Anticipated Releases: October - December 2026
- The Fiction Fox
- 8 hours ago
- 13 min read
October Releases
Children of Owl - Darcie Little Badger
Genre: middle-grade fantasy Expected Release date: October 6th
Synopsis:
From the peerless master of contemporary fantasy comes a tale of three cousins and the world of creatures, ghosts, and murderers that surrounds their trailer park. Illustrated throughout with comics pages!
Maisie: hasn't gotten her life back on track since her best friend died and she saw Owl, harbinger of ill tidings and doom.
Joel: Streaming prodigy with questionable decision-making who's been exiled to a summer of kitten fostering.
Verona: will do anything to leave their trailer park behind, even watch a house she knows is haunted.
Owl: son of Big Owl, who can't help who he is, or how much he cares about these aforementioned humans.
Their four stories intertwine with a ghost bent on justice, an adorable feline Animal Person, and a vengeful monster headed straight for them in this singular YA fantasy novel from Newbery Honor-winning Darcie Little Badger.
Find me Where it Ends - Cassandra Khaw
Genre: horror
Expected Release Date: October 6th
Synopsis:
Antigone is no stranger to death.For the women of her family, death always comes in the form of a black dog.When Antigone’s own black dog arrives, she isn’t afraid. She invites it inside, where it soon becomes a daily source of companionship and comfort. It also forces her to reflect on the life she’s led—the parts of herself she’s hollowed out for the sake of others, and the bone-deep exhaustion that’s hounded her every step.Her Death’s arrival must be a sign, permission to finally let go. To rest. Because while mortality is inevitable, living is a choice.But a good death comes at a price.
As You Wake, Break the Shell - Becky Chambers
Genre: science fiction
Expected Release Date: October 13th
Synopsis:
Life on Fortune is hard. The atmosphere is poisonous, the planet hardly fit for life. For years the colonists have struggled, forbidden from returning to the Mothership until they develop the technology of spaceflight for themselves.
Cora suffers from a rare condition, brought about by her contact with the alien animal she pilots, quarrying vital water for the colony.
Signy is the only person who can save her - but to do so, she must break the rules that govern their lives, and risk her livelihood and the other colonists who rely on her for survival.
But, as Cora and Signy meet, grow, and fall in love, they begin to yearn for more than mere survival
Your Beloved Remains - Quinn Connor
Genre: horror
Expected Release Date: October 6th
Synopsis:
Archivist Celia Kiel has spent her life on the remote campus of Basin College in the Southern Ozarks. Once a jewel of women’s higher education in the South, the school now molders on its mountaintop, its endowment thinly supported by the bequeathed estate of 19th century writer, Beatrice Donahue. Celia guards the legacy of this venerated, yet scandalous author, who has been the object of her illicit desire since childhood.When the administration announces the college's imminent closure, Celia discovers a manuscript pickled in formaldehyde, and with it, a chance to save the only home she's ever known. She will forge Beatrice's infamous lost work, a spellbinding horror written toward her life's tumultuous end. To do it, she is forced to recruit her professional rival, literature postdoc Joan Harriot, who has both an astounding talent for mimicry and a dark secret of her own. As their world closes in and the ghosts of the Victorian past encroach, their creative collaboration spirals into an obsession more twisted than even their beloved Beatrice could have penned.
The Wall is Also A Road - Annalee Newitz
Genre: Science Fiction
Expected Release Date: October 6th
Synopsis:
Gardenpath is a graduate student in biology who desperately wants to pass their exams with the highest honor possible: a prize given to scholars who discover something truly novel in the universe. Gardenpath also happens to be an amoeba–a slime mold, to be exact–from an ancient civilization that dwells in a vast network of towers between the stars. Seeking their prize, Gardenpath heads to a remote, dangerous planet that other researchers have dismissed as dead and uninteresting. There, they are surprised to discover a complicated ecosystem unlike anything they've ever encountered–including some peculiar, multicellular animals who seem to have language and culture.To learn more about these animals, Gardenpath changes their shape to resemble one of them. And that's how they meet a creature named Murtis, who lives in a city she calls Pompeii and works in a brothel known to locals as "the lupanar." Unfazed by a visitor who says she's from the stars, Murtis takes Gardenpath into her care, introducing her to the seaside tourist town full of immigrants and shopkeepers who are just trying to get by.A Wall Is Also a Road is a story about what happens when the alien becomes familiar–and beloved. Gardenpath expected to finish their research, present their discovery, and take their place among the decorated scholars of the floating cities. But when they look at their wild new friend Murtis’s sensor bulb, attached to a bizarre electro-chemical control system, they begin to realize there’s more to life than academic achievement. They're not sure what it is, but they're going to use science to find out.
