The American Library Association (ALA) announced the winners of the Youth Media Awards during their LibLearnX conference, at a ceremony held Monday, January 27 in Phoenix AZ. Winners included several works and authors of genre interest.
The Alex Awards honor books for adults that “have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.” This year, at least four adult books of genre interest appeared on the complete list of ...Read More
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The Clarion West writers’ workshop has announced a new scholarship for “trans, two-spirit, nonbinary, and other gender-expansive authors.” The Sea Star scholarship, funded by an anonymous donor, will cover full annual tuition (currently $3200) for one qualifying student per year. Clarion states:
Trans, two-spirit, nonbinary, and other gender expansive authors who continue to change and inform the landscape of speculative fiction for the better. We know that trans writers are ...Read More
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It’s the end of January and we’ve got a great collection of the top new SF, Fantasy, Horror, and YA releases to share with you! Come by our YouTube channel to keep up-to-date on all the releases slated to hit shelves every week! While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to show your support for what we do! We’ll be back next week with another fantastic new video for you! ...Read More
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The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) has announced the longlist for the 2024 NBCC awards for books “published in English (including translations) in the United States.” Authors and titles of genre interest include:
Criticism
Fiction
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
A Vile Season, David Ferraro (Page Street YA 979-8-89003-072-6, $18.99, 400pp, hc) October 2024.
David Ferraro’s new young adult fantasy romance A Vile Season is comped as Bridgerton meets The Bachelor but with vampires. That’s exactly the vibe. Everything from the pacing, the intentionally and flamboyantly anachronistic diversity in the upper classes, the garish wardrobe, the playful disregard for historical accuracy, the overly dramatic relationship conflicts, the marriage competition, ...Read More
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We are so happy to release our second episode of The Storytellers, our series of Zoom-recorded author readings! We kicked off with Ai Jiang reading I AM AI (which you can find here), and today we have Tobi Ogundiran reading “Midnight in Moscow” from Jackal, Jackal.
Tobi Ogundrian is the award-winning author of the Guardian of the Gods duology and the critically acclaimed collection Jackal, Jackal. He has ...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!
Addison, Katherine: The Orb of Cairado (Subterranean Press 978-1645242130, $45.00, 120pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 01/31/2025)
Original fantasy novella, set in the award-winning world of The Goblin Emperor. Ulcetha is a disgraced scholar, framed and kicked out the University, and he makes a living crafting elven forgeries. But when his friend dies ...Read More
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At the Fount of Creation, Tobi Ogundiran (Tordotcom 978-1-250-90803-2, $21.99, 224pp, hc) January 2025.
Writers of duologies aren’t doing any favors for book reviewers. With a trilogy, we can blather on about middle-book syndrome and three-act structures; with an ongoing series, we can speculate about metanarratives or simply rate each new volume as though it were the latest album from a familiar band, but a duology somehow seems to ...Read More
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FairyLoot and Transworld Publishers have announced a new fantasy imprint, to launch in fall 2025. FairyLoot is a fantasy book subscription box company specializing in illustrated and deluxe editions, and Transworld is a division of Penguin Random House UK, one of the UK’s “Big Four.”
The new imprint’s name and logo will be revealed at the London Book Fair in March 2025.
The Bookseller reports:
The fantasy imprint will discover ...Read More
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Andy Cox and Richard Wagner, who worked together on Black Static and Interzone, announced the launch of a new horror magazine, Remains. The quarterly magazine will feature all-new horror fiction, columns, and features; stories will be illustrated by Wagner, who has contributed cover and interior art for Black Static and more.
From a Facebook post via Livia Llewellyn, Cox announced:
REMAINS. 100 colour pages of new horror fiction. Smells nice. ...Read More
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The longlist for the 2025 International Dylan Thomas Prize has been announced and includes several works of genre interest amongst the twelve selected.
The annual Dylan Thomas prize, in partnership with Swansea University, awards £20,000 “to the best published or produced literary work in the
Ellen Datlow is accepting submissions for her 17th Best Horror of the Year anthology, to be published by Night Shade Books and covering material appearing in 2025.
I am looking for stories and poetry from all branches of horror: supernatural, uncanny, sf horror, psychological, dark crime, terror tales, or anything else that might qualify.
This is an all reprint anthology, so I’ll only consider material published in 2025. Deadline ...Read More
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Fortress Sol, Stephen Baxter (Gollancz 978-1-39961-461-0, £25.00, 480pp, hc). October 2024.
Fortress Sol is classic Stephen Baxter. It’s driven by big ideas: Humanity’s response to a perceived existential threat includes both dispersing to the stars and mind-boggling engineering projects. Like 2021’s Galaxias, the focus is not so much on the alien threat as on humanity’s response. There’s a relatively small cast of characters, who are engaging enough but ...Read More
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Terese Svoboda, Shiva Kumar, Austin Grossman, and Grady Hendrix read at the Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room in Industry City, Brooklyn NY on November 19, 2024 as part of the Brooklyn Books & Booze Reading series, hosted by Randee Dawn
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would ...Read More
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The Shutouts, Gabrielle Korn (St. Martin’s 978-1-2503-2348-4, $29.00, 304pp, hc) December 2024.
