of Oz as a reflection of American society, exploring how beliefs about heroism, villainy, ethics, and truth change between the classic film and the recent Wicked films.

 

 

Maberry, Jonathan: Bewilderness (WordFire Press 978-1680577969, $23.99, 514pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, 08/11/2026)

SF horror novel. A doorway to a parallel dimension malfunctions and causes infinite parallel Earth’s to collide with our’s. Abby Corman is the only one who knows how to stop this, but an alien hunter is determined to stop her.

 

 

Okungbowa, Suyi Davies: Season of the Serpent (Orbit US ‎978-0316428996, $19.99, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Epic fantasy novel, the third book in the Nameless Republic trilogy. The Nameless Republic and Kangalaland are on the verge of war, and everyone must pick a side. Lilong lost her power, and is doing everything she can to get it back.

 

 

Penelope, Leslye: The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass (Orbit US/Redhook 978-0316594691, $19.99, 496pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Contemporary fantasy novel. After the disappearance of Zahara’s sister, no one remembered she even existed in the first place, besides her. Four years later she finds evidence of her existence, and hires a private investigator to look into her past.

 

 

Ribay, Randy: Nest of Tongues (Penguin Random House/Random House 979-8217024346, $19.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Young-adult paranormal horror novel inspired by Filipino mythology. Lily and her brother Caleb are vampires, but choose to keep it a secret, until one day when a monster hunter kills another vampire.

 

 

Smith, Jasmine: Death Card (Penguin Random House/Putnam 978-0593858295, $13.99, 304pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Young-adult contemporary fantasy novel. Mikaela Broussard has a vision of a customer stabbing her in the heart. She decides to spend time with the customer, Joelle, in order to gather more information, but starts to find her irresistible. A first novel.

 

 

Spotts, Isabelle: Saint Delilah (Penguin Random House/Berkley 979-8217189816, $30.00, 311pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Horror novel. Delilah, a ghost, is trying to clear her unfinished business, and she needs to start with finding who her killer is, so she teams up with the owner of a strip club she used to dance at, and a stranger who can hear and touch her. A first novel.

 

 

Tchaikovsky, Adrian: Preaching to the Choir (Rebellion/Solaris UK 978-1837867301, $32.99, 176pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/13/2026)

SF novel, second in the Terrible Worlds: Transformations series. Ross asked Elena to come with her to a mysterious family gathering for moral support, despite the fact that spouses aren’t invited, and they uncover dark secrets.

 

 

Tooley, Adrienne: There Are Ghosts Here (Penguin Random House/Delacorte 979-8217027897, $19.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Young-adult speculative horror novel. Willa Childs forgets the details of the accident that sent her to the Dorsey House, and the others stuck there, Caroline and Ivy, are intending to keep it from her.

 

 

Walter, Heather: The Witch Queen (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 978-0593598399, $30.00, 560pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/11/2026)

Fantasy novel, second in the Crimson Crown duology. Queen Ayleth knows that having the kingdom under her rule isn’t perfect, and she’s consumed by fears that the witches will come to remove her, or that people will find out her secret. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK edition.

 

 

Whitten, Hannah: Reliquary (Orbit US/Run For It 978-0316579537, $30.00, 320pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, 08/11/2026)

Horror novel. The estranged family of Claire’s late fiancé, Elias, reaches out after his death, and invites her to a three day stay at Harrow Point. While she’s there, she uncovers the reason behind her traumatic connection to the ocean.

 

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The post New Book Releases: Aug 11, 2026 appeared first on Locus.

A French manuscript from about 1485 shows a woman spinning wool in her doorway while her child plays beside her. The doorway is the mouth of a giant snail shell. She lives there.
Robert Testard painted it for Charles d'Angoulême, a count in southwestern France, as one of 56 miniatures in Les secretz de l'histoire naturelle.  — Read the rest

The post In this 1485 manuscript, people live inside giant snail shells appeared first on Boing Boing.

Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup delivers everything I want from a fantasy detective story. Wonderful characters, fantastic world-building, and a mystery worth solving.

Bennett tells the story from the point of view of Din Kol, an altered human whose misshapen talents left him useless to most regular sources of employment for altered humans in the Empire. — Read the rest

The post The Tainted Cup gets the fantasy detective novel exactly right appeared first on Boing Boing.

Doi Toshitsura was a feudal lord in Edo-period Japan who studied snow for about twenty years. His 1832 book of woodblock prints, Sekka Zusetsu, has eighty-six drawings of what he called "snow flowers" (sekka), plus a dozen more copied from a 1779 Dutch natural history book. — Read the rest

The post A Japanese lord spent 20 years drawing snowflakes under a microscope appeared first on Boing Boing.

Luke Howard was an industrial chemist in London. He studied clouds as a hobby in the early 1800s. In his Essay on the Modification of Clouds, he gave the standard cloud formations the names we still use today. Cirrus is the Latin word for a wisp of hair, cumulus for "convex or conical heaps," stratus for a "horizontal sheet." — Read the rest

The post One hobbyist named cirrus, cumulus, and stratus back in 1803 appeared first on Boing Boing.

The writer’s political ideal—citizens appearing before one another as equals, engaging in dialogue and debate—had a counterpart in her spirited gatherings on the Upper West Side.

Cold War policymakers pushed for a unified Continent. Their MAGA successors are trying to undo all that.

“The Savage Landscape,” “Presence,” “It’s All River,” and “The Shampoo Effect.”

A draft rule reviewed by WIRED would prevent the census from counting undocumented immigrants. To protect against “distortions,” it would also bar questions about race and sexual orientation.

"From The 'London Times' in 1904" is an 1898 Mark Twain short story set six years in the future, and it describes something very close to the internet. It opens as a murder mystery. Clayton, a hot-tempered army officer, is accused of killing Szczepanik, the inventor of a machine called the telelectroscope. — Read the rest

The post Mark Twain wrote a story in 1898 that describes the internet appeared first on Boing Boing.

 It’s August in Brussels, which means it’s vacation time.

Whether you’re heading off to the beach or holding down the fort in town,  this episode is brimming with book recommendations from our newsroom and from you, our listeners. Whatever your genre preference, from true crime thrillers to deep political dives, we’ve got your summer holiday covered.

 But this installment is not just a book chat.

We’re also tackling the rise of populism and the crises facing liberal democracies around the world. That’s the topic of “Defeating Trumpism,” a new book by former Belgian Prime Minister and European Parliament Member Guy Verhofstadt. The book is a self-diagnosis from one of Europe’s most passionate centrists about the failures of his movement. And his prescription? A new political paradigm he calls “Citizenism.”

We’re on a break for two weeks, so expect us to pop back up on your feed with the daily Brussels Playbook Podcast on Aug. 24 and the Week Ender podcast on Aug. 28.

Questions? Comments? Get in touch! You can message us or send a voice message to our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.

If you were moving diamonds across the Deccan Plateau in the 1830s, there were rules about when to set out. Leave on a Tuesday or a Thursday, on the 5th, 13th, or 28th day of the lunar month. Eat coriander seeds before a Tuesday departure and jaggery before a Thursday one. — Read the rest

The post An 1832 book explains how to pick a lucky day to travel appeared first on Boing Boing.

Young American men are in trouble. They are the loneliest demographic in the Western world. Their social circles are shrinking. At all ages, they are significantly more likely to die by suicide than their female peers.

But if there’s one place where young American men are likely to congregate, regardless of race or political beliefs, it’s the world of video games. According to a 2017 Pew study, 72 percent of men under 30 say they play video games often or sometimes. The gaming world is a place they feel safe — which means it is full of untapped potential for building community, says video game expert George E. Osborn.