Her Kind - Sophie Lefens
Genre: Literary Fiction
Expected Release Date: October 13th
Synopsis:
When Ada is left to raise her young son alone, she retreats to her otherworldly aunt Leigh’s crumbling lakeside home, seeking solace for herself and stability for Lenny. Yet, among the wildflowers and the hum of the water, Ada can’t escape the nagging feeling she might not have much time left. Sensing death grow nearer, she invites her three closest friends—a brash, unemployed seamstress; a gentle, disillusioned violinist; and a serious painter—to the house over a long weekend to determine which of them might take on the raising Lenny if she no longer can.Amidst strange animal activity and Aunt Leigh’s mysterious late-night visits to her dead husband’s grave, the women find comfort and purpose in one another’s company as their stay extends into winter. Meanwhile, Leigh’s memory is fading fast, and Ada must confront past and present truths she’s spent a lifetime avoiding.When death does finally come to the group, it sets off a chain of events that exposes long-hidden secrets and the true mystical nature of Leigh and her ancestral home. Written in attentive, insightful prose, Her Kind is an ode to the power of love to return us to ourselves.
The Forest Bleeds - Rachel Kitch
Genre: Horror
Expected Release Date: October 13th
Synopsis:
Saige Chambers, Arcane Bioengineering student and blood witch, is constantly anxious and chronically over-prepared. When Saige and her fellow witch doctoral candidates depart for a conference, she plans and anticipates every last detail. Except – she’s not prepared for the moment their bus turns off the highway and takes them to a remote mansion in the Appalachian Mountains, the gates sealing shut behind them.The mansion’s owner, Arius Medea, issues a simple mandate: fix his injured, rotting leg or die. But it’s no ordinary injury – the flesh melts off the bone, emitting waves of foul magic that set Saige’s blood alight. Saige’s colleagues want to fight back and escape. Saige thinks their best chance is to fix him fast and get out. As tensions rise, Saige finds herself growing closer to Vaishnavi Sri, a poison witch and Saige’s long-term crush. But first impressions can be misleading, and as Saige’s reluctant attraction to Arius grows, she begins to wonder if there’s a better life waiting for her in the walls of this mansion.But, as one by one, Saige's colleagues start to disappear, Saige realizes that dying may not be the worst option – because there are far worse fates lurking in the woods.
Peck & Peck - Bonnie Garmus
Genre: contemporary fiction
Expected Release Date: October 13th Synopsis:
The number one bestselling author of global sensation Lessons in Chemistry returns with an irresistible, delightful, and tender story about a young man whose life turns upside down when he is hired by the most prestigious, secretive, and dysfunctional poetry journal in the world: the renowned Peck & Peck of New York City.
Batter Gray is worried about his future. Even when he was eleven, his classmates seemed to have settled on a goal: doctor, lawyer, broker, engineer. Good jobs that automatically command respect, security, 401Ks. Now Batter is in his early twenties, living in New York City, and he wants something different; something that alienates some readers and bores most. Poetry. And yet—to him and exactly thirty-nine editors at a company called Peck & Peck—poetry not only represents the power of humanity but holds the key to its survival.
Batter is named after his mother’s heroic dog. An identical twin who lost his brother at birth, he finds himself confronted by the everyday dualities that make up life: right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, rejection vs. acceptance. It’s almost as if his dead brother is a reminder: there are always two sides to every story.
No, wait. Make that three...
From the Library Of Jurgen Leitner - Premee Mohammed
Genre: Horror
Expected Release Date: October 27th
Synopsis:
In the winding, perilous corridors of Jurgen Leitner's private library, you never know what you'll find. A starving cookbook. An ancient scroll that casts cool, predatory breezes. A cloth-bound hardback that compels you to DIG, DIG, DIG, DIG.Free, these books are more than simply unnerving-they're deadly. But the library keeps their dangers in check and their would-be readers safe... Or so Leitner claims.
