Born of Malice — Xan van Rooyen (Ruadán Books)

Savat is an ancient city steeped in old magic. But the once god-fearing Savati people find themselves in the tightening fist of the Sodality, a tyrannical power determined to replace magic with technology, and eradicate all devotion to the old gods.

Yet gods still move among them.

Zal, Chaos incarnate, unjustly exiled to the mortal realm, lives for revenge against his family.

Riksa, War shackled, is the tormented captive of her brother Zal in his obsessive quest to open a way between the realms.

Leksi, Nightmare disincarnate, has always resented her metaphysical family destined to cause human suffering and strives to live free of them.

In Savat’s university, the scholar Niki prepares an experiment dangerous to Sodality-imposed rule. Though unskilled in the talents of the magic-wielding arkani, the fruit of Niki’s groundbreaking research would harness magic through music, sound, and vibration itself, giving anyone the ability to access the arcane.

When worlds are ripe for annihilation, all it takes is one god-sized sibling rivalry to light a conflagration.

October 2, 2026 • Novel • Dark Fantasy

All Things Wicked — Rani De Vadder (Hamley Books)

In the shadow of a decaying estate, Ophelia Moreaux runs from the wreckage of her past. She finds refuge in glassblowing, coaxing fragile beauty from fire and fracture. But the pond behind her house calls to her, and so does the mansion beyond it.

Unaware of the vengeful spirit lurking beneath the water’s surface, Ophelia swims nightly in the pond, even as its presence haunts her dreams. When she meets Malachai Graves, scarred, solitary, and dangerously magnetic, she is drawn to his darkness, as it mirrors her own.

As Ophelia and Malachai confront the secrets that turned them into monsters in their own ways, the past claws its way back to the surface. The ghost in the water grows restless. It’s jealous, wrathful, and desperate to finish what it once started. Because some evils never die. They drown. And wait.

October 5, 2026 • Novel • Dark Romantasy

The Heresy of Thieves — Mia V. Moss (Dark Matter INK)

Vael stole magic from the gods for Her people and put an end to centuries of unrest. Now magic is gone, and the battle for the Witchlands’s soul begins.

After a millennium of prosperity and magic, one catastrophic night undoes the realm of Yvaelen. Magic has fallen, and prayers to Vael the Giver go unanswered.

Jal Riago knows when it’s time to move on from a con. She can’t maintain her false refugee heiress story forever, and her benefactors grow weary of playing host. Just when she’s about to confess and cut ties, a deadly raid sets Jal’s life on a collision course with a powerful entity reckoning with its own madness.

The young, steadfast King Thealys Vorrine inherited the throne of Dynestra after her parents’ deaths at Spellfall. But sparks of unrest flare all too quickly into the unpredictable wildfire of rebellion, and King Vorrine must forge headlong into unknown territory.

Royal knight and notorious rake Ember Carrado is trying his best to get fired. Instead, when he’s paired with a judgmental paladin and sent on a mission to hunt down a rampaging mythical beast, he finds himself face-to-face with the past he’s been running from since Spellfall.

Beacon Wylda Lorcanthas wields a sharp tongue and the second-highest office in the Church of Vael. When the head of the Faith dies, Wylda must seek out a biddable successor. Unfortunately, the clergy’s clear favorite is a charismatic priest who promises the restoration of magic—for those willing to partake of a bloody cost.

The dark betrayal behind Spellfall, and the very fabric of Yvaelen’s faith, will be hidden no longer. What began with a thief’s touch will end with a reckoning. And salvation for some may be a waking nightmare for others.

October 6, 2026 • Novel • Epic Fantasy

The Southern Sorority of Superstitious Witches — Katie Ortiz (Alcove Press)

In this spellbinding Southern Gothic novel, three women weave together old Southern folklore and magic to fight sexism and educational discrimination in post-Civil War Alabama, perfect for fans of Hester Fox and Louisa Morgan.

