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Best New Fantasy Books for Your Book Club

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Though my tastes have changed over the years, one thing that has always been true (at least, since I started reading) is that I love fantasy. I used to be more of a dragons and chosen hero type girlie — I mean, who wasn’t once? — but these days, I favor the softly weird, the speculative, and lore-based fantasy.

Even if your book club doesn’t normally discuss fantasy books, I think you should start. The ones I rounded up here have various levels of the fantastical. Some are more fabulist, with subtle escapes from the mundane, while others are full-on time travel romances. Whatever “level” of fantasy you decide on, these books will help to take you and your book club out of the usual and to a place where life can be reconsidered in novel ways.

Nibbles and Sips: Cheese-Stuffed Garlic Bread Pepperoni Pizza Bites

garlic bread pepperoni pizza bites

This is such an easy but delicious-sounding recipe. For it, you’ll need a can of biscuits, a package of pepperoni, cheese of your choosing (swiss, cheddar, mozzarella, etc.), butter, egg, fresh basil, and fresh garlic.

Chop up your cheese and pepperoni (or just the cheese, if you want to keep it vegetarian), spread the biscuits out a bit and stuff your filling in each one, brush the rolls with an egg wash, and bake at 350 degrees.

For the full instructions, visit @Chef_Tyler’s YouTube page.

cover of The Emperor and the Endless Palace; wildly colorful illustration of mountains, oceans, clouds, trees, a dragon, and a large jungle cat

The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang

Across multiple timelines and lives, two men are reborn, each life proving to them the eternity of love. A young emperor gets seduced by a courtier in 4 BCE, an innkeeper helps a mysterious visitor in 1740, and a college student meets an intriguing stranger in modern-day L.A.

Honestly, if they’re not willing to be reborn and traverse timelines, do they even love you?

cover of The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan

First off, this is giving Rebecca meets the movie Three Thousand Years of Longing (starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, if you’re unfamiliar). It centers around Sana, who, along with her father, is one of the latest inhabitants of the once-grand Akbar Manzil, an estate off the coast of South Africa. Usually, the estate is a place where people go to forget themselves, even going so far as to ignore the estate’s uncanny qualities — like bones in the garden and mysterious moving figures — but Sana becomes obsessed with the contents of a forgotten room. The room’s pictures, diary, and other artifacts tell Sana of Akbar Manzil’s original owner’s second wife, who died a hundred years ago. As she dives deeper into the woman’s life, a djinn watches her from the shadows.

cover of The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young

The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young

From the author of Spells for Forgetting comes another subtly fantastical story. This time, June Farrow waits for her family’s curse to find her in a small mountain town. The women of her family are known for their flower farm, just as they are known for the curse that haunts them — a curse thought to be the cause of June’s mother’s disappearance years ago. Now that June has started hearing and seeing things that others can’t, she knows the curse is at her door. She’s also ready to do anything to be free of it.

cover of Jonathan Abernathy, You Are Kind by Molly McGhee

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee

Jonathan Abernathy is feeling that debt-fueled existential crisis many of us have felt, but he gets a potential out in the form of a government loan forgiveness program. And it’s for a job that he can do in his sleep…or other people’s. The generally oblivious Jonathan becomes a dream auditor and enters people’s dreams to remove anxieties and any other elements that might disrupt their work. For a time, he convinces himself that he’s doing them a service, but the existential dread creeps back in as he questions the morality of it all. With how accurate some dystopian stories have been in the past, and reading the plot for this, I just want to say: “Please don’t give them any more ideas.”

island witch book cover

Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa

In this Sri Lankan-inspired gothic story, Amara is the daughter of a traditional demon-priest, who was respected by the other townspeople before a new religion came in with the British colonizers. Now, men are being attacked in the jungle, and Amara’s father stands accused. She’ll have to solve the mystery of the strange happenings to clear her father’s name…but there’s also the issue of the connection she has to what’s going on.


Erica Ezeifedi

Associate Editor

Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside of work, much of her free time is spent looking for her next great read and planning her next snack. Find her on Twitter at @Erica_Eze_.

cover of The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson

The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson

This has a lot going on in the best of ways. It’s a space opera with queer Regency romance, tyrants, time travel, ancient prophecies, and so much more.

Okay, so first off, there’s Asha, who serves as a virtually voiceless assembly line worker in the year 6066. It’s basically what all humans do, since they settled on the desert planet Gahraan and unknowingly become indentured to its already existing emperor, Thracin. Asha’s got a little of the ole rebel in her, though, as she studies stolen aeronautics manuals at night. But when a stranger in a cloak shows up, everything changes.

Then there’s Obi, a time traveler currently stationed in the year 1812. he’s got a temporal sickness from skipping across the time line, and unrequited love for a prince. He’s set to give up on time traveling when he learns about the ghost girl in the British Museum, who folks say is from another time. When Obi and Asha become entangled in each other’s lives, a prophecy starts to play out — one that involves incomprehensible reincarnation and ancient heroes.

Like I said, a lot.

cover of Your Utopia: Stories Bora Chung; yellow with a white robot with red eyes

Your Utopia by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur

Chung’s latest is a collection of dystopian realities, immortality, and discovery. With humor and well-placed moments of warmth, she explores how an elevator’s AI develops feelings for an apartment complex’s resident, how nature finds a way, even after the world gets ravaged by capitalism, and what happens when a linguist tries to escape a horrific virus on Earth.

cover of The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw, Richard Kadrey

The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw, Richard Kadrey

In this dark fantasy/cosmic horror novel, 30-something Julie is going through it. She’s got a substance abuse problem, and the freelance work she does doing things like demon exorcisms is not cutting it. On top of that, her friend — and hopeful future boo thang — just came to her to get away from her abusive husband. In other words, Julie needs some help badly. But the help she seeks kinda sorta endangers everyone around her and opens her up to the whims of an eldritch horror.

indian burial ground book cover

Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina

Noemi Broussard is all set for a change when her boyfriend dies by suicide, and whatever progress she made gets upended. But there’s something about the details of Roddy’s death that just doesn’t make sense. Then, her Uncle Louie returns to the reservation, and with him come some key clues to figuring out what really happened to Roddy. But there’s something else he brings, too — a horror that Noemi may regret knowing.

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