2026 is already shaping up to be a huge year for fantasy stacked with major returns, bold new releases, and more must-reads than any TBR can reasonably survive. If you were hoping to catch up on your backlog… sorry in advance.
Some of the genre’s biggest names are back with new installments in long-running series and beloved Worlds. We’ve got the return of The Dresden Files and Dungeon Crawler Carl, new work from Tad Williams, and another sharp entry from Mark Lawrence.
But 2026 isn’t just about epic doorstoppers and ongoing sagas. Alongside those heavyweights are shorter, stranger, and more intimate releases: new short fiction from Amal El-Mohtar and Alix E. Harrow, stories that remind us how much fantasy can do in just a few pages. There’s sweeping myth and history in The Tapestry of Fate by S. A. Chakraborty, and Katherine Arden’s Unicorn Hunters promises something delightfully off-kilter and sharp.
Below, I’ll start with my Top 5, those books I’m personally counting down the days for, before listing the rest of 2026’s most anticipated fantasy releases in publication order. Whether you’re here for epic stakes, literary magic, or something a little harder to categorize, 2026 already looks like a very good year to be a fantasy reader.
Top 5 Most Anticipated Releases of 2026
#5 A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett
Shadow of the Leviathan #3 | August 11 | Del Rey
Flavor of Fantasy: Mystery Fantasy
If you haven't yet, do yourself a favor and start The Tainted Cup, the first book of the Shadow of the Leviathan series. There's a reason it was one of our top five bestselling series of 2025.
In the canton of Sapirdad, two of the Empire's most powerful families are moments away from going to war with each other, their hundreds of retainers gathered with swords drawn. If blood is spilled, the whole of the empire may be plunged into starvation and chaos.
To deescalate matters, someone must do the impossible: prove that one family's eldest son is innocent of a gruesome and unforgivable murder, despite the incontrovertible evidence against him.
It is with this undertaking that the great detective Ana Dolabra is tasked, her assistant Din at her side--and the two find themselves racing with great speed and little dignity to the scene.
As ever, the impossible proves little obstacle for the deadly combination of Ana's intellect and Din's keen eye, and mere hours after riding into the dusty town, Ana glimpses the greater pattern behind the crime. A deeper, subtler web of death is being woven in plain sight, by a mastermind with an ancient magical technology at his disposal.
But even Ana's uncanny insight is of little use when each new suspect she uncovers ends up dead--with each new killing calculated to bring tensions between the two rival clans past the boiling point. And as Din pursues their adversary through the canton's wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses, he finds his loyalties divided in unexpected ways.
#4 The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden
June 2 | Del Rey
Flavors of Fantasy: Historical Fantasy, Fairy Tale
For some reason historical fantasy and unicorns rarely do it for me. Color me surprised then when I read The Unicorn Hunters jacket copy and was immediately interested. Couple this interest with the praise for Arden's previous work and I'm certain I'll tackle this novel this year.
Anne of Brittany was a child when her realm was invaded, her home besieged, and her royal father driven to his death.
Now her treasury is empty, her land occupied by her enemies, and she is ordered, under threat of renewed war, to become queen of her conquerors and marry the King of France.
This marriage means her country's annexation. But Anne promised her father that Brittany would never be conquered.
Defiantly, she betroths herself in secret to France's greatest enemy. But in a world where courts may spy on each other by magic, there is only one way to solemnize this illicit union.
Anne takes her court deep into a legendary forest, where the court diviners' skill cannot reach. The world thinks they are only a hunting party, coursing after unicorns. But that is a lie, a trick, a feint. No one in living memory has seen a unicorn. All Anne wants is this secret wedding, which is her only hope of salvation.
But when against all hope a unicorn appears and a stranger out of legend stumbles from the trees and falls at her feet, Anne is plunged into a world of enchantment where a doomed sovereign might find the power to change her own and her country's destiny--or be lost in the shadows forever.
