The Final Inoculation — C. M. Kosemen (Wilton Square Books)

The Final Inoculation gathers together surreal short fiction and original artwork inspired by the myths, creatures and landscapes of the Mediterranean world.

Across these strange and dreamlike tales, giant spiders haunt ancient islands, prophetic creatures roam mountain ranges, and forgotten civilisations linger beneath the surface of everyday life. Blending speculative fiction, folklore and biological surrealism, C. M. Kosemen creates bizarre worlds that feel both ancient and eerily possible.

Written over the past decade and presented alongside Kosemen’s vivid paintings and illustrations, these stories emerge from the same imaginative universe that made All Tomorrows an international cult phenomenon. Part weird fiction, part illustrated art book, The Final Inoculation is a striking exploration of dreams, mythology and the hidden strangeness of the natural world.

October 1, 2026 • Short Story Collection • Surrealist Sci-Fi

Machine Elves Descending — John King (PM Press)

Best known for the social realism of novels such as The Football Factory, Human Punk, and London Country, John King’s writing also carries speculative strands, with his interest in dystopian fiction clear in several books. The Liberal Politics of Adolf Hitler took this further, and the main story in this collection, “Machine Elves Descending,” drives deep into the worlds of science fiction. As an alien spaceship approaches, pod-dweller Stretch scans the flatlands, hoping that the invaders will become bored and leave. Once the aliens have landed, Stretch becomes unsure, as new memories close in.

“Granny’s Letters” tells the story of an elderly widow waiting for an under-threat Post Office to deliver her mail. Granny Smith isn’t as frail as she appears, though. She knows how to dish out some righteous justice. “See No Evil” finds Jimmy Ramone released from prison and facing temptation, conscious that he must resist if he is to survive the night.

“Writing the Canals”: finding inspiration in the local waterways. “A Very Corporate Coup”: an article that appeared in the New Statesman in the run-up to the EU referendum. “The Shed”: a trip into the famous Chelsea home end and the author’s youth. “May Day”: introduction to the London Books edition of John Sommerfield’s 1936 novel of the same name, republished as part of the London Classics series which John edits.

October 6, 2026 • Short Story & Essay Collection • Science Fiction

Strange Lights — Mira González (Bindery Books)

Parenting is never easy, but it’s a hell of a lot harder when your toddler is a chupacabra.

Paranormal investigator and cryptozoologist Reggie has embraced her fate as parent to an adopted toddler, Eldi—a bloodsucking chupacabra with a fondness for goats. Reggie wants nothing more than to put her complicated past in the rearview mirror and fade into as much obscurity as her toddler will allow. But a rash of UFOs in the night sky and a couple of crop-circle-carving Roombas force Reggie into an investigation that attracts the attention of an old enemy, an anti-supernatural agency hunting for creatures like Eldi. To outwit them, Reggie must team up with Calvin, a podcaster-turned-werewolf whose charm is a real threat to Reggie’s rule against romantic attachments.

With Reggie’s history quickly catching up to her and Eldi in the agency’s crosshairs, any shred of normalcy evaporates. Reggie must decide: Can she confront her dark past to save Eldi—and an entire alien species—from getting wiped out of the universe?

For fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here, Strange Lights is a joyride in a sentient Winnebago with a quirky cast of cryptids.

October 13, 2026 • Novel • Cozy Paranormal Sci-Fi

The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek — David Liss (Tachyon Publications)

A young man with a terrible past finds his unlikely protector: the oddly-altered enforcer of a backwater Florida town. Edgar Award-winner David Liss’s latest novel reads like Hiaasen meets Crichton—a razor-sharp allegory pulled straight from today’s headlines.

Who is Iliana Marek? Is she the bully who alongside her foster father police chief Bryce Hillard, controls and terrorizes Tylor, Florida? Or is she the reborn guardian angel of Dan Gibson, a social pariah responsible for the suicide of Faye Kristic, a death which he cannot remember ten years later.

Dan’s once-promising future is in tatters. He lives in an apartment on his estranged parents’ property, works at a convenience store with a terrible boss, and is addicted to prescription drugs. But ten years after Faye’s death, Iliana suddenly takes Dan’s side, and a lot of bad people start dying fast.

As Dan becomes entangled in the ensuing chaos, he needs to finally discover what part he played in the death of Faye Kristic, and why the changes to Iliana make her no longer entirely human.

