Author: Alex Acks

Persephone Station is a backwater planet that the United Republic of Worlds is content to ignore while a corporation makes its home there—and keeps its secrets. Rosie is the owner of a bar that caters to tourists and criminals; Angel is a criminal who does a favor for her. The result is that they both end up in hot water with the corporation—and its private army.

Noah, a man with a shiny new PhD in genetics lands his dream job at a company where he gets to design new lines of living, breathing dragons. These creatures have mostly been used for industrial purposes until now, but the company’s eager to break into the general retail market by designing dragons into the perfect pet. But Noah has other ideas, and his own changes he wants to make to the draconic genome…

A newly-minted 16-year-old Jedi Knight named Vernestra Rwoh is handed a first assignment that feels frustratingly like a babysitting gig: supervise an aspiring inventor four years her junior as they head to a new space station. But bombs go off in the ship as soon as they’re out of reach of easy help, and Vernestra has to keep her charge and several other survivors of the bombing alive after they land their escape pod on a nearby moon.

A humble scribe who thought she was only supposed to record the great deeds of others discovers she may have more power than she could have imagined in a world that stands at the brink of the next Great Dying.

Every seven years, nine Greek gods must walk the earth as mortals. There, they are hunted by those eager to kill a god and seize their immortality. Lore is the survivor of a line of these hunters who were brutally murdered by a rival family. Now, she’s got a chance for revenge against the man-turned-god responsible for their deaths.

Twelve years after a bloody war that has left two nations licking their wounds and smoldering with leftover animosity, the villagers of an isolated village named Jalard have been largely untouched by this trauma. But their yearly contact with the outside world brings shocking changes. Normally, representatives of the Academy come to take two villagers away to join the institute, which has been a great honor. Until this year, when a shocking announcement leaves the residents of Jalard questioning just where their people have been going all these years.

Urban fantasy where elves, vampires, and djinn rub elbows in North Carolina. In this world, PI (and sylph) Arden Finch just wants to practice her forbidden magic and live her life. Too bad the elves have a bounty out on elementals like her… and then one of them accidentally hires her. There’s a second book in the series, too: Eldritch Sparks!

A human scientist, in collaboration with a mysterious counterpart he’s never seen, designs a warship that the government immediately orders him to dismantle. But his collaborator reveals that aliens are coming to conquer humanity, and the ship is what they need to survive. (The second book is out, too: The Last Guardian.)

An anthology of stories and poetry written entirely by authors of Africa and the African Diaspora. Just check out the author list–it’s strong as heck.

The author describes this series as “cozy, optimistic apocalypse.” It focuses on humans doing their human thing, surviving and figuring out how to thrive after the end of the world. In this installment, Jack needs to search for a cure for his three-year-old found sister, Poppy, when her weakened immune system gets hit with an aggressive virus. The answers are out in the wasteland.

Rhona has been battling the malevolent AI that wants to wipe out humanity for as long as the war has been going… until it kills her. Now she’s back, new body, same personality, minus some very important memories. She needs to figure out how to reshape her life and find her way–and get back in the fight.

A collection of seven short stories in which a mated pair of dragon-shifters have adventures that include an egg hunt, illness, and even a murder investigation.

Kira didn’t exactly expect a medal for her wartime heroics, but assassins out for her blood when her government betrays her as part of their surrender terms is exponentially worse. She and her comrades are forced to flee to the edge of civilized space, where they try to build new homes and new lives. But their enemies have a long reach…

A collection of paranormal humor and horror short stories with a New Zealand twist.

An American leaves her failing gallery behind and moves to England after inheriting a manor house in Herfordshire… from a relative she’s never heard of. Soon she’s immersed in the 400-year history of the crumbling house and its overgrown garden, and in that long past, she may at last find herself.

This is the final book of The Poppy War fantasy trilogy, the whole of which is an incredibly tense fantasy series about colonialism and war and the horrible things those both do to people. If you want to give it a whirl, start with The Poppy War.

Final book of The Witches of Lychford fantasy series. Lychford has been a strange place from the start of this five book series, where witches are real and this almost model country village is always threatening to slip into another world. Start with Witches of Lychford.

This is the final book of The Daevabad Trilogy, which is about a canny con woman in Ottoman-era Cairo who finds out that she’s far more than she could have ever imagined, and gets taken into the mysterious world of djinn and immersed deeply in its internecine politics and historical struggles. Start with The City of Brass.

