The exciting sequel to the gunslinging, dragon-riding world of The Mountain Crown

Sephihalé ele Janan sits in a prison cell in the southern island of Mazemoor, dreaming of escape. After months in a provisional prison for fighting for the imperial Kattakans, Janan is sponsored by another refugee who was once a part of his scattered family. Yearning to build a life on his sister’s land with the dragons their people revere, the peace Janan seeks is threatened by a ruthless dragon baron who covets both Janan’s connection to the earth and the battle dragon to which he is covenanted.

The conflict may drive Janan to acts of violence he hoped to leave behind in the war, and bring more death to the land Janan now calls home.

The Desert Talon is a story of two groups of people who, despite a common ancestry, have diverged so far in their beliefs that there appears to be little mutual ground—and the conflict may well start to unravel the burgeoning hopes of a country, and a man, still recovering from the ravages of war.

From Laila Lalami—the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction” (NPR)—comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.

An unforgettable tale of revenge and rebellion unfolds when an inexperienced king implements a doomed plan to end a thousand-year war in this relentlessly gripping epic fantasy debut from a “master storyteller” (Andrea Stewart, author of The Bone Shard Daughter).

“The exhilarating must-read fantasy debut of 2025.” —Tasha Suri, author of The Jasmine Throne

A SONG OF REBELLION. A SONG OF WAR. A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST.

In the Nine Lands, only those of noble blood can summon the spirits of their ancestors to fight in battle. But when Temi, a commoner from the slums, accidentally invokes a powerful spirit, she finds it could hold the key to ending a centuries-long war.

But not everything that can be invoked is an ancestor. And some of the spirits that can be drawn from the ancestral realm are more dangerous than anyone can imagine.

Drawing on multiple pre-colonial cultures, including Yoruba and Filipino, and set in a non-Western-inspired world, A Song of Legends Lost is not just a tale of vengeance but a stunning debut novel of identity and heritage.

“A whirlwind debut of ferocious talent and compulsive storytelling that lifts you up from the first page and never lets go.” —Lavie Tidhar, World Fantasy Award–winning author

From an electrifying new voice in epic fantasy comes The Raven Scholar, a masterfully woven and playfully inventive tale of imperial intrigue, cutthroat competition, and one scholar’s quest to uncover the truth.

Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best.

Then one of them is murdered.

It falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in.

If she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen.

We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.

From Axie Oh, the New York Times-bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, Final Fantasy meets Shadow and Bone in this lighthearted romantic fantasy reimagining the Korean legend of Celestial Maidens.

Sunho lives in the Under World, a land of perpetual darkness. An ex-soldier, he can remember little of his life from before two years ago, when he woke up alone with only his name and his sword. Now he does odd-jobs to scrape by, until he comes across the score of a lifetime—a chest of coins for any mercenary who can hunt down a girl who wields silver light.

Meanwhile, far to the east, Ren is a cheerful and spirited acrobat traveling with her adoptive family and performing at villages. But everything changes during one of their festival performances when the village is attacked by a horrific humanlike demon. In a moment of fear and rage, Ren releases a blast of silver light—a power she has kept hidden since childhood—and kills the monster. But her efforts are not in time to prevent her adoptive family from suffering a devastating loss, or to save her beloved uncle from being grievously wounded.

Determined to save him from succumbing to the poisoned wound, Ren sets off over the mountains, where the creature came from—and from where Ren herself fled ten years ago. Her path sets her on a collision course with Sunho, but he doesn’t realize she’s the girl that he—and a hundred other swords-for-hire—is looking for. As the two grow closer through their travels, they come to realize that their pasts—and destinies—are far more entwined than either of them could have imagined…

A battle-weary prince meets a reluctant assassin. But could their bond end their war?

SEPARATED BY WAR, UNITED BY FATE…

Prince Elician is a Giver. He can heal any wound and bring the dead back to life. He also can’t be killed, so is cursed to watch his country wage an endless war.

Reapers can kill with a single touch. And when one attacks Prince Elician by a hotly-contested battlefield, but fails, the Reaper expects a terrible punishment. Instead, Elician offers him a chance at a new life and a new name on enemy territory. The Reaper hadn’t realized he could ever find something, or someone, to make life worth living—until Elician. Yet the prince is unaware that his kindness is part of his enemy’s plan, until danger engulfs in turn.

