August Clarke, The Felicity Complex (Erewhon 7/26) This darkly humorous SF dystopian satire pushes the concept of fembots to the limit. Six “women” bioengineered to serve billionaires in a Cold-War-era luxury fallout shelter start to rebel against their programming. All except Hallelujah, our heroine specimen. “The readers are left to wonder whether Hallelujah dreams of being a caretaker because it accords with the image of the feminine that she has been taught, or because it helps to allay her fears that she is actually a monster.” [Abigail Nussbaum]

 

 

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Chuck Wendig, The Calamities (Del Rey 8/26) A contemporary dark fantasy that melds horror and shocking family drama from the New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers. The first in The Fiends series. The heir to one of the world’s most influential families reckons with the demonic secret of their power: they’re half-demon fiends with dark magic from buying human souls – but he’s considering a different path and has some interesting friends who might help.

 

 

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Hawk, Shane & Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., eds. Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood (Penguin Random House/Vintage 8/26) This hair-raising second volume to the beloved Never Whistle at Night anthology consists of 21 dark stories by Indigenous authors, focusing all on all things horror. Authors include Kimberly Blaeser, Jessica Johns, Stephen Graham Jones, P.C. Verrone, and Joshua Whitehead. Foreword by Richard Van Camp; illustrated by Brent Learned.

 

 

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James Patrick Kelly, The Book of Bots (Fairwood 8/26) Over the past 30 years, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author James Patrick Kelly has been thinking a lot about robots, hence this collection of 12 stories all about them and their many forms. Fans of Kelly’s long running column in Asimov’s will be interested in two new essays included here: “The Comedy of Science” on the history of robots in SF and “Robots on Parade 2026” focusing on current developments in robotics and AI.

 

 

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Jo Walton, Everybody’s Perfect (Tor 6/26) This colorful fantasy novel is set in the Serenissima, a magical, shadow version of Venice, set at a cross­roads of nine worlds with nine different races/species who live together in the city. A laborer has a dream that the city will elect a magistrate who will marry the sea, and he passes his vision along, creating a chain of gossipers. Their shared beliefs shape the story which is told through all manners of sailors and seers, rogues and beggars, of all genders and forms.

 

 

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M.R. Carey, The Tinder Box (Orbit US 6/26) The bestselling author of The Girl With All the Gifts brings us a dark fantasy novel inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. A former soldier works for a reclusive widow who is secretly a witch of great power. He finds a magical artifact on a dead demon’s body that has fallen out of the sky, a tinderbox that can grant wishes – and could change the world. A story of witchcraft, trickery, and devilish wickedness.

 

 

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Natasha Pulley, The Salt King (Bloomsbury USA 6/26) This is a contemporary fantasy novel about religion and the power of belief from the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. A Jesuit priest returns to the small hometown he fled as a teen years later, investigating the strange death of a fellow priest, who was turned to salt after being healed. He learns that other strange events involving “salt light” have occurred in the mines where their god, the Salt King, is said to reside. The story unfurls into a global catastrophe, focusing on faith and apocalyptic magic with touches of queer romance.

 

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Robert Jackson Bennett, A Trade of Blood (Del Rey 8/26) This is the third volume of Bennett’s popular Shadow of the Leviathan fantasy mystery series “starring the impishly grinning, cheerfully inappropriate genius detective Ana, and her earnest and somewhat emo assistant Din.” [Abigail Nussbaum] This entry has Ana and Dinios investigating murder charges against the heir to a powerful rancher, whose death could trigger war. “As in the previous volumes, the mystery is twisty and entertaining, carrying our heroes… from the halls of great families now fallen into ruin, to shrines to forgotten gods hidden in the depths of the forest, to crypts and mausoleums.” [Abigail Nussbaum]

 

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Tlotlo Tsamaase, House of Margins (Erewhon 5/26) From the author of Womb City comes this contemporary horror novel featuring a promising young African writer who disap­pears during an exclusive writing residency at a colonial mansion. After her disappearance, her sister realizes that a new true crime podcast – sensationalized and surreal – contains details about exactly what happened. This haunting horror story is steeped in truths about the pub­lishing industry, racism, cultural appropriation, and online culture and utilizes a variety of sharp storytelling techniques.

