Archives de catégorie : Speculative Fiction

MEET ME AT THE CROSSROADS de Megan Giddings

From the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of Lakewood and The Women Could Fly, a dazzling new novel about two brilliant sisters and what happens to their undeniable bond when a mysterious and possibly perilous new world beckons.

MEET ME AT THE CROSSROADS
by Megan Giddings
Amistad, June 3, 2025
(via Writers House)

On an ordinary summer morning, the world is changed by the appearance of seven mysterious doors that seemingly lead to another world. People are, of course, mesmerized and intrigued: A new dimension filled with beauty and resources beckons them to step into an adventure. But, perhaps inevitably, people soon learn that what looks like paradise may very well be filled with danger.

Ayanna and Olivia, two Black Midwestern teens—and twin sisters—have different ideas of what may lie in the world beyond. But will their personal bond endure such wanton exploration? And when one of them goes missing, will the other find solace of her own? And will she uncover the circumstances of what truly happened to her once constant companion and best friend?

Megan Giddings brings her customarily brilliant and eye-opening powers of storytelling to give us a story that dazzles the senses and bewitches the mind. MEET ME AT THE CROSSROADS is an unforgettable novel about faith, love, and family from one of today’s most exciting and surprising young writers.

Megan Giddings is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. Her novel, Lakewood, was one of New York Magazine’s 10 best books of 2020, one of NPR’s best books of 2020, a Michigan Notable book for 2021, a nominee for two NAACP Image Awards, and a finalist for a 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction category. Her second novel, The Women Could Fly, was named one of The Washington Post’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy novels of 2022, one of Vulture’s Best Fantasy books of 2022, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice.

LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER de Neena Viel

For fans of Jordan Peele’s films, Stranger Things, and The Other Black Girl, LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER is a laugh-out-loud, deeply terrifying, and big-hearted speculative horror novel from electrifying debut talent Neena Viel.

LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER
by Neena Viel
St. Martin’s Press, February 2025
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

Most Anticipated by Goodreads, People, BookRiot, Reactor, Screenrant, and more

Twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.

When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.

« Deliciously terrifying and belly laugh-inducing…Viel incorporates well worn genre tropes in new ways and provides plenty of bloodcurdling surprises along the way. » — BookPage, Starred review

« Unique and compelling … a terrifying and immerse supernatural horror story that is clearly underpinned with love. » — Library Journal

« [An] addictive supernatural thriller. » — Publishers Weekly

« Heartfelt and darkly humorous…Fans of Jordan Peele’s films will want to check this out. » — Booklist

« Anxiety metamorphoses into terror for a young Black woman fiercely protecting her own… A relentless descent into familial fears made manifest, both haunting and terribly familiar. » — Kirkus

Neena Viel is a horror writer who lives in a cabin in the Washingtonian woods with her husband and the best dog on the planet. Her passion for philanthropy (almost) rivals her love for ghost stories. LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER is her debut novel.

THE LAST ICEBERG TASTING MENU d’Erin Jones

THE LAST ICEBERG TASTING MENU explores themes of climate change, wealth inequality, queer lives, and immortality, combining the ensemble storytelling of Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, the speculative nature of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark and C. Pam Zhang’s Land Of Milk and Honey, with the humor and heart of Glass Onion.

THE LAST ICEBERG TASTING MENU
by Erin Jones
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, publication 2026-2027
(via Frances Goldin Literary Agency)

In a not-too-distant future, the world’s last glacier has been downgraded to the world’s last iceberg. While society mourns another natural wonder lost to climate change, the billionaire—a former tech mogul turned restaurateur—becomes obsessed with obtaining a piece of the ice to serve at his restaurant. The iceberg has been deemed a protected entity by the United Nations, but that doesn’t worry the billionaire. He needs the ice.  

THE LAST ICEBERG TASTING MENU is a speculative, propulsive literary novel-in-stories following the waning days of the world as we know it, and the nine people who find their fates intertwined with the iceberg and one another across space, time, and class. There’s the helicopter pilot who aids and abets the billionaire’s heist despite physical and emotional scars from what she saw while working in search and rescue amid environmental catastrophes wrought by global warming; the billionaire’s wife, who reserved her place in a future Mars colony by allowing her consciousness to be contained in a box as the world burned; a pair of twins who have only ever lived at sea and now lead scuba tours of communities drowned by rising waters; and finally, the security guard who will do whatever it takes to provide protection (and air conditioning) for his young family, and becomes embroiled in a plot to reclaim the little of the iceberg that remains in containment before it’s gone forever.