When Lucille, Catherine, and Victoria are invited to participate in a trial semester for women at Alabama’s most prestigious university, they each have their own reasons for accepting. Lucille wants freedom from her father’s control and the reminders of her traitorous first love. Catherine wants to escape an arranged marriage meant to halt her attraction to women. And Victoria wants to run from the guilt that haunts her after the death of one of her fellow mill girls.

The trial semester will determine whether or not women across the state will be allowed to attend other universities. But the enrolled women quickly learn that success is not guaranteed, and some of their male cohorts are determined to see them fail. When the men’s pranks go too far, Lucille, Catherine, and Victoria form a coven under the guise of a sorority and call upon witchcraft steeped in the traditions of southern folklore to fight back.

As they gather their fellow witches, they discover there is something darker at work at the university, a force that is determined to expel all the women at the university, and they’ll need all the allies they can get if they want to succeed.

For fans of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls and Weyward, this historical speculative novel explores the darker side of human nature and the ways in which women navigate—and survive—oppressive, male-dominated societies.

October 6, 2026 • Novel • Southern Gothic Fantasy

Bird King Rising — Samantha Bansil (Bindery Books)

A new queen reigns. A rebellion stirs. Will she risk it all to rule?

Newly crowned queen Laya Gatdula is determined to prove her worth to her subjects, her family, her rivals—and herself. When whispers of rebellion and rumored sightings of a giant raptor in the mountainous Skylands reach the capital, Laya must face the terrifying realization that her ex-lover and rival, Luntok, might still be alive and coming for the throne. Though she already wields power over wind and rain, to quell the threat from the north, Laya seeks the ultimate weapon: lightning.

Torn between the counsel of two men—her beloved confidant and her ruthless uncle—Laya must trust herself to cement her legacy and hold the throne. Is it better to earn her nation’s loyalty through benevolent rule, or risk everything to become an all-powerful god? And with Luntok rapidly gathering his army, will she live long enough to make the choice?

From Samantha Bansil, a brilliant, fresh voice in AAPI fiction, Bird King Rising returns to the world of Black Salt Queen with the gripping conclusion to an epic story of duty and strength, passion and betrayal, and the devastating cost of war.

October 13, 2026 • Novel • Historical Romantasy

Resonant — Jeremy Jacobson (Bindery Books)

An epic antediluvian fantasy about the struggle between power and free will—and what happens when the chosen make choices of their own.

Ranian is finishing the final hunt of his servitude to a shepherd merchant when a Firesong shudders through his mind. Elva, a Bell Maiden in training, hears it while aiming a knife at an assassin’s heart. Imebron’s studies are upended when the music passes through his body.

A Firesong of such strength hasn’t been heard in millennia, not since the Sundering tore the world into its Five Realms. It can only mean that a danger of corresponding magnitude is approaching . . . if it’s not already here.

The godly Authority has given its warning signs, and the Resonant have a decision to make: Will the three strangers abandon everything—including their values—to fulfill their calling to protect the Realms?

October 13, 2026 • Novel • Epic Fantasy

The Step and the Walk — Kristina Elyse Butke (Oliver Heber Books)

A dark academia fantasy of forbidden alchemy, demonic bargains, and a young man determined to conquer death itself.

To achieve immortality, just give up your desire and walk through the Gate.

Driven by loss, Andresh has bent his every study toward a single heresy—an end to death itself. At university, he finds the path: the Magnum Opus, an alchemical road to immortality, and a demon named Isabelle who trades in the secrets that line it. But the road has a toll. Each gate demands he sacrifice a piece of himself, and the first—Nigredo—asks for the one thing he never imagined surrendering: his desire.

Which would be simpler if his heart were not already divided between Lily, the friend he has loved as long as he can remember, and Sebastien, the classmate who makes that loyalty harder to keep by the day. He wants them both. The first gate will let him keep neither. And the further Andresh walks, the clearer it becomes that he is not the only one with designs on his soul—and that a man bargaining away death may be a danger to far more than himself.

