Loyalty and peace buckle under the strain of ambition in Tamaki’s densely poetic debut and Autumn Empire series launch, set in a Japan-inspired secondary world. Kai and Sen, orphaned when their parents took up arms against the Imperial chancellor, seek to redeem the family name, with Kai maneuvering openly at court and Sen secretly raised by another noble family. Their uncle, Yora the Poet, tries to maintain his position with the chancellor but finds it increasingly difficult as the chancellor schemes to put his own family into the Imperial succession. Meanwhile, Rui, a peasant woman and Sen’s childhood friend, finds herself at the mercy of Hososhi, the “guardian-god of the barrier between our world and the next,” who seeks to vanquish a vengeance-summoned demon. Past crimes come to light, debts come due, and civil war brews as monks fight for temple authority, an Emperor is pushed aside for his infant son, and warriors clash in epic sword battles. Tamaki drops readers straight into this well-stocked stew of rivalries, drawing deeply from Japanese history and Samurai sagas. It can be a challenge to keep track of the fast-moving coups and battles, but lovely snippets of poetry, appealing protagonists, and fascinating interpersonal dynamics will keep readers hooked. Tamaki is an exciting new voice in epic fantasy. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

The first in a duology, this disappointing dark fantasy from bestseller Reid (Lady Macbeth) gets off to a strong start but quickly loses focus. The story’s ascetic, nonspeaking heroine, Lady Agnes of the land of Deprane’s fallen House of Teeth, hopes to use her cousin Marozia’s marriage to Prince Liuprand, scion of the conquering House of Berengar, to find a way to raise her recently deceased grandmother from the dead. The secrets of necromancy, developed by the nobles of Drepane generations prior, were stolen and hidden by the House of Berengar. Agnes’s slow but steady investigation keeps the pages turning, but as her mission brings her and Liuprand closer, she forsakes her grandmother’s cause for his love. The romance plot, built on the characters’ instalust, quickly overshadows the intrigue and frustratingly strips Agnes of agency, transforming her into a complacent protagonist pushed around by forces outside of her control. Reid’s language is lush and she grapples with some deliciously dark gothic themes, but the storytelling is not well served by the flat, fairy tale–esque characterizations. The result lacks both direction and, ironically, teeth. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Riffing on the long tradition of lesbian boarding school tales in which desire simmers beneath propriety, Curran sets her lush and haunting gothic debut at England’s Briarley School for Girls, a manor turned boarding school built on its founding family’s sugarcane fortune. When narrator Emily Locke’s classmate Violet Kirsch falls to her death from a balustrade after stealing a good night kiss with French teacher Élodie Lefèvre, rumors of their illicit attachment spread quickly. As Emily and her friends investigate, the line between innocent admiration and forbidden sapphic desire soon becomes blurred. Emily suspects Violet’s demise was no accident, but instead part of the broader rot of the institution she calls home. With the school’s supply of milk and food mysteriously souring, the students turn to spiritualism, séances, and a village medium for help. Briarley contains echoes of classic literary gothic manors like Thornfield Hall and Hill House and the narrative does a good job teasing out the dark history of slavery and empire packed into its bricks and mortar. On the way to Briarley’s bloody dissolution, Curran delivers a chilling tale of repressed passion, queer awakening, and the corrosive power of silence. It’s an impressive start. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Hugo and Nebula award winner Kingfisher (Snake-Eater) adds a heaping helping of David Cronenberg’s style to her signature blend of humor and horror in this striking Southern gothic set in 1885. Illustrator Sonia Wilson once worked with her naturalist father, but after his death, she ekes out a miserable living teaching watercolor painting at a girls’ school in Wilmington, N.C. So she leaps at the chance to once again work as a scientific illustrator for Dr. Matthias Halder, even if the position means painting screwworms and blowfly maggots instead of the plants she truly loves. On her arrival to Halder’s decaying mansion in the woods, she’s greeted with a warning from one of the neighbors that the “Devil walks these woods at night.” She also learns that, 10 years prior, there was a rash of bizarre animal and human deaths, their corpses found dangling upside down from trees with their throats and wrists bitten out. But if the woods are so dangerous, Sonia can’t help but wonder why her new employer wanders them at night and what the rumors have to do with his vast and bizarre collection of insects. Kingfisher teases out this mystery into perhaps her most viscerally terrifying tale to date. Readers will come away with new nightmares. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

This cleverly meta if somewhat improbable offering from Rose (Hiding Lies) adds to the growing subgenre of horror stories in which slasher-film aficionados discover that they themselves have become targets. In this instance, the horror fan is Jenna Willcot, whose extreme anxiety has kept her housebound for the past five years but who impulsively books a short stay at a horror movie themed cabin in rural Marion, Mont. Upon arrival, she learns that, 25 years earlier, the town was terrorized by a serial killer, dubbed the Bitter Butcher—and lands in the sights of a new killer who is decimating the residents of Marion on the anniversary of the Butcher’s spree. Rose clearly knows her stuff, peppering her tale with abundant references to the slasher films and books that shape Jenna’s strategy to defend herself against the killer. Unfortunately, the characters, including Jenna, often act unbelievably and take frustrating risks, emulating the greatest clichés of the slasher cannon (a prime example being the townsfolk’s insistence on gathering for a memorial vigil honoring the original Butcher’s victims, even as the new killer picks them off one by one). Still, this is sure to appeal to readers who like their horror fiction to resemble horror films. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Gauthier (Echoes on the Pond) revitalizes the familiar horror trope of the creepy imaginary friend in this unsettling novel set in New England. Protagonist Tim Beaulieu is overwhelmed with taking over as the primary caregiver for his four-year-old daughter, Cleo, and blames himself for the death of his ex-wife, Jenny, who was in an accident on her way to pick up Cleo at his request. His fragile mental state is threatened even more when Cleo tells him about her numerous conversations with Mr. Brambles, the “good monster” residing in her closet. Initially, Tim believes this to be a coping mechanism that could help Cleo process her grief. Then Drew Raposo, a neighbor who was once mean to Cleo and whom Tim threatened in response, disappears and Tim becomes a person of interest in the case. Gauthier maintains a high level of suspense throughout as he keeps readers guessing whether Brambles, who, Cleo reports, has also voiced threats against Drew, is real or a figment. Meanwhile, the fully three-dimensional characters make buy-in to the central conceit easy. Stephen King fans will be enthralled. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