As the pieces of a deadly plot come together, featuring abduction, treachery and forbidden magic, tensions escalate at court and on the battlefield. The fires of conflict burst into new flame—but can those who wield the powers of life and death find peace?

A POWERFUL AND RICHLY-IMAGINED TALE OF LOVE, WAR, MAGIC AND YEARNING.

Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

“Look at you, eating magic like you’re one of us.”

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job—no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from—is herself.

From NYT bestselling author Rachel Gillig comes the next big romantasy sensation, a gothic, mist-cloaked tale of a young prophetess who is forced on an impossible quest with the one infuriating knight whose future is beyond her sight. Perfect for fans of Jennifer L. Armentrout and Leigh Bardugo.

Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.

Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil’s visions. But when Sybil’s fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.

From the internationally bestselling author of Tigana, All the Seas of the World, and A Brightness Long Ago comes a sweeping new novel of love and war that brilliantly evokes the drama and turbulence of medieval France.

Thierry Villar is a well-known—even notorious—tavern poet, intimately familiar with the rogues and shadows of that world, but not at all with courts and power. He is an unlikely person, despite his quickness, to be swept into the deadly contests of ambitious royals, assassins, and invading armies.

But he is indeed drawn into all these things on a savagely cold night in his beloved city of Orane. And so Thierry must use all the intelligence and charm he can muster as power struggles merge with a decades-long war to bring his country to the brink of destruction.

As he does, he meets his poetic equal in an aristocratic woman and is drawn to more than one unsettling person with a connection to the world beyond this one. He also crosses paths with an extraordinary young woman driven by voices within to try to heal the ailing king — and help his forces in war. A wide and varied set of people from all walks of life take their places in the rich tapestry of this story.

Both sweeping and intimate, Written on the Dark is an elegant tour de force about power and ambition playing out amid the equally intense human need for art and beauty, and memories to be left behind.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Kaikeyi comes an epic and daring novel that imagines an alternate version of India that was never liberated from the British, and a young woman who will change the tides of history.

Kalki Divekar grows up a daughter of Kingston—a city the British built on the ashes of Bombay. The older generation, including her father, have been lost to the brutal hunt for rebels. Young men are drafted to fight wars they will never return from. And the people of her city are more interested in fighting each other than facing their true oppressors.

When tragedy strikes close to home, Kalki and her group of friends begin to play a dangerous game, obtaining jobs working for the British while secretly planning to destroy the empire from the inside out. They found Kingston’s new independence movement, knowing one wrong move means certain death. Facing threats from all quarters, Kalki must decide whether it’s more important to be a hero or to survive.

Told as ten moments from Kalki’s life that mirror the Dashavatara, the ten avatars of Vishnu, Ten Incarnations of Rebellion is a sweeping, deeply felt speculative novel of empowerment, friendship, self-determination, and the true meaning of freedom.

From Lambda Literary Award finalist Linsey Miller comes this thrilling stand-alone fantasy about the lengths we’ll go to get ahead—an incredibly fresh, twisty love letter to dark academia…with a body count.

Perfect for fans of A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid, Gallant by V. E. Schwab, and All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody and C. L. Herman.

There is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school’s honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.

If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.

And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.

Fabian isn’t worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.

As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.

Status is hereditary, class is bestowed, trust must be earned.

When an arrogant prince (and his equally arrogant entourage) gets stuck in Orledder Halt as part of brutal political intrigue, competent and sunny deputy courier Elen—once a child slave meant to shield noblemen from the poisonous Pall—is assigned to guide him through the hills to reach his destination.

When she warns him not to enter the haunted Spires, the prince doesn’t heed her advice, and the man who emerges from the towers isn’t the same man who entered.

The journey that follows is fraught with danger. Can a group taught to ignore and despise the lower classes survive with a mere deputy courier as their guide?

The Witch Roads is the latest epic novel by fan favorite, Kate Elliott.

Set in the world of New York Times bestseller Seraphina, a boy on the run from a dragon—among other dangers—seeks refuge in a haunted abbey in this wholly original ghost story about what haunts us, and what connects us.

