New Book Releases: 3/18/2025
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New science fiction, fantasy, and horror books for the week of March 18, 2025.
Baumann, Joe: A Thing Is Only Known When It’s Gone (University of Wisconsin Press 978-0299348946, $18.95, 224pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 03/18/2025)
Collection of 20 surreal, mostly queer, speculative stories, including flowers that bloom from someone’s body and a teacher with water in his veins.
Collins, Suzanne: Sunrise on the Reaping (Scholastic Press 978-1546171461, $27.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Young-adult dystopian SF novel, the fifth in the Hunger Games series, a prequel to the original series. The special 50th annual Hunger Games has twice as many tributes as usual, and Haymitch Abernathy is chosen, kept away from the girl he loves.
Courage, Rachel Ekstrom: Nothing Bad Happens Here (Penguin Random House/Delacorte 978-0593567593, $12.99, 400pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Mystery/suspense novel with fantasy elements. Melancholy teenager Lucia is visiting Nantucket when she finds a girl’s body on the beach. As she learns more, she’s drawn into a friend group of chaotic, beautiful girls who may have secrets.
Fracassi, Philip: The Third Rule of Time Travel (Orbit US 978-0316572514, $18.99, 336pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
SF novel. A scientist finds a way to send human consciousness back in time to any moment of a traveler’s life, but as she tests this technology herself, reality starts to change.
Jones, KC: White Line Fever (Tor/Nightfire 978-1250792716, $18.99, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Supernatural road-trip horror novel. Livia and her friends are on a weekend getaway on a stretch of road known as The Devil’s Driveway. It’s only 15 miles long, but there’s horror at every turn.
Jones, Stephen Graham: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668075081, $29.99, 448pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Historical vampire horror novel. In a wall, the 1912 diary of a Montana priest is discovered, with transcribed interviews in which a Blackfeet vampire describes his life and revenge.
Kelly, Julia R.: The Fisherman’s Gift (Simon & Schuster 978-1668068687, $28.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Historical novel with hints of the supernatural. In a remote Scottish fishing village, a boy washes up on shore, and looks uncannily like the son of a local woman who was lost at sea years before.
Kowal, Mary Robinette: The Martian Contingency (Tor 978-1250237040, $32.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Alternate-history SF novel, the fourth in the Lady Astronaut series, about a second attempt to settle people on Mars. Elma is part of the resettlement, but discovers disturbing events that happened during the first Mars expedition.
Lem, Darkly: Transmentation | Transience (Blackstone Publishing 979-8212185998, $25.99, 382pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
SF novel of multiverse adventure. Competing multiversal societies, with factions within them have an unwanted confrontation, involving insurrections and an assassination plot. Lem is a pen name for five authors: Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and M. Darusha Wehm.
Ludington, Andrew: Splinter Effect (St. Martin’s/Minotaur 978-1-250-34930-9, $28, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Thriller/SF novel about a time-traveling archaeologist. Rabbit Ward travels to the past to recover artifacts, but on his last mission he lost the Menorah of the Second Temple and his protege. He sets out to find them both. A first novel.
McDaniel, Kellan: Till Death (Simon & Schuster/MTV Books 978-1-6659-4907-1, $19.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Gay vampire romance novel. An eternally adolescent vampire and a human high school student get involved and confront bigotry in town. This is a pen name for K.M. Szpara.
Nadler, Stuart: Rooms for Vanishing (Penguin Random House/Dutton 978-0593475461, $28, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Historical multiversal novel about the Altermans, a Jewish family from Vienna. In separate futures and across decades, each of the Altermans thinks they’re the last survivor of the family.
Nelson, Rachelle: Embergold (Enclave Escape 979-8886051865, $24.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 03/18/2025)
Young-adult fantasy novel. Gilde has lived in the wet marshlands, out of the reach of dragons. But when her father sacrifices her and she wakes up in a dragon’s cave, she finds that her dragon host is kind and loves books.
Okri, Ben: Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken Hearted (Other Press 978-1635425284, $24.99, 208pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 03/18/2025)
Novel with fantasy and magical realist elements, inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Two couples in present-day France organize a fete for people who have been hurt by past love. In planned attendance is Madame Sosostris, a mythical figure with powerful abilities.
Pulley, Natasha: The Hymn to Dionysus (Bloomsbury USA 978-1639732364, $30.99, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 03/18/2025)
Queer fantasy novel reimagining the Greek myths of Dionysus. A warrior searching for a missing prince encounters the witch Dionysus, in whose presence riots and unrest follow.
Qin, Emily Yu-Xuan: Aunt Tigress (Astra House/DAW 978-0756419387, $29, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Mythological fantasy novel with elements of Chinese and Siksiká Nation folklore. Tam inherits an undead fox after her Aunt Tigress is found murdered, and navigates adventure and romance.
Sullivan, J.L.: From Ash & Darkness (Wild Rose Press 978-1-509260454, $20.99, 332pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 03/24/2025)
Young-adult fantasy novel. Bax banished the evil djinn, but still needs to return the Ifrit’s artifact and finally lay the demon to rest.
Turtledove, Harry: Twice as Dead (Arc Manor/Caezik SF & Fantasy 978-1647101237, $29.99, 294pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Fantasy detective novel about PI Jack Mitchell in post-WWII Los Angeles. Jack is hired to figure out what happened to the brother of Dora, a vampire, and discovers a dangerous new drug in haunted Los Angeles.
Waite, Olivia: Murder by Memory (Tordotcom 978-1250342249, $21.99, 112pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Futuristic SF mystery novella featuring a centuries-old detective on an interstellar generation ship where minds are stored and/or transferred between bodies. Dorothy investigates murder and minds being erased.
Wijesekara, Maithree: The Prince Without Sorrow (Harper Voyager US 978-0063420540, $30, 352pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Fantasy novel, first in the Obsidian Throne trilogy. Prince Ashoka, whose father tried to wipe out all witches in the empire, is sent to govern a tumultuous province, where he encounters Shakti, a vengeful witch.
Wurth, Erika T.: The Haunting of Room 904 (Macmillan/Flatiron 978-1250908599, $28.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 03/18/2025)
Horror novel. Olivia’s sister was able to commune with the dead, but when she dies, the ability passes to Olivia, an investigator. She looks into deaths in a hotel where girls show up dead in the same room, over and over again.
Van Stry, John: Sometimes in the Fall (Baen 978-1668072479, $18, 288pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 03/18/2025)
SF novel. Engineer Dave frees himself of Earth and focuses on his family’s space cargo company. But tensions are rising on earth, and Dave finds himself roped into war.
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