Fantasy and Science Fiction
July 2025

Recent Releases
Dissolution
by Nicholas Binge

Grieving the loss of her husband to Alzheimer's, Maggie embarks on a dangerous quest to uncover the truth behind his illness, leading her on a mind-bending adventure through time and memory to save him and change the course of history.
 
Also available through Boundless
The Sea Eternal
by Emery Robin

Goddess, tell me the story. 

Matheus Ceirran, commander of half the known world, is dead. For the past year, his loyal captain Anita has hunted down his assassins—that is, when she can pull herself from the bed of Altagracia Caviro Patramata, queen and oracle of the client planet of Szayet. But when Anita’s quest for revenge takes her across the borders of an enigmatic neighboring empire, she uncovers a dangerous secret that could upend the fragile balance of the galaxy. 
 
Meanwhile, Ceirran’s heir apparent Otávio Julhan grows more and more powerful in the capital that Anita has left behind. Caught between home, Szayet, and a new and greater threat, Anita finds herself at the center of a war that threatens to collapse her world.
 
The fate of empires dances on the tip of a knife, and history will be written by the victors in this sweeping tale of myth, imperial legacy, and the love affair of a lifetime.
 
From one of the most original voices in science fiction comes the spectacular sequel to the epic, interstellar love story that began in The Stars Undying. 
When the Tides Held the Moon
by Venessa Vida Kelley

The year is 1911. Benigno "Benny" Caldera, a young Boricua blacksmith, creates masterful ironworks for Coney Island's Luna Park. When his accomplishments lead him to the park's secret captive -- a stolen merman named Río-- Benny must find the courage to betray everyone he's known to do what's right. This queer debut title has "a captivating and perfectly balanced blend of history, fantasy, and good old-fashioned carnival magic." 
Metallic Realms
by Lincoln Michel

Though he's struggling with debt, Michael Lincoln commits to publishing The Star Rot Chronicles, a collection of science fiction stories written by his best friend and their writing group. However, the lines between fiction and reality blur as the group's interpersonal dramas collide within the pages. This riveting and complex novel will appeal to fans of similarly offbeat metafiction such as Philip K. Dick's Radio Free Albemuth and Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake. 
 
Also available through Boundless, and Sound Recording
One Way Witch
by Nnedi Okorafor

The world has forgotten Onyesonwu.

As a teen, Najeeba learned to become the beast of wind, fire and the kponyungo. When that took too much from her, including the life of her father, she let it all go, and for a time, she was happy — until only a few years later, when the small, normal life she’d built was violently destroyed. 

Now in her forties and years beyond the death of her second husband, Najeeba has just lost her beloved daughter. Onyesonwu saved the world. Najeeba knows this well, but the world does not. This is how the juju her daughter evoked works. One other person who remembers is Onyesonwu’s teacher Aro, a harsh and hard-headed sorcerer. Najeeba has decided to ask him to teach her the Mystic Points, the powerful heart of sorcery. There is something awful Najeeba needs to kill and the Mystic Points are the only way. Najeeba is truly her daughter’s mother.


When Aro agrees to help, Najeeba is at last ready to forge her future. But first, she must confront her past — for certain memories cannot lie in unmarked graves.
Gifted & Talented
by Olivie Blake

Where there’s a will, there’s a war.

Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology, is dead. Any one of his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne.

Or at least, so they like to think.

Meredith, textbook accomplished eldest daughter and the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. You're welcome! If only her father's fortune wasn't her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud.

Arthur, second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. And yet, his wife might be leaving him, and he's losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father’s approval in the form of a seat on the Wrenfare throne might just turn his sinking ship around.

Eilidh, once the world's most famous ballerina, has spent the last five years as a run-of-the-mill marketing executive at her father’s company after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious career. She might be lacking in accolades compared to her siblings, but if her father left her everything, it would finally validate her worth—by confirming she'd been his favorite all along.

On the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins—but which Wren will come out on top?
 
Also available on Sound Recording
The Book That Held Her Heart
by Mark Lawrence

The secret war that defines the Library has chosen its champions and set them on the board

The fate of an infinite library hangs on one book, a book that holds the power to break the unbreakable. In the face of such forces, fragile things like hearts, family, and the world seem certain to fail.

The people most vital to Livira are scattered across time and space, lost, divided into factions, in mortal peril. Somehow, she must bring them together and resolve the unresolvable argument that fuels the library’s war. The bond between Livira and Evar has stretched and stretched again. Can it hold at the end, when things fall apart? Can it bring them together against impossible odds? This is the last chapter, the final page. The end threatens and no one, not characters, readers, or even the author, will emerge unscathed.
 
The last installment of The Library Trilogy. 
Here There Be Dragons
Emberclaw
by Laura Lam

After her predecessor flees and doesn't return a new Archivist is bound to recount another tale of magic and betrayal in a story that begins with a death, in the second novel of the series following Dragonfall.
Blood of the Old Kings
by Sæong-il Kim

There is no escaping the Empire. Even in death, you will serve. In an Empire run on necromancy, dead sorcerers are the lifeblood. Their corpses are wrapped in chains and drained of magic to feed the unquenchable hunger for imperial conquest. Born with magic, Arienne has become resigned to her dark fate. But when the voice of a long-dead sorcerer begins to speak inside her head, she listens. There may be another future for her, if she's willing to fight for it. 
A Monsoon Rising
by Thea Guanzon

After a lifetime of war, Alaric and Talasyn were thrust into an alliance between their homelands that was supposed to end the fighting; however, being married to their sworn foe feels far from peaceful. Now Talasyn must play the part of Alaric's willing empress while her allies secretly plot to overthrow his reign. But the longer the couple are forced together, the harder it becomes to deny the feelings crackling like lightning between them. When the time comes to act, can she trust him, or must she ignore her heart for the sake of so many others?
 
As the master of the Shadow forged Legion, Alaric has trained for battle all his life, but marrying a Lightweaver might be his most dangerous challenge yet. With tensions between nations churning, he needs to focus on the greater threat--the Moonless Dark, a cataclysmic magical event that could devour everything. Only he and Talasyn can stop it, with a powerful merging of light and shadow that they alone can create together. But saving their world from this disaster is a mere preface to his father's more sinister schemes, and his wife is a burning flame in the darkness, tempting both his loyalties and his desires. The Hurricane Wars aren't over. It's time to choose what--and who--to fight for. The world holds its breath amidst a whirlwind of new magic and old secrets that could change everything.
A Language of Dragons
by S. F. Williamson

London, 1923. Dragons soar through the skies and protests erupt on the streets, but Vivian Featherswallow isn’t worried. She’s going to follow the rules, get an internship studying dragon languages, and make sure her little sister never has to risk growing up Third Class. By midnight, Viv has started a civil war.

With her parents arrested and her sister missing, all the safety Viv has worked for is collapsing around her. So when a lifeline is offered in the form of a mysterious ‘job’, she grabs it. Arriving at Bletchley Park, Viv discovers that she has been recruited as a codebreaker helping the war effort – if she succeeds, she and her family can all go home again. If she doesn’t, they’ll all die.

At first Viv believes that her challenge, of discovering the secrets of a hidden dragon language, is doable. But the more she learns, the more she realizes that the bubble she’s grown up in isn’t as safe as she thought. Eventually Viv must decide what war is she really fighting?
 
Also available on Sound Recording. 
Contact your librarian for more great books!
Michigan City Public Library
100 E. 4th Street
Michigan City, Indiana 46360
219-873-3044
mclib.org/