Locus is thrilled to announce two of the field’s talented and award-winning authors, Tananarive Due and Stephen Graham Jones, will be headlining the 2026 Locus Awards as Guests of Honor this May. Novelists Due (The Reformatory, a NYT Notable Book) and Jones (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, NYT Bestseller) will grace the stage in Berkeley, California, on May 30, 2026, as we celebrate the science fiction, fantasy, and horror …Read More

Locus is excited to bring you another video on the top new releases of the week! We’ll be going over the best of the best in the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Young Adult genres! There’s a new video every week, so if you want to support what we do and don’t want to miss out on future releases, consider subscribing to the channel! …Read More

The White Octopus Hotel, Alexandra Bell (Del Rey 979-8-217-09179-9, $19.00, 349 pp, tp) October 2025.

The White Octopus Hotel (my fourth hotel book this year!), by Alexandra Bell, is a time-travel novel in the Bradbury tradition and a love story that is full of drama and mystery and, upon reflection, far more romantic than it seems while reading. It’s also a great big story of family and history and regret …Read More

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the preliminary ballot for the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards.

Superior Achievement in a Novel

• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, Kylie Lee Baker (Mira; Hodder & Stoughton as Bat Eater)
• Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, Clay McLeod Chapman(Quirk)
• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix(Berkley)
• King Sorrow, Joe Hill(William Morrow)
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga)
• Angel Down, …Read More
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The American Library Association (ALA) announced the winners of the Youth Media Awards at a press conference held on January 26, 2026 in Chicago IL and virtually.

The Alex Awards for the ten best adult books that appeal to teen audiences went to multiple works and authors of genre interest, including:

• Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert, Bob the Drag Queen (Gallery)
• The Favorites, Layne Fargo (Random House)
• The Whyte …Read More
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Visit our bookshop.org page to purchase this week’s new books and support your local bookstore. And us!

Anderson, Liza: We Who Have No Gods (Penguin Random House/Ballantine 978-0593976319, $30.00, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 01/27/2026)

Fantasy novel, the first in the Order of Acheron series. Vic, caretaker for her younger brother Henry, discovers that he’s inherited their mother’s witch abilities and will start training for the Acheron Order. …Read More

No Man’s Land, Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey, 978-0-34549-315-6, 496pp, $30.00 hc). Cover by Tomás Almeida. March 2026.

One fascinating variation on the myths-in-the-modern-world theme is the re-emergence of mythological or fairytale creatures or elements into the modern world – and here I am using modern loosely, because Richard K. Morgan’s No Man’s Land takes place in an alternate post-WWI Britain. That war is over – but, as one character …Read More

This list covers new SF/F/H print, online, and electronic periodicals (including regularly updated websites) seen by Locus magazine, focusing on those that publish fiction or reviews and criticism. To submit titles for listing on these pages, please send to Locus Publications, 655 13th St. #100, Oakland CA 94612 or email [email protected].

Analog

• Trevor Quachri, ed.
• Vol. 195, #s 11 & 12, November/ December 2025, $10.99 print, bimonthly, 208pp, 14½ …Read More
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John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has announced the winners of theBulletin‘s first short fiction contest, Write Before Midnight. Judge Kim Stanley Robinson declared a seven-way tie between:

• The Hard Problem , Beston Barnett
• Countdown , Alex Dabertin
• What the People Want , Patrick Hutson
• A Modest Briefing , Robert Levinson
• Good Boy , Kerri Brady Long
• On Behalf of …Read More
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Two reprints from paperback to hardcover debut this week. First is Kaylie Smith’s Enchantra (Forever), first published in 2025 in paperback. Second is Celina Myers’ Hollow (Hanover Square Press), self-published in paperback in 2022. Each ranks on three lists.

Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT
02.01 LAT
01.25 USAT
01.18 PW
01.26 Amz
…Read More

Michael Kelly curates The Best Weird Fiction of the Year and is former Series Editor for The Year’s Best Weird Fiction. He’s a World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and British Fantasy Award winner. His fiction has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best New Horror, Black Static, Bourbon Penn, Nightmare Magazine, The Dark, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. He is the owner and editor-in-chief …Read More

Eugen Bacon, Nga’phandileh Whisperer (Stars and Sabers 9/25) Science fantasy, cosmic horror, and varied cultures mix in this dread-filled yet lyrical novella in the Sauútiverse world. A precocious Guardian in an elite space outpost misuses her sound magic and is stripped of her power and exiled, but finds new power and summons creatures of unreality she can’t control.

Travis Baldree, Brigands & Breadknives …Read More

The Daughter Who Remains, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW 978-0756418991, $23.00, 192pp, hc) February 2026.

Nnedi Okorafor’s The Daughter Who Remains is the concluding novella in her She Who Knows trilogy, but it’s a little more complicated than that. The first novella, last year’s She Who Knows, was a prequel to Okorafor’s World Fantasy-winning Who Fears Death (2010), revealing the early history of Najeeba, the mother of Onyesonwu, that novel’s world-changing sorcerer, …Read More

The Salvage, Anbara Salam (Tin House 978-1-963-10847-7, $17.99, 368 pp, tp) October 2025.

Anbara Salam’s The Salvage is a deliciously spooky novel set on Cairnroch Island, just off the coast of Scotland, in 1962. Marta Khoury, a marine archaeologist from an Edinburgh museum, has been dispatched to dive on a Victorian shipwreck which was recently discovered in Arctic waters and then dragged back to the crew’s home at Cairnroch. The …Read More

Song of Spores, Bogi Takács (Broken Eye Books 978-1-94037-275-4, $20.99, 216pp, tp) November 2025.

When I wrote my review of Bogi Takács’s excellent second collection, Power to Yield and Other Stories, I was surprised that, as editor, poet, academic, translator, and critic, e found the time to amass such a sizeable catalogue of stories. This time around, with a much greater appreciation of Takács’s work and what e has achieved …Read More

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) has announced the finalists for the 2025 NBCC awards for books published in English (including translations) in the United States. Authors and titles of genre interest include:

Criticism

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad (Knopf)
• Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue, Yoko Tawada, tr. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda (New Directions)

Fiction

• On the Calculation of Volume (Book …Read More
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Locus is excited to present you with another video on the top new releases of the week! We’re going over the best of the best in the SF, Fantasy, Horror, and YA genres and you’re not going to want to miss a second of it! We post a new video every week and would hate for you to miss out on your next favorite book, so consider subscribing to the …Read More

Fantasy Autumn ’25
Bourbon Penn 11/25
Tasavvur Fall ’25

Issue #98 of Fantasy Magazine is the second issue since the magazine came under Psychopomp’s publishing umbrella with Shingai Njeri Kagunda and Arley Sorg at the editing helm. It opens with The Memory Breach by Christian Emecheta, a captivating tale of Echo, who takes memories from people without even meaning to, just by an accidental touch in a parking …Read More

Tor Publishing Group has announced a new imprint, Wildthorn Books. The imprint will focus on commercial stories that are irresistible, genre-blending and genre-bending. Categories and genres published under the imprint will include commercial and upmarket women’s fiction, suspense, paranormal mystery, magical realism, speculative non-fiction, and historical fantasy.

Wildthorn Books launches globally with Tor UK. Devi Pillai will be the president and publisher; Monique Patterson, who joined in 2023 with …Read More

Visit our bookshop.org page to purchase this week’s new books and support your local bookstore. And us!

Bacon, Eugen; Ntumy, Cheryl; & Embleton, Stephen: Sauúti Terrors Short Stories (Beyond and Within) (Flame Tree Collections UK 978-1835626405, $26.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, 01/20/2026)

Shared-world anthology of Afrocentric horror stories set in the Sauútiverse, a planet system with two stars. Part of the publisher’s Beyond and Within series. Authors include T.L. …Read More

Pedro the Vast, Simón López Trujillo (Algonquin 978-1-643-75710-0, $17.99, 144pp, tp) January 2026.