October 13, 2026 • Novel • Sci-Fi Thriller

The City of Factories — Naomi Eselojor (Ruadán Books)

Set in an alternative steampunk Nigeria, Naomi Eselojor’s Africanfuturist novella is a tale of community sheltering, resistance, and technological responsibility, for fans of Nnedi Okorafor, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, and Wole Talabi.

1859, Nigeria. In the fishing village of Itu Agan, nine-year-old Alabi and his inventor father test a new steamboat prototype when a platoon of automaton soldiers raid their village. The metal invaders execute the village chief and capture Korede, Alabi’s father, leaving him and his mother alone and devastated.

There is no choice but to accept the new order. All the village boys begin work as fishermen and plantation farmers as soon as they become teenagers and, for nine long years, Alabi must put the promise of invention nurtured in his childhood to rest.

When he discovers that his father Korede is alive, working for the colonizer regime, Alabi is determined to reconnect with him. After years of hard work to obtain a travel permit and with threats of his mother’s imprisonment should he not return in two months, Alabi sails to the city of factories, unprepared for the resistance that is brewing and the adventure that awaits…

October 13, 2026 • Novella • Afrofuturist Steampunk

On Spec 2026 — Edited by Edward Willett (Shadowpaw Press)

In 1989, a small group of Edmonton writers formed The Copper Pig Writers Society in order to fill a niche in Canada: a paying market for English SF. The result was On Spec Magazine, which put out 134 issues over the ensuing quarter-century.

The magazine published its last issue in December 2025, but the brand and the vision continue in this new anthology of science fiction and fantasy from authors who are either Canadian citizens or reside in Canada, edited by Edward Willett, himself an Aurora Award-winning author and podcaster and publisher of Shadowpaw Press, based in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Featured authors in On Spec 2026: New Canadian Literature of the Fantastic include such Canadian speculative fiction luminaries as Candas Jane Dorsey, Marcelle Dubé, Michèle Laframboise, Fiona Moore, Douglas Smith, Hayden Trenholm, and Liz Westerbrook-Trenholm.

There’s a world of wonder waiting for you inside the covers of this fabulous collection. Jump inside and discover just fantastical the Canadian imagination can be!

October 13, 2026 • Anthology • Sci-Fi & Fantasy

These Bright and Perilous Designs — Felicia Martínez (Thinking Ink Press)

A layered, lyrical, and heartbreaking novella.

In the near future, a grieving son uncovers the secret journal entries of his genius mother—and the life and love story she tells is layered across multiple universes.

In one universe, Phaedra falls in love—tragic and doomed—with Hippolytus. In another, the pair are brilliant and misunderstood software engineers whose creations threaten the world.

In ancient Greece, in the near future, in every world, some things remain true: Phaedra and Hippolytus’ love is doomed, and Phaedra’s scorned husband Theseus will do anything to seize their designs.

A novella written in vivid nonlinear prose perfect for fans of NK Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy and the myth-laden heartbreak of Hadestown, These Bright and Perilous Designs reimagines the Greek myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus with neurodiverse and asexual characters. It is a love story spanning lifetimes and a study of grief for those left behind.

October 20, 2026 • Novella • Sci-Fi Myth Reimagining

The Death of Blockbuster — Sam Rebelein (Sobelo Books)

The Death of Blockbuster is a nostalgia-fueled BLACK MIRROR-esque sci-fi novella about a young woman grappling with a personal tragedy as her sister conducts secretive AI experiments.

October 20, 2026 • Novella • Dystopian

Vanguards: Galactic Crisis — O.R. Savage (Oliver Heber Books)

The galaxy has a plan. A mythology professor was not part of it.

Clement Reeber, a mythology professor, built his name debunking the Vanguards—impossibly powerful sentient starships no serious scholar believes in. Then Federation Security delivers him aboard one, a vessel with walls of liquid metal and a crew that glows from within, and a lifetime of certainty collapses in a single moment.

Worse, he carries two ancient Mhyrnian artifacts half the galaxy will kill for—and at the galaxy’s heart, he’s seized by a vision meant only for those born with supernatural gifts. No one can explain why an ordinary academic received it.

But the galaxy is already moving. As the EndStar Procyx devours whole systems, the council pushes the twelve Vanguards toward a computer-modeled strike promising to end the crisis in one blow. Reeber is the lone voice insisting the model has never been tested—and with the strike already in motion, a lifelong skeptic must decide how far he can trust what he cannot yet prove.