Second in a fantasy duology that starts with The Merciful Crow. A fantasy society with a caste system where the Crows take the dead. A dying king and a prince may or may not keep a promise to change it all.

Second in the duoloy that starts wth The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan. Epic space opera where crews of total badasses just try to live their lives while the galaxy definitely has other ideas.

Third book in The Salvagers trilogy; start with A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. This science fiction series is about the rag-tag salvage crew of the Capricious, who are just trying to make ends meet out in the black and keep getting themselves into a whole lot of trouble.

Second book in The Blood in the Stars fantasy duology. Start with Spin the Dawn. A girl who dreams of being a tailor poses as a boy to compete in place of her father in a competition to make the magic gowns for an emperor’s reluctant bride. Her craft will cost her more than she can know.

Final book in the Green Creek series; start with Wolfsong. A pack of humans, witches, and werewolves live in a town called Green Creek, defending the people and palce they love from all comers.

This book finished the fantasy duology that starts with The Never Tilting World about the twin goddesses that have ruled the world of Aeon until one sister betrayed the other. Now there’s half a realm of eternal light, the other of eternal night—and the daughters of the goddesses hope to heal their broken world.

Final book of the Chronicles of Ghadid trilogy; start with The Perfect Assassin. A fantasy series about assassins, first tasked with solving a murder, then forced to fight the undead.

Final book of The Harwood Spellbook fantasy series; start with Snowspelled. In an alternate “Angland,” the ladies rule politics with an iron fist and the more softly emotional gentlemen limit themselves to the practice of magic. But of course no one follows the rules…

Final book in the Diamondsong fantasy serial, which starts with Escape. The Ja-lal have prevented contact with the fairies in the forest they guard for many lifetimes, but those barriers are beginning to crumble and the fairies have their own dangerous agenda.

In a fantasy world filled with epic adventure, the kind that makes for excellent stories, the truth tends to get bent a little. Heroes are told to be more heroic than they were, villagers more helpless, and so on. But Heloise the Bard is there to set the record straight about how easy adventuring isn’t and how truly rare heroism happens to be. This time, she’s skewering the story of the fearsome red dragon, Dragonia.

The proprietress of the Little Shop of Found Things has no choice but to take responsibility for accidentally transporting a dangerous man from his time to her own, and now she has to figure out how to make things right and keep herself and Flora safe. Then a beautiful, antique wedding dress makes itself known to her, and she realizes the dress and her enemy are connected. She’ll need the help of her boyfriend and a long step back into the 19th century to put things right.

Neal Asher has kept himself busy during the lockdown by writing five brand new novellas and novelettes and reworking one previous novella, all of them exploring the Polity universe and beyond. He’s collected them all into one book, for fans old and new.

Pleo has survived the loss of her twin sister and the tragedy that utterly broke her father. She has one goal: to escape this colony, an attainable goal only for the rich or the lucky. Then she’s framed for the murder of a rival student who happens to be from a wealthy family, and she must go on the run. Escape might just destroy the old colony entirely…

Life has mysteriously sprung forth on the Moon, and humanity is all too eager to seize on this new land to colonize. Decades later, the dead are no longer laying quiet in the ground and murmurings of rebellion echo through the living. A cyborg is dispatched from earth to investigate, but she might uncover a secret that will undo all the life that has sprung up from the barren world.

Tasifa is a Hawk, one who investigates strange and difficult situations in the kingdom of Aves. She’s dispatched to a small mountain village where a young girl has been found dead… but when she arrives, she discovers the dead actually number three, and the town is filled with secrets and murder.

In a world of magic where those who can bear children are barred from practicing, Beatrice longs to become a full-fledged magus while all her family wants is for her to marry well and save them from financial ruin.

Women fighting for access to the ballot box in 1893 turn to old magics–but there are those who still will not suffer a witch to live, let alone vote.

People can travel to parallel universes, but only the ones their doppelganger has already died in. Luckily for Cara, she’s dead in all but 8 of the worlds hers can reach.

A history of the near future about the ways humanity will have to learn to survive climate change–and hopefully thrive.

An exploration of memory, knowledge, and communicaton built by a labyrinthine, endless house in which dwells Piranesi, who is beginning to realize that he’s not alone, and nothing is as it seems.

Noemí heads to an isolated village overseen by a rotting manor house to try to save her cousin from an outwardly charming but extremely sinister husband and his even creepier family. It’s classic gothic tropes examined with very new twists.

A young woman with psychic powers must decide what to do with her abilities as she watches her brother be incarcerated and suffer through it.