October 13, 2026 • Novel • Dark Academia Fantasy

A House of Perfect Safety — Virginia M. Mohlere (Dancing Star Press)

A fae novella of care-taking and justice seeking, with a magical house, a binding Pact, and a sincere love of trees.

For centuries of seasons, Warden has served the Pact at Ash House. For any creature of the Twilight Lands who shows up on the doorstep of her House with a need, she stitches wounds, cures poisons, provides safety and rest, assuming the form demanded of her by each of her varied visitors. When a guest arrives whose mind is so locked away that she does not know what form to take, what injuries he has suffered, nor how to help him, it will stretch her skills – and the Pact – to the limit.

Should the Pact be broken, it could be the end of the Twilight itself.

“There is such ferocity in [this book’s] desire for the safety and well-being of its characters, such passionate fury at the cruelties of a world that inflicts harm on the poor, the weak, the low of status, and such profound acknowledgement of pain, that every flicker of light, every new growth, every step towards freedom, is an enormous victory against the powers that seek to break us.” — C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter

October 13, 2026 • Novella • Cozy Folklore Fantasy

Migration of the Gods — CJ Aaron (Aethon Books)

When a God falls, humanity must learn to rise.

Every century, the heavens ignite as the Gods pass from one celestial home to the next. For the people of Drucent, it is a night of wonder and prayer. But this time, something went wrong. A single light veered from the path.

A God has fallen, and the world will never be the same.

Carsom was a nobody—an orphan in the frozen northern tundra, destined to muck out stalls until the cold claimed him. But when he discovers a smoldering crater and the celestial traveler within, his fate is rewritten. Gifted a legendary cosmic blade, he must transform from a stable boy into a warrior capable of defending a God.

He must adapt fast to survive the Emperor’s vicious Blood Wardens, as his new path converges with a princess on the run from her own father, and a nomadic outcast with the magical abillity to heal the dying but at a catastophic cost.

The presence of fallen gods has disrupted the natural and political order. Only together, can they stop it.

Bestselling author CJ Aaron returns with this new progression fantasy epic, where a stable boy must master a cosmic blade, a nomad must learn to control his volatile magic, and a princess must find strength in the darkest of times.

October 13, 2026 • Novel • Epic Progression Fantasy

These Fated Gifts — Amy Orrell (Elsewhen Press)

Seeing a rare swallowtail may be a sign…

…your long-lost twin seeing one too is an omen.

Separated at birth for their own protection, twin sisters Elin and Bryn have grown up with no knowledge of one another, and no understanding of the gift they carry.
Elin of the Orvaear wants only two things: to lead a simple life and to avoid stirring up trouble. But it’s not easy when her world is limited to a handful of tiny islands, her only friend, Oran, is a member of the rival clan, and both clans are controlled by Gannon, the man who murdered her parents.

Living in Londyn, a city of extremes, Bryn strives to hide her poverty. Working hard to win a coveted agronomy scholarship, she dreams of giving her family a better life. But her family includes a stranger, one whose arrival will threaten more than just her carefully laid plans.

Fated to defend both old world and new from the man who orphaned them, Elin and Bryn must bridge their divide and learn to wield their magic as one.

But Gannon won’t allow anything to stand in his way. He’s killed before, and if he must, he’ll do it again.

October 16, 2026 • Novel • Cli-Fi Fantasy

The Volcano Keeper — Bradley Sides (Regal House Publishing)

When a volcano suddenly emerges in the middle of his family’s Alabama cattle pasture, young Charlie Melvin is confronted with a promise his grandfather once made—that something extraordinary would rise from the land.

As Charlie comes of age, he wrestles with the meaning of the volcano and the legacy of his family. His story unfolds through evocative vignettes that explore love, loss, responsibility, and faith.

Graceful, tender, and emotionally resonant, Bradley Sides’ The Volcano Keeper is a moving portrait of a young man navigating grief while discovering the quiet miracles woven into the natural world.

