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Ampersand, Erin: Time to Play (Tor 978-1250470171, $18.99, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

SF LitRPG novel, the first book in the Apocalypse Parenting series. A mom has to teach their kids how to fight after Earth is transported to an intergalactic game show, and everyone is given supernatural powers.

 

 

Andersen, Kurt: The Breakup (Penguin Random House/Random House 978-1984801371, $30.00, 576pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Near-future satirical/dystopian political SF novel. In 2045, a couple with a failing marriage is brought together to tour colleges with their seventeen-year-old. They road trip through a broken America that’s been reshaped by a civil war.

 

 

Anonymous: Dreams Divine (Flame Tree Collections UK 978-1835627952, $30.00, 416pp, formats: hardcover, 08/18/2026)

Fantasy romance anthology. Features stories from Benjamin Adams, Aishatu Ado, Dee Alberts, Danielle Marie Cahill, Bella Chacha, Victor W. Clubb, Irene W. Collins, K.S. Dearsley, H.L. Docherty, Philip Brian Hall, and many more.

 

 

Anonymous: Of Swords & Roses (Flame Tree Collections UK 978-1835627969, $30.00, 416pp, formats: hardcover, 08/18/2026)

Fantasy romance anthology. Features stories from Erica Barnes, Keyan Bowes, Kim Chance, Deborah L. Davitt, Sarina Dorie, Umenyi Chisomaga Evelyn, Jonathan Ficke, Jess L. Freed, M.A. Gardner, and many more.

 

 

Blackwood, Lauren: The Queen’s Bodyguard (Penguin Random House/Delacorte 979-8217092413, $32.00, 307pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Fantasy romance novel. Queen Theora selects Argos to be her bodyguard during negotiations, and while they’re technically married, she has no plan to have their souls bound together, but over time she begins to change her mind.

 

 

Blake, Olivie: Dreamland (Tor 978-1250368935, $29.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Fantasy novel. Anya is invited to work for the de Witt family, one of the most important film dynasties in LA. It’s there where she finds herself oddly attracted to Jude, and discovers a family curse that lives within the walls of their villa. Simultaneous with the Tor UK edition.

 

 

Cantor, Jillian: The Season of Light and Darkness (Simon Pulse 979-8347107285, $21.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/04/2026)

Young-adult dystopian SF novel. Ellie and her family decide to freeze themselves cryogenically in order to escape a dictatorship. When the government finds the lab, Ellie is the only one who gets unfrozen, and she must become “initiated.”

 

 

Cavendish, Catherine: The Ghosts of Chanterlands (Flame Tree Collections UK 978-1787589919, $26.95, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/18/2026)

Horror novel. In the year 1940, Pamela Courtney is evacuated to Chanterlands, where her aunts live, but secrets are stirring in the house, and greater danger is awaiting Pamela as the safety her mother hoped for is not gaurunteed.

 

 

Cesare, Adam: Clown in a Cornfield 4: Lights! Camera! Frendo! (Harper 978-0063325081, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Young-adult slasher horror novel, fourth in the Clown in a Cornfield series. Sabrina Alvarez is cast as the final girl in a horror movie, but things feel off as this movie based on real events begins to feel like it might repeat itself.

 

 

Cornell, P.A.: The Astronaut Among the Flowers and Other Stories (Stars and Sabers 978-1967550005, $30.00, 218pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, 08/18/2026)

Collection of 21 stories that look into human connections to each other, to technology, to the world, and to themselves. Includes stories such as “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont,” and “Split.”

 

 

Fletcher, C.A.: The Two of Us at the End of the World (Orbit US 978-0316538695, $19.99, 400pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Post-apocalyptic SF novel. As the world is falling apart, a couple is falling in love, and when they realize they’re some of the only people in the world who can still have kids, the government does too. Simultaneous with the Orbit UK edition.

 

 

Gilman, Carolyn Ives: Testament of Leaves (Fairwood Press 978-1958880302, $16.99, 120pp, formats: paperback, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

SF novella. On a faraway planet, inscrutinator Shameesh Kulkarni must find out why a linguist has died, but no one wants to help her besides a digital copy of the victim, and an octopod.

 

 

Hallow, S.M.: The Halls of the Dead (Harper Voyager US 978-0063446984, $30.00, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Gothic fantasy novel. Irene Haley has been practicing necromancy her entire life, and when her love, Agnes, is hanged, she decides to perform a resurrection, something that hasn’t been done successfully in two thousand years. A first novel.

 

 

Jae-Jones, S.: Guardians of Dawn: Suhwa (St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 978-1250191519, $22.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/18/2026)

Young-adult fantasy novel, fourth in the Guardians of Dawn series. When Min Suhwa leaves her convent for the first time in her life, she finds herself having to flee from a Huntsman who’s trying to take her life. Simultaneous with the Titan Books UK edition.

 

 

Lemming, Kimberly: I Punched an Alien and Now We’re in Couples Therapy (Penguin Random House/Berkley Romance 978-0593818657, $20.00, 352pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

SF romance novel. Blair is captured by aliens, and taken to their planet where she is to be put into a breeding program with the arrogant king Osid. Together, they must complete increasingly difficult, and dangerous challenges

 

 

Monét, Noelle: Bound by Fury (Simon & Schuster/McElderry 978-1665979870, $21.99, 496pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Young-adult fantasy novel. Harper goes to Black Mountain Academy to discover more about her new powers, but as she digs deeper, she realizes that the academy has sinister secrets beneath the surface. A first novel.

 

 

Moronova, K.M.: Once Written in Gilded Blood (Sourcebooks/Bloom Books 978-1464279041, $29.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Fantasy romance novel, second in the Cruel Fates duet. Alira married the Blood Knight in order to end the war, and prove that peace between demons and demigods is possible, but the gods are restless and people keep fighting. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK edition.

 

 

Pacton, Jamie & Podos, Rebecca: Homeward for a Spell (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 978-0593873670, $18.99, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Cozy romantic fantasy novel, second in a series. Sage and Araphi go on a life-changing adventure together with a team of ragtag explorers. As time goes on, Sage and Araphi begin to develop great chemistry together. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK edition.

 

 

Pedersen, Kailee: The Minimalist (St. Martin’s 978-1250328274, $18.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Horror novel. Mia Voss must finish the unfinished manuscript of her late teacher, Ryder Wakefield. Mia abandons her girlfriend to work in Ryder’s home, where she begins to unpack with the complicated bond she had with him.

 

 

Pratt, Tim: The Jewel and the Comet (Angry Robot UK 978-1836730224, $18.99, 400pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

SF novel, the second in the Nigh-Space multiverse. Glenn is pulled out of his normal life to navigate through the multiverse, while his girlfriend, Vivy, is called on a scouting trip to stop a comet.

 

 

Pulley, Natasha: The Salt King (Bloomsbury USA 978-1639737291, $29.99, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

SF novel. Former Jesuit priest Avelyn Brocken teams up with Jericho, a doctor, to protect the world from salt light, a dangerous substance that’s been turning people into salt. Simultaneous with the Orion UK edition.

 

 

Sandeen, Del: These Walls Remember (Penguin Random House/Berkley 978-0593955666, $30.00, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Horror novel. Strange things begin happening to sisters Mickie and Delilah after learn ingmore about the history of the house they inherited. Mickie must save her sister before they’re both changed forever by the house.

 

 

Schwab, Kathleen: Queenswood (Blackstone Publishing 979-8228465084, $29.99, 346pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Historical fantasy novel set in 12th-century Ireland. Angus, the Crown Prince of Faerie, must travel to the human world in order to find a maiden who can become the next Queen of Faerie, despite how much he doesn’t want to.
A first novel.

 

 

Sharabianlou, Lexie: The Blue Moon Café and 24-Hour Occult Emporium (Penguin Random House/Dell 979-8217094684, $20.00, 448pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Paranormal romance novel. Talula Smith runs the worst coffee shop in town, but that’s the point. The true purpose of the café is to protect and provide new identities for magical beings that are at risk. A first novel.

 

 

Singh, Amal: Slow Burn (Flame Tree Press UK 978-1787589889, $26.95, 224pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 08/18/2026)

Fantasy novel. Failed actor Rishi Tripathi is sent to an inverted version of Mumbai. In this world, he’s a superstar, but when the actions of his doppelganger start having consequences, he’s forced to make a hard decision.

 

 

Snow, Eli: The Divine Gardener’s Handbook (St. Martin’s/Saturday Books 978-1250395184, $31.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

New adult SF novel. Cyprin cheats her way into getting a job in the divine gardens, and starts working with her rival, Purcell. They begin to form a bond that might ruin Cyprin’s life. A first novel.