At the start of Glenn’s sharp-toothed debut, former Hollywood starlet Lila Devlin returns to Los Angeles to launch a skincare brand 10 years after the kidnapping and murder of her infant daughter drove her out of town. Public response to her beauty industry turn is initially unenthusiastic despite the best efforts of her publicist, Sylvie Lightly, whose own ill-treatment in Hollywood bonds the women together. When a business meeting takes a grisly turn, Lila discovers a deep thirst for vengeance against the L.A. elite who turned their back on her, the media who preyed on her, and the fans who wouldn’t respect her privacy. At Sylvie’s suggestion, she also finds the surprise missing ingredient that takes her skincare line from good to great: collagen harvested from her murder victims. After a somewhat slow and aimless start, the pace picks up and the plot finds its footing as Lila embarks on a double life as a beauty guru and serial killer. Along the way, Glenn works in interview transcripts and article excerpts, giving the novel a true crime feel. There have been many horror novels exploring the toll that celebrity status and beauty standards take on women, but this fun and gory tale stands out from the pack. It’s as vicious and unforgiving as Hollywood itself. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Anderson (Something in the Woods Loves You) delivers a haunting and atmospheric urban fantasy populated by quirky human characters and fabulously weird mythical creatures. It kicks off with protagonist Green dying and coming back to life, his death having been stolen by a giant crow. After this bizarre encounter, he feels an inexplicable call to the Catskill mountains, where he’s determined to camp while seeking fulfillment. On his first night at the remote Candle-Fly Camp, he barely survives a strange encounter with a glowing, translucent deer and a partially skinned horned wolf that addresses him as “not-man” before vanishing. Fortunately, Green’s new, reclusive neighbor, Valentina, is a cryptonaturalist and expert in such unusual phenomenon and agrees to take him on as an apprentice. Thus begins Green’s education in the unseen and unexpected, as Valentina introduces him to all manner of cryptids and helps him investigate why these creatures are appearing to him. She also reveals that the glass fawn, the technical name for the translucent deer, is said to bring death to all who see it, meaning Green’s time may be running out. Anderson’s worldbuilding is wonderfully bizarre, and there’s an introspective bent to the ecologically minded narrative that gives Green’s journey an intimate feel as he finds new friends, purpose, and home. The result is a wholly captivating tale of magic and nature. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Somers (The Burning City) riffs on Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies with a choose-the-outcome novel structure in this sophisticated and darkly comic horror outing. Noting in his introduction that readers should “read until you hit a redirect—a footnote pointing toward one of the stories at the end of the book,” Somers unspools the ghastly fates of the 1995 graduates of Bishop Carlbus Prep school. It kicks off with senior Amy, who is determined to throw the most legendary graduation party ever. But domineering Amy is not well liked by her classmates, and the party quickly spirals into chaos. By sunrise, Amy is dead from a fall down the basement stairs. Over the years, the rest of Amy’s classmates die one by one in ways too increasingly bizarre to be overlooked: Xerxes is eaten by mice, Quentin sinks in a mire, and Fanny suffers from leech-induced anemia. At the funeral of Zillah, who died of alcohol poisoning, the few remaining students realize that someone or something is deliberately picking them off. Through its clever structure, the book posits a number of explanations but offers no easy answers, which may frustrate some. Somers unpicks the seams of Gorey’s original to create portraits of despairing and complicated adults, all broken and haunted by the trauma of their youth. It’s an eerie gem. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Assassin’s Creed game developer McDevitt shines in his sci-fi noir debut, plausibly imagining a future in which many have become addicted to “surrogate realities” to the detriment and even death of their IRL bodies. Kennedy Stark was a regular PI until a client came to him about her Cleopatra-obsessed son, whose obsession with an SR program recreating ancient Egypt became a life-threatening addiction. Stark didn’t locate the boy in time to save him, an incident that inspired him to switch jobs to become a halter, a licensed professional who pulls people out of surrogate realities. Now he’s tapped for an assignment by a shadowy duo, Auntie and Friend, who ask him to locate software genius Delia Walsh, a senator’s daughter and SR pioneer, with whom Stark shares a past, for a lucrative fee. Stark accepts, on condition that his compensation will be a shot at a spot on the next shuttle to Mars, which is being colonized in response to catastrophic climate change on Earth. McDevitt’s Chandleresque protagonist finds the path to halting Delia’s immersion challenging and hazardous, creating a gripping and twisty mystery for readers. Fans of Nick Harkaway will be riveted. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink