Archives de catégorie : Romantasy

MADDER LAKE de Katie Wu

Lush, thrilling, and inventive, MADDER LAKE is something utterly fresh in the romantasy space. It has the anonymous yearning of The Night Circus, the examination of the foreign student experience of Babel, and the use of magic to explore a sense of belonging and the definition of home of Starling House. But it also has a system in which magic and art are intricately intertwined, alongside a deep investigation of who gets access to that art and who serves as its gatekeepers.

MADDER LAKE
by Katie Wu
HarperVoyager, March 2027
(via Dystel Goderich & Bourret)

At Xenra, the world’s top magic painting university, blending art and the arcane is commonplace. But for Ayla, a homesick immigrant, commonplace isn’t good enough. Not if she wants to graduate with a lucrative patronage and afford treatment for her dying mother back home. When the school cancels her scholarship, she’ll do anything to stay at Xenra—including asking her privileged rival Constantine to team up for a painting competition that would guarantee her tuition.

Except there can only be one winner—she’ll have to beat him in the final round of the contest. Her only hope is a mysterious canvas she finds hidden in the school—a canvas that can turn anything painted on it into reality. With the power to change the art market (and perhaps the world), it’s the perfect way to stand out among her peers. But as Ayla investigates the canvas, she discovers that she’s not the only one working on it…

Constantine, desperate to rejoin his family after being disowned years ago, has found it too. They anonymously collaborate on it—and pass wordless confessions through its brushstrokes—all while butting heads on their joint project. As her mother’s condition worsens and Constantine’s powerful family threatens their shot at the competition, Ayla needs to solve the mysteries of the canvas and secure her win, once and for all. But unraveling century-old secrets risks the very fate of her people, so Ayla and Constantine must each decide if winning is truly worth selling out this magic—and each other.

Katie Wu is an author of swoony and strange books. Born stateside but raised in Shanghai, she then studied computer science and fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania, and is now based in NYC. You can find Katie Wu on TikTok/Instagram as @katiewuwrites. MADDER LAKE is her adult fantasy debut.

INNAMORATA d’Ava Reid

A modern blend of gothic horror and epic romance for fans of the necromantic magic of Gideon the Ninth, the court intrigue of The Priory of the Orange Tree and the Shakespearean family drama of House of the Dragon with two powerful women at the center.

INNAMORATA
by Ava Reid
Del Rey Books, March 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Once there was an island where the dead walked the earth, and seven noble houses ruled by the arcane secrets of necromancy.

A conqueror’s blade brought them low, burning their libraries, killing their lords, and extinguishing their eldritch magic.

But defiant against the new order stands the House of Teeth and its last living members: beautiful Marozia, the heiress to the House, and her cousin, the uncanny Lady Agnes.

Though she has not spoken a word in seven years, Agnes is the true carrier of the House’s legacy. And she has her orders. She must recapture the secrets of death magic and avenge her family’s fallen honor. She must arrange the betrothal of her beloved cousin Marozia to Liuprand, heir to the conqueror’s throne, for access to the forbidden library in his grotesquely grand castle.

Revenge burns in Agnes’s heart but so do stranger passions—and it is Liuprand, the golden prince, who speaks to her soul. This passion is as treasonous as it is powerful, poisoning the kingdom’s roots and threatening to tear the already shattered realm in two.

For Agnes’s final order is the gravest: She must not fall in love.

Ava Reid is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning, Lady Macbeth, and other novels. Her books have been published in more than fourteen territories. She lives in the New York area.

TANGLED ROOTS de S.T. Gibson

In this lush, sin-stained sequel to the Sunday Times bestselling Savage Blooms, Eileen, Finley, and Nicola embark on a quest to rescue kidnapped Adam from the faery underworld, plunging into a centuries-old power struggle between humans and the fae.

TANGLED ROOTS
(Unearthly Delights, Book 2)
by S.T. Gibson
Orbit, February 2027
(via KT Literary)

There is only one rule they must follow in the faery court, where pain and pleasure are elevated to art: entertain the king, or suffer the consequences of his boredom.

Getting close to the enigmatic and alluring faery king isn’t just a matter of survival; it is the only hope Eileen and her lovers have of escaping Craigmar’s curse.

Adam, Nicola, Finley and Eileen must scheme and seduce their way through court, all in the name of breaking the others free. But it’s so hard to want to be a hero when the faery king offers them each the fulfillment of their wildest desires… for a price.

