Author: Alex Acks

A once renowned and feared band of mercenaries has retired, the former members becoming some combination of old, drunk, and out of shape–and mostly pretty content with it. But then one of the old guard shows up at the former leader, Clay’s, door and desperately needs help. Clay must get the band back together for one last job that could be the death of them all.

A struggling stand-up comedian gets a new gig by becoming a Genrenaut, a member of a secret organization of interdimensional travelers who seek out broken story archetypes and fix them. If they don’t correct the narrative dysfunction of the worlds they go to? The ripples will bring destruction to their homes.

This is the start of a rip-roaring series about Evie, the personal assistant to a superhero who also happens to be her childhood best friend. Their friendship occasionally makes things a bit awkward as she navigates her super boss’s diva tantrums and demon-blood-stained leather pants. But then Evie has to pose as her boss for one night, and her secret gets out–she also has super powers, and her job’s about to get a lot more difficult.

Becoming a feared–and effective–dark lord is a lot more difficult than it sounds. There are a lot of details one has to constantly worry about, and those villain speeches don’t simply write themselves. Thankfully, there’s the Dark Lord’s Handbook to help all the fledgling subjugators… and Morden, the product of a randy dragon’s chance encounter, had better read quickly.

Sal Vidon has the power to reach through time and space so he can find anything he might want, intentionally or not… and on the unintentional side is his mother, who is no longer alive in his home universe. Sal is also, notably, a close up magician in training. When he comes to a new school and meets Gabi, he discovers he has a new friend, whether he wants one or not, and good thing–because he needs all the help he can get fixing the universe they’ve unintentionally broken.

Elisabeth was raised in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, monitoring the sorcerous grimoires guarded within its walls, each one capable of wreaking terrible havoc on the world–and transforming into monsters made of ink and leather if provoked. But when the most dangerous grimoire is released, Elisabeth is framed for the crime. If she wants to save the world from the grimoire, she must ally herself with a sorcerer–and learn about the power she possesses.

Losing one’s mother is hard enough, but Ning has to live with the guilt of having killed hers, however accidentally; she brewed the poison tea that took her life. The same poison tea may soon also claim her little sister. Her only chance to save her sister is to travel to the imperial city to compete in a competition of tea-masters vying to win a favor from the princess. But a competition in the imperial court is anything but simple… or safe.

Annie Mason has come to Crow Island to settle her father’s estate–and she hopes to reconnect with her best friend, Beatrice. But the island is one where magic lurks just below the surface, and rumors of witch craft have long haunted the locale–and particularly a resident named Emmeline Delacroix. When Annie sees Beatrice and Emeline have a confrontation at a party, she finds herself drawn into the haunted underworld of the island–and its illicit magic.

An aspiring journalist named Jamal Lawson heads into Baltimore to report on a protest against police brutality that occurs after the murder of another Black man. But before the rally gets going, the city implements a “safety” protocol called “the Dome” that surrounds the city and forces those within into a militarized shutdown. Trapped, Jamal makes new allies and works with them to take the fight to the chief of police who masterminded this horrifying tactic.

For twenty years, Alex has been obsessively trying to develop–and convince others to invest in–a gene-edited super algae that he believes will reverse climate change. The takers he finally finds are a pair of hyper rich sisters, who will fund him… if he does his research on the luxury space station being built for billionaires as a beta tester. But the space station is not what it’s sold to be, and conditions on earth are only worsening.

Jacob has only taken a temp job in the mailroom of Delphi Enterprises because he’s so absolutely desperate for work. But on his first day, a cloud of poison gas descends on an all-hands meeting and kills all of the regular employees. He’s now stranded in the office complex with a few other survivors who were also hired as temps. Together, they create their own world that isn’t so bad–it’s almost like spring break–until they find out just why the disaster happened.

Kaikeyi is the only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, and she was raised on tales of the gods and their fantastic powers that allowed them to vanquish evil. But the stories she hears don’t match the reality she sees, where her mother is exiled and Kaikeyi herself is nothing but a pawn to be married off. She turns to the books that taught her the stories and discovers a magic that allows her to transform from a princess to a warrior–and queen.

Sequel to Black Sun.

With the city of Tova shattered by the Crow God’s eclipse and the social order falling to pieces, Xiala and the former Priest of Knives must find a way to survive as allies–and try to help two living avatars find their way to remain human.

Loulie al-Nazari is a criminal who sells illegal magic, guarded by a jinn. After she inadvertently saves the life of a cowardly prince, his father blackmails her into finding a magical lamp that will sacrifice all of the jinn to revive the barren land. She and her bodyguard must survive an epic quest–and at the end waits more truth than Loulie could ever imagine.