As climate change has become an ever-growing and more insistent presence in our lives, it has also begun inflecting and informing works of fiction, whose authors imagine how the remainder of the 21st century will play out. Interestingly, it is writers coming from outside the traditional venues of SFF writing and publishing who have most readily embraced this ...Read More
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Days of Shattered Faith, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Head of Zeus 978-1-03590-152-4, £22.00, 544pp, hc) December 2024. Cover by Joe Wilson.
Days of Shattered Faith, the third book in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Tyrant Philosophers sequence, continues to examine the effects of the long-running, world-conquering program of the nation of Pallesand, a resolutely rationalist, religion-detesting nation determined to bring its notion of secular perfection to a world that is filled with supernatural ...Read More
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Jesse Ball, The Repeat Room (Catapult 9/24) This absurd dystopian (and possibly truly Kafkaesque) SF novel details a jury system where a single juror is chosen to relive the defendant’s experience; in this case, a menial worker experiences an illicit psychosexual relationship with a tragic end. “It’s in the novel’s absurdity that we are asked to view justice and the worth of a single human life in a new light.” ...Read More
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Crows and Silences, Lucius Shepard (Subterranean 978-1-64524-217-8, $60.00, 520pp, hc) December 2024.
When discussing Lucius Shepard, it’s inevitable to bemoan that despite his abundant talent, his work received little mainstream recognition. I observed this when I reviewed The Best of Lucius Shepard: Volume 2, quoting an obituary of Shepard penned by Christopher Priest for The Guardian. Priest felt that Shepard’s preference for the novella and his association with ...Read More
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And the Mighty Will Fall, K.B. Wagers (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-311524-8, $19.99, 464pp, tp) November 2024.
And the Mighty Will Fall is K.B. Wagers’s tenth and latest space opera novel, the fourth book in the NeoG continuity after 2023’s The Ghosts of Trappist. And the Mighty Will Fall brings the action back to our solar system and the long-running conflict between advocates for an independent Mars and the central ...Read More
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The Audio Publishers Association (APA) has announced the finalists for the 2025 Audie Awards, “recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment.” Finalists of genre interest are listed below; narrators are listed in alphabetical order.
Science Fiction
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the preliminary ballot for the 2024 Bram Stoker Awards.
Superior Achievement in a Novel
We’re getting closer to the end of the first month of 2025 and Locus is back with another weekly video on the top new SF, Fantasy, Horror, and YA book releases of the week of 1/21/2025! Come by our channel to keep up-to-date and subscribe to the channel to show your support for what we do!
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Rest in Peaches, Alex Brown (Page Street YA 979-8-89003-070-2, $18.99, 336pp, hc) October 2024.
Get ready for another great young adult horror comedy with Rest in Peaches by Alex Brown (not me!). Quinn is about to do the biggest, most important thing she’s ever done in her whole 17 years of life. At this year’s Homecoming game, she will don a brand new Peaches the Parrot mascot costume and ...Read More
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Several authors and works of genre interest are among the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) 2025 Edgar Awards nominees.
Best Novel
Best First Novel
Best Critical/Biographical
Best Short Story
The National Book Foundation, together with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, announced the selected books for the 2025 Science + Literature program. The 2025 fiction selection is science fiction novel The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel (Riverhead), along with two other selections in non-fiction and poetry.
The Science + Literature program, supported by a grant from the Sloan Foundation, identifies three books across fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, that “deepen readers’ ...Read More
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The Lies We Conjure, Sarah Henning (Tor Teen 978-1-259-84106-3, $19.99, 400pp, hc) September 2024.
As The Lies We Conjure opens, sisters Ruby and Wren are finishing up a summer stint working at a local Renaissance Fair when they get an offer that impetuous Wren cannot pass up. A customer offers them each $2,000 to attend a family dinner at the local landmark mansion and pretend to be her grandchildren. ...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!
Burke, Ava: Haunting and Homicide (The Quick Brown Fox/Crooked Lane 978-1639109289, $29.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 01/21/2025)
Fantasy mystery novel, first in the Ghost Tour Mystery series. Tallulah “Lou” Thatcher can see ghosts, which helps her host viral ghost tours in New Orleans. When her rival tour guide is murdered by ...Read More
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Author and longtime Locus editor Laurel Amberdine, 54, died January 21, 2025 of cancer.
Born 1970, Amberdine was a devout Catholic who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and later lived in the Bay Area and Portland OR. She joined Locus in 2015, where she worked as an assistant editor and web editor; she was instrumental in revamping Locusmag.com and keeping it up and running. She was also an ...Read More
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Breath of Oblivion, Maurice Broaddus (Tor 978-1-25026-512-8, $30.99, 400pp, hc) November 2024.
Breath of Oblivion is the second instalment in Maurice Broaddus’s highly anticipated Astra Black trilogy. The first book in the series, Sweep of Stars, was a Locus Award finalist in 2023 and garnered favourable reviews for his Afrofuturist space adventure. Sweep of Stars clearly displays Broaddus’s admirable worldbuilding, as he imagines the year 2121, long after ...Read More
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Model Home, Rivers Solomon (MCD 978-0-37460-713-5, $28.00, 304pp, hc) October 2024. Cover by Abby Kagan.
Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is a novel about a haunted house in which said house sits in the background while haunted people take center stage. Stunningly written and full of the kind of trauma that can only come from family, this novel takes the haunted house trope and turns it into something that feels entirely ...Read More
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