October 20, 2026 • Novella • Magical Realism

Tropes — Sharon Shinn (Fairwood Press)

A man who can shift shapes. A woman who keeps being reincarnated. A world where unicorns are real. A city bound by elemental magic.

These are some of the touchpoints in Sharon Shinn’s new collection of stories and poems. It features two brand-new novellas, including a story set in the Elemental Blessings universe.

October 27, 2026 • Short Story Collection • Fantasy

Hooch Tuesday — Jack Cady (Fairwood Press)

HOOCH TUESDAY DELIVERS THE NEVER-BEFORE PUBLISHED EARLY NOVEL FROM JACK CADY AND A MASTERCLASS IN SATIRE. FILLED WITH GHOSTS AND BIZARRE CHARACTERS. IT’S A STORY FROM A YOUNG WRITER FLEXING HIS IMAGINATIVE POWERS EARLY IN HIS CAREER.

Where could . . .

— a 1000-year-old business manager,
— a truck driver known as the last of the Indian fighters,
— a witch-in-training who is also a member of the DAR, and
— a bulldozer driver who communes with his dozer

. . . all live together perfect in harmony? Toss in a truck haunted by 14,000 Indians, plus a thoughtful ghost to tell the story, and perfection thrives at the industrial dump. These misfits and outcasts drink beer and admire the view. They relive lost loves and misunderstandings, peaceful in the company of a highly opinionated bulldozer that talks aloud. Life is good, at least until the DAR’s own witch-in-training plans a party.

Then the dump starts to jump, fueled by unfortunate deliveries of grenades left over from One More War and a dose of rocket fuel, compliments of yet more war. Potato chips, high-proof hooch, dreams and decadence blow sky high in Jack Cady’s scathing commentary on love, war and equality. Political correctness be damned, Cady’ satire comes alive, as relevant today as it was forty years ago.

October 27, 2026 • Novel • Fantasy

Rage of the Wiled — Revey Galaer (City Owl Press)

Massachussetts, 1692.

One witch. One Puritan. A curse that could damn them both.

When Lorelle Wolf was a child, she was orphaned and brought to Sufferance, a secret settlement of witches hiding from the growing terror of Salem. The last living member of England’s formidable Silversun coven—and the so-called defective twin of a dead prophesied savior—Lore has spent her life under watch, trapped in her brother’s shadow and longing for freedom.

Abigail Willard, a devout Puritan, is running from a loveless engagement when she flees Salem and lies her way into Sufferance. Living among witches should terrify her, but even that feels preferable to a forced marriage.

When Sufferance is attacked, Lore and Abigail escape into the harrowing Wiled Woods—a cursed forest steeped in the blood of innocent women. Hunted by a dark witch and Salem’s most ruthless witch hunter, the two women must rely on each other to survive.

To break the curse threatening witches and Puritans alike, they rush to find Lore’s missing familiars and unite a rare, dangerous magic split between them—magic powerful enough to save both their worlds… or destroy them entirely.

October 27, 2026 • Novel • Historical Romantasy

The Saints We Make — Josie Kallo (Neon Hemlock)

It is the Empire. It is always the Empire.

Clarion is the sun, bright and hot. At her side is Respite, a wisp of cloud. Behind them, pale like the morning’s moon, is Saint Penance.

The Saints and their chosen are all that stand between the people and the consuming Empire. And as one girl learns when her village burns to the ground, one does not refuse the saint-path, no matter how hard it may prove to walk.

“The Saints We Make has it all: sapphic paladins! Resistance against an evil Empire! Suffering and joy, trauma and healing! This book burns like cleansing fire and shelters precious seeds of hope. Josie Kallo calls us to the righteous fight and never lets us forget that, after the fighting is done, we’ll need to make a better world. We’ll need music. Most of all, we’ll need each other. ” -Izzy Wasserstein, author of All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From

Part of the Neon Hemlock Novella Series.

