20 sci-fi and fantasy books we can't wait to dive into this summer

That Miscellaneous The summer blockbuster season is upon us. Some of the biggest sci-fi and fantasy books of the year are hitting shelves over the next four months, including new titles from Ken Liu, Holly Black and Ruthanna Emrys. Also, widely acclaimed genre-bending authors like Akil Kumarasamy, Megan Giddings and Georgi Gospodinov are back with fresh head-scratches alongside a new generation of debut authors.

Whether you’re looking for a quick fix you can devour in a single weekend or an epic tome you can brood over for months, here are the 20 best sci-fi and fantasy books to read in May, June, July and August 2022 coming to you.

The cover of Jennifer Saint's Elektra, featuring the profiles of three people with long hair on an orange background.

Electra by Jennifer Saint (May 3)

Madeline Miller fans Circle and Margaret Atwoods The Penelopiad is attracted to this reinterpretation of The Iliad zooming in on Helen of Troy’s niece Elektra. It’s another compelling historical fantasy in the vein of Saint’s debut novel, Ariadnebut this time she expands the focus to include two more women: Elektra’s mother, Klytemnestra, and her father’s mistress, Agamemnon Kassandra.

The cover of The Immortal King Rao with a group of uneven concentric circles and an upward silhouette.

Not many former Wall Street Journal technology reporters have written a sci-fi novel, but Vauhini Vara has done just that with this stunning, nuanced book about memory, capitalism, and climate change. It’s the story of a South Indian child who grows up to become the most powerful man on earth – first as CEO of a tech company, then as leader of an international corporation – and gives his daughter access to his memories in a desperate bid to save the planet.

The cover of Book of Night by Holly Black, featuring a crescent moon on a black and blue background.

The co-author of The Spiderwick Chronicles

is back with her first adult novel, a dark fantasy novel set in a world that could be our own were it not for the “shadow magic” and “glamists” who study her. When a 28-year-old thief named Charlie Hall finds a dead man whose shadow has been torn to shreds, she embarks on an adventure to search for a missing magical text – the eponymous Book of the Night.

The cover of Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel. Illustrative color blocking in the shape of a face with round lenses.

time refuge by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel (May 10)

This Ballardian novel, Gospodinov’s third translation from Bulgarian into English, is about a Swiss health clinic for Alzheimer’s patients, where each floor is designed to recreate a different decade of the 20th century. Things start to get wild when whole countries decide to “live” in a certain decade of the past. (France, of course, chooses the 80s.)

The cover for Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak, featuring a person shoveling in the street in front of a parked car.

This contemporary spin-on The rotation of the screw Mallory Quinn is a newly sober nanny who takes care of a 5 year old boy. The kid seems cute at first (isn’t it always?) until he draws a picture of a man dragging a woman’s body through the woods. As his drawings grow more lifelike, Mallory wonders if he’s channeling something supernatural – something that could help solve a cold case.

Cover for The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah showing an amulet against a white background.

Loulie al-Nazari, a magic smuggler criminal with the enviable alias “Midnight Merchant”, joins forces with her genie guardian, a prince and a thief in this fast-paced fantasy adventure inspired by multiple stories Thousand and one Night. Fans of SA Chakraborty’s Daevabad trilogy will enjoy al-Nazari’s race to find an ancient artifact that has the power to destroy every jinn in the world.

Cover photo for Garden of Earthly Bodies by Sally Oliver, featuring a woman with her back bare and hair growing down her spine. Also possibly tentacles!

In this debut novel by Sally Oliver, traumatized women grow thick, dark hair down their spines. Marianne, grieving the death of her sister, joins other affected women at an experimental treatment center in the Welsh wilderness, where her past and present begin to intersect – and where her sanity begins to break down.

Cover art for Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro, featuring a black bird flying against a background of clouds and the night sky.

A dark historical fantasy set in Victorian London and Meiji-era Tokyo. Ordinary Monsters is about a British detective tasked with protecting two children with supernatural powers from a man of smoke. At almost 700 pages, it’s a doorstop with a labyrinthine story and a wide cast of characters.

Cover of The City Inside by Samit Basu with a colorful image of Delhi.

In the near future, the metaverse will be hosted by reality controllers like Joey, who oversees the live streams of South Asian celebrities. When she hires an assistant named Rudra, the estranged scion of a wealthy Delhi family, they discover a corporate conspiracy that is destroying everything they think they know.