October 20, 2026 • Novel • Epic Space Opera

Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends — A.D. Sui (ECW Press)

This sapphic cli-fi thriller is a love letter to hope in the bleakest of times, combining the multiverse-bending drama of This Is How You Lose the Time War with the cat-and-mouse chase of Killing Eve.

On a near-future Earth devastated by climate change, Dr. Cassandra Barlowe is right where she wants to be: working on an island of floating trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, as far away from Dr. Yana Gulsvig as possible. Cas’s research on plastic-dissolving fungi is undervalued and underfunded, thanks to the invention of deleria, a drug that allows glimpses into different timelines. For the average user, it’s a way to view lost loved ones or experience a different life, but it also offers a glimpse into worlds where humanity has solved its many global crises. Now, most science funding is dedicated to trawling these different timelines, searching for a reality with the solution to the climate devastation.

But when Yana — the world’s leading expert on deleria and Cassandra’s ex-lover — is killed in a mysterious explosion in the hub of deleria research, taking the hope of reversing climate change with her, Cas is arrested on charges of domestic terrorism. Cas must delve through timelines to piece together what happened, while watching other versions of herself and Yana live out the life they could have had — happier, more in love. As brutal government agents close in and her addiction to deleria grows, Cas has to make a choice: live in the spiraling branches of reality, seeking closure for Yana’s death until the drug shatters her mind, or live in the now, even if that means embracing her own damaged self and fighting, however hopelessly, for her own future and that of humanity.

October 27, 2026 • Novel • Climate Sci-Fi Thriller

Chimera Skin — Johnny Compton (Shortwave Publishing)

Who Among You Is Ready to Know More?

Chimera Skin is a new apocalyptic sci-fi short novel from Johnny Compton, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Spite House, Devils Kill Devils, and Dead First.

Swanson, a mutated man struggling to maintain his sanity, is civilization’s last hope. Our world has been decimated after a messianic alien unleashes hell on Earth during its failed attempt to “uplift” humanity. But Swanson may have figured out how to fight back, even if his plan forces him to leave the only planet he’s ever known.

Chimera Skin is a short science-fiction horror novel in the vein of The Fly, The Thing, and I am Legend.

November 3, 2026 • Novel • Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Horror

The Hyena — David Quantick (Stars and Sabers)

Coming soon from Emmy Award winner David Quantick, exclusively via Stars and Sabers Publishing.

The Hyena is the story of Deborah Parkinson, the greatest artist you never heard of. Artist, lover, mother, friend–but never muse–Deborah is a woman whose story spans cities and continents, legends and geniuses.

From Paris to New York and from Kahlo to Dali, this is the story of a woman who didn’t fit in… and liked it that way.

November 10, 2026 • Novel • Surrealist Alternate History

Eve of Ruin — Sherrilyn Kenyon (Oliver Heber Books)

Sherrilyn Kenyon (McQueen) returns to her League: Eve of Destruction series.

Someone is after Eve to not only end her life, but destroy her hard won reputation. While being a mercenary was never her dream job, it’s one she’s learned to embrace. She’s used her skills to help a lot of those society turned its back on.

So, the idea of someone pretending to be her while spreading lies and doing harm to others is something she will not tolerate.

But when old sins come home to roost, everything Eve loves is at stake, including her forbidden relationship with a League assassin.

It’s not just her life at risk, it’s his and she will not let any innocent suffer in her name.

November 10, 2026 • Novella • Romantic Sci-Fi

An Army of Lovers Cannot Be Beaten — Luke Dylan Ramsey (Nat 1 Publishing)

In the ruins of the world, David has claimed a library as his last refuge—guarding its knowledge, its secrets, and the fragile illusion of purpose it provides. He survives day to day on a shattered university campus, patrolling its borders, scavenging what remains, and holding off the violent factions that prowl the outskirts. Isolation has hardened him, stripped him down to routine and instinct—until Sarah arrives.

Together, they transform the ruins into something almost resembling a home, forging an uneasy alliance against the chaos pressing in from all directions. Yet the campus is far from safe. Rival groups grow bolder. Supplies dwindle. And beneath the library, something vast and unknowable continues to expand.

As violence escalates and the past refuses to stay buried, David and Sarah must each decide for themselves what they are willing to fight for—and what they are willing to become to survive.

