Archives de catégorie : Speculative Fiction

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

THE WATER TAKES de Sarah Walker

An unimaginable apocalypse. A scared young girl. A stubborn old woman. Neither will survive without the other.

THE WATER TAKES
by Sarah Walker
Summit/Simon & Schuster Australia, March 2026
(via Wolf Literary)

Pam is in her mid-seventies, widowed and hiding from the world behind a caustic sense of humour. Her health is declining, and she’s afraid of dying alone, but her most pressing concern is complaining to the council about her waterlogged garden.

When Pam’s ten-year-old neighbour, Charlotte, is foisted upon her, a tentative friendship begins to unfurl, cracking open Pam’s hard exterior.

But the puddles in the garden become pools, and then sinkholes. Nowhere seems safe. With no help coming, Pam and Charlotte can only shelter in place for so long – eventually, they know they must attempt to navigate a catastrophically altered world.

THE WATER TAKES is a work of astonishing literary imagination with the urgent page-turning propulsion of a thriller. Full of surprises and revelations, with a sense of humanity that is never clichéd or sentimental, The Water Takes will make you laugh and cry – and it will stay with you forever.

‘What do you do when the world starts drowning? THE WATER TAKES is haunting, terrifying and still somehow hopeful. Seventy-something Pam is one of the most vivid characters I’ve ever encountered – she made me laugh and roar and weep. I am in awe of Sarah Walker and this book.’ – Kate Mildenhall

‘The Water Takes is a beautifully written blend of looming menace and sharp humour, along with a tender and timely reminder that connection is what saves us when catastrophe hits. This is dystopian fiction that feels as real, as human, as anything I’ve read. A dizzyingly good debut.’ – Jacqueline Bublitz

Sarah Walker is a Naarm/Melbourne-based writer and artist. Her first book, The First Time I Thought I Was Dying, a collection of non-fiction essays about the unruly body in late capitalism, won the 2021 Quentin Bryce Award. She was runner-up in the 2019 Calibre Essay Prize and received the 2020 ABR Victorian Rising Star award. Her work has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Walkley Awards, the Hammond House International Short Story Prize, the Nillumbik Prize, the Disquiet Literary Contest, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize and the Darebin Mayor’s Writing Award. She has been published in The Monthly, Overland, Meanjin, Island Magazine, Kill Your Darlings, the ABR, the AFR, and The Guardian. She is also an award-winning photographer and fine artist, whose work has been commissioned across multiple countries. She is a PhD candidate at RMIT.

EX ROMANA TRILOGY de Sophie Burnham

Perfect for readers of Saara El-Arifi and C. L. Clark and stories with strong, queer voices, this is a speculative imagining of a world on the brink of revolution. Here, Rome never fell, but the apocalypse is coming—if it hasn’t arrived already.

EX ROMANA TRILOGY
by Sophie Burnham
DAW, 2024 – 2027
(via KT Literary)

Book 1: SARGASSA (DAW, October 2024)

An unlikely group of rebels are ready to burn down the Roman empire like you’ve never imagined it before. From the halls of the Senate floor to the bloody sands of the gladiatorial pits, Sophie Burnham’s debut is full of riveting political danger, thoughtful worldbuilding, and a tightly-knit group of conspirators.

The role of Imperial Historian is Selah Kleios’s birthright, but she was supposed to have more time to learn the role from her father, the previous Historian. In the wake of her father’s sudden and shocking assassination, Selah finds herself custodian of more than just the Imperial Archives when an old flame returns intending to steal the Iveroa Stone—a seemingly harmless artifact containing secrets that could destroy the empire.

Theo Nix is a damn good spy, and they know it. By day, they work in Senator Naevia Kleios’s office; smart, unobtrusive, and grateful, they’re the model of a perfect plebeian. By night, their time belongs to Griff: master strategist, commander of the Revenants, the spider at the center of a very large and very dangerous web. When Griff gives Theo an assignment, they move, no questions asked, so it’s really no surprise Theo is flirting with Arran Alexander—Selah’s low-caste half brother is an obvious target. It is a surprise, however, that they’re enjoying it so much.

After a year away in the legions, Arran has recently returned home, only to find the cracks beneath his feet widening. Struggling with his own identity and purpose, drawn into an underground independence movement through his growing feelings for Theo, Arran must choose between the sister he loves and the chance to take control of his own life for the very first time.

SARGASSA is the first book in a new speculative trilogy that is equal parts political intrigue, queer romance, and revolution.

« Sargassa is a masterclass in world-building, with its realistic politics, complex and brutal caste system, and gorgeous settings. It takes time to get the lay of the land, but the payoff is worth the effort. The expansive scope multiplies the emotional and conceptual weight of the narrative. » —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

Book 2: BLOODTIDE (October 2025)

The fate of the empire hangs in the balance in the second installment of the genre-bending Ex Romana trilogy.

Cracks are forming in the empire’s facade.

In the wake of startling revelations and personal betrayals, Tair finds herself the Iveroa Stone’s new custodian as she embarks on a battle for Luxana’s streets. As the fallout of the fighting pit massacre leads to a rise in legionary crackdowns and vigilante justice, Tair is determined to find a better path forward for Sargassa’s future. Up in the Imperial Archives, meanwhile, Selah tries to make sense of her family’s tangled history within the Imperium’s shadowed beginnings.

Elsewhere, in the far-flung reaches of Roma Sargassa’s badlands, Arran and Theo undertake a covert mission for the Revenants, one that could tip the scales between victory and defeat in Griff’s upcoming war. But long-laid plans and careful maneuvering are nothing compared to the forces of nature, and Sargassa’s future might just be determined by the coming storm.

Book 3: DAWNLANDS (October 2027)

In the third and final installment of the Ex Romana trilogy, the battle for Sargassa’s future has arrived. As skirmishes break out across the eastern seaboard, Selah and Tair fight to hold Luxana’s tenuous alliance together against both the Imperium and the looming threat of reinforcements from Roma. But the return of long-missing friends and unexpected allies also brings news that will force them to contend with impossible questions: Just how much are they willing to sacrifice for a different tomorrow? And is it already too late to try?

Sophie Burnham is a queer, nonbinary novelist and screenwriter, backed by an Acting BFA and a concentration in playwriting from Syracuse University. Honored with a We Need Diverse Books writing grant and a placement in ScreenCraft’s 2020 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Screenplay competition, Burnham’s debut novel promises to enthrall and enlighten readers. Follow them on Twitter at @sophielburnham.