The Galactic Guru Reading Recommendations
spring Book Releases 2026
Science fiction takes bold leaps this season. New dystopian tales and space-set adventures lead the lineup. You will also find smart graphic novels and speculative fiction with edge. These books question the future and human nature. Spring is the perfect time to explore new galaxies.
May Books:
Babylon, South Dakota
by Tom Lin
From the author of the Carnegie Medal in Fiction winner The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu comes a tantalizing, American West saga about a Chinese American family trying to survive on their Dakota farm as a powerful, mysterious, and morally dubious military secret shapes their lives.
"Lin's gossamer prose is patient and full of wonders."--Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams and An Oral History of Atlantis
When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara.
But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu's farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America's nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire.
In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of "strangers in a strange land" to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another.
TIME Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of the Year Town & Country's Best Books of Spring 2026 New York Times Book Review's 32 Novels We're Excited About This Spring The Spokesman Review's 12 upcoming books we're excited to read
The Franchise
by Thomas Elrod
A Most Anticipated Title from Men'sHealth, FanFiAddict, The Nerd Daily, and Transfer Orbit!
Game of Thrones meets The Truman Show in this epic tale of a Hollywood-owned fantasy world where nothing is quite as it seems to the people who live and die at the studio's whim.
A land filled with magic and dragons and wizards and warriors.
Thousands of people live and work within its borders, fearful of their enemies and loyal to their king.
The classic fantasy world of The Malicarn has been brought to life on the big screen in a series of phenomenally successful blockbuster movies, almost entirely populated by characters in total belief that their sham fantasy lives are real.
A fan-favorite actor finds himself doubting the studio's work, but this franchise has an almost unstoppable momentum, and bringing freedom to a population that already believes itself to be free won't be as easy as he thinks.
A Parade of Horribles
by Matt Dinniman
It's off to the races in the explosive eighth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series--featuring bonus material exclusive to this print edition.
As chaos and mass panic spread outside the dungeon in the wake of Faction Wars, Carl and Donut find themselves on the tenth floor, where they're forced to compete in a surprisingly normal set of tasks. Well, normal for the dungeon.
Races. Get from point A to point B, and don't come in last. After each race, they pick an upgrade for their vehicle and the track gets more challenging. It all seems a little too normal, a little too simple.
Ignore those strange glitches that are occurring with increasing frequency. Don't listen to those whispers about what's happening on the mysterious eleventh floor, something the system AI calls A Parade of Horribles. Nobody, not even the showrunners, knows what that means. Just that the AI has ominously dubbed it "a coming-out party for the ages."
Everything is fine, Crawler. I repeat, everything is fine.
Carl hates that it's business as usual. The rules of this floor have taken away his agency. That just will not do.
So Carl is planning a party of his own. It's a plan so dangerous, so insane, he can't even consult his friends lest the AI put a stop to it. Because if it goes wrong, it's not just the end of Carl and Donut. No. The stakes are higher than they've ever been.
Includes part eight of the exclusive bonus story "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret."
Platform Decay
by Martha Wells
A most-anticipated title from USA Today, Goodreads, BookPage, BookRiot, Seattle Times, and The Nerd Daily!
Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment of Martha Wells' bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.
Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.
After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn't know.
Including human children. Ugh.
This may well call for... eye contact!
(Emotion check: Oh, for f--)
The Murderbot Diaries
All Systems Red
Artificial Condition
Rogue Protocol
Exit Strategy
Network Effect
Fugitive Telemetry
System Collapse
Platform Decay
Seek the Traitor's Son
by Veronica Roth
DELUXE EDITION--a beautiful hardcover edition featuring a map, designed endpapers and black sprayed edges.
An epic, romantic dystopian fantasy begins in Seek the Traitor's Son, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth
Elegy Ahn did not ask for destiny to find her.
She is happy with her life as a soldier, defending her small country from the Talusar, a powerful nation who worships a deadly Fever. A fever that blesses half of its victims with mysterious gifts.
But then she's summoned to hear a prophecy-her, and the most ruthless of Talusar generals, Rava Vidar. Brought face to face, they learn that one of them will lead their people to victory over the other...but they don't know which. And at the center of both of their fates: a man. A man that, Elegy is told, she will fall in love with.