Sequel to The Jasmine Throne.

Malini has been declared the rightful empress and is determined to claim that throne, but deposing her brother will be no easy task, no matter how great the army that follows her. And Priya wants nothing more than to free her country from that empire’s rule, even if her soul is intertwined with Malini’s. Their coming together may be the only way to save both of their people, though it will cost them dearly.

Sylah grew up in the resistance, training for the day she would lead her people to topple the ruling class… until her entire family was murdered. But when she meets Anoor, daughter of the most powerful ruler in the empire, the heat that sparks between them is undeniable. When the empire begins a new series of trial by combat that will find its newest cohort of leaders, they team up with Hassa, a girl who has survived by being socially invisible, to set events in motion that will burn the entire order to the ground.

After his family dies to cholera in Canton, Robin Swift comes to London at the behest of a mysterious professor. There, his days are devoted to the linguistic studies that will get him into Oxford University’s Royal Institute of Translation, which is also called Babel. But beyond languages, Babel is a center for the magic that’s made the British Empire a world-dominating power. Soon Robin realizes that his residence in this academic utopia comes at the cost of betraying his motherland.

Charm is a witch alone, the last of her line, a child of a conquered people. She lives confined to the Orchard House and its bone trees, which she tends for the sake of her children. She acts as the madam to a house filled with girls who are not real, and every Tuesday is the mistress of the emperor. But when the emperor is dying, he summons her to his bedside and tasks her with choosing which of his terrible sons will carry on the empire… and finding out which of them has murdered him. If she completes these tasks, she will have her freedom… but she will have betrayed her past.

The Memory House in Tumble Tree, Texas, is a place where people come to have their most painful memories removed by the family that’s long practiced this trade. Lucy, now sixteen, is finally old enough to learn. Her father tries to teach her, using himself as a subject, but she can’t pry his memories loose… and instead sees far more than she should, including a moment from the day her mother died, one that’s left her father wracked with guilt. As she investigates this memory, she realizes that she, herself, has gaps in her memory…

The City of Dusk is a place where Life, Death, Light, and Darkness–the Four Realms–converge on the city as night falls. Each of the realms has a god of its own, and an heir to that god. Once, the city thrived under their care, but the four have withdrawn their favor and the city is dying–and with it, the realms. It is up to the four heirs to join forces to save the city, no matter what their defiance will cost them.

In late 1920s Seattle, a well-respected mage and city leader is trying to criminalize certain types of magick users, and with them its most vulnerable population. He hires a companion for his daughter, intent on curbing her rebellious behavior, but who he gets is the widowed owner of a speakeasy looking to avenge her husband’s murder.

In a future where terraforming has become commonplace, the next great frontier is Pluto, at four billion miles from the Sun and an average temperature of 200 degrees below zero. Humanity’s greatest scientists and engineers are making the project work with captured asteroids and engineers… until they are sabotaged. This horrifying act leaves one family shattered, the father comatose and nine-year-old Nou unable to speak. But Nou might hold the key to what happened… and why someone is trying to destroy the project.

After their kingdom was flooded, the few survivors struggle along on an ark with scant resources, always aware of the ravenous beasts that circle them. Iraxi is one of the refugees, a common who is pregnant with a child that might not be entirely human, ostracized because she refused the advances of a prince. Her fate and her child’s will change their world… though for better or ill is the question.

On the island of Alimnia lives an old woman who is a tattoo artist for the dead, who ensures that their spirits can reach the promised waters of heaven, and her estranged daughter. They come together to clear the air between them, to lay to rest a lost brother and son.

Elder diplomat Bréone Hemmerli has one last task she’s set herself–to negotiate a new peace between humanity and a species of aliens that have come to an Earth slowly falling to ruin due to climate change. Unfortunately for Bréone and the future of humanity, her memory has also started to fail… and when she and the alien, named Tura, find a way forward, she can no longer remember.

In a space opera retelling of The Little Mermaid, the galaxy has been populated by scattered clans of gene-edited humans, those who live in the sea and those who live on land. The daughter of a Sea-Clan lord, Atuale, started a war between two clans by choosing to marry a land-bound husband. But now he and his people are dying of a plague, and she must find a cure at all costs.

Princess Thanh spent most of her childhood as a hostage in the kingdom of Ephteria, which hasn’t moved to colonize her homeland… though it’s only a matter of time. While there, she had her first romance–with the daughter of Ephteria’s ruler–and survived a devastating fire that destroyed much of the royal palace. Now back home, she must navigate between that first love, her conflicted relationship with her disapproving mother, and her loyalty to her home country–and herself.