October 27, 2026 • Novella • Fantasy

The Soul Thief — Molly Haniszewski (Dragon Bone Publishing)

Marlee is a great thief, and nobody knows it. For years, she has flown completely under the radar, stealing gems and valuable books on demons for clients who have no idea just how talented she is. But one night, she is beaten to her own job by a shade-possessed (and insanely good-looking) singer, who steals the single most valuable gem in the world -the gem that would guarantee Marlee’s career for the rest of her life. The singer disappears, and Marlee is targeted by those wishing to recover the gem. To save her skin, she must track down the singer and take the gem back.

Zebediah was thrown to the demons when he was ten years old. Over a decade later, he lives at the whim of a tyrannical shade, who uses his body to carry out devious acts. Since then, Zeb lives a shadow of a life, forgotten by everyone he’d ever known and unable to leave a mark upon the world. He gave up hope of being saved from his fate long ago-until a quiet, curvy waitress named Marlee unexpectedly slashes the shade for disrupting her burglary.

Could she help Zeb break free from his tortuous half-life as a thrall?

November 3, 2026 • Novel • Urban Fantasy

Blue Moon — Connie Senior (Bitingduck Press)

Third and final volume in the Club and Fang trilogy. In Blue Moon, Caleb O’Connor is in his twenties and looking to settle down to raise his adopted werewolf kids and help his human girlfriend run The Wolf’s Den, a cozy Victorian bed and breakfast in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Can a werewolf find a place in the modern world? Caleb has wrestled with this question since he received a werewolf bite as a small child. At seventeen, Caleb left the Maine coast where he grew up. For six years, he led a werewolf pack in Romania and tried his hand at vampire hunting. Now back in Bar Harbor, he’s asked to investigate when an unknown werewolf pack attacks a teenage girl at the full moon.

As Caleb digs deeper into the mystery, he uncovers a plot to destroy his kind and must choose between savagery and civilization to save himself and preserve his family.

Blue Moon explores the search for identity and the need to create family—and not necessarily the family we’re born into.

November 9, 2026 • Novel • Contemporary Fantasy

Woodfest — Meg Ripley (Creature Publishing)

In Woodfeast, the sequel to Necrology, Meg Ripley weaves revolutionary politics and dark fantasy for a blisteringly timely look at the rights, communities, and power of women.

As war rages between fundamentalist Freemen and the Dirty, practitioners of outlawed magic, nine-year-old Rabbit and her siblings have no idea how to ensure their culture’s survival. They have nine shards of the Woodfeast, a relic with unknown power, and a host of uncertain allies: Jane, a Dirty woman known to the Freemen as their apostate son; the Warrior, a beast formed from wolves; and Hyena, a storm razing the country and insisting that Rabbit must commit murder to be truly free.

To protect Dirt, each other, and the nation, Rabbit and her friends must understand the history of the Freemen—and the women they tried to destroy—before the Freemen can unmake the source of Dirt itself.

November 10, 2026 • Novel • Dark Historical Fantasy

Harvest of Spears — John Powers Wheeler (Dark Matter INK)

Across the Seven Spears, ancient myths are surging to life.

The Velhori, humankind’s oldest enemy, have awoken and begun hunting down the last remnants of humanity. But there is hope, for a prophecy tells of a woman with the fortitude and the sorcerous talents needed to end the Velhori threat forever. Vikandra Keshyl is NOT that woman.

But when Vik’s sister Tash succumbs to an illness that only Velhori magic can cure, Vik devises a plan to kill the Chosen One and assume her identity long enough to cross into Velhori lands, with the full might of humanity’s armies behind her, and cut a secret deal with the enemy.

November 17, 2026 • Novel • Dark Epic Fantasy

A Call of the Ocean — Edited by Lezli Robyn (Caezik SF & Fantasy)

The salt air doesn’t just fill your lungs, it claims them.

