Category: Swords and Spaceships

Narra Jal is an outcast, someone who has been considered lucky her entire life, doomed to live on the fringes of society. But to save her mother, she returns to the city that turned its back on her, Bato-Ko, and enters into the trials that will determine its next ruler. The fact that she has no weapons, no armor, no magic, no training, no chance will not stop her. With sheer, fierce determination, she will show her opponents that they were right to fear would bring them ill luck.

One terrible night destroyed Ava and Kaye’s deep friendship — the night the vampires broke through the barrier protecting their town, killing Kaye’s mother and turning Ava into one of their number. These two young witches are now at odds, and it only gets worse when Ava’s mother plans to destroy the town herself, forcing Ava to seek help from the very vampires that attacked them two years ago…and forcing Kaye to try to hunt her down.

Anaïs is at a party — the anniversary of the kingdom, a massive and glittering affair — and wishes she were anywhere else, hopefully as far away from the pompous Prince Leo. At midnight, she’s temporarily granted her wish when a massive explosion destroys the palace and kills everyone — including her. Then she wakes up in her bedroom, before the party, and she’s the only one who remembers the disaster. She must relive it again and again until she can find a way to stop the attack, which means diving deep into court intrigue and betrayal.

It has always been raining in Aloisville, at least that anyone can remember…but that is because the rain itself washes away memory. Stay outside too long, and a person can lose everything they ever were. Laverne begins keeping a journal too late — her town has already changed irreparably, and a mysterious force prevents anyone’s escape. But all she wants to do is survive, and remembering anything at all will be the key.

Carmen Sanchez has returned to Mexico to supervise the renovation of an old abbey, with her daughters in tow since they are too young to be left alone in New York. But when an accident at the abbey reveals a collection of ancient artifacts, Carmen loses her job and the family trip is caught short. Something follows Carmen and her girls home to New York, stalking the family and warning of coming catastrophe…

An alien crashes their spaceship in the middle of nowhere, an unfamiliar and unremarkable planet (of course we’re talking about Earth) where the gravity is a massive problem that means they need to practice walking. Good thing their pursuit of delicious humans provides excellent motivation. But after a fun time hunting, they begin to understand their prey a little too well…and why humans might want to survive.

Elle is the ignored middle child — but she’s also a descendant of the Chinese god of medicine, which makes her a disappointment as well. Instead of a doctor, she’s a mediocre magical calligrapher employed by a temp agency. She still finds challenge in outfitting her client (and main crush), the half-elf Luc, with very powerful and well-crafted glyphs. Luc has his own burden: he’s trying to repair a curse laid on someone during a botched assignment. Together, Elle and Luc might be able to find both fulfillment and happiness…but they need to gain their freedom first, and that will require sacrifices of them both.

This is Anuja Varghese’s debut collection of speculative fiction stories that blend reality and worlds beyond to explore family, sexuality, community, and cultural expectations, focused particularly on the ways racialized women have their power stolen and the dangerous journeys they undergo to reclaim it.

Yang Wei arrives in C City expecting a normal work trip…but when a complimentary bottle of water from the hotel causes him horrific stomach pain and renders him unconscious for three days, he finds himself trapped in a labyrinthine hospital system where there is no diagnosis, but there are a lot of secrets being kept from all of the patients.

Emma rushes out the door on an ordinary Monday, so distracted by the demands of her job and social obligations that she doesn’t notice the distress of her own family. That night, she fights with her husband and realizes too late that she’s forgotten their anniversary — just in time for him to walk out of the house with their dog and be hit by a car. The next day when she wakes up, her husband is alive…and it’s Monday again. And again. And again. Until she figures out how to right all of their lives.

This new short story collection — her first in almost a decade — from Margaret Atwood focuses on family, memory, and loss with her trademark, thoughtful speculative twist.

The sequel to The Unbroken starts with the rebels having won and the empire withdrawing from Qazal. But unbinding once-conquerer and conquered is no simple or easy task. Luca still needs to take her throne back from her uncle and gain her rightful place as queen, and Touraine must grapple with the fact that leading a revolution and leading a country are very, very different things. Together, perhaps the two can overcome history and heartbreak.