Osborn is the founder of Half-Space Consulting, which advises governments and NGOs on the social impact of video games. In his new book Power Play: Video Games, Politics, and the Battle for Global Influence, Osborn shows that anti-democratic powers and violent actors have been exploiting the video games space for decades. 

Most visibly in the US, a large community of gamers rallied together in 2014 to harass prominent female game developers and gaming journalists. They forced multiple women into hiding while claiming that they were fighting for ethics in gaming journalism. The campaign, which became known as Gamergate, made so much noise that it attracted the attention of Steve Bannon, who organized supportive coverage on Breitbart and treated it as a recruiting ground for the racist, misogynistic, and anti-democratic alt-right movement. As Osborn documents in Power Play, the communities that sprang up to organize Gamergate became pipelines to the communities that organized the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

“Bannon’s intuitive understanding of the power of toxic gamer communities created the digital-activist base, the tactical playbook and the strategic approach necessary for ‘mainstreaming’ populist far-right ideas within the online media ecosystem,” Osborn writes in Power Play. 

Yet Osborn also writes that there is a vast potential for good within gaming communities. He shows that gaming can help people understand pandemics and autocracies and climate change; that it can connect people to one another and make people less lonely.

I wanted to understand what those possibilities meant for the young men who are so invested in video games and are in so much trouble, so I called Osborn up to discuss. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You write in the book that there’s always been a wide audience for video games across demographics. But when people talk about gaming’s traditional audience, they’re mostly talking about young men. How does that happen?

In the 1980s and the 1990s, video games were not sold on the basis of who wants to play. They were sold on the basis of who buys technology. There were two primary audiences: families with kids, and young men buying tech.

Then a couple of things all happen at the same time: The introduction of the smartphone in about 2007; the emergence of digital storefronts like Steam and The App Store; the financial crash. Video games companies start to think, “We have done very well in a small number of markets. What happens if we start reaching a wider base?”

The number of people around the world playing video games goes from hundreds of millions to about the 3.6 billion that we see today. When you look at the gender split of players, roughly speaking, the gender split in the US is now nearly 50/50, and the average age of a player is much closer to late 30s, early 40s. It creates this space where that traditional audience of younger men start to feel left behind, like the industry is moving away from them. 

What’s really interesting, when you look at this in the context of the research that I’ve done, is that it creates a grievance culture amongst some of those younger men. That ultimately opens up the opportunity for someone to begin taking advantage of it. 

In the book, you talk about how there are a few different things that make gamers an attractive group for political actors to try to target. One of them was this idea that gamers are highly likely to act on their beliefs. What does that mean in this context?

The nature of play — I think it was actually the writer Naomi Alderman who talked about this — is that it encourages agency. If you compare it to other creative mediums, even the most linear of video games, a player [moves] through it in their own way. They don’t have exactly the same experience as everybody else.

It encourages people to really believe in themselves as participants in the medium. They are not solely consumers of the culture, and therefore they feel that they have a greater say over what happens.

Then it [also] creates a strong community tie between the people who are involved in play. The sheer breadth of choices available to you brings the community together to talk about how to play, and ultimately the way it makes them feel. [That’s] part of the reason why these information spaces are so powerful.

Along those lines, you document Steve Bannon getting interested in Gamergate and leveraging that phenomenon to help create the alt-right of the 2010s. A lot of the political groups you discuss who try to intervene with gamers use top-down propaganda, but it seems like Bannon’s really interested in them as a specific community, right? He’s not making didactic games about why they should support Trump. He’s talking about how they’re heroes fighting for ethics in gaming journalism. What’s the effect of that choice?

It creates a sense of power within those communities they may not have otherwise felt. If you compare it to the last US election, Kamala Harris’s campaign created an officially branded Fortnite experience. It promised players a chance to engage with the campaign’s key pillars. Which is exactly the kind of top-down, non-inclusive communication where you are going into someone else’s arena and putting something in there that would never emerge from that space organically. 

Obviously the message doesn’t work. It ends up reeking of elitism.