From ice into fire, and from epic to intimate. Simón López Trujillo’s Pedro the Vast (2021, trans. Robin Myers) is a short novel that simmers and then sears, which is to say a novel that shares the heightened-reality fervour of a writer like Yuri Herrera but which actually does tip over into apocalyptic fire at its end. …Read More

The Locus Bestsellers for October include top titles: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US), The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (Tor), The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey), and Dungeons & Dragons: The Finest Edge of Twilight by R.A. Salvatore (Random House Worlds).

HARDCOVERS Months
on list Last
month 1) Katabasis, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US) 3 1 2) Alchemised, SenLinYu (Del Rey) …Read More

Two debuts this week, both of fantasy novels. Melissa de la Cruz’s Rings of Fate (Entangled: Red Tower Books), first in a new series, is on three lists, ranking as high as #7 on the NY Times fiction hardcover list. And Elise Kova’s Dragon Cursed (Entangled: Mayhem Books) is also on three lists, two of them for YA/children’s books, ranking as high as #1 on the NY Times‘ YA …Read More

KAMILAH COLE was born in Jamaica and raised in America. She graduated New York University and now lives in the Pacific Northwest. Her first novel, So Let Them Burn (2024), was shortlisted for a Dragon Award, a Lambda Award, and a Lodestar Award, and a sequel, This Ends in Embers, was published in 2025. Her speculative short fiction was included in the anthology The Secret Romantic’s Book of Magic …Read More

The Steeping of Blood, Hafsah Faizal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 978-0-374-38942-0, $20.99, 448 pp, hc) September 2025.

Hafsah Faizal’s YA Blood and Tea duology comes to a close with A Steeping of Blood, which picks up mere moments after the first book’s intense ending. This means that readers must – absolutely must – read A Tempest of Tea before opening Steeping, and it also makes reviewing Steeping exceedingly tricky. Certain …Read More

The Village at the Edge of Noon, Darya Bobyleva (Angry Robot 978-0857669902, trade paperback, 384pp, $18.99) December 2025.

Being from an ocean-bordering state, I have long maintained that seasonal seaside resort communities everywhere are cut from the same cloth. Whether you find yourself in my local Block Island or Key West or Brighton or Menton, you’re going to encounter seafood and squabbling families on vacation, cheap souvenirs and arcades, loud …Read More

The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Seventeen, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Skyhorse 978-1-949102-78-9, $19.99, 384pp, tp). December 2025. Cover by Asya Yordanova.

Ellen Datlow has been annually selecting year’s best horror stories since 1988. The Best Horror of the Year Volume Seventeen, featuring stories first published in 2024, is further proof she knows what she’s doing.

The most recent volume includes twenty-two stories and one prose poem ranging in length …Read More

The Universe Box, Michael Swanwick (Tachyon 978-1-61696-459-4, $18.95, 304pp, tp) February 2026.

In the introduction to his new collection The Universe Box, Michael Swanwick tells us about his very eclectic household, which he says his wife describes as a wizard’s den, full of skulls, masks, spears, pots, art ranging from Chesley Bonestell to comics, even a bottle of cat whiskers. So, too, it may be, with this book, he adds, …Read More

It’s a new week and we’re back with another video on the top new releases in the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres! We post a brand new video every week, so if you don’t want to miss out, and want to support what we do, consider subscribing to the channel to keep up-to-date on future releases! …Read More

Nominees have been announced for the 2026 Splatterpunk Awards, honoring superior achievement in the literary sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror fiction in 2025.

Best Novel

• Janitors vs. The Living Dead, Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason (Death’s Head)
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga)
• At Dark, I Become Loathsome, Eric LaRocca (Blackstone)
• The Home, Judith Sonnet (Madness Heart)
• Music to Sacrifice Virgins To, Kristopher Triana (Bad Dream)

…Read More

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