Archives de catégorie : Speculative Fiction

EXIT d’Ezzedine C. Fishere

This highly original novel tells an alternative history in which the Arab Spring leads Egypt and the Middle East to the brink of nuclear war.

EXIT
by Ezzedine C. Fishere
Translated by Jonathan Smolin
American University in Cairo Press, November 2026

In what might be his last night on Earth, the Egyptian president’s translator Ali pens a letter to his estranged son, telling him of everything that has led him, and his country, to breaking point.

Ali is traveling aboard a cargo ship on a dangerous mission to accompany twenty-four nuclear warheads from North Korea to Egypt, where they will be launched at the Israeli occupation of Sinai. But he has blown the whistle on the operation and now must face the consequences: will he be celebrated as a hero or condemned as a traitor?

Fishere’s powerful storytelling offers an alternative history to events post-revolution in Egypt, hinging on the rupture of the Arab Spring. EXIT creates a compelling, and terrifying, vision of the Middle East, one that both teaches us about the present and warns of coming catastrophe.

“[A] wonderful ‘prophetic’ novel”—Jamal Khashoggi

Ezzedine C. Fishere is an Egyptian novelist, diplomat and academic. A distinguished fellow at Dartmouth College, his extensive diplomatic experience includes the Egyptian Foreign Service and the United Nations missions in the Middle East and East Africa. He has published ten novels in Arabic, two of which have been translated into English: Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge which was nominated for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (often referred to as “the Arabic Booker”) and The Egyptian Assassin which was adapted by Pan-Arab TV into a limited television series entitled, “Abou Omar El-Masry.” He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.

DEAD BATTERIES de Kate Maupin

A single mom and her neurodivergent son battle for survival and stability in a post-apocalyptic world, one that is arguably no less harsh to them then the pre-pandemic one, in this gripping, one-of-a-kind debut.

DEAD BATTERIES
by Kate Maupin
Crown, October 2026

Ever since May’s husband decided parenthood wasn’t for him and left, it’s just been May and her autistic son with high support needs, Davis, against the world. A rather unwelcoming one that never had much patience or understanding.

Then 99.9% of the population was wiped out by a virus in just a few weeks, and that world ended. May has kept herself and Davis alive only through the self-imposed isolation she got so good at in the Before. They have their routines, their cozy nest in an abandoned library, and most importantly, the old battery-powered Game Boy that offers Davis familiarity and comfort in a world that’s difficult to understand.

One day May runs into a stranger while out scavenging for the precious batteries that keep Davis’s Game Boy alive. This stranger calls himself Bird, he has intel—and a proposition. Supposedly there’s an entire haven of survivors nearby. Bird wants in, and he needs May and Davis to play along as wife and child in order to guarantee himself a spot. Besides, wouldn’t May want to be part of a community again?

Not particularly—but the survivors have batteries. So she reluctantly agrees. And while May knows better than to trust the man who ripped her and Davis out of their routines, she can’t help but open up to him. But when Bird’s true motivations come to light, her old life collides with the new in terrifyingly dark ways, forcing May to question how far she would go to protect her son. How long can she and Davis last until the batteries run out?

Kate Maupin is an award-winning author, educator, foster child advocate, and reformed Super Mom. She is a genre-hopping writer with work originating in academic nonfiction, but excited to make her fiction debut. She is a national speaker on education and parenting topics, and is a retiree of the executive board of the Connecticut Association for the Gifted. Her work with populations of high needs children, as well as her own journey in special needs parenting, brought her to the realization that all parents can benefit from an antibody to “super parenting.” Kate currently lives in the wilds of Connecticut with her husband, two sons, and a truly outrageous number of pets.

THE INNKEEPER de Pradeep Niroula

A witty, dazzling speculative debut for readers of White Teeth and Sea of Tranquility—with a dash of Forrest Gump—the novel braids multiple storylines into a brilliantly converging plot, exploring displaced identity, national mythmaking, privilege, and the search for agency in an age of accelerating mechanization.

THE INNKEEPER
by Pradeep Niroula
Blackstone, Fall 2026
(via Nancy Yost Literary)

Almost everything seems to be going right for our nameless narrator from the secretive nation of Ratnastan. Freshly graduated from a prestigious Northeastern college and newly employed at an AI startup, he appears to be on a path to success—until a chance bicycle collision with a young woman named Samantha sends him careening into an entirely different future.