I think what Bannon realized is this group had its own things that it felt were important. Particularly within Gamergate — I think that they were talking about things that were toxic, lies, untrue. But it coalesced to create an identity around that group. Bannon realized that ultimately, if you promoted it upwards, then they would feel part of this wider community.

A lot of the most visible political activity associated with gamers in the US has been pretty dark and even quite violent. I’m thinking of not just Gamergate, but the Charlottesville riots and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Is it possible to harness the energy of this community toward more constructive ends?

I just came back from Games for Change in New York. It’s a big festival in the US every year. There’s satellite events around the world. It looks at the way that these dynamics can be used for various social goods, provided that you are actually leaning into them. 

The UN’s Playing for the Planet Alliance reached hundreds of millions of people by asking game makers to create content on their behalf [about climate change]. It wasn’t a case of saying, “We need you to create games that do this specific thing.” It was much more, “Here is a theme. Create something that works for your community.” 

When more elite institutions chose to engage with games communities on their terms, they tended to achieve much bigger reach, at a much lower cost, and with much more positive outcomes than any of the hostile uses that I talk about in the book. And frankly, because these communities have often felt pushed to the side, they also feel particularly validated when someone comes into their space and says, “Actually, we do recognize your power. We would love to work with you to make the most of it.”

How do you know that the effects are so much bigger than something like Gamergate? Are there numbers you can cite?

One of the best examples was in 2022, when Epic Games did fundraisers for the Red Cross through things like Fortnite. Their game store raised more money for the charity and its work in places like Ukraine than were donated to it by the countries of France or Italy.

You’re talking about this potentially massive effect, but thus far it’s tended to be sporadic. When you compare it with a lot of the examples that I look at in the book, especially Saudi Arabia’s attempt to use video games within its soft power strategy, there’s clearly much more strategic thinking [from the Saudis] about the way to influence these communities. 

That’s one of the missing pieces of the puzzle in a lot of democracies. We have the ingredients for this to work really effectively, but at the moment it feels like we’ve not got anyone cooking.

I came away from this book with this sense that for a lot of young men, video game communities are a precious space where they feel seen in a way that they don’t in a lot of the rest of society right now. What makes this world so special to these men?

Video games have always been social. With young men in particular, because the medium has been so closely attuned to them, [many of them] are going to find their groups and communities within these worlds. 

This is me speaking more from British experience, of thinking what it’s like to be a man growing up in the UK. We’ve seen significant cutbacks in local investment into things like community groups, clubs, youth spaces. Online communities and online game communities have helped replace a lot of things taken out of civil society. 

The loss of investment in third spaces, especially for teens, is definitely something we’re seeing in the US as well.

You write about campaigning to combat the loneliness epidemic in the UK through gaming outreach. How did that initiative come together?

I was contacted by the government around April 2020, during the pandemic. I was working at the time as the head of campaigns and communications at Ukie, the video games trade association. 

Quite early into my job, I realized all of the different games companies that formed Ukie had very different cultures. You couldn’t tell them what to do, because frankly, it wouldn’t work. 

So I went in and said, “Okay, we’ve got an ask. We want you to encourage your communities to find one hour to sit down in their favorite online game with a friend, family member, or co-worker, and ask them how they’re doing.”

Different companies took part in the campaign. But they went out to their communities with different messages. Some of them were going out with streams from their community managers. Some of them were just replicating the messaging that we had. Some of them were doing more dedicated messages to players via games. 

It’s not particularly scientific, so take it with a pinch of salt. But afterwards, the polling firm Ipsos MORI found that across Europe, players in the UK were roughly 10 percentage points more likely to say that video games made them feel less lonely than other parts of the continent. 

Looking back on that, I can see that a lot of the ideas I’ve had, about how games can be an information ecosystem and about how you effectively communicate to it, can be found in that campaign. 

It’s about decentralizing the message. It’s allowing people to take it and run with it. That’s when it becomes really effective.