Dr. Tyson Klein, a quantum physicist at CERN, has found something strange in the data from the Large Hadron Collider — a pattern in the output, like there’s a broadcast happening over what he comes to call “quantum radio.” Is it a message from another time, another universe or something even stranger? But he’s not the only one who’s noticed, nor the only one trying to decipher the signal. And there are those who want this discovery to never see the light of day.

Jade Nguyen comes to Vietnam to visit her estranged father with one goal in mind: pretend to be straight, Vietnamese, and American enough to get the money for college tuition out of him that he’s holding over her head. But the French colonial house Ba is restoring has an eerie air and other plans for her, starting with strange noises and sensations, and soon escalating to a ghostly bride who gives her a simple but cryptic warning: Don’t eat. If Jade is brave enough, she may be able to save her family…this time.

In Simta, women’s magic is outlawed. The few who have the gift are called Nightbirds, and jealously guarded by the Great Houses thanks to their most important skill: the ability to gift their magic to another with a kiss. Nightbirds spend a year bestowing their magic on those who can pay well, and then are expected to be married into a Great House and settle down to become the mothers of the next generation before their lose their powers. But this Season’s Nightbirds find themselves at the center of a political plot that may well expose them to a church that would very much like to kill them — and reveals to them the deepest secret of the Nightbirds. There are more girls like them, and they are far more powerful than they’ve been allowed to discover.

Mar’s pirate father once made a wicked bargain with el Diablo, and when the devil comes calling to collect his due, not even this transmasculine, nonbinary teen’s secret and powerful magic that lets them manipulate fire and ice can stop the loss of his father’s soul and his ship. But the devil offers Mar a different bargain: their soul for their father’s. Mar, no fool, knows better than to take such a deal — but if they want to save their father, they’re going to need allies.

Daisy has enough problems, and then you add in that she can see dead people — and there are a lot of dead people wandering the streets of Toronto. The final straw, however, is when her boyfriend dumps her. So she leaps at the chance to go to a secluded mansion her mother just inherited in Ontario: it sounds like a great way to get away from her problems. But her mother has secrets she could have never guessed at, and there are things worse than just ghosts wandering the streets. As Daisy’s story unfolds, another girl, Brittney, enters the house ten years in the future to escape her abusive mother. In the end, only one of their stories can be told.

A girl raised in seclusion on a magical island hidden off the coast of Ireland longs to venture into the outside world where magic is all but extinct. When her guardian falls to return home one day, she finally gets her chance. But the truth about what caused magic’s decline — and her guardian’s escape to their magical island — is far more complicated than she ever could’ve imagined.

When Zawadi village in the heart of Kenya is threatened by outside forces, interested in a medical discovery called the Kuvu that could change humanity forever, she must give up the life she planned for herself in order to save herself and her people. Now, it’s a race against time to find the Kuvu before it’s destroyed — or before it destroys everything and everyone around it.

In a desert city parched for water, a boy makes a deal with his ruler: provide water for his dying mother and he will venture out into the Forever Desert to bring water back to the city. It’s an epic quest for salvation not only for himself and his mother, but his entire city as well.

In a world ripped apart by a virus, three women forever altered by the virus’s effects try to navigate the coming apocalypse in all its terrifying, eldritch glory. And as dark forces pull Erin, Savannah, and Mareva together, they discover just what it will take to survive this nightmare.

In Prohibition-era New York, the Revelle family’s fantastical show set on Charmant Island is full of magic and champagne. But as Prohibition threatens their livelihood, Luxe Revelle agrees to pose as the girlfriend of a wealthy scion as he vies for mayor in order to keep her family’s business afloat. It’s only when a desperate orphan begins delving into secrets about the island’s past that Luxe discovers just how dangerous a game it is to keep secrets from powerful people.

A magical pair of glasses passed down from her grandfather begins granting Winna’s wishes in this middle grade novel about family, Black history, and an incredible pair of spectacles. After wishing she could see ghosts, Winna meets the original owner of the spectacles: her great-aunt Estelle. She soon discovers her great-aunt had a brother who was kidnapped when their mother went north to escape slavery — and he’s still alive. Now, it’s up to Winna to track him down in order to break the family curse and make their family whole once again.