Voir le résumé du premier tome, SAVAGE BLOOMS (Orbit, octobre 2025)

S.T. Gibson is the British Fantasy Award-nominated and Goodreads Choice -nominated author of the USA Today bestseller Evocation and Sunday Times bestseller A Dowry Of Blood. She holds a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing from UNC and Masters of Theological Studies from Princeton Seminary.

SEASON OF STEEL de Maia Kane

Bridgerton meets Pacific Rim in this sapphic crossover romantasy set in a glittering alternate Regency in which the London Season is more cutthroat than ever…literally.

SEASON OF STEEL
by Maia Kane
PRH/Dutton, Spring 2027
(via Park, Fine & Brower)

In an alternate Regency England where marriage to eligible noblewomen is decided by deadly mecha dueling tournaments, half-Chamorro bluestocking Lady Wilhelmina Applewhite will choose her own destiny, thank you very much. But when her father’s sudden death leaves Willa as his sole heir, her hand in marriage—and the enormous ducal estate she stands to inherit—becomes the upcoming Season’s grand prize. Determined to seize her fate—and protect her little sisters’ freedom—Willa shocks the ton by declaring her intention to hire a Bloodsworn fighter to compete for her own hand.

Except, the only one mad enough to even consider it is rakish, brooding Thomasin Drake, the first and last woman to have ever fought in a Season…until her final duel ended in defeat and disgrace. Thomasin is more interested in drowning her sorrows in whiskey than risking her life fighting for a fussy spitfire like Willa—and she swore never to return to high society after her loss. But when she discovers that the man who beat her is competing with her own old mech, she agrees to enter on one condition: if she wins, the rig belongs to her.

Together, the two women must navigate both the Season’s high society balls and dangerous duels, or Willa risks losing her family, her estate, and her freedom to fortune hunters. But if she isn’t careful, she might lose her most valuable possession—her heart—to Thomasin before the Season is over.

And in a world where marriage is a matter of life and death, falling in love is the last thing she can afford.

Maia Kane is a hapa CHamoru writer, Shudokan black belt, and media studies graduate student who completed her education in London. When not writing books or academic essays, she enjoys playing video games, reading comics, and backpacking around the world.

THE DARK IN HER VEINS de M.K. Lobb

From critically acclaimed, UK bestselling author M.K. Lobb comes a noir romantic fantasy set in a world in which sin is a fatal disease, and the rich hire the poor to carry out their basest instincts―until the forbidden romance between a sinner and a mysterious figure threatens to destroy everything.

THE DARK IN HER VEINS
by M.K. Lobb
Sourcebooks Casablanca, August 2026

In the gritty, glittering city of Valestadt, every crime—from the smallest infraction to the largest atrocity—leaves its mark in the form of Bloodrot, a wasting disease that slowly eats away at its host. For the poor, sinning is a death sentence. For the rich, it’s just another expensive pastime. After all, anyone can be bought.

Talin Keller is a sinner. She has learned to rely on nothing and no one—traits that have served her well as right-hand woman to the holiest man in the city, the Prophet. Talin’s job is to get her hands dirty so the Prophet’s can stay clean. It’s a job she’s frighteningly good at, and judging by her rapidly advancing Bloodrot, it might also be her last. But when a routine assignment puts Talin on a collision course with the Prophet’s most hated enemy, a shadowy underworld figure known as “the Warden,” she begins to see a future for herself that doesn’t involve a body bag. If she can get close enough to the Warden, she can trade his capture for her own freedom.

The closer Talin gets to the Warden, though, the more she finds herself falling for his sharp edges and twisted sense of justice. And as the lines between good and evil—between saint and sinner, between lover and enemy—begin to blur, Talin finds herself at the center of a conflict that could destroy everything.

M. K. Lobb is a fantasy writer with a love of all things dark— be it literature, humour, or general aesthetic. She grew up in small-town Ontario and studied political science at both the University of Western Ontario and the University of Ottawa. She now lives by the lake with her partner and their cats. When not reading or writing, she can be found at the gym or contemplating the harsh realities of existence. Her first young adult novel, Seven Faceless Saints (Little, Brown) released in 2023. It was a Kids’ Indie Next Pick and was shortlisted for the Barnes & Noble Children’s & YA Book Awards. The sequel, Disciples of Chaos, followed in 2024. Her third novel, To Steal From Thieves, released in 2025, with the sequel, To Deal With Kings, coming in March 2026. Her first adult romantasy, THE DARK IN HER VEINS, releases in August 2026.