You think you know the tales of the mythical creatures of the deep? You don’t. You only know the lies told to keep children away from the ocean’s depths. In one story, after an apocalypse residents of an exclusive resort discover the true price of making a survival pact with beings from an old Scottish legend. In another, a master forger who’s faked so much of her life in order to achieve her goals, discovers another person’s secret is far more valuable and impossible to believe than the ancient artifact she craves so much, buried deep in the ocean. Whether it’s the evocative story about the merfolk featured on the front cover or a WWII pilot’s haunting encounter with a monster from Japanese mythology, these tales reveal new depths to our ocean’s hidden inhabitants that will make us confront our own humanity.

Edited by Lezli Robyn (affectionally known as a landlocked mermaid to her peers), within the pages of A Call of the Ocean you will rediscover the magic of a protagonist uncovering their true purpose or a hidden truth of an ocean that tries to consume them. Some will find the strength to fight their battles and break the surface again. Others will succumb to the depths…

Stories by Leslye Penelope, Joanna Corrance, Jennifer Brozek, Alex Shvartsman, Alica Cay… and many more.

November 17, 2026 • Anthology • Dark Fantasy Sci-Fi

Lucy Miles’ Photogenic Mind — Aaron Tillman (Regal House Publishing)

Fifteen-year-old Pinky Green has always felt destined for ridicule, until Lucy Miles shows up and flips his world upside down. Lucy is extraordinary, artistic, and hiding dangerous secrets about herself and her father. When her estranged mother washes up on Calamity Beach and her father turns up dead the next day, Lucy disappears, and everyone points the finger at her.

Determined to help, Pinky teams up with an unlikely crew: Gilda Montgomery, the sharp-tongued owner of Cockaroost Concessions, and Walter Walsh, Lucy’s burly, melancholic godfather and recently suspended Boston cop.

As they follow a trail of mysteries both magical and mortal, they confront the complexities of loyalty, the power of friendship, and the strange, luminous truths hidden in the most unexpected places.

November 17, 2026 • Novel • Magical Realism

The King’s Demon — Brad Abdul (Flame Tree Press)

The final exciting instalment of the Afterlife trilogy that started with The Devil’s Advisor.

The afterlife has been teetering on collapse, leaving Dahlia to do what she can to re-establish balance.

However, when departed souls start going missing, she enlists the help of Dallas, and the twins begin their hunt for a monster that shouldn’t exist.

Meanwhile, Brian grapples with the toll that his new immortal powers and sovereignty are having on his body and sanity.

Little does he know, a Demonic presence lurks just beneath the surface, ready to enact its long awaited plan to undo Hell.

November 17, 2026 • Novel • Humorous Fantasy

Rise of the Slayer — Coreene Callahan (Oliver Heber Books)

From Amazon Bestselling Author Coreene Callahan comes the second novel in her heart-stopping series about a warrior caught in the crosshairs between parallel worlds and the woman battling to pull them back from the brink of war.

Considered an abomination by the dominant class in his world, Westvane is reviled for the mixed-blood in his veins. Caged on the outskirts of society, he’s spent decades alone, waiting to strike at the queen who imprisoned him as a child. After years of isolation, he finally gets his chance, only to be thrust through a magical portal into another world.

Trapped on the other side with no way home, he comes nose-to-sword-point with the queen’s rival.

As the last Door Master, Truly Turnbolt holds the key to both kingdoms, threatening the queen’s brutal grip on his world. When tensions ignite, a dangerous idea leads to a perilous choice—lend justice a helping hand by joining forces with Truly on her quest to topple a tyrannical regime. Or use the Door Master as bait to exact his revenge before the queen uncovers the truth and sends her executioners to kill him.

November 17, 2026 • Novel • Romantic Portal Fantasy

The Shadow in the Mirror — Coreene Callahan (Oliver Heber Books)

Her paintings show the truth. Someone doesn’t want it to stay on canvas.