Jewel is an established courtesan in a luxurious and well-renowned House in a far-future city where the government will cull anyone for a single mistake. Jewel is keeping her head down and living her life… until one of her friends dies at the hands of a client and then, even more shockingly, comes back to life.

Centuries ago, the robots used as mindless workers in Panga became self-aware and walked out into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Until one day, a tea monk having a crisis of purpose meets one of the robots who has returned. The robot has a very specific mission: to find out the answer to the question, “What do people need?”

Yejide and Darwin meet at the gates of Fidelis, an ancient and sprawling cemetery on the island of Trinidad. Yujide has been left a legacy she doesn’t want by a neglectful and bitter mother: she is the one woman with the power to shepherd the city’s souls to the afterlife. Darwin was raised as a devout Rastafarian, forbidden from interacting with death at all… but the only job he’s been able to find is as a gravedigger. Together, they will contend with the restless dead of the city and their own wounds that need to be healed.

Nell Young hasn’t spoken to her father, legendary cartographer Dr. Daniel Young, since he fired her and ruined her reputation over a cheap highway map that sparked an argument between them. But when her father is found dead in his office with that same worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell has no choice but to investigate both his death and the map. And what she finds is this apparently common thing might be the last of its kind–because a mysterious person has been hunting them down and destroying them.

After the powerful AI named Karma goes silent, there is nothing to save the dying city of Chittagong from falling into the sea and taking all of its remaining residents with it. Kundo goes searching through Chittagong for his missing wife; along the way he will build a crew of unlikely companions and journey from cyberspace to the magical realm of the djinn.

Hollow’s End is a picturesque small town turned tourist attraction because of its “miracle” crops, including the iridescent wheat grown on Wren’s family farm. But Quicksilver blight has come, destroying those crops one by one, and then bleeding into the earth, infecting the livestock and wildlife… and then the humans. Wren is one of the last people standing, and it’s up to her and her ex to find the source of the blight and save their town.

Cadenza is a city run by poets, also called the City of Words. Its libraries are legendary and legion; its printing presses are its thrumming heartbeat. Carlo Mazzoni arrives with the intention of making a name for himself, but as he steps through the gates, the city’s bells are tolling for the death of the poet-leader. Instead of an exciting place to perfect his art, he finds a city at the verge of war–and a web of intrigue that might destroy Cadenza and take him with it.

The empire Luca is to inherit is crumbling around her as her uncle, sitting on the throne, continues to make matters worse. Her best opportunity is a land long since conquered, where she can sway the rebels there toward peace… and use them to reclaim the magic her land has long since lost. There she meets Touraine, a soldier conscripted by the empire as a child, whose bonds of blood to her homeland should be long broken… and aren’t.

It’s 1912 in a Cairo very different from the one we know, where Djinn have come into the world and the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities regulates magic. When an entire secret brotherhood is slain, Agent Fatma is put on the case and discovers the murderer claims to be the man to whom that brotherhood was dedicated–al-Jahiz himself, the one who opened our world to magic. Whether he is real or imposter, he must be stopped, and she’s the woman to do it.

By 2095, people generally don’t die from violence–instead they get taken out by designer diseases or starve in the streets because they can no longer keep up with AI squeezing them out of the gig economy. The key to survival is a plethora of pills. Welga is an executive bodyguard in this milieu, and when her client is killed by a mysterious terrorist group called the Machinehood, she finds herself in the middle of a plot to stop all pill production.

The sequel to A Memory Called Empire sees Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass leaving the heart of the Teixcalaanli empire to go to the edge of space, where an alien species that no one knows how to communicate with has begun slaughtering Teixcalaanli colonies. Together, they must figure out how to talk to a species whose language quite literally makes them ill… and also how to talk to each other.

Plague Birds are the melding of human and artificial intelligence, marked by their bright red hair and clothes so ordinary people know to fleet them. They serve as the judges and executioners in the world that still survives after civilization has collapsed. Crista first met the Plague Birds when one killed her mother when she was a child. As an adult, she becomes this thing she hates and fears most in order to save her village. Her first mission is to chase down a group of murderers who wield what looks like magic.

This is a collection of Chinese science fiction and fantasy short stories written, edited, and translated by a female and nonbinary team. Stories range from a restaurant at the end of the universe (but not that restaurant) to the island of the gods that travels on the backs of giant fish.