A few things to know about the town of St. Muckle’s: It’s too out-of-the-way to interest greedy lords, and too damp and muddy for marauding dragons to burn. And anyone, from a humble serf to a runaway nun, may earn their freedom by living for a year and a day within the town walls. Seven years ago, Charl and his mother fled to St. Muckle’s and made it their safe-haven, building a new life in this so called Peasant’s Paradise. But when Charl sees something impossible—a ghost—soon the embers of his past are threatening to engulf his world in flame. A tragic accident is quickly followed by murder, a deadly plague, and a mercenary dragon.

Charl manages to escape to an abandoned abbey outside of town, but finds no safety within those ruined walls. A treacherous nun, a chorus of murdered girls, and the fearsome Battle Bishop await, ready to ensnare him in a complex web of history, magic and fate. For some things should never be forgotten, however much they haunt us, and Charl will need all his wisdom and resiliency if he is to fight for the world he knows…and the people he calls home.

Discover more critically-acclaimed fantasy from Rachel Hartman!
Seraphina
Shadow Scale
Tess of the Road

The first in a sweeping Southwest Asian-inspired epic fantasy trilogy brimming with morally ambiguous characters, terrifying ghouls and deadly monsters.

Combining cut-throat dynastic politics with expansive worldbuilding and slow-burning romance, this stunning debut is perfect for fans of Godkiller and Samantha Shannon.

Bataar was only a child when he killed a gryphon, making him a legend across the Red Steppe. As an adult, he is the formidable Bataar Rhah, chosen by god to rule the continent that once scorned his people. After a string of improbable victories, he turns his sights on the wealthy, powerful kingdom of Dumakra, whose princesses rule the skies from the backs of pegasuses.

When rumours reach the capital that the infamous warlord is moving on Dumakra, Nohra Zultama prepares to face him. She and her sisters are feared warriors, goddess-blessed and mounted on winged, man-eating horses. But as deceit and betrayal swirl through her father’s court, Nohra soon learns the price of complacency. With her city under Bataar’s rule, Nohra vows to take revenge. But her growing closeness to Bataar’s wife, Qaira, threatens to undo her resolve.

When rioting breaks out and mythic beasts incite panic, Nohra must fight alongside Bataar to keep order, her mixed feelings towards the man she’s sworn to kill becoming ever more complicated. Old evils are rising. Only together will Nohra and Bataar stand a chance against the djinn, ghouls, and monsters that threaten to overrun their world.

Inspired by the diverse Turkic cultures of Southwest Asia, this gorgeously written fantasy is sure to sweep readers off their feet.

In the thrilling conclusion to the Egyptian-inspired Scorched Throne duology, a fugitive queen must risk everything and everyone she loves for the chance to restore her lost kingdom of Jasad.

Held deep in a mountain refuge, Sylvia has been captured by the Urabi, who believe the Jasad Heir can return their homeland to its former power. But after years of denying her legacy and a forbidden alliance with Jasad’s greatest enemy, Sylvia must win the Urabi’s trust while struggling to hide the dangerous side effects her magic is having on her mind.

In a rival kingdom, Arin must maneuver carefully between his father’s desire to put down the brewing rebellion and the sacred edicts Arin is sworn to uphold. He is determined to find Sylvia before it’s too late, but Arin’s search unravels secrets that threaten the very core of his beliefs about his family and the destruction of Jasad.

War is inevitable, but Sylvia cannot abandon her people again. The Urabi plan to raise the Jasadi fortress, and it will either kill Sylvia or destroy the humanity she’s fought so hard to protect. For the first time in her life Sylvia doesn’t just want to survive. She wants to win.

The fugitive queen is ready to reign.

The exciting conclusion to the gunslinging dragonrider trilogy!

After years of separation, Havinger Lilley has finally reunited with his lover, Janan. He now hopes to heal from the experience that changed his life forever: being bonded to the soul of a king dragon and to the man Raka who died to save it. But this bond is consuming him, making his thoughts and feelings not his own.

Compelled by this to return to the frozen north that was once Raka’s home, Lilley and his companions Janan and Meka make the arduous journey toward a confrontation with the power-hungry Kattakans that could result in another devastating war.

In this final chapter of The Crowns of Ishia series, the survival of the Ba’Suon people, their dragons, and the land itself rests on the decisions of Lilley, Janan and Meka.

Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul–perhaps at the cost of their own.

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:

The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.

That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….

Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.

With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.

But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.