#3 The Dungeon Book by Gareth Hanrahan
August 11 | Orbit
Flavors of Fantasy: Epic Fantasy, Humorous Fantasy
Hanrahans' Lands of the Firstborn series has been high on my TBR for a few years now. I was excited then to learn about this new work of his. Now I'm not sure which I should tackle first. The Dungeon Book sounds like a wonderful mix of humor with what I love about epic fantasy. That its a standalone only helps it creep ever higher up Mount TBR.
Enter a world of dungeons and dragons, magic and manticores, and goblins and gargoyles . . .
Bait doesn't remember a time before the dungeon. Before the dragon stole her from her cot. She doesn't know what her name was before she was handed over to the monstrous denizens of the dungeon beneath the sorcerer's tower. Luckily for Bait, they decided not to eat her. And so she grew up in the dark - the goblins her adopted family, a vengeful minotaur her protector, a sentient skull her tutor, and a blob of corridor slime her main source of nutrition.
But the labyrinthine dungeon, with its haunted halls, buried temples and forgotten magics, draws treasure hunters like moths to flame. And as the outside world starts to intrude, Bait will learn what it means to be monstrous and she will have to decide where she truly belongs.
#2 Seasons of Glass & Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
March 24 | Tordotcom
Flavor: Fairy Tale
When this came across my desk, I realized just how long it has been since I've read a short story. And that's an absolute shame. I'm supremely curious to see what El-Mohtar, co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War, does with the form.
With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.
Full of Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Hugo Award-winning and nominated stories, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories includes "Seasons of Glass and Iron," "The Green Book," "Madeleine," "The Lonely Sea in the Sky," "And Their Lips Rang with the Sun," "The Truth About Owls," "A Hollow Play," "Anabasis," "To Follow the Waves," "John Hollowback and the Witch," "Florilegia, or, Some Lies About Flowers," "Pockets," and more.
#1 The Splintered Sun by Tad Williams
Osten Ard | October 6 | DAW Books
Flavor: Epic Fantasy
Nearly any sort of book Tad Williams announces is going right up near the top of my TBR. He's long since earned my trust as a masterful storyteller. But, we're not just getting any old story. We're getting a standalone entry in the world of Osten Ard. If you've never stepped foot in Osten Ard or have been wary about committing to such massive volumes The Splintered Sun should be a great entry.
A swashbuckling bandit and his band of misfit rebels navigate a kingdom menaced by dark sorcery and war in this fast-moving epic fantasy
With the old King of Hernystir's health failing, warlords carve up the land and rival factions clash over the rightful heir. Into this chaos steps Flann, joined by allies both noble and common, to help the King's one legitimate heir claim his father's blessing and restore stability. But enemies, human and inhuman, stalk their every move, determined to end Flann's quest before it begins.
Packed with action, unforgettable characters, and the sweeping imagination that has made Tad Williams one of fantasy's most beloved voices, this is Osten Ard as you've never seen it before.
2026 Most Anticipated Releases sorted by release date
Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher
January 20 | Tordotcom
Flavor of Fantasy: Cozy Fantasy
No one knows exactly how the Goblin War began, but folks will tell you that goblins are stinking, slinking, filthy, sheep-stealing, henhouse-raiding, obnoxious, rude, and violent. Goblins would actually agree with all this, and might throw in "cowardly" and "lazy" too for good measure.
But goblins don't go around killing people for fun, no matter what the propaganda posters say. And when a confrontation with an evil wizard lands a troop of nine goblins deep behind enemy lines, goblin sergeant Nessilka must figure out how to keep her hapless band together and get them home in one piece.
Unfortunately, between them and safety lies a forest full of elves, trolls, monsters, and that most terrifying of creatures...a human being.
Twelve Months by Jim Butcher
Dresden Files #18 | January 20 | Tor Books
Flavor of Fantasy: Urban
One year. 365 days. Twelve months.