Three strangers build themselves a place of belonging and the family they lack across space and time–but all of them are pursued by pasts they cannot escape.

When Ellie’s cousin is murdered, she has to use all of her knowledge of the paranormal and her ability to summon the ghosts of animals to save the rest of her family–and break open a nasty secret festering in the heart of Texas.

An all-female mission is heading out to explore a planet in the Goldilocks zone of another solar system–but then things begin going wrong on the ship and it might well be sabotage.

In a city that partially exists in virtual spaces, a repo-man and sometimes thief is hired to steal an object from a tech billionare. When that object turns out to be the first sentient AI, he realizes he’s got trouble coming bigger than any possible paycheck.

What if Red Riding Hood and Hou Yi the archer were old, retired, and lesbians? What if they were trying to forget the mistakes and traumas of their pasts? What if those pasts caught up with them?

In a future American Southwest where bandits and queer librarians fight against fascists, a girl stows away on a Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape an arranged marriage.

A scholar finds an unlikely ally in a younger prince in her quest to overthrow the utterly corrupt and cruel king.

Immanuelle is an outcast in the very puritanical (and cult-like) lands of Bethel–and those lands are about to be visited by the vengeance of witches murdered long ago, apparently called up by the rage of Immanuelle’s dead mother.

Two girls go out looking for monsters; one falls through a crack between parallel worlds. And that’s only the beginning–because the cracks are getting wider, and soon much larger, more extraordinary things will start falling through into our world.

An exiled old wizard has to hope again, even as the world falls apart around him and poisoned deserts spread.

A temp administrative assistant to super villains gets badly injured in a superhero attack. She gains her vengeance by collating the data on who else these so-called heroes have hurt and using it on social media.

In the near future, massive floods have led to untold destruction and rampant homelessness. Fascist government elements take their opportunity to round up people of color, disabled people, and LGBTQ people and shove them into labor camps. But new heroes rise to lead a resistance: Kay, a drag queen in mourning for his lost love; a social worker named Firuzeh; Bahadur, a transmasculine refugee. With the help of a rogue army officer, they plan a revolution that will very much be televised.

In the midst of a massive climate crisis, the space race has come back to life, with corporations offering massive rewards for anyone who will go out into the black to claim resources in their name. Jack is desperate to escape earth and joins a team chasing down an asteroid… but he doesn’t realize that everyone on the ship is just as desperate as him, if not more so. And they’ll do anything to get to the steroid first–and make sure they get a bigger share.

Chih and their companions are at the mercy of a band of tigers. If they want to keep themself and their friends alive long enough to be saved by their mammoth allies, they must unravel a secret hidden in a story about a tiger and her scholarly lover.

The Kaiser plan might have helped avert a multi-planet war that they themselves were probably the cause of, but two planets have been left devastated by alien technology. Now with the Kaiser family trying to settle into quiet obscurity, the vultures are circling in to strip these razed planets of their remaining resources, and tensions are building again. The Kaisers need to find the truth of what happened to these two worlds… and avert another war.

Captain Desiree Quicho and her crew of utter BAMFs do not have time for your nonsense, because they have a universe to save from an evil billionaire, a criminal queenpin, political factions scrambling in a power grab, and an AI on a rampage. Captain Quicho just wanted a peaceful moment and some good barbecue, but she’ll have to fight to get it.

The crew of the Kettle is an eclectic set: Max, a xeno-archaelogist from Earth stranded far from home; Lahra, a warrior from a nearly extinct people, who does battle with sword and song; Wheel, the grumpy cybernetic pilot with a shady past. Together, they hunt artifacts that they mostly sell–but they always hope it can show them the way home, for certain values of home. But when they pick up an artifact that’s far more powerful than they could have imagined, they end up squarely in the crosshairs the space fascists called the Vsenk–and the crew will have to go from hunting ruins to fomenting rebellion.

A crew of absolute losers overseen by an AI arrive on a planet on the ass-end of space with a mission of salvaging a long-dead UN starship. They’re expecting a long, ugly, boring, and very thankless job. What they get is a backwater filled with megafauna and a competing salvage crew, and a planet that seems to be actively trying to kill them besides. They need to engineer their way to both survival and their payday with every card in the deck stacked against them.

Dolly almost has a legit profession in this cyberpunk future–she recovers abandoned sports cars from parking lots in Dubai and sells them off for parts. But when her friend Bristol catches wind of an auction for the most expensive dog in the world, she gets pulled in for one more job. Because how hard could a dog heist be?