The Delsarte System of Dramatic Expression is an acting manual, first published in 1885, that set out to chart every movement a human body can make. Genevieve Stebbins, an American actress, wrote it after training under Steele MacKaye, who had studied in Paris with François Delsarte, a French singer and orator who died in 1871 without publishing his method. — Read the rest

The post The 1885 book that graphed the human face into 81 expressions appeared first on Boing Boing.

At this month’s NATO summit in Ankara, allies announced billions of dollars in new arms deals and reaffirmed their commitment to spend more on defense. European governments have made the pledge, and the money is real: European defense spending has doubled since 2019, and by 2030, European NATO member countries are projected to spend in excess of €800 billion a year, up €300 billion from 2025, with equipment spending alone nearly doubling.

But committing money is the easy part. The harder question is whether Europe’s defense industry can turn it into equipment fast enough to matter. Europe’s largest defense manufacturers’ order books now average more than five years for production, and some are closer to nine. Money is flowing in faster than industry can turn it into equipment. But a purchase order is not equipment that can be deployed on the ground and the air.

European countries have long duplicated capabilities rather than pooling them.

The bottleneck sits in the defense industrial system. Deterrence relies on the chain from funding to contracts, then through production, deployment into services, then rapid innovation in the field. Europe’s next goal comes after the spending promise. The continent fields six times as many weapons platforms as the United States, because countries have long duplicated capabilities rather than pooling them. Production ends up split across many small runs that never reach an efficient scale. Ukraine, under pressure, has shown how fast a defense system can move, adapting tactics in weeks and building drone detection networks from consumer electronics. Europe needs to catch up and then accelerate.

Four moves would help Europe accelerate.

The first is multi-speed procurement. Software-led systems such as drones and targeting improve in rapid cycles throughout their deployment and need procurement that can keep up. Israel’s Iron Dome started out as far less capable than it is today and improved continuously in service. European defense ministries have already set up high-speed procurement units with dedicated teams and greater risk tolerance. These need to become mainstream, rather than the exception.

Collaboration in procurement, maintenance and training brings costs down and delivery forward.

The second is military collaboration to reduce fragmentation. Collaboration in procurement, maintenance and training brings costs down and delivery forward. The Tempest project, where the U.K., Italy and Japan are jointly building a next-generation fighter, demonstrates the model: shared development costs that no single country could carry alone. Recent bilateral maritime agreements, and Romania’s use of EU funding to buy European while expanding production at home, show the same logic spreading.

The third is industrial consolidation, which is already underway and needs to move faster. Companies are driving it themselves. Airbus, Leonardo and Thales have agreed to merge their space divisions into a single joint venture with roughly €6.5 billion in revenue and 25,000 employees, and European defense mergers and acquisitions rose 35 percent year over year in the first half of 2025. McKinsey analysis finds that consolidation across key supply chain segments could unlock around €9 billion in annual synergies, more than the current equipment budgets of 24 of Europe’s 30 NATO members. The deepest opportunity sits below the big primes, among the thousands of tier two, three and four suppliers that still duplicate one another’s work. Europe can speed this up by harmonizing requirements, reducing national carve-outs and letting industry do the combining. Consolidation is only half the task. Europe also needs to build sheer capacity — more shipyards, more assembly lines, more of the physical plants that turn orders into hardware — and the capital to fund it. In several categories, Europe simply lacks enough places to build.

Real deterrence means difficult choices, and a public that understands the importance and the cost of security.

The fourth is regulatory unlocking. Full scale-up demands skilled workers retrained, accredited and security cleared from other industries; production sites with preapproved permitting; and alignment of export controls across European allies. These regulatory unlocks now need the same energy and focus as the funding commitment debate. 

Real deterrence means difficult choices, and a public that understands the importance and the cost of security. That conversation is only beginning in much of Europe. It must include the potential for “gray zone” cyber strikes on hospitals, arson at industrial sites, drones disrupting ports, undersea data cables cut — these have all occurred, but many citizens do not yet recognize this as having malicious intent.