Harry Dresden has been through a lot, and so has his city. After Harry and his allies narrowly managed to save Chicago from being razed to the ground, everything is different--and it's not just the current lack of electricity.
In the battle, Harry lost people he cared about. And that's the kind of loss that takes a toll. Harry being Harry, he's doing his level best to help the city and his friends recover and rebuild. But it's a heavy load, and he needs time.
But time is one thing Harry doesn't have. Ghouls are prowling Chicago and taking out innocent civilians. Harry's brother is dying, and Harry doesn't know how to help him. And last but certainly not least, the Winter Queen of the Fae has allied with the White Court of vampires--and Harry's been betrothed to the seductive, deadly vampire Lara Raith to seal the deal.
It's been a tough year. More than ever, the city needs Harry Dresden the wizard--but after loss and grief, is there enough left of Harry Dresden the man to rise to the challenge?
Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
Cosmere | February 3 | Tor Books
Flavor of Fantasy: Epic Fantasy
A legendary standalone novel that navigates the seas and the stars of a far-future Cosmere.
All his life, Sixth of the Dusk has been a traditional trapper of Aviar--the supernatural birds his people bond with--on the deadly island of Patji. Then one fateful night he propels his people into a race to modernize before they can be conquered by the Ones Above, invaders from the stars who want to exploit the Aviar.
But it's a race they're losing, and Dusk fears his people will lose themselves in the effort. When a chance comes to sail into the expanse of the emberdark beyond a mystical portal, Dusk sets off to find his people's salvation with only a canoe, his birds, and all the grit and canniness of a Patji trapper.
Elsewhere in the emberdark is a young dragon chained in human form: Starling of the starship Dynamic. She and her ragtag crew of exiles are deep in debt and on the brink of losing their freedom. So when she finds an ancient map to a hidden portal between the emberdark and the physical realm, she seizes the chance at a lucrative discovery.
These unlikely allies might just be the solution to each other's crises. In their search for independence, Dusk and Starling face perilous bargains, poisonous politics, and the destructive echo of a dead god.
Sanderson expands his thrilling novella "Sixth of the Dusk" into a mythic novel of legends, lore, and warring galactic superpowers.
Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons
March 3 | Tor Books
Flavor of Fantasy: Epic Fantasy
Centuries ago, necromancy almost destroyed the world. That's how history remembers it.
History remembers it wrong.
Mathaiik has trained all his life to join the sacred order of the Idallik Knights, charged with defending their world from the forces of necromancy. Only vestiges of that cursed magic remain, nothing like the fabled days of the Grim Lords, the undead wizards who once nearly destroyed the world.
But when an even stranger kind of monster begins to wake, the Knights quickly prove powerless to stop them. Whole forests are coming alive and devouring anyone so foolish as to trespass, as if the land itself has turned upon humanity.
It's a good thing, then, that the Grim Lords were never truly destroyed. One of their number sleeps below the Knights' very fortress. And when an army of twisted tree monsters attacks the young initiates in his charge, Math decides to do the unthinkable: he wakes her up.
This is only the beginning of his problems. Because said necromancer, Kaiataris, knows something history has forgotten. The threat of this wild magic is part of a cycle that has repeated countless times-life after death, chaos after order. And if she and Math can't find a new way to balance the scales, this won't just be the end of the world as they know it, but the end of all life, everywhere.
Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tyrant Philosophers #4 | March 10 | Head of Zeus
Flavor: Epic Fantasy
As the Palleseen's campaign to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world rages on, Eres Ffenegh - "the City on the Back of a Crab" - is the next state slated for conquest. But its citizens won't give up sovereignty easily.
The siege has dragged into winter and the defenders - both locals and Pal renegades - hold an uneasy alliance against the enemy at the gates, while the Pal army is looking over its shoulder for the next self-destructive dictate of their government back home.