In just one day, Elegy's old life-her job, her purpose, and her future-is over. She and Rava are destined to collide, with the fate of their nations hanging in the balance. And when they do, only one will be left standing.
Elegy intends to make sure it's her.
Dungeon Crawler Carl, Vol. 1 (Graphic Novel)
by Matt Dinniman - Aethon Aethon - Matt Dinniman - Laurel Pursuit Studios Laurel Pursuit Studios - Tevagah Tevagah - Actus Actus
The LitRPG fantasy smash hit phenomenon and New York Times bestseller, DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL, is now a graphic novel for the very first time!
The Apocalypse WILL be televised!
You know what's worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Getting stuck on a sadistic alien game show with her cat. Join Carl and Princess Donut as they try to survive the end of the world -- or just get to the next level of a trap-filled fantasy dungeon.
With vibrant art done by Laurel Pursuit to bring action-packed battles to life, join as Carl fights his way through the dungeon in heart-speckled underwear.
And of course, the grizzly scenes are only balanced with the incredibly fluffy, wide-eyed stare of its main character, Princess Donut.
A ton of heart and effort was poured in creating a series with a script and style that would both appeal to WEBTOON readers and also lovers of DCC, all while consulting author Matt Dinniman the entire way about character designs, story, - EVERYTHING!
We couldn't resist taking the apocalyptic awesomeness of the DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL WEBTOON and adapting it into the FIRST EVER graphic novel series!
Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.
This volume collects episodes 1-13 of the WEBTOON edition.
Praise for DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL, Vol. 1 (WEBTOON Graphic Novel):
"...incredibly entertaining" -- Screenrant
"...one of the most unique new stories on Webtoon" -- Screenrant
Dungeon Crawler Carl ranked #1 best new series on WEBTOON by Screenrant
Praise for DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL (eBook/Print):
"Fresh. Creative. Hilarious. I'm obsessed...Princess Donut is my queen." - Actor, producer and New York Times bestselling author Felicia Day
"I don't always say nice things about a book just because the writer has compromising pictures of me engaging in some very complicated international crimes, but when I do, I say them about Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl! Also, this series has no goddamn business burying so much depth and emotion and complexity under its bawdy, gory surface, but it does so anyway. What a wild-ass and unexpected delight." - New York Times bestselling author Scott Lynch
"[A] comically cosmic adventure series...often laugh-out-loud funny...Grind your way to dungeon mastery alongside Carl and Princess Donut." - The Wall Street Journal
"This is the book for anyone who ever wondered what it would be like to be a role player in a game with the best game master ever. Also for anyone who wants to read a good book. Or maybe anyone who has been outside at night--in their underwear--looking for their cat and wondering 'What's the worst thing that could happen?' Once you start, you won't put it down." - Patricia Briggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson series
"One of the most bananapants, funny, inventive books I have read in a while." - Book Riot
"If there's a better LitRPG than Dungeon Crawler Carl, I haven't read it." - Travis Deverell a.k.a. Shirtaloon, author of He Who Fights With Monsters
"Dungeon Crawler Carl is just one big smile all the way through. Put on your best pair of boxer shorts and sit back for a truly fun and enjoyable read."--New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson
"Dungeon Crawler Carl is the best start to a series I've read this year. I wish I'd tried it sooner." - Will Wight, author of the Cradle series
"To describe the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and the first book in particular, one must blend the darkest, grittiest science fiction with the humour of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It mixes fun, whimsical absurdity, and serious, dark themes with dire consequences...it is so spectacularly good that I cannot recommend it high enough." - Grimdark Magazine
"Dinniman's Douglas-Adams-but-playing-D&D romp was so much fun that I immediately went out and got the next two books...genuinely joyful." - LitHub.com
April Books:
Underlake
by Erin L McCoy
When a mother claims her missing daughter is alive beneath a lake in a flooded valley, a marine biologist descends into a hidden underwater settlement where those who refused to leave have built a sealed-off world--and where the consequences of that choice are beginning to surface.