The opportunity in getting it right is significant. McKinsey and GLOBSEC estimates indicate that every euro of spending on European-manufactured equipment generates two euros of revenue across the European supply chain, and an additional €165 billion a year in equipment spending could create up to 1.2 million jobs. The coming years will reveal how effectively Europe is able to scale up to protect its territory and citizens, and how much of the promised investment becomes lasting deterrence and European jobs. Getting there depends on the whole ecosystem — governments, industry and investors — moving together. Increased spending is important. Spending it effectively matters more.

Jonathan Dimson is a senior partner in McKinsey’s London office. Mikael Robertson is a senior partner in the Stockholm office.

Visit our bookshop.org page to purchase this week’s new books and support your local bookstore. And us!

 

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Arena, Brittney: To Dance with Death (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 978-0593973226, $30.00, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Fantasy novel, the second in the Edge of Glass series. Vasalie sacrificed herself to kill King Illian. Now his brother, Anton, made a deal with the goddess of the underworld to bring King Illian back.

 

 

Broadbent, Carissa: The Lion & the Deathless Dark (Tor/Bramble 978-1250367846, $29.99, 560pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Fantasy romance novel, fifth in the Crowns of Nyaxia series. Kyrene makes a deal with her enemy, Septimus, to slay the gods in exchange for money. Simultaneous with the Tor Bramble UK edition.

 

 

Corr, Katharine & Corr, Elizabeth: Queen of the Gods (Candlewick Press 978-1536244540, $19.99, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/04/2026)

Young-adult fantasy novel, second in the House of Shadows trilogy. Deina is trapped in the underworld, and is offered the chance to become a goddess by Hades, but she refuses, and decides to escape.

 

 

Diaz, Glenn: Yñiga (Coffee House Press 978-1566897556, $17.99, 264pp, formats: paperback, 08/04/2026)

Novel about modern Philippine life with supernatural elements. Yñiga’s neighborhood is burned down, so she visits an old friend, and they go to the nearby forest that houses trauma that still haunts her family.

 

 

Erbach, Dane: Meat Bees (Clash Books 978-1968043056, $21.95, 290pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 08/04/2026)

Horror novel. Scarlett finds herself searching for a co-worker that disappeared, but instead of finding him, she discovers a swarm of yellow jackets eating meat off of his corpse.

 

 

Flint, Eric & Barber, Griffin: 1637: The Pilgrim’s Passage (Baen 978-1668073346, $28.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/04/2026)

SF novel in Flint’s Ring of Fire series. Princess Begum Sahib is being escorted to Jeddah, but the real reason she’s leaving is so she can have her child in secret.

 

 

Forst, Devin: Strange and Terrible Things (Abrams 978-1419780615, $19.99, 208pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Upper middle-grade non-fiction/art book. Guide to nearly 80 creatures of different myths, and folklore from all over the world. Includes chapters such as: Fiendish Faeries, Menacing Monsters, and Creepy Cryptids.

 

 

Gong, Chloe: Eyes of Kings (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668000298, $29.00, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Fantasy novel, third in the Flesh and False Gods series. Unrest is stirring in the kingdom of Talin. The recently dethroned king August Shenzhi is ready to go to war with the one who dethroned him, Calla Tuoleimi.

 

 

Hampson, Robert E.: The Sands of Mars (Baen 978-1964856735, $17.99, 432pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 08/04/2026)

Near-future SF novel, second in the Bionic Frontier series. Colonel Shepard is on a mars base and struggling with missing his family, but the rest of the base is struggling with trusting each other as suspicion of sabotage arises.

 

 

Karlie, Logan: Cursed by the Dawn (Little, Brown/Ottaviano 978-0316610889, $24.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Young-adult fantasy romance novel. Esmer and Erebus must stop the demon king from destroying everything, but they realize something horrible has already happened, and their love might be the first thing to go.