 

 

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Vonda N. McIntyre, The Curve of the World (Aqueduct 5/26) A stunning posthumous his­torical fantasy novel of bronze-age Minoan civilization: a former bull dancer is required by tradition to take her adopted son to meet his birth mother, an epic journey from the Mediterranean to a far land on the Pacific coast. “The Curve of the World has its moments of adventure and thrills – including one transcendently imagined mountain crossing – but is more fundamentally a patient story of a slower world. It is a world with violence and cruelty, but where good-faith dialogue offers rewards….” [Niall Harrison]

#noinsta

 

S.C. Bandreddi, The Game of Oaths (Candlewick 6/26) Bandreddi’s debut outing is a young-adult historical dark fantasy novel about a magical circus in 1896 Paris. Performers trapped by contracts are forced to compete in a deadly tournament to entertain the elite while promising freedom for the winner – but one competitor is more interested in revenge. Full of magic and brutal action, with a diverse cast dealing with issues of colonialism that add a serious touch.

 

 

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Maurice Broaddus, A City Dreaming (Tor 6/26) The third and final volume in the Astra Black trilogy offers a complex mix of political intrigue and action, as a signal from a wormhole promises new arrivals, triggering conflicts across the solar system that threaten the Muungano Empire.

 

 

 

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Ellen Datlow, ed., Lovecraft’s Brood (Tachyon 7/26) A new anthology by noted editor Datlow offers 19 stories of cosmic dread from the last 20 years, with new takes on Lovecraftian themes. Authors include Laird Barron, Elizabeth Hand, Caitlín R. Kiernan, T. Kingfisher, Steve Rasnic Tem, Paul Tremblay, and L. Marie Wood.

 

 

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Kate Heartfield, Mercutio (Harper Voyager UK 5/26) In this ‘‘prequel’’ to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Romeo’s witty friend Mercutio gets his own story told, as he and Dante Alighieri team up to stop a Faerie invasion into the real world.

 

 

 

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Allan Kaster, ed., The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 10 (Infinivox 6/26) The latest volume in this popular SF year’s best anthology presents 11 stories from 2025 by an impressive roster of writers, including Vera Brook, Isabel J. Kim, Nancy Kress, Allen M. Steele, Bruce Sterling & Paul Di Filippo, and Peter Watts.

 

 

 

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Justin C. Key, The Hospital at the End of the World (Harper 2/26) This near-future SF novel imagines a world ‘‘in which hospitals are run entirely by AI and where doctors are little more than glorified software engineers.’’ [Ian Mond] Pok, a medical student, is forced to work in the only hospital not run by algorithms and learn how to deal with patients in a human way, all while trying to uncover his father’s secret.

 

 

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Haralambi Markov, The Language of Knives (Mythic Delirium 7/26) A collection of 13 dark fantasy/horror stories, four new, many involving elements of Slavic myth, dark humor, and questions of queer identity. This is Markov’s first collection, with an introduction by Ann VanderMeer.

 

 

 

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Alex Shvartsman, The Best of All Possible Planets (UFO Publishing 7/26) A satirical SF space opera novel, inspired primarily by Voltaire’s Candide (and not a little Douglas Adams), but with dozens more inspirations (and targets) from genre and pop culture (a list is provided). ‘‘But an exhaustive hunt for every Easter Egg would go against the spirit of this breezy read. Just relax and let the ride take you away from the actual world for a bit.’’ [Adrienne Martini] A small group sets out to get a new protective force shield for Earth, AKA Planet Dirt, and chaos naturally ensues.

 

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Jen St. Jude, Where You’ll Find Us (Bloomsbury US 6/26) This young-adult fantasy novel follows a disowned queer teen who finds a farmhouse out of time where queer kids from different decades have found refuge and share their experiences – until one day the clock starts ticking again.

 

 

 

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Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Best of Adrian Tchaikovsky (Subterranean 6/26) A hefty collection of 37 stories, chosen by the prolific author as his best, and with an Introduction by John Scalzi. Tchaikovsky notes he chose to omit some previously collected stories (notably those in his Shadows of the Apt series and his Lovecraftian Mythos stories) – what remains is a plentiful and entertaining mix of SF, fantasy, and ‘‘weirdness’’ that spans most of Tchaikovsky’s career, from early to recent tales.

#noinsta

 

Mahbod & Mahyar A. Amouzegar, To­morrow Brings Joy: Elysium (University of New Orleans Press 3/26) Near-future SF novel set in Elysium, a utopian society where humans and androids coexist, but Dolores and her android companion KR uncover a place called Walled City, a par­allel social experiment that reveals some unsettling truths about Elysium’s origins.

