20 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books We Can’t Wait To Dive Into This Summer

The other The summer blockbuster season is upon us. Some of this year’s biggest science fiction and fantasy books will hit shelves over the next four months, including new titles from Ken Liu, Holly Black and Ruthanna Emrys. Plus, widely celebrated cross-genre writers like Akil Kumarasamy, Megan Giddings, and Georgi Gospodinov are back with new head scratchers along with a new crop of debut authors.

Whether you’re looking for a quick fix to devour in a single weekend or an epic tome to pore over for months, here are the 20 best science fiction and fantasy books coming in May, June, July, and August 2022.

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electra by Jennifer Saint (May 3)

Madeline Miller fans Circe and Margaret Atwood the penelopia will be attracted by this reinvention of The Iliad who approaches Helen of Troy’s niece, Elektra. It’s another gripping historical fantasy along the lines of Saint’s first novel, Arianabut this time he widens the focus to include two more women: Elektra’s mother, Clytemnestra, and her father Agamemnon’s mistress, Cassandra.

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Not many former Wall Street Journal tech reporters have written a science fiction novel, but Vauhini Vara has done just that with this surprising and nuanced book on memory, capitalism, and climate change. It is the story of a boy from South India who grows up to become the most powerful man in the world, first as the CEO of a technology company, then as the leader of an international corporatocracy, and gives his daughter access to his memories in a desperate attempt. try to save the planet.

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The co-author of The Spiderwick Chronicles is back with his first adult novel, a dark fantasy set in a world that could be ours were it not for “shadow magic” and the “gloamists” who study it. When a 28-year-old thief named Charlie Hall finds a dead man whose shadow has been shattered, he embarks on an adventure to search for a lost magical text: the titular Book of Night.

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Shelter of time by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel (May 10)

This Ballardian novel, Gospodinov’s third translation from Bulgarian to English, is about a Swiss health clinic for Alzheimer’s patients where each floor is designed to recreate a different decade of the 20th century. Things start to get wild when entire countries decide to start “living” in a particular decade of the past. (France, of course, chooses the 80s).

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This contemporary twist The turn of the Screw It’s about a newly sober babysitter, Mallory Quinn, who takes a job babysitting a 5-year-old boy. The boy seems sweet at first (isn’t he always?), until she draws a picture of a man dragging a woman’s body through the woods. As the drawings of her become more and more realistic, Mallory wonders if she is channeling something supernatural, something that could help solve a cold case.

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Loulie al-Nazari, a criminal magic dealer with the enviable alias “Midnight Merchant”, joins her genius guardian, a prince and a thief in this fast-paced fantasy adventure inspired by multiple stories of Arabian Nights. Fans of SA Chakraborty’s Daevabad trilogy will enjoy al-Nazari’s quest to find an ancient artifact with the power to annihilate all jinn in the world.

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Traumatized women grow thick, dark hair along their spines in this debut novel by Sally Oliver. Marianne, grieving the death of her sister, joins other grieving women at an experimental treatment center in the Welsh wilderness, where her past and present begin to overlap, and her mind begins to unravel.

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A somber historical fantasy set in Victorian London and Meiji period Tokyo. ordinary monsters is about a British detective tasked with keeping two children with supernatural powers safe from a man made of smoke. At almost 700 pages, it’s a doorstop with a labyrinthine story and a great cast of characters.

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In the near future, the metaverse will be moderated by reality checkers like Joey, who oversees South Asian celebrity livestreams. When he hires an assistant named Rudra, the estranged scion of a wealthy Delhi family, they uncover a corporate conspiracy that destroys everything they think they know.

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Ken Liu returns with the fourth and final book in his Dandelion Dynasty series, best known for establishing the “silkpunk” genre with 2015 the grace of kings. This time, Pékyu Takval and Princess Théra must face two wars to decide the fate of the Seven Islands of Dara.

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knives out satisfies The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in this locked room mystery set in the near future, where an alien diplomat’s human translator becomes embroiled in a murder investigation. Eddie Robson has written for British comedies and doctor who spin-offs, so some dry humor is to be expected.

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Kingfisher’s retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a great way to reacquaint yourself with the story ahead of Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of Mike Flanagan’s original text. This version involves mushrooms, “possessed wildlife,” and a bunch of ghosts that may not actually be ghosts.

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Emrys’s first novel since the Innsmouth Legacy series is a story of first contact fueled by climate change. In the late 21st century, when aliens land in the Chesapeake Bay and offer humanity an escape from what they perceive to be a doomed Earth, our species must decide whether to leave home or stay.

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the insomniac by Victor Manibo (August 2)

What if you never needed to sleep again? It sounds great, but it doesn’t work as well in Manibo’s debut novel. A “wakeless” journalist named Jamie Vega finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation, and what’s worse is that he can’t remember anything from the night of the crime. After undertaking his own investigation, he discovers the truth behind insomnia, and well, it can’t be good.

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The title is not a metaphor; this novel is about people who eat books. Calling themselves The Family, they live on the Yorkshire moors and punish children by making them eat dictionaries. It turns out that they actually subsist with the stories contained within books, which becomes a problem when one of them becomes addicted to the best narrative container of all: the human brain.

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40 by Alan Heathcock (August 2)

A civil war between the US government and a faction of revolutionary fundamentalists is the setting for Heathcock’s bold and bizarre novel about faith, family and the future. When a young soldier named Mazzy Goodwin wakes up in a crater to find wings sprouting from her back, she’s not sure if it’s a miracle or a biological experiment, but it gives her the chance to become a leader in times of war. of war and find his missing sister.

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Face by Joma West (August 2)

Skin color is a choice in Joma West’s debut novel, courtesy of some gattacaHigh-end genetic technology that allows everyone (who can afford it) to design their own “perfect” faces. At the same time, all skin-to-skin contact is considered obscene, and a wealthy family’s pursuit of happiness turns into a nightmare worthy of a nightmare. black mirror episode.

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The brilliant author of Lakewood imagine a dystopia where witches are real, a fact that the authoritarian state uses to criminalize single women after the age of 30 and to prosecute black women for the slightest suspicion. When Josephine Thomas goes on a quest to honor her mother’s dying wish, she discovers a community that lives by very different rules.

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the first union is a South Asian-inspired fantasy epic that has been compared to that of Patrick Rothfuss the name of the wind, and for good reason: It’s an 800-page series opener told in the first person by a legendary sharp-tongued warrior who wields magic. The stunning cover doesn’t hurt either!

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This genre-defying novel from the author of the 2018 short story collection half gods is about a near-future artificial intelligence trainer, Ada, who in her spare time translates a Tamil manuscript written by a group of medical students in the 1990s. The story alternates between Ada’s encounters with the technology of the future and medical students’ attempts to suffer as much as possible in order to understand their patients.