 

 

LaRocca, Eric: We Turn Gruesome at Night (Titan Books UK 978-1803369556, $28.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/09/2026)

Horror novel. Second in the Burnt Sparrow series. Gladys Esherwood and Rupert Cromwell are trapped in the End House. One day Rupert is introduced to a secret organization that shows him the secrets of the town.

 

 

Larue, Taylor J.: Steelborn (Little, Brown/Requited 978-0316599412, $32.00, 432pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Fantasy romance novel. Reya Connery is a thief who follows a strict set of rules, but when a heist goes wrong, she needs to rethink her principles, which is when she meets Caelan Halcyon, an immortal warrior. A first novel.

 

 

Lloyd, Ellery: Time to Burn (Harper 978-0063323056, $28.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, 08/04/2026)

SF mystery novel. Time travel is real, but only available to the ultra-wealthy, and on the first ever trip to the past, a group of billionaires return covered in blood, and with one of their members missing. Simultaneous with the Macmillan UK edition.

 

 

MacLean, S.A.: Sunsplitter (Orbit US 978-0316573146, $9.99, 581pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Spicy fantasy romance novel, second in the Beasts of the Void series. Fi needs to rebuild her city with the help of Antal, but Antal is brought home by his father, and he must prepare himself for the first homecoming in 50 years. Simultaneous with the Orion UK edition.

 

 

Moriarty, Jaclyn: Time Travel for Beginners (Penguin Random House/Berkley 978-0593820339, $30.00, 544pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

SF novel. In Sydney, Australia, there is a coffee shop known as the time travel agency, which allows you to go anywhere in the past, without the risk of changing the future. Simultaneous with the HarperCollins UK edition.

 

 

Rath, Emily: Devour Me (HarperCollins/Avon 978-0063484764, $22.00, 528pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Paranormal love triangle romance novel, the first in a trilogy. Dáinn has spent two centuries working for a witch. While on a mission to kill a rival witch, Dáinn makes a deal to spare a life, if they kill his mistress.

 

 

Revis, Beth: Chaotic Orbits (Astra House/DAW 978-0756420802, $20.00, 400pp, formats: paperback, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Omnibus of the Chaotic Orbits trilogy: Full Speed to a Crash Landing (2024), How to Steal a Galaxy (2024), and Last Chance to Save the World (2025).

 

 

Rose, Stephanie: Small Town Slasher (Death by TBR Books 979-8218635510, $8.99, 276pp, formats: ebook, 08/04/2026)

Serial-killer horror novel. Horror fan Jenna rents a horror themed cabin in rural Montana, but the day before she arrives, people begin to get murdered, and it’s clear a massacre is starting.

 

 

Saft, Allison: Immortal Game (St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 978-1250404763, $22.00, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Young-adult fantasy romance novel. Shea Fury is given the chance to participate in a chess tournament, where the winner is granted one wish, and hers is to free her sister from the land of fae.

 

 

Salisbury, Melinda: Local Gods (Simon & Schuster/Sarah Barley 979-8347101474, $19.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

YA folk horror novel. Sylvie spends most of her time in an abandoned railway station avoiding carnivorous deer, but one day she finds a dying god named Illican, who can teach her magic that would save her town.

 

 

Sambury, Liselle: A Clash of Carnivores (Simon & Schuster/McElderry 978-1665957397, $24.99, 608pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Young-adult horror novel, second in the Mastery of Monsters trilogy. August Black is bonded with a monster, Virgil, for life, and they must prepare for the Monster’s Ball, despite their challenging relationship.

 

 

Stiefvater, Maggie & Milledge, Sas: The Dream Thieves: The Graphic Novel (Penguin Random House/Viking 978-0593621233, $17.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, 08/04/2026)

Graphic novel adapted by Stiefvater from her Raven Cycle. Ronan Lynch has a secret ability to pull things out of dreams, and it’s almost killed him multiple times.