 

 

Young, E.G.: A (Dead) Thing Like Me (Holiday House 978-0823461066, $19.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 08/18/2026)

Young-adult ghost novel. A ghost named Hot Dog is summoned by Logan, an artist grieving the death of her best friend. Hot Dog hopes this will make her feel alive again, but she’ll need to confront the reason behind her death. A first novel.

 

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The post New Book Releases: Aug 18, 2026 appeared first on Locus.

My incurable optimist friend, Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired and my partner at Cool Tools and the Recomendo newsletter, has been posting essays on Substack mainly about the future, artificial intelligence, and what it means for humanity. I am loving these essays. — Read the rest

The post Kevin Kelly: AI will be a microscope we point at our own minds appeared first on Boing Boing.

The first thing I noticed when I gave up American technology was the silence.

My phone usually starts up before I get out of bed, buzzing every few minutes throughout the day with calls, messages, headlines, calendar reminders and social media alerts. It’s a constant pulse that averages nearly 200 iPhone notifications on weekends and twice as many Monday-to-Friday.

But on this warm mid-summer Sunday, my life was on an unlikely version of mute. After years of reporting on Europe’s push to wean itself off U.S. tech giants and cultivate homegrown alternatives, I had decided to test my own daily habit by cutting myself off from using any American technology for 72 hours.

No iPhone. No Mac. No Slack or Teams. No Google Search or Maps. No ChatGPT. No WhatsApp or Signal. No Facebook or Instagram feeds. No credit card payments.

I wondered if I would turn into a digital monk.

For three days, I set out to live and work in Brussels as if U.S. tech had suddenly become unavailable to me overnight. It was a purposefully fictional scenario rooted in a very real European anxiety: what happens if Washington weaponizes our continent’s Silicon Valley dependence and reaches for the tech “kill switch?”

Limited versions of that scenario have already surfaced. When U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration cut off French-born International Criminal Court judge Nicolas Guillou from U.S.-linked financial and technology services, he called it a form of “civil death.”

Meanwhile, U.S. export controls in June forced Anthropic to block foreign nationals from accessing two of its most advanced AI models, offering a glimpse of what government bans on access to cutting-edge technology can look like.

Such episodes feed into mounting fears that the Trump administration could use Europe’s overreliance on U.S. tech as leverage in trade fights or disputes over EU regulations. A Proton survey released earlier this month found that 74 percent of European business leaders worry such a cutoff could disrupt their operations.

In my own little experiment, the stakes were much lower. Yet I was about to find out that replacing American tools with those built here in Europe was going to make almost everything harder — and lonelier.

Trying to live without U.S. tech, I would find out, essentially amounts to trying to live without tech at all. That was partly because, like virtually all of my fellow Europeans, I had locked myself into those consumer choices.

Dumbphones and FOMO

The early symptoms of going cold turkey looked suspiciously like withdrawal.

On that first morning, with my iPhone shut off, I reached for a Nokia brick from Finland. The so-called dumbphone is the type of device now enjoying a second life among people detoxing from screen time and is also a favorite of drug dealers seeking to avoid getting busted by any tracking and data collection.

Several hours in, I realized there were no notifications on the Nokia. Nobody calls or texts anymore. Then came the shameful part: a sense of helplessness, followed by FOMO-fueled restlessness. The world had surely kept spinning at full speed, and I was missing it. For the next few days, I would still catch myself checking the phone compulsively like an addict.

“The phone aged you instantly,” my best friend joked later that day as we traded our now-standard FaceTime video calls for a regular one. It was unclear whether he meant the muffled audio or me struggling with a new-but-actually-old device, or both.

I did notice that I was pacing up and down my flat because my usually overstimulated brain apparently couldn’t handle focusing on a voice-only call.

One instant benefit from my dumbphone: no doomscrolling in bed.

It all took me back to my first cellphone at 13, when texting meant tapping the same tiny key several times for a single letter, every SMS cost money and abbreviations and emojis were not just stylistic choices but ways to squeeze more into a message.

I knew my social media life would be at risk in my experiment. European alternatives such as Mastodon have gained traction since Elon Musk turned Twitter into X. But who joins a social network when none of their friends are there?

That was fine. I was actually eager to disappear for a while, well aware of the anxiety social media induces in me and the insecurities created by constantly watching other people’s supposedly perfect lives.

Online shopping was out — but so too was paying by card in stores and restaurants. The payment networks I rely on are American: Visa and Mastercard dominate card payments across Europe, meaning that even a purchase made with a European bank card often still runs over U.S.-controlled rails.