"In the vein of Margaret Atwood and Emily St. John Mandel, McCoy's novel is a thoughtful, ethereal story that . . . feels as though it came from the eerie depths it describes." --Booklist (starred review)
"Mesmerizing . . . Through lightless tunnels and shimmering pools . . . this book illuminates how faith, language, and truth can warp or sharpen under extraordinary pressure." --Susanna Kwan, author of Awake in the Floating City
"Stunning . . . Achingly true to the human need for hope and forgiveness, Underlake reveals the greatest depths are within the human heart." --Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker
Twelve years ago, Otta escaped her small town, determined to become a marine biologist. Now she's returned, carrying the guilt of a friend's disappearance during a deep-sea dive and unsure she'll ever be able to dive again. Then a stranger, May, appears at her door, insisting that her daughter who ran away is under the nearby lake--alive.
It turns out the small-town legend is true: Three decades ago, the entire valley was flooded to build a dam, but the people who lived there refused to leave. These "refugees of a world obsessed with change" now inhabit an underwater realm. To find the missing girl, Otta and May come face-to-face with communities that have lived in isolation for decades, breeding extremes of delusion and nostalgia. As they push their bodies to the mortal limit, the women must confront the fear, control, and suspicion born of the misguided quest to construct a purer world.
Hypnotic and arresting, Underlake brings a poet's attention to language, evoking the ethereal work of Marilynne Robinson, Lauren Groff, and Emily St. John Mandel and the imaginative brio of Margaret Atwood. In taking her place as a major new voice in American fiction, McCoy shrewdly explores the American obsession with land, inheritance, and race, asking what we cling to when the world changes--and who gets erased in the name of preserving it.
We Burned So Bright
by Tj Klune
A heart-wrenching standalone novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, We Burned So Bright follows an elder gay couple on an end-of-the-world road-trip.
The road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky....
Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they've experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world.
Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they've ever known will be gone.
Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They're in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it's all over.
On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how--impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends.
And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough.
Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes?
Japanese Gothic: A Gothic Dual-Timeline Novel of Ghosts, Hauntings and Redemption (Original)
by Kylie Lee Baker
New York Times Most Anticipated Book for 2026
USA TODAY Most Anticipated Books of 2026
Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2026
Book Riot "Our Most Anticipated Books of 2026"
In this lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds.
October, 2026: Lee Turner doesn't remember how or why he killed his college roommate. The details are blurred and bloody. All he knows is he has to flee New York and go to the one place that might offer refuge--his father's new home in Japan, a house hidden by sword ferns and wild ginger. But something is terribly wrong with the house: no animals will come near it, the bedroom window isn't always a window, and a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls.
October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers in a house behind the sword ferns. A monster came home from war wearing her father's face, but Sen would do anything to please him, even turn her sword on her own mother. She knows the soldiers will soon slaughter her whole family when she sees a terrible omen: a young foreign man who appears outside her window.
One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie.
Something is hiding beneath the house of sword ferns, and Lee and Sen will soon wish they never unburied it.
For readers who love:
- Grady Hendrix and Stephen King
- Japanese mythology
- Friendship and family themes
- Terrifying, gory stories
- Horror with heart
- A new take on the classic haunted house trope
The Subtle Art of Folding Space
by John Chu
The Subtle Art of Folding Space, is the exhilarating debut science fiction novel from Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author John Chu channels unhinged physics, generational trauma, and the comfort of really good dim sum. This isn't your usual jaunt through quantum physics.
Most Ancipated Books of 2026--Esquire
Best New Science Fiction of 2026-- New Scientist
Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Look Forward To In 2026--Literary Hub
Most Anticipated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of 2026--Book Riot
Ellie's universe--and this one--is falling apart. Her ailing mother is in a coma; her sister, Chris, accuses her of being insufficiently Chinese between assassination attempts; and a shadowy cabal of engineers is trying to hijack the skunkworks, the machinery that keeps the physics of each universe working the way it's supposed to.
Daniel, Ellie's cousin, has found an illicit device in the skunkworks--one that keeps Ellie's comatose mother alive while also creating destabilizing bugs in the physics of this universe. It's not a good day.
If she can confront her mother's legacy and overcome her family's generational trauma, she just might find a way to preserve the skunkworks and reconcile with her sister...but digging into her family's past is thornier than it seems, and the secrets she uncovers will force Ellie to choose between her family and the universe itself.