When Samantha asks him to visit her sprawling, antique-filled house, he discovers it is no ordinary bed-and-breakfast, but a clandestine inn for time travelers—a crossroads of hidden portals stretching from the 1850s into the future.

Unable to travel himself, our narrator becomes the inn’s unlikely steward: host, confidant, and steadying presence to a rotating cast of eccentric and occasionally famous (hello, Herman Melville!) guests from across history. All the while, he juggles the absurdities of his tech job and falls hopelessly for Autumn, a medical student visiting from five years ahead…an almost-romance shadowed by the uncrossable gulf between them.

But when he uncovers a devastating connection between the network of inns, his homeland, and his own family’s past, the careful balance he’s maintained begins to fracture…with consequences that ripple across time itself.

Pradeep Niroula grew up in Nepal and studied physics and fiction at Harvard. After graduation, while working at a startup, he lived in a bed-and-breakfast to save on rent, helping with chores — the setting that ultimately inspired THE INNKEEPER. Pradeep received a PhD in physics and now works as a research scientist in quantum computing and artificial intelligence at JPMorgan. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Scientific American, and his writing has appeared in LA Review of Books, The Drift, and MIT Technology Review, among other publications.

UNTRAVELLED WORLD de Martha Perotto-Wills

A heart-pounding, otherworldly adventure, mixed with the thorny, sexy lesbian dynamics of a Julia Armfield novel. For fans of The Ministry of Time and Annihilation.

UNTRAVELLED WORLD
by Martha Perotto-Wills
Random House, Fall 2027
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Ten years ago, the door opened to reveal a surreal, uncharted world adjoining our own: a terrifyingly beautiful expanse of glass which shifts at its own whims—every two hours, every two days—unpredictably gifting clear, flat planes or delivering dangerous crevasses hiding reality-bending hallucinations.

For Teddy, newly graduated and directionless, the era-defining mystery of the other world is merely an icebreaker, a conversation topic on dates gone cold. But then Adrian Clermont, an old family friend, appears in Teddy’s living room seeking funding for an expedition into the other world. Teddy, seeing a chance for purpose and an escape from her privileged, hermetic world, begs to join Adrian’s team.

When the Clermont party make it through the door, Teddy falls helplessly in love with both the landscape and with Jenny Cattaneo, a flinty meteorologist with a strangely deep connection to the other world. When Teddy makes a staggering discovery about a missing explorer, she is forced to reckon with the true cost of the life she’s built in the other world—the first real home she’s ever known.

Martha Perotto-Wills is a writer from London. She has a BA in History and an MA in Queer History. After spending several years as a bookseller and cataloguer in crumbling second-hand bookshops she moved into trade publishing, and now works as an associate agent at a literary agency. She lives in south London with her girlfriend and their cat. UNTRAVELLED WORLD is her first novel, partially born from her obsession with Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s 1922 memoir The Worst Journey in the World.

CREATURES OF HABIT de Jennifer Yeh

A warm, generous, and emotional debut novel with a speculative bent for fans of The Correspondent, Shark Heart, and Sandwich.

CREATURES OF HABIT
by Jennifer Yeh
William Morrow, March 2027
(via Neon Literary)

Gina Lee’s life might not have turned out to be terribly exciting, but it’s comfortably predictable—until her husband Mark drops a bomb that upends everything. Ever since the unexpected death of his mother Mark has been drifting out of the family orbit. Now, he has completely escaped their gravitational pull: he’s leaving to start a new relationship with a younger woman.

Reckoning with a future that looks nothing like the one she imagined and a past she now must rewrite, Gina finds herself adrift for the first time in decades. For years she has been the emotional and practical heart of her family, but with the members of that family scattered and the reality of Mark’s engagement party fast approaching, Gina wonders for the first time what she wants for herself.

It’s only when a strange amphibious creature crawls through her window to ask for help that Gina begins to understand that her life is not over. In fact, with the unlikely wisdom of her new friend, she finds that it might be just beginning.

Told with a poignantly observant eye, Jennifer Yeh’s gentle, uplifting debut that speaks to the shifting seasons of life and the deeply human ability to find joy in a few perfect moments.

Jennifer Yeh is a textbook author and a one-time frog biologist. She lives in San Francisco