Within the city, Devil Jack, a good man apprenticed to the notorious conjurer known as the Widow, is driven to bargaining with hell to get back what he's lost. Meanwhile Kiffel ea Leachan is the city's champion, a child of privilege who's just lost everything to the invaders. Both must try to survive the siege and make their own destinies in a world that's cut them loose.
Outside the city, Pal reinforcements have arrived to take the city, but it's the sort of help that might just damn them all...
No Man's Land by Richard Morgan
March 24 | Del Rey Books
The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars--and maybe it would have been, had an even greater, otherworldly foe not risen to extinguish the conflict. Overnight, as guns blazed in France and Flanders, village after village in the quiet British countryside was swallowed by the Forest. And within the Forest lurk the Huldu--an ancient fae race, monstrous in their inhumanity, who have decided that mankind's ascendency over the world can endure no longer.
Enter Duncan Silver. Scarred by the war, fueled by a rage deeper than the trenches in which he once fought, Duncan is determined to show the Huldu that the world is not theirs for the taking. Armed with a deadly iron knife and a cut-down trench gun filled with iron shot, Duncan will stop at nothing to return the children the Huldu have stolen to the arms of their families. No matter how many Huldu he may have to slaughter along the way.
But when he is hired by a mother to return her four-year-old daughter, Miriam--taken by the Huldu six months past and replaced with a changeling--all hell breaks loose. Miriam is a pawn in a much bigger game for dominance than Duncan ever expected, and several long-buried secrets from his past are about to be violently resurrected.
Daughter of Crows by Mark Lawrence
The Academy of Kindness #1 | March 24 | Ace Books
Flavor of Fantasy: Epic Fantasy
Set a thief to catch a thief. Set a monster to punish monsters.
The Academy of Kindness exists to create agents of retribution, cast in the image of the Furies--known as the kindly ones--against whom even the gods hesitate to stand. Each year a hundred girls are sold to the Academy. Ten years later only three will emerge.
The Academy's halls run with blood. The few that survive its decade-long nightmare have been forged on the sands of the Wound Garden. They have learned ancient secrets amid the necrotic fumes of the Bone Garden. They leave its gates as avatars of vengeance, bound to uphold the oldest of laws.
Only the most desperate would sell their child to the Kindnesses. But Rue ... she sold herself. And now, a lifetime later, a long and bloody lifetime later, just as she has discovered peace, war has been brought to an old woman's doorstep.
That was a mistake.
Steel Gods by Richard Swan
The Great Silence | March 31 | Orbit
Flavor of Fantasy: Epic Fantasy
Industrial Revolution Beckons. Spiritual Catastrophe Looms. And the Empire of the Wolf teeters on the brink.
The true horror of the Great Silence has been revealed. As nation after nation succumbs to the mind-plague and Sova scrambles to enlist help from across the globe, Ambassador Renata Rainer has been given a simple task: save the world. While she travels to the Principality of Casimir to enlist the help of the Empire's oldest enemy, Lieutenant Peter Kleist returns to the haunted forests of the New East to search for ancient answers--and finally confront the terrible fate that awaits him.
In their wake, a task force of engineers, soldiers, and arcane experts will try and unpick the final secrets of the Great Silence--on both sides of the mortal plane. But time is running out. Count Lamprecht von Oldenburg has returned to the capital, armed with a terrible vision and enough madness to see it through. Those who stand in his way face a simple choice: join the revolution, or die.
As the world tips towards chaos, all paths converge on the Eye of the Sea, where the fabric of reality wears thin--and where the Empire of the Wolf must confront the most terrible enemy it has ever known.
We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune
April 28 | Tor Books
The road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky....
Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they've experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world.Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they've ever known will be gone.
Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They're in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it's all over.
On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how--impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends.
And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough.
Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes?
A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi Vo
Singing Hills #7 | May 5 | Tordotcom
Every story begins somewhere.