An Army of Lovers Cannot Be Beaten is a bleak character-driven post-apocalyptic tale of survival, trust, and the fragile, dangerous hope that can still exist between two people at the end of the world.

November 15, 2026 • Novel • Post-Apocalyptic

ECO25: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction — Edited by Marissa van Uden (Apex Book Company)

A must-read showcase of the best climate fiction, eco-horror, and nature-based science fiction and fantasy published around the world every year.

ECO: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction explores humanity’s deep relationships with other species and our communal fears, grief, and passion as we try to protect our natural world—all through the lens of the fantastic.

Featuring established authors, award winners, and rising stars, each volume forms a unique snapshot of how some of the most imaginative writers on the planet are engaging with this extraordinary time in Earth’s natural history. 

In putting together this annual anthology, a team of passionate judges read hundreds of ecofiction works published in collections, magazines, and journals around the world, narrowing them down a shortlist of the very best. The 24 most compelling, emotionally impactful, and thought-provoking stories are then selected as finalists. 

ECO25, the second in the series, features a range of beautiful and evocative stories, including works by talented authors such as Ally Wilkes, DaVaun Sanders, G. Willow Wilson, Michael Capobianco, Rebecca Campbell, Ruthanna Emrys, and Samir Sirk Morató, among many others.

November 17, 2026 • Anthology • Climate Fiction

Outer Realm — Rick Campbell (Severn River Publishing)

A fragile armistice is collapsing. And on a mining world no one remembers, a servant girl has just picked up something she was never meant to touch.

Seventeen-year-old Nola Nislei has lived her entire life on Lithos, a brutal mining world in the no-man’s-land between two rival empires. Orphaned by war. Raised in servitude. Trained, quietly, to fight.

Then an escape pod falls from the sky. Inside are two bodies, and a silvery medallion that seems to know her before she knows herself.

Within days, an Imperial strike force is hunting her across the stars. The Empress has issued a direct order: capture the girl alive. And a shattered Nexus prescient who has not been seen in seventeen years has come to collect her first.

As the Ore Belt burns, Nola is pulled into a conflict shaped by ancient bloodlines, hidden powers, and a secret she has carried her entire life without knowing it.

Perfect for fans of James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes and Frank Herbert’s Dune, bestselling author Rick Campbell’s Book 7 of the Nexus House series opens an all-new arc—The Realm War—and the ideal entry point into an epic space opera where prescience is a weapon, empires keep their cruelest secrets alive, and bloodlines decide the war.

November 24, 2026 • Novel • Space Opera

The Wolf Maid From the Sea — Lowry Poletti (Neon Hemlock)

Trievennia has fallen, and with the destruction of its impossible towers comes the death of its architectural scholars, its centuries-old sorcerers, and its mycelial technology. Fleeing the war-torn ruins of his homeland, the anatomist Michele d’Eliore disguises himself as a mortal man and makes it to wintery Oukaeya before he is incapacitated by exhaustion and illness.

He wakes in the care of a nearby fort, only to find that he is trapped here with its commander, Akoúda Genova, by a storm said to be borne from a hungry goddess. But Michele has no mind for Oukaeyan superstition and no time to waste on his growing attraction to the commander: he will find the survivors of Trievennia, even if he must stare down the maw of an unspeakable beast.

November 24, 2026 • Novella • Science Fantasy

Promise of Manifest — Alex Kingsley (Space Wizard Science Fantasy)

The conclusion of The Bastion Cycle that began with Empress of Dust, a 2025 Small Spec Book Award winner!

After tragedy struck the Ivies, the remaining members went their separate ways. While some piece together what’s left of their lives, Harvard is out for revenge. But he can’t take on Bastion’s biggest corporations alone. He needs both human and crab allies when he strikes out into the dusts for what may be the final time.

The corps are locked in a race not only to found the next city, but to pioneer the next stage of human survival on Earth. Is there any cost too great to save a species? If everything is fated to become crab, is it wrong to hurry that process along?

Harvard and his friends find themselves at the core of an existential struggle for not only the future of Bastion but the future of life on Earth — and it’s beginning to look like some of them won’t make it out alive.

November 2026 • Novel • Post Apocalyptic Sci-Fi

A Killing in Souls — Andy Dudak (Dark Matter INK)

Scymadie Third-Gen is a monk sent on a mission to investigate the spiritual implications of “homifacts,” people transformed into dreaming statues. No one knows who or what made them, or why.

