Source: Illumicrate

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh Genres: Adult, Dystopian, LGBTQ+, Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fiction, Hard Sci-fi, Space Opera, Time Travel Published by Tordotcom on April 10, 2023 Format: Hardcover, Special Edition Pages: 438 Source: Illumicrate While we live, the enemy shall fear us. All her life Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the all-powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the Majoda their victory over humanity. They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. But when Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands. Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, she escapes from everything she’s ever known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined. A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family …

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao Genres: Adult, AAPI, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Low Fantasy, Magic Published by Gollancz on January 19, 2026 Format: Hardcover, Special Edition Pages: 390 Source: Illumicrate In the waning years of the Azalea Dynasty, the emperor is dying, the land consumed by famine, and poetry magic lost to all except the powerful.&nbsp Wei Yin is desperate. After the fifth death of a sibling, with her family and village on the brink of starvation, she will do anything to save those she loves.&nbsp Even offer herself as concubine to the cruel heir of the beautiful and brutal Azalea House.&nbsp But in a twist of fate, the palace stands on the knife-edge of civil war with Wei trapped in its center…at the side of a violent prince.&nbsp To survive, Wei must harden her heart, rely on her wit, and become dangerous herself. Even if it means becoming a poet in a world where women are forbidden to read—and composing the most powerful spell of all. A ballad of death…and love. This book may be unsuitable for people under 17 years of age due to its use of sexual content, drug and alcohol use, and/or violence. A story of …

Saltswept by Katalina Watt Series: The Earthsalt Duology #1 Genres: Adult, Adventure, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Magic, Mythic Fantasy, LGBTQ+ Published by Hodderscape on February 25, 2026 Format: Hardcover, Special Edition Pages: 382 Source: Illumicrate A ragtag crew. A perilous quest. First, they need a boat. Next, they need to learn how to sail it.  A pirate faces the gallows drop. A farmer is given a terrible ultimatum to save her daughter. An acolyte ascends to priestesshood . . . only to find that a blessing really can be a curse. These unlikely bedfellows band together with an inscrutable pickpocket and a talking ottercat in pursuit of the most hopeless of to sail into the Maelstrom – a raging whirlpool from which no one has ever escaped – and the mysterious treasure hidden within it.  The quest will test their fragile allegiance to its limits, but there is more at stake here than getting the magic of the world is in peril, and the barrier between life and death has never been so thin. And in the Bastion, the seat of power in Paranish, the queen has an unquenchable thirst that threatens the world and everyone in it.   Can there …

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino Genres: Fantasy, Dark Academia, Fantasy Romance, Paranormal, Horror, Young Adult Published by Titan Books on July 31, 2021 Format: Hardcover, Special Edition Pages: 389 Source: Illumicrate The devil seeks his due from two unsuspecting students in this YA horror novel for fans of The Library of the Unwritten and VE Schwab.  When Tess and Eliot stumble upon an ancient book hidden in a secret tunnel beneath their school library, they accidentally release a devil from his book-bound prison, and he’ll stop at nothing to stay free. He’ll manipulate all the ink in the library books to do his bidding, he’ll murder in the stacks, and he’ll bleed into every inch of Tess’s life until his freedom is permanent. Forced to work together, Tess and Eliot have to find a way to re-trap the devil before he kills everyone they know and love, including, increasingly, each other. And compared to what the devil has in store for them, school stress suddenly doesn’t seem so bad after all. What if it was just you and me, in an eerie library, with a demon haunting our hopes and dreams, not two but three? More successful than …

After the Forest by Kell Woods Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Fairy Tale, Low Fantasy, Magic, Historical Fiction, Retelling, Young Adult Published by Titan Books on September 25, 2023 Format: Hardcover, Special Edition Pages: 463 Source: Illumicrate Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour. A drop of blood to bind its power.  1650: The Black Forest, Wurttemberg.  Fifteen years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people recovering in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, the witch’s grimoire, secreted away and whispering in her ear, and the recipe inside that makes the most sinfully delicious – and addictive – gingerbread.  As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat. But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her intoxicating gingerbread is a source of ever-growing suspicion and vicious gossip.  And now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta’s own powers – magic she is still trying to understand – may be the only thing that can save her … If it doesn’t kill …