Erin Jones is the author of the YA novel Tinfoil Crowns (Flux Books, 2019), a 2020 Moonbeam Awards Silver Medalist, and one of Barnes & Noble’s most anticipated YA books of the year. Jones graduated with her MFA in fiction from Emerson College where she is now affiliated faculty and a writing consultant for ELL students. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

DON’T LET ME GO de Kevin Christopher Snipes

They Both Die at the End meets See You Yesterday in this speculative YA romance about two star-crossed boys trapped in a millennium-spanning cycle of reincarnation whose only hope of escape may be a price that neither is willing to pay.

DON’T LET ME GO
by Kevin Christopher Snipes
HarperCollins Children’s Books, May 2025

Out and proud, Riley Iverson knows there’s nothing more cringe than crushing on a straight boy. But from the moment that the handsome, sporty, and painfully heterosexual Jackson Haines walks into his life, Riley can’t help but feel an instant and undeniable connection. Mainly because, as impossible as it seems, Jackson is the spitting image of the boy who’s recently appeared in Riley’s dreams—dreams set in another time and another place where he and Jackson were desperately in love.

At first Riley tries to dismiss the coincidence as a product of his hormone-fueled, overactive imagination, but as his friendship with Jackson deepens into something more, the dreams prove harder to ignore. Especially when Jackson begins having them too. Plunged into increasingly vivid visions of the past, the boys find themselves in various eras scattered throughout history. No matter where or when their dreams take them, though, two things remain constant: Riley and Jackson are always together, and they always die at the end.

As it becomes increasingly difficult to view their dreams as anything but warnings, the boys are forced to consider the possibility that their burgeoning relationship might be propelling them headfirst into their own tragic ending. But is it worth staying apart to save their lives if the price is forsaking a love that has defied not only time and space but even death itself?

Kevin Christopher Snipes is a New York–based writer who was born and raised in Florida. He spent his early career in the theater writing plays, including A Bitter Taste and The Chimes. Later, for Gimlet Media/Spotify, he created the queer fantasy podcast The Two Princes. His children’s poetry and short fiction have been published internationally, and his debut novel, Milo and Marcos at the End of the World, was an official selection of the NEA’s Read Across America program. 

LUMINOUS de Silvia Park

Prescient yet timeless, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, this highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood.

LUMINOUS
by Silvia Park
Simon & Schuster, March 2025
(via The Friedrich Agency)

“I once had a family. At least, the earliest version of me had a family.”

In a reunified Korea of the near future, the sun beats down on a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, broken down for parts. Eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through the scraps, searching for a piece that might support her failing body. There among the piles of trash, something catches her eye: a robot boy—so lifelike and strange, unlike anything she’s ever seen before.

Siblings Jun and Morgan haven’t spoken for years. When they were children, their brother Yoyo disappeared suddenly, leaving behind only distant memories of his laughter and near-human warmth. Yoyo—an early prototype of a humanoid robot designed by their father—was always bound for something darker and more complex. Now Morgan makes robots for a living and is on the verge of losing control of her most important creation. Jun is a detective with the Robot Crimes Unit whose investigation is digging up truths that want to stay buried. And whether they like it or not, Ruijie’s discovery will thrust their family back together in ways they could have never imagined.

At once a thrilling work of speculative fiction and a poignant exploration of what it really means to be human, Luminous is an unforgettably brilliant debut.

One of Debutiful‘s Most Anticipated Debuts of 2025
One of LitHub’s 20 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Look Forward to in 2025

“Extraordinary…set in a not-too-distant future, debut novelist Silvia Park’s Luminous gloriously explores the unpredictable, fading lines between man and machine.”—Shelf Awareness

« With Ishiguro-esque precision, Park dissects sentience and reality, as well as love and death…Lustrous. »—Publishers Weekly

« A well-crafted take on the vagaries of memory and what it means to be human, with a satisfying investigative backbone. »—Booklist

“Inventive, rollicking, and poetic, Luminous is a future classic novel about robots that reveals itself to be profoundly, beautifully human.”—Juhea Kim, author of Beasts of a Little Land and City of Night Birds

“Wildly and, yes, luminously emotional.”—Matt Haig, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library

« [Luminous] is a spectacular debut, taking place in a thoroughly imagined, vividly written future. Harrowing but full of heart, a work of enormous ambition and brilliance with an ending that fully justifies the title and brought me to tears. »—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Luminous is warm, expansive, and particular. Park renders the intersection between family and technology with wit and philosophical depth, but ultimately this is just incredibly exciting to read. It’s utterly beautiful.”—Raven Leilani, bestselling author of Luster

Silvia Park’s stories have been published in Black Warrior Review, Tor, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, and elsewhere. They hold an MFA from NYU and attended the Clarion Science and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and Tin House Summer Workshop. They teach fiction at the University of Kansas and split their selves between Lawrence and Seoul. LUMINOUS is their first novel.