Scy must survive a violent rush to claim these preserved souls, but she’s not interested in profit, or even her order’s metaphysical pursuit. She’s a closeted physicist. She suspects homifacts have something profound—and non-mystical—to tell her about the universe.

December 1, 2026 • Novel • Science Fantasy Space Opera

Bats of the Republic — Zachary Thomas Dodson (Featherproof Books)

The full-color featherproof edition of the illuminated novel Bats of the Republic features hand-drawn maps and natural history illustrations, subversive pamphlets and science-fictional diagrams, and even a nineteenth-century novel-within-a-novel, all designed by the author, with a new introduction.

In 1843, fragile naturalist Zadock Thomas must leave his beloved in Chicago to deliver a secret letter to an infamous general on the front lines of the war over Texas. The fate of the volatile republic, along with Zadock’s future, depends on his mission. When a cloud of bats leads him off the trail, he happens upon something impossible…

Three hundred years later, the world has collapsed and the remnants of humanity cling to a strange society of paranoia. Zeke Thomas has inherited a sealed envelope from his grandfather, an esteemed senator. When that letter goes missing, Zeke engages a fomenting rebellion that could free him—if it doesn’t destroy his relationship, his family legacy, and the entire republic first.

As their stories overlap and history itself begins to unravel, a war in time erupts between a lost civilization, a forgotten future, and the chaos of the wild.

Bats of the Republic is a masterful novel of adventure and science fiction, of elliptical history and dystopian struggle, and, at its riveting core, of love.

December 8, 2026 • Novel • Dystopian Sci-Fi • Reedition, first pub. 2015

Falling for Evil — Celia Aaron (Alcove Press)

Born without a Gift, Clementine Holt spends every waking hour bouncing between odd jobs, desperately hiding her Pleb status from Emperion City’s superpowered populace. It’s why she finds herself working as a cleaner at the offices of the notorious Orcus, Inc. On the outside, a shining beacon of industry. On the inside? Well, let’s just say that Clementine’s contract is quite clear—whether she cleans up shredded documents or mangled body parts—she’s not to say a word to anyone about it, lest she become the next pile of entrails. 

Grave Valmont, head of Orcus, Inc., is a ruthless businessman by day and a vicious supervillain by night. His name alone inspires both awe and fear. His greatest desire: to have total control over Emperion City. But when he meets Clementine, he discovers something he desires even more than unchecked power: a wily little vixen caught in his claws.    

Struggling with crippling debt and a demanding stepfamily, Clementine just wants to do her job and pay back what she owes. The last thing she wanted was to attract the attention of the world’s most dangerous villain. But when her best friend goes missing, she knows there’s only one person who can help. Forced into a corner, Clementine enters into a bargain with Grave—one that threatens to unravel all her carefully drawn plans and rewrite everything she thinks she knows about their world…and herself.  

Darkly comedic and with a heavy dose of spice, Falling for Evil is set in a postmutation world that will appeal to fans of X-Men and Gen V.

December 8, 2026 • Novel • Sci-Fi Romance

Queen — J.S. Fields (Space Wizard Science Fantasy)

Nobody leaves Queen.

On the tidally locked, women-only planet, a vulva and an authority problem are the only immigration requirements. Emigration is banned.

Ember spends her days cruising Queen’s endless sand dunes, hunting sand pirates and wallowing in memories of her dead wife. After an ambush, Ember is dragged to the pirate camp and learns her wife’s biggest secret—before her death, she’d joined the pirates, built an illegal spaceship, and plotted to leave the planet.

Ember’s sister, Nadia, hatches a desperate rescue that leads her to the very edge of the habitable zone. There, Nadia stumbles across other secrets kept—a flourishing, impossible ecosystem and a New Earth mining installation. Queen’s hidden resource, highly sought-after and limited, should have made its inhabitants rich. Instead, Queen’s scientists live in decaying houses, battle the elements, and struggle to eke out a living.

Ember, Nadia, and the sand pirates must take back the planet and expose the corrupt New Earth mining. Taming giant beetles, wrestling stinkhorn fungi, and enlisting Queen’s rabbit population in a high-stakes aerial battle are just part of the hijinks that will determine Queen’s fate as a galactic player, as well as the futures of all its conscripted inhabitants.

December 2026 • Novel • Space Opera