Hiruko is a climate refugee and citizen of the former nation of Japan; her country has long since disappeared from the face of the earth and is remembered now only as “the land of sushi.” She’s made her new home in Denmark, but still searches for someone who can speak Japanese. As she travels across Europe on this quest for her friends, she’ll have quite a few odd and rather dystopian adventures…

The lake is an other worldly place where the boundary between air and water begin to blue; beneath its surface exists an ethereal and supernatural landscape… though Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only two who know this for certain. Then one day, that underwater world begins to drift to the surface, threatening to bring their secrets with it. Bastián and Lore can stop this from happening if they work together, but they haven’t spoken for seven years…

When she was in college, Zelda and her friends thought they had figured out how to make the world a better place–fighting monsters, ones no one else believed existed. But one of her friends fell to the darkness they were supposedly fighting, and the group split up. Zelda’s the only one who hasn’t moved on. Now her fallen friend is coming home and bringing hell with her.

In 1682, the king invites all the maidens in France to a series of of events where Prince Louis will be choosing his bride. But for Cendrillon de Louvois, now reduced to being called Cinder after her father’s death, the invitation requires subterfuge for her to escape the watch of her cruel stepmother. Then, at a ball, she meets Prince Louis and his brother Auguste… and catches the attention of both. While she wants Auguste, Louis is her best chance to escape the life she hates…

This one is witches in space! Mariam Xi was turned into a “voidwitch” by the organization MEPHISTO. She’s since escaped their clutches during a bloody coup, but they’ll do anything to get her back, including sending bounty hunters on her trail. It’s becoming increasingly hard for her to keep running, and she’s been betrayed by more than one person… she just needs to figure out who.

After the death of her adoptive mother, Hannah ends up living alone at the edge of a swamp in Louisiana. She’s settling into the new rhythm of her life–including falling in love with a boat captain–when her birth mother comes back into her life, a witch who is rumored to be able to commune with the dead. Soon Hannah must confront her past, the deadly spirits that share the swamp with her, and the gift that lives in her blood.

Dark and unbearably tense at times, this was one of my favorite books that came out in 2020. Immanuelle Moore lives in Bethel, a place where the Prophet’s word is law. Her mother had her with an outsider of a different race, and that has made Immanuelle and her entire family outcasts. When she is lured into the Darkwood that surrounds Bethel, a place where the Prophet supposedly killed four witches, she begins to learn the truth of Bethel, herself, and her own powers.

Samantha Mather is a descendant of Cotton Mather; when she comes to Salem from New York City, she finds herself targeted by a group of girls who are the descendants of those accused of witchcraft by her own ancestor. With that enough of a complication, she also finds out that ghosts are real when one shows up to demand she stop touching his stuff. The source of all these troubles is even more worrying–she’s caught in a curse that links everyone with ties to the Salem Witch Trials, and she has to break it if she wants to stop history from repeating itself.

Tea comes from an entire family of witches, but her abilities set her apart: she can resurrect the dead, a fact she learns when she accidentally brings her brother back to life. Her necromantic talents mean she is a bone witch, and she will find few friends from here on out… until she and her brother are taken in by an older bone witch. Tea tries to learn to wield her powers and how to work elemental magic, but dark forces are gathering and danger will soon be at her door.

Miuko is the ordinary, very human daughter of an innkeeper in the realm of Awara, where gods and monsters walk. When a curse is laid on her, she begins to transform into a demon, one who can kill with a single touch. She must embark on a dangerous quest to find a cure for this condition… except as she travels, she finds a freedom she never thought possible.

Seventy-five years from now, humanity flees a dying planet on a fleet of massive arks, each ship developing its own unique culture. One ship receives an alien distress call, and the crew sent to respond to it disappears. One of the missing is Eryn’s sister, and she joins the crew to search for them… but what they find is a terrifying and deadly threat that will follow them back home.

Olivia has spent what feels like all her life at the Merilance School for Girls, with her only memento of home her mother’s journal, a book that unravels into madness. Then she is invited back home to Gallant by a mysterious letter that no one at the house will admit to having known about. Even with no welcome from her family, Olivia feels more at home at Gallant than she ever has anywhere else, even after seeing ghouls in the hallways. There are secrets in the old house, and she will unravel them all.

Noor is psychologist who works at a memory removal clinic in London; while she spends her days helping people forget their worst moments, she has difficult connecting emotionally with others. Worse, she begins to suspect her boss, Louise, is engaged in some very shady business. Her life touches upon a series of customers, each of them wanting to forget a terrible moment in their lives… but then they must grapple with its absence afterward.