Category: Dystopia, Urban Fantasy, Mythology
Published by Saga Press (out now)
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters.
Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last—and best—hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much larger and more terrifying than anything she could imagine.
Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel to the rez to unravel clues from ancient legends, trade favors with tricksters, and battle dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.
As Maggie discovers the truth behind the disappearances, she will have to confront her past—if she wants to survive.
Category: Magical Realism, Fantasy, Romance
Published by Tor (out now)
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Ander
Childhood friends Patricia Delfine, a witch, and Laurence Armstead, a mad scientist, parted ways under mysterious circumstances during middle school. But as adults they both wind up in near-future San Francisco, where Laurence is an engineering genius and Patricia works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s ever growing ailments. But something is determined to bring them back together—to either save the world, or end it.
Category: Dystopia, Fantasy, LGBT
Published by Ecco (out now)
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
After the climate wars, a floating city is constructed in the Arctic Circle, a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering, complete with geothermal heating and sustainable energy. The city’s denizens have become accustomed to a roughshod new way of living, however, the city is starting to fray along the edges—crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside direst poverty are spawning unrest, and a new disease called “the breaks” is ravaging the population.
When a strange new visitor arrives—a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side—the city is entranced. The “orcamancer,” as she’s known, very subtly brings together four people—each living on the periphery—to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves.
Blackfish City is a remarkably urgent—and ultimately very hopeful—novel about political corruption, organized crime, technology run amok, the consequences of climate change, gender identity, and the unifying power of human connection.
An electrifying novel about an oracle. A small town. And the end of the world as we know it… One morning, the residents of a small coastal town somewhere in Australia wake to discover the sea has disappeared. One among them has been plagued by troubling visions of this cataclysm for years. Is she a prophet? Does she have a disorder that skews her perception of time? Or is she a gifted and compulsive liar? Oscillating between the future and the past, Dyschronia is a novel that tantalises and dazzles, as one woman’s prescient nightmares become entangled with her town’s uncertain fate. Blazing with questions of consciousness, trust, and destiny, this is a wildly imaginative and extraordinary novel from award-winning author Jennifer Mills.
Categories: Near-future, Speculative, Literary fiction
Published by Picador (out now)
The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell
Khaim, The Blue City, is the last remaining city in a crumbled empire that overly relied upon magic until it became toxic. It is run by a tyrant known as The Jolly Mayor and his devious right hand, the last archmage in the world. Together they try to collect all the magic for themselves so they can control the citizens of the city. But when their decadence reaches new heights and begins to destroy the environment, the people stage an uprising to stop them.
Categories: Fantasy, Speculative, Novellas
Published by Saga Press (out now)
Heavy Weather: tempestuous tales of stranger climes by Kevan Manwaring
Since Odysseus’ curious crew first unleashed the bag of winds gifted to him by Aeolus, the God of Winds, literature has been awash with tales of bad or strange weather. From the flood myths of Babylon, the Mahabharata and the Bible, to twentieth-century psychological storms, this foray into troubled waters, malicious heat waves, vengeful winters, hurricanes and hailstones, offers the perfect read on a rainy day – or night. Featuring tales of unearthly climatic phenomena from some of the finest writers in the English language including Algernon Blackwood, Herman Melville, William Hope Hodgson, Edgar Allan Poe and more, this collection of weird tales will delight and disturb.
Categories: weird, stories, fantasy, weather
Published by British Library (out now)
The Belt and the Necklace by C.S. MacCath
Blackthorn Limited is more than a fashion house to Barbara; it was her mother Imelda’s dream, one she hoped to share someday. But Imelda gives Barbara’s inheritance to a model because her company “needs a successor who looks the part” and tells her devastated daughter that “nobody cares when a fat girl cries.” Barbara’s sorrow drives her to a suicide attempt, and that’s when the Blackthorn family gnome steps out of the Otherworld to tell her about a magic that can make her slender and beautiful. But the merfolk who possess this magic have their own concerns, and the belt and necklace they offer Barbara come at a high price.
Categories: Play, Fairy Tale
Published by Odyssey Theatre (Sept 2021)
Night Roll by Michael J. DeLuca
New mother and climate refugee Aileen Dupree has been abandoned by her partner in post- industrial Detroit. Her neighbor, Virgil, is Aileen’s only connection to the outside world. But then Virgil borrows Aileen’s prized possession — a chrome and leather, royal blue fourteen-speed bike — and disappears. Looking for answers, Aileen hears strange stories of the Elf, a timeless being that always fought the colonizers and capitalists of Detroit, and now leads the Night Roll on a race through the city’s disintegrating streets. It is up to Aileen to brave the strange magic of the Night Roll and bring Virgil back. But what can the Elf teach her about her new life? And what must she pay for that knowledge?
Categories: Fantasy, retelling
Published by Stelliform Press (out now)
Climate Fiction Writers League 