On the banks of the Ya-lé River, the town of Luntien gathers to celebrate the start of the rainy season, but the celebration is marred by the arrival of refugees from the sea. Everyone has a story about the foreigners newly in their midst--lazy, violent, unwanted--while the refugees themselves grieve the loss of the home they loved.
Cleric Chih, very recently still Novice Chih, is also a stranger in Luntien. A moment of carelessness and bad luck leaves them waiting tables as they struggle to establish themself as a real cleric. A cleric's job is to listen and record, but the stories emerging in Luntien are ugly and violent, as hard to predict as the river itself. With their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant by their side, Chih must help the refugees while also unraveling a mystery that may have roots in their own faraway home in the abbey of Singing Hills.
In the seventh entry of the award-winning Singing Hills series, we meet Chih and Almost Brilliant just beginning their journey together as Chih assumes their place on the road and in the world.
The novellas of the Singing Hills series are standalone stories linked by the Cleric Chih, and may be read in any order.
A Parade of Horribles by Matt Dinniman
Dungeon Crawler Carl #8 | May 12 | Ace Books
Flavors of Fantasy: Progression Fantasy, Humorous Fantasy
Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat Princess Donut must compete in increasingly difficult and unhinged challenges in order to survive the tenth floor of the dungeon.
Mortedant's Peril by R. J. Barker
Trials of Irody Hasp #1 | May 19 | Tor Books
Flavor of Fantasy: Mystery
In a city of ancient automata, strange spirits, and sleeping gods, a cleric of death finds his own life on the line in this vividly imagined fantasy murder mystery from the acclaimed author of The Bone Ships and Age of Assassins.
Irody Hasp is a Mortedant, a cleric tasked with reading the last thoughts of the dead--though no one thanks him for it. No Mortedant is popular, but Irody is scarcely tolerated even by the other members of his own guild, and rarely selected for anything but the lowliest of jobs.
This impoverished existence would be dismal enough--but after reading the corpse of a low-level records keeper, Irody's troubles quickly multiply when his own apprentice is murdered, and all fingers point to him as a suspect. The only way to save his own skin is to find the real culprit himself, an investigation that quickly attracts powerful enemies with few scruples, and draws him into a plot that threatens the entire corrupt yet wondrous city he calls home.
Perfect for fans of The Lies of Locke Lamora, Foundryside, and Witness for the Dead, this investigative misadventure begins a perilous new series by award-winning author RJ Barker.
The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty
Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi #2 | May 19 | Harper Voyager
Amina al-Sirafi thinks she's struck gold. Tasked with hunting down arcane artifacts for the council of immortal peris, she can savor the occasional rollicking adventure on the high seas with her cherished criminal companions while still returning home to raise her beloved daughter, Marjana. But when Raksh, the spirit of discord with whom she is reluctantly wed, provokes the council's wrath, Amina is charged with a seemingly impossible quest: steal a spindle capable of rewriting fate from a mysterious sorceress on an island no one can escape.
Forced to leave Marjana--who is increasingly frustrated at being peddled what are clearly lies about her mother's life and her own past--Amina finds her mission almost immediately thrown into peril. But deadly storms, an erratic poison mistress, and old enemies are the least of her worries. For the peris' story is unraveling, hinting at a far deadlier game whose rules Amina must swiftly puzzle out. A game that sets her against an adversary more cunning and powerful than she has ever faced.
A game that not everyone on her crew wants her to win.
I Hear a New World by Alan Moore
Long London | May 26 | Bloomsbury Publishing
Flavors of Fantasy: Historical Fantasy and Literary Fantasy
It's 1958 and Dennis Knuckleyard has decided to leave his adventures in the Great When in the past where they belong. For nine years, he's avoided so much as thinking about the magical version of London, until he rediscovers an unpleasant reminder of his last adventure-a key that he'd secretly brought into his own world from the other for safekeeping.