When portrait artist Seraphine Marrow paints a murdered woman, she discovers something impossible: her art reveals her subjects’ final moments. Each brushstroke brings visions she cannot explain, and the more she paints, the harder it becomes to separate memory from madness. Desperate to keep her ability hidden, she avoids the authorities — until one painting exposes a killer who has made mirrors into weapons.

Inspector Lucien Harrow trusts evidence, not visions. But when a string of strange deaths defies all logic, he’s forced to follow the only lead that makes sense: Seraphine Marrow. Her knowledge of the victims is too precise to ignore — and too dangerous to dismiss.

As they descend into London’s hidden laboratories, Seraphine’s visions grow stronger and more demanding. The mirrors at the center of the murders are not merely surfaces — they are something far more deliberate, and each revelation pulls her closer to their grasp. With the body count rising and the line between truth and illusion blurring, Seraphine and Lucien must learn to trust each other before a killer obsessed with immortality claims them both as its next victims.

The Shadow in the Mirror is a dark, atmospheric gothic paranormal mystery set in Victorian London’s most treacherous corners — tightly plotted, relentlessly tense, and haunted by the question of how much truth a mirror can hold.

November 17, 2026 • Novel • Gothic Paranormal Mystery

An Edge Sharp Enough — Jesse Q. Sutanto (Daphne Press)

Mara has no memory of life before her assassin training behind the fortress-like walls of Tchu-Morrokhai, which has been her world since she was five. Practicing discipline and strategy, sacrifice and solitude, she has dedicated herself to resisting the Divine Empress’s plans of eradicating the all-but-forgotten magic. She longs for a world once again filled with magic—and freedom and love. And she’ll do whatever it takes to find those things.

In the faraway city of Velingard, Livya is the privileged daughter of the revered scientist whose invention of an indestructible new metal was the catalyst for a great revolution. Yet Livya’s bored of suitors and balls, more interested in philosophical debates. But when an invite to a secret salon leads to a kidnapping attempt, Livya is suddenly on the run—with the unlikely aid of charming con man Kaian, a once dear childhood friend inexplicably turned frosty stranger.

Captain Fonde has served Velingard faithfully in the twenty years since the revolution, and all has been peaceful… until now, when he’s informed that their “indestructible” metal is inexplicably starting to crumble. Ships, bridges, buildings, statues—their entire post-revolution world is literally about to come apart. Could it be that the metal—and therefore the revolution—was flawed all along? Or is there something darker—evil, ancient, inhuman—at play?

With stunning world-building, Jesse Q. Sutanto weaves an epic tale of characters whose lives irrevocably intertwine—and unravel—as paths collide across continents, racing toward an explosive twist that will forever change all of their fates…

November 17, 2026 • Novel • Dark Fantasy

Waxing and Waning — J.N. Howell (Mythic Roads Press)

Delilah Ali works as a doctor for magical creatures alongside her incompetent medical intern, Micah, who she intends to fail by the end of his summer internship. But her summer plans are disturbed when Delilah’s vampiric ex-“something”, Darcy, crashes back into her life with a desperate plea. She needs Delilah to remove her newborn son’s magic with an illegal surgery before they’re caught by the werewolf pack hunting him down.

As the odd-ball team travel across Ontario to escape the pack and make the surgery possible, old feelings reemerge, Delilah’s own long-dormant magic rears its head, and they begin to suspect the problem is bigger than just one baby’s magic.

December 1, 2026 • Novel • Sapphic Fantasy Romance

The Penitent’s Path — Ryan Kirk (Oliver Heber Books)

He came to learn and seek a new path. His enemies found their new way forward first.

Veynar has spent months seeking a master, carrying the weight of the lives he’s taken and a spirit bound to his own. He wants answers to the questions that have plagued him. The wilds have other plans.

When a young warrior named Roneth leads him to Stonehaven, a mountain town built with impossible care on the edge of the wilderness, Veynar begins his search. But the Graevath are massing in the trees and driving toward the walls, eager to destroy the lives inside.