 

 

Stovall, Shami: One-Fifth Dragon (Baen 978-1668073353, $28.00, , formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Fantasy Novel. Story of a person whose “found family” murdered their true family, and now they’re determined to get revenge using the techniques this family taught them.

 

 

Swan, Richard: The Infinite State (Tor 978-1250386229, $29.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Dystopian SF novel, the first in the Decurion Saga. Katherine Fuller’s father is a member of the fascist Pater Aeternus, and she’s using this power to attempt to create a more fair world. Simultaneous with the Orion UK edition.

 

 

Ward, Tristis: Assassin at Allgate (Hades/EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy 978-1770532588, $15.95, 236pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, 08/04/2026)

Space opera/mystery novel, the first book in the Desire & the Law series. Desire, an android, was built to assassinate an alien aristocrat, but when the aristocrat is murdered by someone else, she tries to find the real killer.

 

 

Watchorn, Morgan J.: Fire to the Stars (Penguin Random House/Knopf 978-0593708446, $19.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Young-adult fantasy romance novel. Every month, an event happens that turns people into dragon shifters. Claire forms an alliance with dragon slayer, Abel, to help her get the life she once had back. A first novel.

 

 

Weymouth, Laura E.: The Castle & The Cloister (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668069660, $20.00, 448pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Fantasy novel, first in the Daughter’s of Light series. A queen that’s teetering on the edge of loyalty and betrayal, and a priest that waits in darkness will decide the fate of a kingdom together. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK edition.

 

 

Winters, Julian: Find My Way Down to You (Penguin Random House/Viking , $13.99, 384pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

YA fantasy romance novel. August is grieving the death of his boyfriend when he accidentally stumbles into the underworld. Down there, he’s forced to choose between a normal life with grief, or a life with love that might ruin him.

 

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The post New Book Releases: Aug 4, 2026 appeared first on Locus.

A secret history of shutting up.

Jacqueline Harpman wrote her best-known works in the nineteen-nineties, but her fiction’s elegiac loneliness seems to anticipate our own solitary, screen-bound era.

“Daylight Come,” “Scavenging Beauty,” “Dooneen,” and “Queen Mab.”

My first reaction to the trailer for “Children of Blood and Bone,” Paramount’s lush adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi’s bestselling 2018 young adult novel, was that I buzzed with excitement. My second reaction? Why must good things come at a cost?

Adeyemi’s novels, inspired by West African mythology, follow the adventures of Zélie, played by Thuso Mbedu, on her quest to restore magic to the kingdom of Orïsha. “Children of Blood and Bone” reteams Mbedu with “The Woman King” co-stars Lashana Lynch and Viola Davis, and also features Cynthia Erivo, Regina King, Amandla Stenberg and Idris Elba.

Adeyemi co-wrote the script with director Gina Prince-Bythewood  and shared in an Instagram reel posted on Wednesday that she worked on the film “to make it a little better for us to be alive.” She also described the experience as “the worst thing I have ever had to live through.”

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“Even though it feels awful to share this, it’s better to share it and have it known and understood before I see a bunch of you for this new book,” Adeyemi said, referring to her upcoming tour for “The Siren,” which releases in September. “I never want to hear about this project again.”

When authors divorce themselves from film versions of their work, it’s usually a matter of creative disagreement. But Adeyemi describes suffering somatic pain and panic attacks, alleging she is still being antagonized behind the scenes.

To echo what former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said in a Substack post, an “Odyssey”-obsessed moment rife with cultural erasure demands to be countered by popular culture built on the civilizational myths, heroes and heroines of the Black diaspora. “Children of Blood and Bone” is one way of doing that. How unnerving that its creation scarred its creator.

“Children of Blood and Bone” debuts in theaters on Jan. 15, 2027.

The post The painful cost of bringing “Children of Blood and Bone” to screen appeared first on Salon.com.