It meant I had to buy everything using cash, which I hadn’t done regularly in ages. Fortunately, unlike in some other European countries, Belgian legislation requires merchants to accept banknotes. The hard part was finding some of those stores without the help of Google Maps, which I’d come to rely on almost as much as my credit cards.

The invisible grip

Swearing off Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and YouTube was also part of the deal — already eliminating a sizable chunk of my leisure time. But it turned out I could barely watch anything at all, or even properly test European streaming platforms, because my television and tablet both ran on Google software.

Thankfully, an offline Nintendo Switch from Japan, good old books and the legendary Snake game kept me company.

These invisible dependencies run deep. Beyond the products we use every day, U.S. systems often serve as gateways to European companies trying to take on Big Tech.

Take Sweden’s Spotify or the Estonia-based rival to Uber, Bolt. Both still heavily rely on U.S.-controlled app stores, operating systems, payment networks and other digital infrastructure.

And then there is the cloud: the data centers and servers that host websites, process data and route traffic. The vast majority of that market is dominated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google, whose infrastructure supports large parts of Europe’s digital economy.

Many corners of Europe would go dark if those services were shut down, with its economy, public administration and communications infrastructure struggling to function normally.

Working outside the stack

On Monday morning, I walked into the office with the slightly misplaced confidence that I had prepared for everything. My efficiency at work, admittedly during a very quiet summer week, took less of a hit than I expected.

I was still working from the office. I used an open-source, Linux-powered computer. I communicated by email through a Switzerland-based Proton address, browsed the web using the Norwegian browser Vivaldi and French search engine Qwant, wrote everything in LibreOffice and even tried Mistral’s generative AI assistant. And there was always a good old notebook.

I felt productive. But the workflow around me was not. The tools themselves worked perfectly well once I accepted that breaking years of habits would take time. The disruption ultimately came from stunted collaboration: meetings, messages, shared documents and the constant stream of small exchanges that keep a newsroom moving.

“It was like you disappeared,” one colleague would tell me later.

European alternatives do exist in that space. The problem is, just like for social media, they only work properly when everyone else uses them too or when competing systems are interoperable — something the EU has long tried to legislate and enforce, often against resistance from large technology platforms.

For this little while, despite technically being able to continue working, I became an outsider within my own team. I had to skip our routine video meetings on Slack and Teams, while missing messages sent over WhatsApp and Signal.

In a trade, a city and an era built around instant messaging, sending a good old SMS felt almost prehistoric — a reminder of the longstanding complaints from the European telecom industry about losing messaging and calling revenues to U.S. tech firms.

Ultimately, this underscored one of the major pinch points in Europe’s push for greater tech independence: digital sovereignty is not an individual project. It only works if people, companies and institutions move together.

On their own, individual efforts are more likely to leave people feeling digitally isolated rather than digitally sovereign.

Relax and relapse

And yet, there was something blissful about these three days.

The initial anxiety slowly gave way to a kind of peace. Of course, that feeling may only reflect that the experiment was temporary and my digital life had not been erased.

The experience nevertheless highlighted how much I had taken these tools for granted. I have placed all my eggs in the same digital basket: my communication channels, the tools I use to authenticate myself and access the digital world, my polished digital self and years of accumulated knowledge, all stored inside one sprawling digital safe.

The concern is no longer simply whether that safe could be broken into from the outside. It is also whether somebody could lock it — or empty it — from within.

Now, as you might wonder how I’ll act on what I’ve learned, I am strangely reminded of Covid.

Many of us emerged from that temporary era of lockdowns and involuntary limits full of healthy new habits and grand ideas about how our lifestyles should change, only to return remarkably quickly to our old routines.

Sadly, the same thing happened here. My iPhone came straight back into my pocket. Messages began flowing through again. My bank card returned to its usual place. Within hours, I had fallen comfortably back into the U.S. technology stack.

As I switched my smartphone back on, my screen lit up with incoming texts inquiring whether my little experiment was over. After 72 hours of old-school SMS exchanges, two different friends were both clearly eager to return to reality, sending me the same final text: “Back to WhatsApp?”

Having finished The Tainted Cup, I immediately dove into the next Ana and Din novel by Robert Jackson Bennett. I also finished the third in the series. Now I must wait.

This series fantasy worldbuilding inside of a detective novel is really a lot of fun. — Read the rest

The post Unfortunately, there are only three Ana and Din mysteries appeared first on Boing Boing.