But while Dennis may believe he's done with the Great When, it's far from done with him. When Dennis gives the key to a friend, its magical properties reawaken, bringing creatures from the other world into Dennis's and sparking riots in Notting Hill. Even worse, Dennis's old crush Grace Shilling has been forced into the Great When to investigate strange happenings in both cities.
Desperate to keep Grace safe, Dennis follows her into Long London. But once inside the other city, it will not let him go away again so easily, and Dennis and Grace must fight to set things right in the Great When and their own world, or forever lose their lives-and each other.
Full of Moore's characteristically stunning world building and rollicking prose, I Hear a New World is the extraordinary second adventure in the Long London series.
A Dance of Burning Blades by M. H. Ayinde
Invoker #2 | June 9 | Saga Press
Flavor of Fantasy: Epic Fantasy
Tension simmers across Nine Lands. In the capital, the people of Lordsgrave seethe with resentment after the horrors of the greyblood attack. Clan Adatali is in open rebellion against the king, and as war in the Feverlands rages on, a humble tree feller--who looks a lot like missing invoker Jinao Mizito--has not forgotten the promise he made to avenge his brother.
Meanwhile, in the shadows, the king's daughter Lyela continues to move her pieces across the board. Can the people of the Nine Lands reclaim their stolen history and unlock the secrets that have been kept from them for centuries?
Songs of the Dead by Brandon Sanderson & Peter Orullian
The Strata Wars #1 | June 16 | Saga Press
Flavors of Fantasy: Urban Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
A London rocker is faced with a life-or-death choice when he realizes that a powerful society of magic wielders are the only ones keeping London safe.
When Jack Solomon, a struggling musician who works in London's West End, is killed, he awakens to a new reality in which light and music are used to create magic and where living eras of the past sprawl beneath modern London, layer upon layer, all the way back to recorded history.
Jack also soon discovers that many of those who reside in the stratums of London's past have grown angry with the present world, and that their anger is being channeled by a powerful society of light-and-music-based magic wielders who can cross the realms between life and death, between the present and the past. A past where the dead are sowing revolution against the living, and all of history is at stake.
Welcome to the Strata Wars.
Everybody's Perfect by Jo Walton
June 30 | Tor Books
Piranesi meets Swordspoint in an elegant relay race through fantasy Venice from Hugo award-winning author Jo Walton
The Serenissima is built from mist and belief, a mythical shadow sister to Venice and crossroads of the nine worlds.
When a laborer called Tiry has a dream that Serenissima will have a doge, and that they will marry the sea, he tells it to a fortune teller named Khadsha. She tells her apprentice, a gondolier called Taddeo, who tells a cop named Gom, who's heard it from five people this morning already. And by that point, it's already settled into the bones of the Serenissima, more than half-fated.
Everybody's Perfect is a gentle, shifting, structurally inventive narrative of startling beauty that will make you rethink everything you think you know about fantasy.
Season of the Serpent by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
The Nameless Republic #3 | August 11 | Orbit
Flavor of Fantasy: Epic Fantasy
The old world has fallen. Now is the time of serpents.
The continent is split. The islands have sunk. The empire of Bassa is no more. With the resistant Nameless Republic and the conquering Kangalaland on the brink of war, all must choose a side: ally, or fall. Oon's heroes and villains must rise from their ashes and meet a Third Great War.
Peace won't come easy. Long-lost family will fight to reach Danso before war erases him forever. Lilong has survived the island catastrophe but lost her power, and will do anything to get it back. And fate will find Esheme where it left her--will the dead queen rise again?
For Oon, the first season of the five states is a season of serpents. After the storms pass and winds blow, what will remain? And who will survive?
Engines of Reason by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Elder Race #2 | September 1 | Tordotcom
Flavors: Epic Fantasy, Science Fiction
On a planet where stories govern identity, where science and magic are a merely point of view, a fallen princess, a reluctant wizard, and a precocious child must unravel the past to shape the future.
