Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas to Devour This Week

Lately, audiobooks seem to have completely replaced my Spotify playlists when I’m out and about (and just in general, once a story has hooked me, if I’m being honest). Because I’ve been in a kind of sampling mood and want to spread my reading over multiple authors, I’ve been gravitating towards novella audiobooks. Like short stories, novellas can be excellent for getting to know an author before diving into a full-length novel—but they are, of course, even more than that. The ones below, for instance, balance fairy tale nostalgia with brutality; coziness with mythology; and magic with alternate histories. They will drop you into fully realized worlds, if only for 100 pages or so, and leave you still thinking about them once they’ve ended. Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo This is the third in a stunning novella series that has won all manner of awards, but you don’t have to start with the first one. Into the Riverlands follows the wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills, and their talking bird companion, Almost Brilliant, as they travel and collect stories. This time, they’ve come across two vastly different women traveling together, and an older couple who have more going on than ...