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Fantasy and Science Fiction December 2025 |
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The Isle in the Silver Sea
by Tasha Suri
In a Britain fueled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes. Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen's court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other? As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them. But what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?
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The Everlasting
by Alix E. Harrow
A legend. A lie. A love story. A lady-knight whose legend built a nation meets a retiring historian in awe of her fame. He’s sent back through time to make sure she plays her part, even if it breaks his heart. Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters – but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten. Centuries later, Owen Mallory, failed soldier, struggling scholar, falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives, and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs. But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend, and finally tell a different story, they’ll have to rewrite history itself, and change their lives in the process.
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| Katabasis by R.F. KuangKatabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero's descent to the underworld. Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of analytic magic. But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and, inconveniently, in Hell. And Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him. But Hell is not as the philosophers claim, its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together. That’s if they can agree on anything. Will they triumph, or kill each other trying? |
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Alchemised
by SenLinYu
Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner, of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed. In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive. According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance’s final gambit? To uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena’s fight, to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self, is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own, secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.
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| Hole in the Sky by Daniel H. WilsonOn the Great Plains of Oklahoma, in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, a strange atmospheric disturbance is noticed by Jim Hardgray, a down-on-his-luck single father trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter, Tawny. At NASA’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, astrophysicist Dr. Mikayla Johnson observes an interaction with the Voyager 1 spacecraft on the far side of the solar system, and she concludes that something enormous and unidentified is heading directly for Earth. And in an undisclosed bunker somewhere in the United States, an American threat forecaster known only as the Man Downstairs intercepts a cryptic communication and sends a message directly to the president and highest-ranking military brass: ‘First contact imminent.' |
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| Sunward by William AlexanderCaptain Tova Lir chose a life as a courier rather than get involved in her family’s illustrious business in politics. Set in humanity’s far future, hiring a planetary courier is essential for delivering private messages across the stars. Encouraged by friends, Tova begins mentoring baby bots, juvenile AI who are developmentally in their teens, and trains them how to interact within society essentially becoming their foster mom. Her latest charge, Agatha Panza von Sparkles, named herself on their first run from Luna to Phoebe station. But on their return, they encounter a derelict spaceship and a lurking assassin, igniting a thrilling chase across the solar system. Tova and Agatha’s daring actions leave Agatha’s mind vulnerable, relying on Tova’s former AI pupils for help. As Tova starts gathering her scattered family around her, she is chased through the solar system by forces who want her captured and her family erased. |
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| Brigands & Breadknives by Travis BaldreeFern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her! If only things were so simple. It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint. A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior surviving on inertia, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover. As together they fend off a rogue's gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when nothing seems inevitable. |
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| The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie LeongCertainty Bulrush wants to be useful, to the Guild of Mages, to the brother who depends on her, and to anyone else she can help. Unfortunately, her tepid magic hasn't proven much use to anyone. So when Certainty is offered the chance to earn her magehood, she jumps on it. Never mind that the assignment is to transport minor artefacts to the dull, unmagical village of Shpelling, or that it involves working with Mage Aurelia, a brilliant, unfairly attractive overachiever who's managed to alienate everyone around her. In Shpelling, the two must deal with testy villagers, an unruly catdragon, and their growing attraction to each other, while avoiding any incidents that could further damage the Guild's testy relationship with the kingdom's citizens. But magic is fickle - sooner or later, it is bound to spell trouble. |
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| Witches of Dubious Origin by Jenn McKinlayZoe Ziakas enjoys a quiet life, working as a librarian in her quaint New England town. When a mysterious black book with an unbreakable latch is delivered to the library, Zoe has a strange feeling the tome is somehow calling to her. She decides to consult the Museum of Literature, home to volumes of indecipherable secrets, some possessing dark magic that must be guarded. Here, among their most dangerous collection, the Books of Dubious Origin, Zoe discovers that she is the last descendant of a family of witches and this little black book is their grimoire. Zoe knows she must decode the family’s spell book and solve the mystery of what happened to her mother and her grandmother. However, the book’s potential power draws all things magical to it, and Zoe finds herself under the constant watch of a pesky raven, while being chased by undead Vikings, ghost pirates, and assorted ghouls. With assistance from the eccentric staff of the Books of Dubious Origin department, including their annoyingly smart and handsome containment specialist, Jasper Griffin, Zoe must confront her past and the legacy of her family. But as their adventure unfolds, she’ll have to decide whether or not she’s ready to embrace her destiny. |
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A Curious Kind of Magic
by Mara Rutherford
Everyone in Ardmuir knows that Willow Stokes is a charlatan, including Willow herself. Her father’s shoppe hasn’t sold anything magical in decades, and it’s only hanging on by the skin of the fake dragon’s teeth Willow sells as charms, along with ‘enchanted’ ostrich eggs, taxidermied chimeras, and talismans made of fools’ gold. Until outlander Brianna Hargrave appears and turns Willow’s fakes into exactly what they’re purported to be. But try as Willow might to enlist Bri’s help, she wants nothing to do with Willow and her curiosities. Because Brianna is harboring a secret of her own: everything she touches turns to magic, and the consequences have chased her all the way to Ardmuir. All she wants to do is find a particular missing grimoire, which contains a spell that can finally put an end to her curse. Desperate to keep her father's shoppe, Willow proposes a bargain that could save them both. Together with the frustratingly handsome printer's assistant, the girls will uncover a plot that goes far deeper than either could have imagined. But when Willow is forced to participate in an ambitious collector's quest for the rarest magical object in the world, a quest that risks almost-certain death, she learns that not all treasure is for sale, and that true magic is closer than she ever could have imagined.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Albert Lea Public Library
211 E Clark St.
Albert Lea, Minnesota 56007
(507) 377-4350alplonline.org |
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