Even more exciting SF/F books to pick up in June 2026
16 new reads to close out the month with
I've been finding that I need a dedicated place to read. The living room is often too crowded and distracting, and crawling in bed to read usually just results in me falling asleep.
Over the last couple of weeks, we've had some great weather, so I've found that the perfect reading nook is my front porch. It's pretty small, and in the time we've lived there, it hasn't really been much of a place to sit, but I've been enjoying my time out there. I've got a small flock of chickadees, cardinals, woodpeckers, and sparrows that swoop in to the feeder from the lilac bushes that keep me company, and I ended up purchasing a small, foldable table that's the right height for tea and sugar. It's relaxing, and I'm looking forward to spending some more time this summer working my way through the never-ending pile of books.
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If you've found this newsletter useful or enlightening in any way, you can support it by signing up as well! Your membership will help with the next batch of work that I've got in the pipeline, nearly 30 pieces that I've got on the schedule, from more book lists to commentaries, reviews, and interviews.
In case you missed it, here are the books that I rounded up earlier this month, and as always, you can find prior lists over on the Book list tag.
Okay, here are 16 new SF/F books to close out the month with:
Breach of Containment by Elizabeth Bonesteel (June 30th)
Earlier this month, I noted that Elizabeth Bonesteel reacquired the rights to her novels The Cold Between and Remnants of Trust, and has republished them under herself. The next installment in the series is Breach of Containment (She's since written a fourth installment, Condition of War).
I'm a big fan of these books: they're really excellent space operas, and I'm excited to see that she's got full control over them. If you're looking for one of those "hidden gem" type of books, these are some good ones.
Andrew Liptak
A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus (June 30th)
Maurice Broaddus completes his Astra Black trilogy (preceded by Sweep of Stars and Breath of Oblivion). This has been a sweeping afrofuturist space opera, set in the Munungano Empire, a pan-African federation that spread into the solar system in the 2050s. In the first novel, we followed a leader, soldiers, and a starship captain as they worked to figure out their place in this world, and in the second, Broaddus carried those threads forward as they faced a range of new threats – not only to themselves, but to their civilization.
In this final installment, the Muunago faces its greatest threat: The Interstellar Alliance is bearing down on them and a war is brewing in our solar system and beyond.
Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying "Broaddus is unafraid to tackle big questions, such as the nature of consciousness, but never sacrifices plot development for exposition. Few current authors can match the ambitious imagination of this powerful and thought-provoking trilogy."
This is Where the Future Bleeds by Mike Brooks (June 30th)
Mike Brooks is back with a new fantasy novel: Kitt Carver is a skilled diviner who caters to his world's rich and powerful, telling them their destinies. Things go sideways when one of her brokers is killed, almost taking her out at the same time.
It seems that one of the destinies she came across isn't sitting well with some unpleasant people, and she gathers up a motley crew, including a childhood friend-turned duelist, and they set off to track down the person with the destiny to give them a heads up. What she doesn't know is that she has her own destiny, and it could spell everyone else's ruin.
Andrew Liptak
The Ishtar Deception by James L. Cambias (June 2nd)
James L. Cambias adds to his larger Billion Worlds series (The Godel Operation, The Scarab Mission, and The Miranda Conspiracy) with a new adventure: a spy named Sabbath Okada – an agent from Deimos – has been tasked with investigating the death of a fellow agent. He's accompanied by Daslakh, an AI that serves as his conscious.
Their mission takes them to Ishtar, a city on Venus, where they find themselves scrambling for clues amongst the city's elite, to the unforgiving wilds of the planet, encountering corrupt cops, spies, and other enemies – including Meili Tewa, the only person Sabbath has ever loved.
The Tinder Box by M.R. Carey (June 23rd)
A veteran named Mag Tresti has been recovering from the wounds he received while serving for his country, and ends up working for a reclusive widow named Jannae Mirchella. There's more to her than meets the eye: she has some powers and plans that she's kept well-hidden behind a more peaceful and unassuming front.
Things change when a demon is killed, and the pair are forced to team up when they find a tinderbox on the demon's body: a powerful magical object that could grant Mag's wishes, but also change the direction of the world.
Kirkus Reviews gave the book a starred review, saying that it's "surprising and redemptive; Carey masters yet another subgenre of speculative fiction."
Voyagers by Meg Charlton (June 16th)
When humanity detects a signal from the outer reaches of the solar system, it upends the world: there's disruption to satellites and plans, and humanity believes that they're on the cusp of first contact. For one – a lawyer named Alex, it's the reopening of an old wound – years ago, he and a girl named Ana vanished for 36 hours in what appeared to be an alien abduction, thrusting them into the spotlight. The experience brought them together, but the pressure eventually pushed them apart.
With the entire world enraptured by the Signal, Alex goes to seek out Ana – now an advocate for abductees, and they're forced to confront their original experiences.
Kirkus Reviews says that "in lesser hands, this book might have been a schlocky story about chosen family or a hard-edged dystopian look at the way facing the unknown can bring out the worst in humans. But Charlton strikes just the right notes of smarts and warmth, and the result is an uncommonly confident debut novel."
Foundling Fathers by Meg Ellison (June 23rd)
In this satirical science fiction novel, a tech company has cloned America’s founding fathers in an experiment, and things go awry when Benjamin finds an iPhone when it’s supposed to be 1750. He takes it to his brothers, Thomas, John, and George, and it upends their lives.
