Swords and Spaceships for June 11

Ace protagonist! Ellie is a teenager in a world just a little different from our own, one where paranormal activity is real and she can raise the ghosts of dead animals. When her cousin dies in an apparent car crash, his ghost warns her that he was actually murdered. Assisted by her family and best friend, she sets out to crack her first case as an investigator and uncovers something far darker and older than she could have imagined.

One of the protagonists is ace–and fat! Eldra is a city governed by ancient prophecies, which also have kept the high council firmly in power. But now that the last of the prophecies has come to pass, unrest spreads, murders abound, and rebels rise–and the orphaned daughter of two of those rebels is determined to take down the high council once and for all.

Protagonist is aro-ace and happy about it! To help pay her brother’s medical bills, Aisha volunteers to become a cybernetically enhanced soldier sworn to protect the Fleet her family calls home. She awakens from enhancement with only hazy memories of why she made her choice–but if she makes it through training and beats out her rivals for top placement, she might regain that lost part of herself and forge new loyalties as well.

Multiple ace characters! Guerline is the second child of the imperial family, and thus she has very few responsibilities–be quiet, don’t make waves, and don’t fall in love with her low-born companion. The last of these directives is the one that gives her the most trouble… and then she’s abruptly forced into the role of empress and has far more than love to worry about.

Protagonist is ace and gay! A cyborg assassin without a past named Vax is sent by Cyrex Corp to assassinate a troublesome journalist who seems to know more about him than he should. The job should be easy. But first Vax somehow fails at the hit and ends up the next target of his employer… and then worse, he might be falling in love with the person he failed to kill.

Ace POV character who is also Deaf! Opal has always dreamed of joining the elite superhero team called the Sentinels, but when her superhero dad is unjustly arrested, she also wants to tell the world about the murky actions of the Altered Persons Bureau who made him disappear into prison. Then in the Sentinels, she finds not a while-oiled machine, but a young team on the verge of breaking apart due to corruption, danger, and family secrets.

Aro-ace protagonist here! Sir Violet’s main job is to go talk to the local dragon every time something in his village goes missing and retrieve the item. This time, however, it seems the dragon has taken the town baker–only when Sir Violet shows up, the dragon is innocent and there’s a much more complicated mystery to be solved.

Ace protagonist (who is seen again in other books in the series)! Hopefully you’ve already heard of this one–it’s the start of a delightful novella series about Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, where children and teens who have gone through a portal to a fantasy world and returned to their own deeply altered by the experience try to build new homes and families–or find their way back to the realm of magic where they truly fit in.