 

 

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Andrea Hairston, The Redemption Center Is Closed on Sundays (Tor 5/26) Multi-dimensional SF mystery novel. A local celebrity is murdered in a small town with a mysterious building where time stands still and dimensions collide. But only an inter-dimensional traveling St. Berdoodle named Oona knows who the killer is. “My favorite part of [the book] is not its playful premise, but that misfits, local personalities, and nosy neighbors are the beating heart of the book.” [Maya C. James]

 

 

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S.L. Huang, The Language of Liars (Tordotcom 4/26) SF novella about body jumping, secrets, linguistics, and consequences. Reo, a member of an empathic species, trains in linguistics to help him understand and “jump” into the mind of a Star Eater, in order to spy on the species and find out why they are dying out – a desperate concern for many worlds, since Star Eaters are the only beings capable of mining a substance necessary for faster-than-light travel – but Reo has no idea just how dark a secret he’ll uncover. “Huang’s book works beauti­fully on multiple levels. It’s a tautly plotted spy-thriller-mystery.” [Vanessa Fogg]

 

 

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T. Kingfisher, Wolf Worm (Nightfire 3/26) Southern gothic horror novel set in 1899 North Carolina, where scientific illustrator Sonia Wilson jumps at the chance to illustrate a reclusive scientist’s collection of insects. “Once the pace accelerates and the true nature of [the scientist’s] research becomes clear, those who came for the horror won’t be disappointed.” [Gary K. Wolfe]

 

 

 

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TJ Klune, We Burned So Bright (Tor 2026) Cozy end-of-the-world SF short novel about two gay men, together for 40 years, who decide to take a road trip as a wandering black hole ap­proaches. They race from Maine to Washington state to take care of unfinished business and meet a kaleidoscope of characters along the way.

 

 

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Ann Leckie, Radiant Star (Orbit US 5/26) Standalone SF novel in the world of the Imperial Radch, who consider the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star to be an antiquated religious site, but decide to allow one last man to join the mummified bodies there to become a “liv­ing saint”, and naturally complications ensue. “What it is about, I think, is where the various characters land in their attempts to find where they belong, where they can be themselves, where they can be at home.” [Russell Letson]

 

 

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James Machell, Human Voices, Alien Con­versations (Space Cowboy 6/26) Non-fiction collection of 16 interviews on writing and SF, conducted by Machell, asking intriguing ques­tions of an interesting mix of authors, artists, critics, and editors, from old legends to new tal­ents, including Paolo Bacigalupi, Pat Cadigan, P. Djèlí Clark, Neil Clarke, John Clute, Samuel R. Delany, Ai Jiang, Ken Liu, Cheryl Morgan, and John Picacio.

 

 

 

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Suzanne Palmer, Ode to the Half-Broken (DAW 5/26) A hopeful post-apocalyptic SF novel. An old ex-assassin robot, who’s been hiding out for decades in the remains of the New York Botanical Gardens, is forced to reconnect with the outside world as he looks for his stolen leg with the help of a human mechanic and a chatty cyborg dog. “This book is a masterclass in how to write near-future SF that features both an old-school wisdom and charms and a totally contemporary vibe.” [Paul Di Filippo]

 

 

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Cameron Reed, What We Are Seeking (Tor 4/26) SF mystery/adventure novel. John Maraintha is abandoned on the planet Scythia, a strange world where “survival means transformation”, where plants give birth to insects, trees kill, artificial monsters and aliens lurk, and people follow a barbaric custom called marriage. “’Things that are changing are beautiful’ is a recurring phrase in What We Are Seeking. Talking to each other is how we understand this, how we make sure we are fitting the categories to the people, not the people to the categories.” [Niall Harrison]

 

 

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Paul Tremblay, Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep Near-future SF horror novel with darkly humorous moments. A female gamer gets a temp job piloting a comatose man, driving him with a game-like controller across the country for the company that owns the AI tech in his brain – while he’s tortured by surreal nightmares. “This lone harried individual experiencing his ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’-style mental captivity does evoke Phildickian ego-unease expertly and vividly.” [Paul Di Filippo]

#noinsta

 

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Nghi Vo, A Long and Speaking Silence (Tordotcom 5/26) Fantasy novella, seventh in the Singing Hills Cycle, a prequel to previous tales, following Chih’s earliest days as a wandering cleric with their hoopoe companion Almost Bril­liant, dealing with a refugee crisis and unraveling a mystery. “It continues to be the most rewarding cycle of novellas I’ve seen in recent years.” [Gary K. Wolfe]

 

 

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