For two of his employees, the risks are worth it. Hugh Franklin, research assistant, has finally found a place he belongs, where his skill in translation is valued, even if his employer is a bit odd. Sebastian Everett, acquisition specialist, can indulge his arcane ambitions, even if it means pretending to care about Leitner's mission.
Though their tenures at the library were years apart, Hugh and Sebastian's stories unfold in parallel, and their footsteps echo down the same eerie aisles, caught in a web spun long before either ever heard the name "Jurgen Leitner."Will they find a way out... or will the library consume them before it's too late?
Publich Access Afterworld - Jen Shoebrun
Genre: Horror, Sci-fi
Expected Release Date: October 27th 2026
Synopsis:
At 5:35pm on September 3rd, 1988, Dallas weatherman Ray “Can You Say Sunshine” Davino makes passing reference to Public Access Afterworld during a rambling monologue, right before he puts a gun to his head on live television and pulls the trigger.On June 12th, 2009, David Sawyer and Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teens who might be falling in love, gather in Erin’s basement to watch TV’s analog-to-digital transition. But in the static that follows, Erin witnesses surreal broadcasts from a pirate TV network called Public Access Afterworld and their lives are changed forever.Seventeen years later, Bethany Peters toils through the night shift at megacorp GlobalVill’s bleak Austin campus. A trans content moderator, she spends her evenings reviewing an endless stream of horrific videos. But then a young streamer begins to crop up in her feed calling out to Public Access Afterworld.But what is Public Access Afterworld?Spanning decades and realities, with an unforgettable ensemble of outcasts and nerds, especially the messy but wholly relatable Bethany who must overcome paranoia and self-doubt to transform into a hero of our times, Public Access Afterworld will have you reading through the night and rooting for its characters to survive. A mesmerizing mashup of speculative fiction, horror, and conspiracy, it marks the arrival of a major new force in contemporary fiction by a groundbreaking filmmaker who’s been compared to David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson.
Savage Lake - Nick Medina
Genre: Horror
Expected Release Date: October 27th 2026
Synopsis:
Nell Marin swore she would never return to the place where part of her died.The passing of her estranged father, however, leaves her with no choice but to take her teenage son, Oscar, back to the run-down family cabin on Torchlight Lake, where horrific memories linger. The two will fix the place up, sell it, and ensure Nell never has to return to that dreaded lake again.But when the roads—which pass through Native land—are barricaded by the local Tribe, the quick trip turns into weeks. Oscar, a horror movie buff, knows this is exactly how it starts. As the long summer days drag on, unsettling things begin to occur: screams ring out over the water and a mysterious figure watches the cabin from the trees at night. Most disturbing of all, his mother is becoming less and less herself.As the strange events lead Oscar to uncover the secrets Nell has shielded him from, he is forced to confront a reality that is far more frightening than movie monsters. He must uncover answers to the questions that stole so much from his mother…before the horror that traumatized Nell drags him under as well.
November Releases
Clear Water - Gabriella Lucille Fuentes
Genre: Horror
Expected Release Date: November 3rd
Synopsis:
Alma Figueroa, recently furloughed from her job as a paralegal and still trying to find her footing after a divorce, is driving home one night when a girl dressed in white appears out of nowhere. Afraid that the girl is injured, Alma takes her to the hospital. The girl is unharmed, but won’t speak and has no identification. Alma is determined to help her, but then the girl disappears without a trace. She is not the only girl in white to be seen. Reports come in of girls appearing in the snow, in the woods, and in the middle of roads. And while none of their faces match the photos on the missing persons posters scattered all over town, evidence of neglect echoes in their unwavering silence.As Alma starts to investigate, she soon uncovers something larger, something the town has been actively ignoring, that just might connect back to her sister Kayla’s death when they were in high school. When another girl from town goes missing, Alma must figure out what the girls in white are trying to tell her before it is too late.Clear Water unfolds over three timelines, moving between the present-day appearance of the girls in white, Alma’s return to the small town several years earlier, and the teenage years in which her sister Kayla gets pulled into addiction. With a haunting quality, a literary feel, and elements of mystery and noir, this lush and lyrical book is a poignant story about sisters, secrets, grief, and what it means when the people in authority continue to overlook the most vulnerable in their community.