The answers he’s chased begin here, but Stonehaven’s enemies, both within and without, leave him little chance to reason carefully. If he hopes to survive, he’ll have to find a path to power that doesn’t destroy all he loves.

Atmospheric, morally weighty, and built around a slow-burning last stand, The Penitent’s Path is heroic fantasy for readers who love haunted protagonists, hard-won redemption, and the question of if we can become more than the wrongs of our past.

December 1, 2026 • Novel • Historical Heroic Fantasy

Vesperil: In the Last Days of the Blight — Edited by B. Morris Allen (Metaphorosis Publishing: Plant Based Press)

Sure, the Fellowship of the Greenstaff has plans to save the world, and they’ve come to the remote island of Vesperil to do it. But what about the people who just want to get on with their lives while the heroes do their thing?

Heroes
have to share the world
with the rest of us

Here, for once, are the lives of the ordinary people in Vesperil as the great quest passes through.

Vesperil brings together eight authors — C.H. Rosenberg, Damian Stockli, Hannah Hulbert, Rob Francis, Maggie Slater, B. Morris Allen, Suzanne J. Willis, and Michael Gardner — in an original, book-length collaboration set in a single shared world. All of the contributors are Metaphorosis magazine alumni, making this project a reunion of proven creative talent.

December 1, 2026 • Anthology • Fantasy

When the Forest Calls — Cassandra Newbould (Stars and Sabers)

A logger’s daughter, transformed by a mysterious fog while protesting the planned felling of a forest’s last remaining heartwood tree, seeks the forest’s vengeance–and her own–leaving a trail of disappearing townsfolk in her wake.

December 8, 2026 • Novella • Dark Fairytale

Beneath the Lost Level — Brian Keene (Apex Book Company)

Charged with another impossible task, with only their wits, weapons, and a group of helpful frog-people to aid them, Aaron and his friends must fight to escape from… Beneath the Lost Level.

After escaping the snake-like Anunnaki and laying waste to their city, Aaron Pace finds that his troubles are far from over. Trapped underground in a cave-in with his companions, Kasheena and Patamoose, the survivors must go deeper to try and find a new way to reach the surface. Little do they know, there’s a whole other world laying in wait.

If being faced with killer robots, dementia-riddled androids, and the last dregs of the civilization of Atlantis wasn’t enough, Aaron and his companions learn that there is an even larger threat looming deeper below—a threat that, if left unchecked, could destroy the Lost Level as they know it. 

December 15, 2026 • Novel • Weird Fantasy

The Bloodstone Curse — Brendon Taylor (Oliver Heber Books)

An epic medieval fantasy of dark magic, buried secrets, and a heroine racing against a curse tightening around her soul.

The witch is dead. But some evils refuse to stay buried.

After surviving a harrowing battle with the witch who nearly claimed her, Danai Walders longs for something she may never have again: a normal life. In the quiet valley where her ailing father struggles to recover and her mother lies buried, peace feels just within reach.

But the curse isn’t finished with her. Danai still possesses the bloodstone pestle that bound Merdrid to a daemon. The artifact pulses with dark power, threatening to consume her. Time is running out to break its hold. Desperate for answers, she sets out in search of Kleed—the kingsworn who once captured her heart with a single kiss—believing he may be the key to her salvation.

But Kleed serves the crown, sworn to recover every lost bloodstone. And Danai has committed an unforgivable crime: she hid one from him. If her betrayal is discovered, she faces imprisonment—or death. Yet the curse tightening its grip may claim her long before justice ever can.

In a world where magic corrupts and loyalty can be fatal, Danai must choose: trust the man she deceived, or risk losing herself forever.

Dark, romantic, and relentlessly paced—The Bloodstone Curse continues The Bloodstone Saga with impossible choices between love and survival.

December 22, 2026 • Novel • Romantic Epic Fantasy