New & Notable, November 2025
Mona Awad, We Love You, Bunny (Marysue Rucci 9/25) A satirical fantasy novel of dark academia getting critical acclaim, this companion to Bunny finds the rich-girl Bunnies furious over Samantha’s depiction of them in her novel, so they kidnap her and tell their creepy-sweet side of the story.
Kalynn Bayron, Make Me a Monster (Bloomsbury US 9/25) Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein gets a modern young-adult retelling, a mix of gothic horror and romance. Meka, newly certified as a mortician’s assistant, works at the family funeral home, where strange things happen after her boyfriend dies unexpectedly – and the dead don’t seem to be staying dead.
Bora Chung, Midnight Timetable (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 9/25) This dryly humorous novel told in ghost stories explores a mysterious research center with cursed objects and doors that don’t lead where they should. The author provides an entertaining afterword “On the Joys of Ghost Stories” that talks of ghost stories in general, Korean ghost stories, and the origins of the stories here. Translated from the Korean by noted translator Anton Hur.
Stacy Nathaniel Jackson, The Ephemera Collector (Liveright 4/25) Near-future Afrofuturist SF novel. A library curator of African American ephemera fights to save her beloved library and its historical collections in 2035 Los Angeles, while the city’s burning and her own health and memory are failing. “This is a novel about Black excellence and the need to preserve history. A solid debut that will put Jackson and his work on the radar of many.” [Gabino Iglesias]
T. Kingfisher, Hemlock & Silver (Tor 8/25) Kingfisher reimagines the story of Snow White, turning it into a forensic mystery investigated by a poison expert, who is increasingly confounded as fantasy and horror elements turn up, all told with the author’s distinctive brand of dark fantasy. “That rare balance of wit and genuine dread has become one of Kingfisher’s most distinctive trademarks.” [Gary K. Wolfe]
Yiming Ma, These Memories Do Not Belong to Us (Mariner 8/25) A first novel in stories (the author calls it a “constellation novel”), this looks at how governments and media change history for their own purposes. In a future, renamed China, memories can be recorded, transmitted, and altered. An unnamed narrator inherits a set of banned memories from his mother – memories that could get him arrested.
Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle (Tordotcom 8/25) Discarded robots find family and purpose in this cozy near-future SF novel, a satire of corporate greed and trend-based culture. A quirky group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen and decide to open their own shop – with really good noodles – in post-war San Francisco.
John Scalzi, This Shattering Peace (Tor 9/25) Military SF novel, the seventh book in the Old Man’s War series, finds peace has its own problems, until war between factions of the Consu, the most advanced aliens humans have met, threatens to drag humans into their conflict in surprising ways. Scalzi’s “sometimes cutesy, or mildly sarcastic, but his approach to storytelling and character is ingenuous, direct, heartfelt. The Old Man’s War series has millions of fans, and this new addition will delight them.” [Adam Roberts]
Samantha Shannon, Among the Burning Flowers (Bloomsbury US 9/25) Shannon’s latest fantasy novel, the third written in the popular Roots of Chaos series, is actually a prequel to the first book in the series, The Priory of the Orange Tree, telling what happened when the long-dormant fire-breathing dragons began to wake. This has plenty to offer fans of the series, even if its ending lacks surprises; it also offers new readers a good starting point to the series and should make readers want to read – or re-read – the rest.
Cadwell Turnbull, A Ruin Great and Free (Blackstone Publishing 9/25) Monsters in their hidden settlement are beset by hunters, a cult, and gods with a conflict that could destroy the universe in this complex contemporary fantasy novel, third and final in the Convergence Saga.