Loba - Valentina Cano Repetto
Genre: Horror
Expected Release Date: November 3rd
Synopsis:
On the run from her abusive husband and desperate for money, Delmira Torres takes a position as a lighthouse keeper at the remote hamlet of Cabo Polonio, the easternmost point of Uruguay. There, she has only a month until her secrets catch up with her – and that salary has to be enough for her to start a new life across the border in Brazil.However, her hopes for peace are dashed. Delmira’s arrival at the lighthouse is met with aggression from gathering sea lions and wary villagers, both factions signalling her as an outsider they want gone. Her only ally is a local fisherman who guards his secrets and thoughts closely. But he cannot save her from a series of strange phenomena – the spiralling visions that plague her, the way time slips, the compulsions she feels to harm to herself and others. Nor can he see what she the apparition of a young, scarred woman, desperate for Delmira’s pain. La Loba, she calls herself. Trapped on the island a century prior, her legend promises a legacy of destitution – one she vows to pass onto every lighthouse keeper who crosses into her territory.
Shunned by the villagers and isolated by mania blurring her days, La Loba’s grip on Delmira’s mind tightens. She may not be first lighthouse keeper to lose her mind on the shores of Cabo Polonio. But she is determined to be the first to survive it.
Salt Water Blood - Manuia Henrich
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Expected Release Date: November 17th
Synopsis:
Eighteen-year-old Moe hears the sea’s prophetic thoughts. Not just hear them—she feels them. That’s how she experienced her father’s death before he did and how she felt her mother’s relief when she abandoned Moe and her younger brother, Tao, months later.So when the sea warns Moe that Tao will drown, she’s determined to get in fate’s way and soon secures them a way off their island home. But those plans are ruined when Tao’s girlfriend goes missing and Tao is found where she was last seen…with blood on his hands—and no memory of what happened.
Moe will do anything she can to clear her brother’s name, even if it means swallowing her pride and teaming up with her annoyingly clever school rival, Temanea. Even if it means relying on the sea’s prophecies.Because her dreaded gift may be the only way to save her brother—and uncover a sickness lurking in their community before it poisons them all.
Universe of Grace - Rachel Cagnek-Sugin
Genre: Science Fiction
Expected Release Date: November 17th
Synopsis:
One afternoon, on a visit to the Bronx Zoo, a jaguar tells six-year-old Grace Goldberg-Li she isn’t human. Not that this comes as a total surprise. Her life looks normal, but no one else, not even her beloved sister, seems to be experiencing things as brightly and painfully as she does. As she approaches adolescence, Grace begins to think that she might be an alien. Maybe this would explain the urge to steal every beautiful object she can find, or the peculiar voice that’s started issuing apocalyptic warnings inside her head.In adulthood, Grace still can’t figure it out. Is it the world that’s crazy and falling apart? Or is it her?
She will attempt, over and over, to remake herself and find her place in it. She will fall recklessly in love with a gorgeous doctoral student; she will live as a tree in a backyard during the pandemic; she will become the best employee that Wendy’s has ever seen; she will travel to the ends of the earth and keep going.
Moving, imaginative, and endlessly surprising, Universe of Grace is at once a tender family portrait, a queer love story, and an epic quest for self-discovery in a world that’s uncertain and wondrous in equal measure. Covering the span of a single life and everything it touches, Universe of Grace shows us that we are each more interconnected and vast than we can ever know.
Murmuration - T.J. Klune
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Expected Release Date: November 17th
Synopsis:
In the small mountain town of Amorea, it’s stretching toward autumn of 1954. The memories of a world at war are fading in the face of a prosperous future. Doors are left unlocked at night, and neighbors are always there to give each other a helping hand.
The people here know certain things as fact:Amorea is the best little town there is.The only good Commie is a dead Commie.The Women’s Club of Amorea runs the town with an immaculately gloved fist.And bookstore owner Mike Frazier loves that boy down at the diner, Sean Mellgard. Why they haven’t gotten their acts together is anybody’s guess. It may be the world’s longest courtship, but no one can deny the way they look at each other. Slow and steady wins the race, or so they say. But something’s wrong with Mike. He hears voices in his house late at night. There are shadows crawling along the walls, and great clouds of birds overhead that only he can see.Something’s happening in Amorea. And Mike will do whatever he can to keep the man he loves.
December Releases
No December releases have truly caught my eye yet. I will keep you posted in case more books are announced...
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