This is rural cyberpunk that gets back to its roots of transhumanism in a group of people who are seriously dehumanized and disenfranchised by the systemic oppression promulgated by corporations. A runaway New Woman ends up in small town West Virginia where she gets caught up with a couple of dead-enders surviving their pointless jobs with the liberal use of drugs and virtual reality.

Michael Duckett has worked for The Future Group for years, despite having no idea what his company does or even what he does. But when he’s suddenly fired, he takes his place as his roommate Stephanie Dyer’s partner in her detective agency. As it turns out, The Future Group has been harboring a horrible secret for decades, something that could fill the world with indescribable horror.

While he’s supported by a loving family, Darshima is a young man struggling to balance tradition with his desire to make his own place in the world. Then an utterly brutal invasion of his world by an unknown enemy finds him abducted and enslaved on a distant world. As he fights to survive, he must look inside himself to uncover a secret that could free his people and break this empire.

With governments all over the world denying the reality of climate change, an underground network of climate scientists springs up to share and preserve data. But the deniers are willing to kill to silence the exchange…

This is a hopeful and uplifting multi-genre anthology of stories about the magic of writing instruments and communication, and the strength of the communities that they create. Stories by ZZ Claybourne, Rai Rocca, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Dawn Vogel, Joy Givens, and many more!

A young, Jewish trans man takes refuge in the Houston basketball arena when a hurricane devestates the city. His fears regarding his fellow refugees take the form of the ghost of his great-grandfather, who fled from Nazi Germany as a boy.

Two transgender elders must learn to weave death if they are to save their land and their people from an evil ruler.

After a nameless young woman is given a warning by her grandmother’s dreamskin, her world begins to unravel. Her skin color starts to peel off, the city she lives in suddenly decides to destroy the train in which the people bury their dead… and the living start randomly becoming invisible.

900 Vennans have come to the massive space station of tradepoint for business and cultural exchange–and their homeworld is destroyed in their absence. It’s up to a young diplomate named Gredin to engage in a new direction of barter, for the survival of her people.

An anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction about hope, community, and queer joy in the face of disaster. Contains 23 stories, 2 poems, and a roleplaying game.

The Valentine’s Day installment in Buhlert’s In Love and War space opera serie is about soldiers who were on opposing sides of an intergalactic war… until they fell in love and decided to go on the run together. Right now, they’re just trying to have a romantic dinner, but they get caught in a turf war between gangasters. These are DELIGHTFUL.

The future and developing technology brings with it all new kinds of crime that these authors are trying to imagine. Who writes the laws, who investigates, and who is the actual criminal? “The laser’s way is both a scalpel and a gun.”

Each flight of stairs in the witch-built tower that imprisons Princess Floralinda contains a dreadful, different monster to guard it. If a lucky man makes it to the top of the tower, he gets the princess and a golden sword. But no one’s made it past the first flight… and the last prince was a long, long time ago.

This is the second collection of short stories about Caitlín R. Kiernan’s monster slayer with albinism, Dancy Flammarion. Across the American South, Dancy continues her war against the monsters, heading for madness and possibly salvation. Two brand new stories are included.

A bloody revolution has burned through the islands of Hans Lollik. Former slave Loren Jannik tries to lead the survivors in the desperate struggle to keep the islands free. But revolution doesn’t provide food or weapons, and the rebels are soon going to run out of options as they continue their fight against the conquering Fjern. Loren must choose the revolutions course, and it could bring them all victory–or spell the doom of their freedom.

Ori isn’t a big fan of the holidays, because they involves the awful meals cooked by her stepfather’s fourth wife and the presence of the woman’s Grandma Elving, who will not stop telling stories about that one Christmas she worked at Woolworth’s. But this Christmas, Ori finds an unexpected ally in her relative Sloane’s latest boyfriend, who is convinced that Grandma Elving’s boring stories about that one particular Christmas are actual traumatic flashbulb memories that hide something much more interesting.

The newly-released jinn are on the attack, destroying villages and cities–and this path of destruction is just the beginning of their vengeance. The Blood Shrike and her remaining family are the top of the kill list for Nightbringer and the newly self-declared Empress. And Laia, still struggling with her own losses, throws herself against the coming apocalypse, determined to destroy the Nightbringer if it’s the last thing she ever does.

Filomena Jefferson-Cho lives a boring, perfect suburban existence, and it’s bumming her out. Then one day, she finds she’s being followed by Jack Stalker, the hero of her favorite book series. And even weirder, she’s definitely not dreaming or hallucinating–and Jack insists that the stories are real and that he needs her help. Soon she’s immersed in the suddenly very real world of her favorite books, facing evil fairies and sorcerers, and she’ll need to find the truth that hides behind all fairytales if she wants to save the kingdom.