My Dear You: Stories
by Rachel Khong
From the author of New York Times bestseller Real Americans, a brilliant short story collection about love, life, and the anguish of becoming oneself in a time when it's so easy to be someone else
"I couldn't stop reading these sly, poignant, very funny stories about intimacy and friendship, work and death, longing and connection. Rachel Khong's writing is so agile and fluid and charming that it can sneak up on you and knock you out." --Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown
The characters in My Dear You find themselves facing extraordinary choices in scenarios that range from the everyday to the absurd: The U.S. government injects all citizens with a drug that makes them see everyone else as members of their own race and gender. God does away with humans in favor of something much better. A woman adopts a cat who conjures the ghosts of her ex-loves. A factory worker decides to befriend a sex doll she is tasked with selling.
These stories go deep beneath the surface, touching on the particular awkwardness of dating in your thirties and asking: What does it mean to be an Asian woman in America? Or an American? Or a human? Along the way, the characters stop to consider interventions from the supernatural, the earthly, the robotic, and the immortal.
Playful, profane, and yet enveloped with profound compassion for life, however you define it, My Dear You takes on dating, marriage, and the pressures of having or not having children; intimacy, memory, race, and capitalism; living, dying, and being dead. At their very core, they are tales of love in its many forms: being in love when you're not supposed to be, or not being in love but wishing you were; failing at dating apps or finding yourself in weird but wonderful lifelong friendships; struggling in heaven to remember your loved ones.
Ranging from the sinister to the tender, these witty and expertly paced stories will have you laughing out loud one minute and reaching for your best friend the next.
March books:
Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories
by Amal El-Mohtar
Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from Amal El-Mohtar.
With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.
Full of Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Hugo Award-winning and nominated stories, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories includes "Seasons of Glass and Iron," "The Green Book," "Madeleine," "The Lonely Sea in the Sky," "And Their Lips Rang with the Sun," "The Truth About Owls," "A Hollow Play," "Anabasis," "To Follow the Waves," "John Hollowback and the Witch," "Florilegia, or, Some Lies About Flowers," "Pockets," and more.
River of Bones and Other Stories
by Rebecca Roanhorse
A stunning collection of award-winning fantasy and science fiction short stories from the New York Times bestselling author of the Between Earth and Sky trilogy--including a new novella set in the world of Trail of Lightning.
Rebecca Roanhorse's first publication, "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience(TM)", was awarded both the Nebula and Hugo award for best short story, and on its strength, Roanhorse was awarded the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Although Roanhorse began to publish novels including Trail of Lightning and Black Sun, she has continued to write piercing stories that examine the American experience through marginalized perspectives.
"River of Bones" returns to the Sixth World series with a novella, this time from Kai's perspective, as he and Maggie travel back to where he grew up to save his ex from the people who almost beat him to death--his ex's family.
Based on the Tewa fable of Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden, "A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy"--winner of the 2019 Ignyte award--explores the tradition of celestial-based storytelling, set in a future where virtual reality is nearly indistinguishable from the real world and celebrities can project their images into space as literal stars.
"Falling Bodies" follows a young student at a space station university caught between two disparate worlds--the one he currently inhabits and the one he has desperately tried to escape--as he searches for his place in the universe.
First published in Jordan Peele's Out There Screaming, "Eye and Tooth" is a story of black horror about the hunters who hunt the monsters and the monstrous among us.
Through a range of contemporary to outright fantasy and science fiction, these stories will immediately capture your attention from one of our premiere writers of speculative fiction whose work is always at the vanguard of American fiction.
Nobody's Baby
by Olivia Waite
Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple in the second entry of this cozy sci-fi mystery series, helmed by a formidable no-nonsense auntie of a detective.
Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty's most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.
A wild baby appears! Dorothy Gentleman, ship's detective, is put to the test once again when an infant is mysteriously left on her nephew's doorstep. Fertility is supposed to be on pause during the Fairweather's journey across the stars--but humans have a way of breaking any rule you set them. Who produced this child, and why did they then abandon him? And as her nephew and his partner get more and more attached, how can Dorothy prevent her colleague and rival detective, Leloup, a stickler for law and order, from classifying the baby as a stowaway or a piece of luggage?
Told from Dorothy's delightfully shrewd POV, this novella series is an ode to the cozy mystery taken to the stars with a fresh new sci-fi take--perfect for fans of the plot-twisty narratives of Dorothy Sayers and Ann Leckie.
Related: If you enjoy fantasy and books with magic and supernatural elements, check out our Dragon Slayer book recommendations.