The cover of Speaking Bones by Ken Liu with a cornucopia in front of a garina fin skull.

Ken Liu returns with the fourth and final book in his Dandelion Dynasty series, best known for establishing the “silkpunk” genre in 2015 The Grace of Kings. This time, Pékyu Takval and Princess Théra must fight two wars to settle the fate of the seven islands of Dara.

Cover of Drunk on All Your Strange New Worlds by Eddie Robson, featuring dark text against a pastel background partially obscured by a ripple effect.

knife out meets The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in this locked room mystery set in the near future where an alien diplomat’s human translator becomes embroiled in a murder investigation. Eddie Robson has written for British sitcoms and Doctor Who Spinoffs, so expect some dry humor.

The cover of What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, a surreal image of a rabbit interspersed with a rabbit skeleton made of mushrooms.

Kingfisher’s retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is a great way to familiarize yourself with the story ahead of Mike Flanagan’s upcoming Netflix adaptation of the original text. This version includes mushrooms, “possessed wild animals” and a variety of spirits that may not be spirits.

Cover photo for A Half-Built Garden, showing the earth at a distance surrounded by dandelion seed heads.

Emrys’ first novel since the Innsmouth Legacy series is a climate change driven first contact story. In the late 21st century, when aliens land in the Chesapeake Bay and offer humanity an escape from what they believe is a doomed Earth, our species must decide whether to leave home or persevere.

Cover photo of The Sleepless by Victor Manibo with three pairs of eyes in neon lights gradually opening.

The insomniac by Victor Manibo (2 August)

What if you never had to sleep again? Sounds great, but doesn’t go over so well in Manibo’s debut novel. A “sleepless” journalist named Jamie Vega gets caught up in a murder investigation and the worst thing is that he can’t remember anything from the night of the crime. After setting off on his own, he discovers the truth behind the insomnia, and well, it can’t be good.

Cover art of The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean featuring a diorama image of a parent and child and a house all made from pages of a book while standing on a book.

The title is not a metaphor; This novel is about people who eat books. Calling themselves The Family, they live on the Yorkshire Moors and punish children by making them eat dictionaries. It turns out they actually thrive on the stories they contain inside the books, which becomes a problem when one of them gets a taste for the best story vessel of them all – the human brain.

Cover photo of 40 by Alan Heathcock, a bright image with a red angel-like figure within the digits 4 and 0.

40 by Alan Heathcock (2 Aug)

A civil war between the US government and a faction of revolutionary fundamentalists is the setting for Heathcock’s bold and strange novel about faith, family and the future. When a young soldier named Mazzy Goodwin wakes up in a crater and sprouts wings on her back, she’s not sure if it’s a miracle or a biological experiment, but it gives her the opportunity to become a war leader and her missing ones find sister.

Cover image for Face by Joma West, an abstract color combination that creates the shape of a face in the center.

face by Joma West (2 Aug)

Skin color is a choice in Joma West’s debut novel, courtesy of some Gattaca-Level genetic engineering that allows anyone (who can afford it) to design their own “perfect” face. At the same time, any skin contact is considered obscene, and a wealthy family’s search for happiness turns into a nightmare worthy of one black mirror Consequence.

Cover photo of The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings, a bright blue image depicting a tree and the sun.

The brilliant author of Lakewood imagines a dystopia where witches are real – a fact that the authoritarian state uses to criminalize singleness for women after the age of 30 and bring black women to justice at the slightest suspicion. When Josephine Thomas sets out to fulfill her mother’s last wish, she discovers a community that lives by completely different rules.

Cover photo of The First Bindin by RR Virdi featuring a person climbing a mountain with a fantasy background.

The first binding is a South Asian-inspired epic fantasy that has been compared to Patrick Rothfuss. The name of the wind, and for good reason: it’s an 800-page series starter narrated in first-person by a legendary, sharp-tongued warrior who wields magic. The stunning cover artwork doesn’t hurt either!

Cover image of Meet Us by the Roaring Sea by Akil Kumarasamy, a raster image with background and different geographic images within each raster.

This genre-bending novel from the author of the 2018 short story collection demigods is about a near-future AI trainer, Ada, who spends her free time translating a Tamil manuscript written by a group of medical students in the 1990s. The story alternates between Ada’s encounters with future technology and the medical students’ attempts to suffer as much as possible in order to understand their patients.