Ronan never wanted to return to Hudson, a sleepy upstate down that is haunted by its own ghosts of violence and hatred. But when his father falls ill, he has no choice but to come “home.” He rekindles his friendship with his first love, Dom, and Dom’s wife, Attalah. With the town seemingly falling apart around them, torn by evictions, gentrifying real estate developers, and the political paroxysms of an upcoming mayoral election, the three friends come up with a clever plan to rattle the interlopers and expose them. But what they unleash is not the truth, but something far more unknowable–and uncontainable: the spirits that have been raging at the changes in their town.

This is Corina’s favorite book of all time, which I regretfully still haven’t gotten around to reading yet and I need to do it soon if we’re going to stay friends. Along with its long awaited sequel, This Virtual Night and Malka Older’s Infomocracy, these are also books she loosely groups as imagining what the internet could be in the future.

Sharon Shinn and Guy Gavriel Kay (her number one pick for him is Ysabel) are her automatic go-to authors for comfort reads that she returns to again and again. Archangel is extra cool because it’s science fiction masquerading as fantasy, which is always fun.

This is an epic fantasy with a gorgeous environmental message that hit Corina, as the child of two Colorado mountain hippies, particularly hard and really stuck with her. The prose requires some work to read but is incredibly rewarding, and you’ll be thinking about it for months after you’ve finished it.

This is another double feature recommendation, sitting alongside Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. Both are books about people who are really good at math in absolutely reality-bending ways. which is extra cool if you’re a person who’s not necessarily that great at math but still thinks it’s really neat on the principle of the thing.

I told Corina she had to read this book because, and I quote myself here, “it’s about disaster heteros.” She has seen the wisdom of my assessment. It’s a gorgeous Mugal fantasy book, but more importantly, you spend most of the pages wanting to squish the two main characters’ faces together so that they’ll just kiss already.

This book has reincarnation, it’s all about classism/caste, and the main character is a lady who takes absolutely zero crap off anyone.

Beyond the fact that this is a Culture novel and therefore has AI in it (one of Corina’s favorite things in a book, other than dragons), this particular novel has a really cool narrative structure that comes to fruition near the end–and does some really awesome character reveal work.

This is just a delightful, queer book to begin with. In addition, growing up in Colorado meant having grown up around a lot of Latinx culture… and it wasn’t something either of us saw reflected in much of what we read as kids. Cemetery Boys is a celebration of that familiar (if observed from the outside) culture–and such a beautiful story about being loved and accepted for who you truly are.

To celebrate fifteen years at the cutting edge of original short fiction, the podcasters at Escape Pod have put together fifteen stories, including new and exclusive work from Ken Liu, T. Kingfisher, and others.

The Archangels of Death and Disease are gone, but their evil legacy remains in the form of zombie-like creatures called the reborn. It is up to Titus, the Archangel who watches over the continent of Africa, to prevent their shambling spread. His only hope for aide is the Hummingbird, old and powerful and broken, if she will stand by his side to stop the rising tides of death.

Dragons have at last returned to the Hundred Isles, but they bring with them only war and destruction. Shipwife Meas and the crew of the Tide Child discover a derelict ship with a belly filled with dying enslaved people; this horrific find draws them into an even bloodier plot that will test their loyalty–and may well kill them.

The fourteenth anthology that collects short stories set in the universe of the Heralds of Valdemar, this collection includes an all-new story by Mercedes Lackey herself.

Wallace is used to moving around constantly–and he hates it. His dad works for an energy company, but refuses to explain why exactly this means they have to move across country every time his son starts settling into a new school. This time, it’s a sudden move to upstate New York, which has recently suffered an outbreak of strange hysterics–centered on the high school Wallace will attend. The town is more strange than Wallace could have imagined, with trees that talk to people and a student body president who might be falling for Wallace, or might just be sinking into a strange, otherworldly darkness. Wallace needs to find new friends who will listen to him better than his dad–and fight.

Just days after winning James Halliday’s contest, Wade discovers a new technology in the vaults that are newly his–and a new riddle, with a new Easter Egg that will lead to yet another prize. But this time, he’s not just competing against the rest of the OASIS. This time, his most dangerous rival will happily kill millions in pursuit of winning. With his life and the future of humanity at stake, Wade has his work cut out for him.