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Fantasy and Science Fiction September 2026 |
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| Voyagers by Meg CharltonWhen the Signal – a mysterious transmission pulsing from the edge of the solar system – arrives, the world changes overnight. Planes are grounded, satellites fail, and speculation abounds. With many believing it could be first contact with extraterrestrial life, humanity holds its breath. But for Alex, a thirtysomething lawyer who’s spent years distancing himself from the unexplainable, the Signal feels deeply personal – the opening of an old wound.
Decades ago, Alex and a girl named Ana both vanished for thirty-six hours while on vacation in Palm Springs. When they returned, dazed but unharmed, the six-year-olds' account of the experience had all the hallmarks of an alien abduction. The media frenzy that followed made them famous, and the long months of child stardom, of talk shows and sitcom cameos, forged a seemingly unbreakable bond between them – until the mystery behind their disappearance began to tear them apart.
Now, with the world on edge and the Signal growing stronger, Alex is drawn back to the one person who might have answers. Ana – now a professional advocate for experiencers of extraterrestrial contact – is leading a retreat near Palm Springs, a stone's throw from the site of their childhood disappearance. As the former best friends tentatively reunite, what starts as a quest to confront the reality of their original experience becomes a larger reckoning with friendship, faith, family, and truth itself – what it means to see the stories we tell ourselves for what they really are. |
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| Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth DurstIn this 3rd in the Spellshop series, Marin is a supply runner with her own boat that she sails from island to island, delivering whatever anyone will pay her to deliver: letters, flour, even the occasional enchanted lemur. It’s a lonely life, but it’s hers, and she wouldn’t trade the freedom of the sea for anything. Her only companion is a sea serpent, Perri, whom she saved from a fisherfolk’s net.
One day, she sails to Alyssium and discovers the city is on fire. There’s been a revolution, and the empire has fallen. Marin, with Perri, begins transporting refugees, finding them new homes where they can start over. One such refugee is Dax, a composer who refuses to leave behind his instruments, no matter how much she tries to emphasize the gravity of the situation. Intrigued by his stubbornness, his passion for stories, and his charming smile, Marin discovers perhaps she isn’t saving him ― maybe it’s the other way around. |
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Little Wild by Laura EvansSuffolk, 1937. As the English countryside swelters in a historic heat wave, preparations for a party at Snare House are in full swing. The Winthers’ only daughter, Joanie, is returning from a summer in Europe, a flying visit before she leaves for university in Oxford. Only Margaret, long-time ward of the family and Joanie’s closest friend, knows the Joanie won’t be going to Oxford. Instead, the two will be leaving the stultifying society they know to live together in London, as lovers.
Then the pair is discovered, and everything goes wrong. Banished to a cabin in the nearby woods, Margaret is alone with her estranged father. As summer curdles into fall and magpies throng the forest, Margaret begins to lose herself. Her dreams turn dark and terrifying, and she wakes from them with dirt on her soles and scratches on her back. Everything suggests that a perverse power is awakening within her—perhaps the very one which led to her mother’s ostracism and eventual death. If she can harness it, Margaret may be able to secure an approximation of the love she’s always craved—but at what cost?
Little Wild is at once a feminist fairy tale, a haunting meditation on the dangers of desire, and a gripping debut from a talented new voice.
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| Sublimation by Isabel J. KimThe border cuts you in two.
When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home.
Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral.
She doesn’t know that Soyoung plans to steal her body and her life.
How far would you go to live the choice you didn’t make? |
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| We Burned So Bright by TJ KluneThe road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky….
Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they’ve experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world. Now, the world is ending for real. A wandering black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they’ve ever known will be gone. Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They’re in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it’s all over.
On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how—impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends. And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough.
Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes? |
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Retro by Jessica M. GoldsteinWhen Ash spots an ad for Retro during a depressing Instagram scroll--she's in debt and unemployed; everyone else is, evidently, thriving--she's surprised the algorithm sent it her way. She's heard of recreational time travel, but it's way out of her budget. Then she sees the caption: Come away with us We're hiring. So begins Ash's life as a Time Travel Agent, leading wealthy tourists on vacations to historical hotspots. She takes bachelorette parties to live out their cowboy-romance fantasies in the Old West; she chaperones '20s for your twenties birthday excursions to speakeasies; she smiles politely as rich Wall Street guys give prospecting a shot during the Gold Rush. It's all thrilling, outrageous, and totally surreal. Bygone America is just a Retro Metro ride away. Despite Ash's tendency toward cynicism, she finds herself swept up in her dazzling new job. Sure, Ash isn't the actress she'd always dreamed she'd be. But isn't this so much better? It's like Ash's life is a movie, complete with an impossible love triangle. How is she supposed to choose between her mysterious office crush and the handsome private eye pursuing her in 1937? For the first time in years, Ash's life feels enviable--so she'd really rather not pay attention to the strange things happening to her memory and relationships outside Retro. But as her trips threaten to unravel her real life, she confronts an unsettling truth: "Escaping" into the past was never really an escape at all. |
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The Sixth Nik by Daniel KrausDeep into space, far past the triworld outposts, beyond range of the lethal trollbot internet, soars The Sickness: a ship woven from biomatter and capable of reacting to every need of its human crew. Sisilla, a nine-year-old cultist with a brain enhanced by arcane tech known as niks, has boarded to investigate the enigma of F m--a plague-riddled planet that has abruptly gone rogue. The mysterious crew includes a faceless assassin, a beautiful engineer jigsawed by plastic surgery, a peyote-addicted medic, and--most lethal of all--a rugged, NonModded captain with a score to settle with Sisilla. Other dangers abound. A hacked robot begins to believe Sisilla is its daughter. The Sickness itself is mutating, possibly even pregnant. And the secret of F m is more horrific than anyone could have imagined. To survive, Sisilla will need to forsake her predetermined fate and embrace the unknown. |
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Cloudthief by Nathaniel RichWhy settle for nothing, when you can steal everything? Forget banks, casinos, museums--society's most valuable treasure sits in the giant, anonymous data centers that power modern life. There, in endless rows of hard drives, lies the sum of our civilization's knowledge, all of the world's personal and private truths, uploaded and saved. They wait unseen, unexploited, and, most critically, unguarded. Tim is a climate journalist disillusioned with chronicling the end of the world. Virginia is an evasive, paranoid, and technologically savvy con artist who has found an ingenious way to live off the grid in the heart of Manhattan. Joined by desire and desperation, they hatch a plan to steal secrets. But they have secrets of their own--secrets they can't tell each other, secrets that could destroy them both... With their last few dollars and some dimestore wigs they set out for the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the unlikely site of the world's largest repository of knowledge--a data center the size of a small city--to attempt a brazen heist that, whether they fail or succeed, will change their lives forever. But the heist is only the beginning... |
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The Demon Star by Jesse AragonOn a ruined planet oppressed by eldritch gods, a rebel leader forces his son to become the vessel of a god-killing demon. Caught in a conflict spanning galaxies and millennia, two unlikely allies must decide whether to save the child, their world, or themselves. The otherworldly religious conflict of Dune, the cosmic strangeness of Gideon the Ninth, and the heart-pounding action of Red Rising converge in this horror-tinged epic science fantasy debut. Ysira Naktis was a human sacrifice, destined for death. But unlike the thousands harvested each year, she did the unthinkable. She survived--and what she brought back with her could rewrite the fate of her civilization. When Ysira's son is chosen for demonic possession, she is faced with a choice: allow him to harness cosmic power at an unspeakable cost or doom millions to save him. She finds an unlikely ally in Brother Jacen Kheris, once a gifted exorcist, now an addict desperate for purpose. From a demon-haunted canyon to a starbound satellite, they must battle their way through cultists, aliens, and the gods themselves. The truths they unearth send them hurtling down a path that can only lead to apocalypse. |
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| Green City Wars by Adrian TchaikovskyIn the solar cities of the future, the humans relax in the sun and the animals work in the shadows. Genetically engineered Little Helpers, serving humanity—unseen, unheard.
Meet Skotch. Racoon, P.I.—Yours for a few buttons as long as the job isn't too illegal, whatever that means.
A mouse has gone missing. Normally this wouldn't raise any hackles, nor any alarms, but this mouse has something that everyone seems to want, though nobody appears particularly eager to say what that something is.
The fee is good—perhaps too good. Certainly not something Skotch can easily turn down.
If only Skotch can work out where the mouse is hiding, what he's hiding, and why his secrets are upsetting a lot of animals caught up in the Green City wars. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Michigan City Public Library
100 E. 4th Street
Michigan City, Indiana 46360
219-873-3044mclib.org/ |
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