Betrayal, ancient myths, and the clash of worlds converge in this spellbinding tale of courage, friendship, and self-discovery.
A profound exploration of identity, memory, and discovery from one of science fiction's most compelling voices.
The Scarlet Ball by Nghi Vo
October 6 | Tor Books
Pick a face, pick a fate.
Judith Ban, former convent girl, courtesan, and failed thief, is on the lookout for her next identity. The daughter of a Vietnamese adventuress and a French naval officer, she's no stranger to risk, but she's unprepared for the secrets of New York's legendary Four Hundred, or for the women who build their power at the city's heart through blood-soaked, gold-etched rituals of demonic marriage.
In exchange for enough wealth to outrun her past, Judith strikes a deal with the matriarch of the powerful Howard family: she will stand in for the missing Howard granddaughter, who was poised to make her debut when she disappeared. With Miss Iphigenia Marshall's face stitched over her own, Judith is white, rich, and about to risk body and soul in the deadly games that determine which girls will find a match--and which will be devoured. If she can keep her wits and her life, her reward will be a husband with undreamt-of power who will be hers to command... so long as she can keep his infinite hungers fed. But to survive the season, Judith will have to seduce a storm in the shape of a man, before the night to which everything has been leading--the Scarlet Ball where the demons choose their brides.
A razor-sharp subversion of romance tropes and nightmare of manners, Vo's fusion of history and fantasy does for Edith Wharton what her acclaimed debut The Chosen and the Beautiful did for F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman
Blacktongue #2 | October 13 | Tor Books
Flavors of Fantasy: Epic Fantasy, Humorous Fantasy
Professional thief and inveterate trickster Kinch Na Shannack has always enjoyed a good book. But now his life, and the future of all of Manreach, depends on him deciphering a very bad book indeed; a stolen, sentient tome that tries to kill him every time he opens it--and often when it's closed.
Galva, veteran of the goblin wars and death's sworn handmaiden, has vowed to protect Kinch while he mines the book for its dark magic and even darker secrets. She does so not for Kinch's sake--though the cheeky bastard is growing on her--but because the book is the key to stopping the shadowy tyrants out to kill the queen she serves, and loves.
The ruthless, all-seeing Taker's Guild dogs their every step, and thief and knight must flee the known world entirely if they hope to succeed in their mission. But trouble finds Kinch wherever he goes, and the pair may have traded the devil they know for horrors far darker and hungrier as they enter lands unknown.
The Slantwise Histories and Other Stories by Alix E. Harrow
October 20 | Tordotcom
Flavors of Fantasy: Historical Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Fairy Tale
A new collection of stories about tricksters and ghosts, ordinary magic and mundane spectacle. Alix E. Harrow spins tales never-told and seen just outside the periphery of reality-in the tradition of Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, and Carmen Maria Machado, these resonant and defiant stories leap from the page and dance in and out of a history that never was (but could have been) and into a future startingly like our own.
What's a legend, except a history told slantwise?
These are stories about the past as it wasn't quite, but might have been, from ancient battlefields all the way up through roadside attractions off I-70. They're about the people caught in the mean jaws of history: the women and workers, the soldiers and mothers, everyone shoved into the margins of the world.
But these aren't stories about victims --they're stories about the ones that got away. The ones who defected and dissented, who broke the rules, who ran and tossed a match behind them.
THE SLANTWISE HISTORIES collects the best known short fiction of Alix. E. Harrow, including the Hugo-award winning "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies" and, for the first time in print, "The Six Deaths of the Saint" and "The Knight and the Butcherbird". Updated to reflect the author's preferred editions, Slantwise Histories also includes "The Long Way Up", "Roadside Attraction", "Mr. Death", "The Ransom of Miss Coraline Connelly", "The Sycamore and the Sybil", "Do Not Look Back, My Lion", "The Whisper in the Weld", "Dustbaby", and four all-new short stories.
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