Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading.
Twitter: @MissLiberty
You probably think I’m exaggerating when I say I am almost always thinking about books, but it’s true. And now that we are on the downward trip of the roller coaster that is 2025, speeding towards 2026, I am thinking more and more about the science fiction and fantasy books coming out next year. I already shared several that I am excited about a few months ago—here are seven more exciting SFF books coming in 2026.
But first, a reminder that release dates are always changing, so don’t write these down in pen quite yet. (Or do use pen. Go wild, you daredevil.) And also, none of the books below are Alecto the Ninth, the fourth book in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series, as sad as that makes me to say. But I promise you’ll know when the news of that book’s release is announced, because you’ll be able to hear me scream from wherever you are.
Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall (Tor Books, March 10, 2026)
Alexis Hall is making his sci-fi debut with this novel being pitched as “sapphic Moby-Dick in space”! That is an elevator pitch I can’t pass up. It’s about the hunt for space monsters to use their spinal fluid for fuel. Earth is no more, and the survival of humanity on other planets rests on the space monsters. But they’re not happy about being hunted. (Also, that cover is amazing!)
Voidverse by Damien Ober (S&S/Saga Press, March 10, 2026)
This space opera is being called “Dune meets Wool,” which sounds like a lot of sci-fi crammed into a small space. It’s about a floating machine called The Construct that destroys all in its path and a survivor of an encounter named The Sinker who is looking to destroy it. Damien Ober was a writer for The OA, which I have not seen, but Kelly Link blurbed this, which is all I need to get me to pick it up.
A Trade of Blood: An Ana and Din Mystery (Shadow of the Leviathan) by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey, April 28, 2026)
I am including this third book in the series to try to entice you to read the first two books, if you haven’t already. THEY ARE SO GOOD. I’ve read the first book, The Tainted Cup, a few times (also, it just won a Hugo) and recently read the second, A Drop of Corruption, and it was equally as fantastic. These are smart, funny, Holmesian mysteries of staggering imagination, set in a plant-and-beast-reliant fantasy world.
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If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop, translated by Anton Hur (S&S/Saga Press, April 28, 2026)
If short stories are more your speed (pun intended), this speculative fiction collection from South Korean bestselling author Kim Choyeop looks great. In it, emotions are sold as material items, an artist mysteriously paints images of a planet from long ago, a young woman journeys through a wormhole to find answers to her aunt’s disappearance, and more.
When I Was Death by Alexis Henderson (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, March 10, 2026)
The author of The Year of Witching, House of Hunger, and An Academy of Liars is releasing her first young adult novel! Alexis Henderson’s upcoming book follows a young girl as she tries to find out the truth about her sister’s mysterious death, even if she has to get the information from Death himself…who has made a deal with her sister’s friends.
The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean (Tor Books, May 5, 2026)
I loved The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean so freaking much that I can hardly contain my excitement about a new novel. (You should pick it up while you wait for this book.) This one also sounds like a fun horror-fantasy mash-up, a Gothic tale set in a Hong Kong of the past. It’s two timelines, about a ghost-talker trying to fight an unforgiving spirit and a young woman hiding out in her mother’s ancestral home, which is full of ghosts.
And Side by Side They Wander by Molly Tanzer (Tordotcom, May 19, 2026)
This book had me at “intergalactic art heist by a ragtag group of underqualified misfits.” It sounds wild! Humanity has somehow decided it was a good idea to lend Earth’s greatest works of art to aliens? And now three hundred years later, they are due to be returned, but the aliens won’t give them back??? LOL. Cue the motley crew of thieves, who will be headed off into the stars to get the art back.
Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Instagram.
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