Publishers Weekly says "Elison has a lot of fun with historicity and her characters are all finely wrought, especially Himmel, whose care for the boys as their surrogate mother butts up against her involvement in the Antediluvian cause. It’s a clever mash-up of American history and modern politics that will have readers both laughing and squirming.
Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein (June 23rd)
An actress named Ash has been looking for work and stumbles upon an interesting opportunity online: a job for a time travel company. She signs up as an agent, leading tours of wealthy travelers who make the trip back into the past to everything from the Gold Rush to prohibition, and everything in between.
She finds that she loves her job, even if it's not what she expected to be doing. Just she starts to realize that things are blurring a bit: her real life and her memories and relationships, and she has to come to terms with the fact that slipping into the past isn't always the escape that it seems.
Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review, saying that it's "a nuanced, biting cautionary tale about how not staying present can erase our very selves."
The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus (June 23rd)
Right on the heels of a Pulitzer Prize win and a looming adaptation of his novel Whalefall, Daniel Kraus's next book looks like a lot of fun.
In the distant future and way out in the depths of space, a living starship called The Sickness is sailing through space. Onboard is a 9-year-old cultist named Sisilla, who's been enhanced by an arcane technology known as niks. She's boarded the ship to figure out a mystery: why a planet called Fém has gone rogue.
She has to contend with the ship's strange crew of assassins, engineers, medics, and officers, all while The Sickness has been changing in strange ways. They eventually find that the situation involving Fém is more horrific, and to survive, Sisilla will have to put aside the plans for her life and make some drastic decisions.
In the Chicago Review of Books, Philip Janowski writes that "the novel teems with what makes for the very best science fiction: thought-provoking scientific ideas, strong characters, evocative scenery and descriptions, strange worlds, and the exploration of individual and societal morality."
Songs of the Dead by Brandon Sanderson and Peter Orullian (June 16th)
This is the first book of a series called The Strata Wars, and it comes from an idea that Sanderson had a while ago. It follows a struggling musician in London, who is awakened after he’s killed in a new reality where light and music create magic in this new world he discovers that a revolution is brewing against the living, threatening the entire world.
Kirkus Reviews says that it's "a headbanging beginning to what could be a remarkable urban fantasy series—heavy metal playlist sadly not included."
Star Wars: The Art of Andor by Phil Szostak (June 30th)
This is one of my more anticipated reads of the year: finally, a behind-the-scenes look at my favorite Star Wars series, Andor. Szostak has written a whole bunch of these art books for the franchise, and I'm particularly interested in reading creator Tony Gilroy's foreword and writer Dan Gilroy's afterword.
But most of all, I'm really excited to see how this series was conceived: what types of designs did they set out to bring to life? How did they play out the story? How did they adapt the second season into its unusual structure? I'm eagerly awaiting my preorder.
Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky (June 23rd)
Another book from Adrian Tchaikovsky. This one is described as "Philip Marlowe meets Redwall" and it's set in a future where human life in leisure and genetically engineered animals called Little Helpers, serve humanity in the shadows. Skotch is a Raccoon and private investigator who's willing to take on almost any gig.
When a mouse goes missing, and he's hired to try and track him down. In most cases, a mouse going missing wouldn't attract any attention, but this particular mouse has something that everyone seems to be after, even if Skotch can't quite get anyone to say what it is.
Devils We Know by L.T. Thompson (June 9th)
In this sequel to last year's Devils Like Us, Cas, Remy, and Finn are friends who're on the run from a mysterious organization, the Order of Lazarus, which wants to use Cas's powers to capture Death and utilize its abilities for their own purposes. That would upend the laws of nature, and impact the trio themselves.
The three of them take off onboard the Mori, where they can exist as their true selves, and in order to protect themselves, they set out to find Death themselves, and prevent the Order from their own nefarious plans.
Kirkus Reviews says that "Thompson carefully interweaves the various plot strands, creating an impressively balanced narrative. The historical setting provides a striking backdrop for a marvelously modern queer-conscious space."
Ring Shout on Saturn by Sheree Renée Thomas (June 9th)
Sheree Renée Thomas brings together a new collection of her shorter fiction (the second of three, following Mojorhythm), which includes stories of salvaged spaceships, children breaking generational curses, aliens, spirits, and quite a bit more.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (June 30th)
Paul Tremblay is one of my favorite horror authors: he's written books like A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock, which end up being some terrific character stories with a light touch of the supernatural or otherworldly. His next looks like it'll be a fascinating one: about a woman named Julia Flang, a former semi-professional gamer who's offered a job that she can't refuse: a tech company needs someone to help bring a man with an AI implanted in his brain from California to the East coast. It sounds like a chilling, prescient novel about the state of technology and the world we live in.
Publishers Weekly says "the narrative culminates with a chilling treatise on unchecked AI and corporate greed that deserves applause for its boldness. This is sure to satisfy the author’s fans."
Andrew Liptak
From the Earth to the Moon: Annotated for Our Spacefaring Age by Jules Verne (June 30th)
MIT Press has issued a new edition of Jules Verne's classic novel From the Earth to the Moon. This edition features a whole bunch of essays to accompany the story by authors Samit Basu, Jordan Bimm, Erika Nesvold, Adam Oyebanji, Malka Older, Adam Roberts, and Asif Siddiqi.
Let me know what catches your eye on this list, and what you've got on your TBR!