Alix E. Harrow is a part-time history adjunct and full-time reader, with stories published in Shimmer and Strange Horizons. In her spare time she writes, gardens, herds pets, and works on her gloriously dilapidated house. She lives in Berea, Kentucky with her husband and son.
The Knight and the Moth (2025) (Stonewater Kingdom, book 1) Rachel Gillig "The Knight and the Moth delivers pure joy--gargoyles! gods! girls in armor!--alongside a serious examination of faith, fealty, and the powers they serve. It's a fairy tale with bruised knuckles, perfectly balanced between the mythic and the desperately human. Simply stunning."
The Incandescent (2025) Emily Tesh "If magical boarding schools existed, they would look very much like this one: volatile cocktails of hormones, demons, and generational wealth, kept afloat solely by the labor and expertise of several very tired grown-ups. If you, like me, are a very tired grown-up, The Incandescent will hit you right in the heart."
The Raven Scholar (2025) (Eternal Path Trilogy, book 1) Antonia Hodgson "The Raven Scholar is a labyrinth of a book - vast and intricate, full of fiendish twists and clever traps - with a deeply human heart at its center. It's thrilling, romantic, often tragic, and always funny; I'm obsessed."
The River Has Roots (2025) Amal El-Mohtar "The River Has Roots is the perfect fable: both bright and brutal, very old and brand new. It's a story that outlasts itself, lingering like a song; I adored it."
The Last Hour Between Worlds (2024) (Echo Archives, book 1) Melissa Caruso "This book has everything you've been craving: sword fights, time loops, complicated feelings about parenthood, and banter with your sworn enemy. What an absolute delight!"
Metal from Heaven (2024) August Clarke "Metal from Heaven is a work of feral and furious imagination. It's pulpy, bloody, sexy, gleefully seditious and seditiously gleeful. It's a battle cry of a book; read it, and rise up."
An Academy for Liars (2024) Alexis Henderson "Alexis Henderson turns her incredible eye for the upsetting to academia, and delivers a campus novel saturated with violence, desire, and power. It's a book with blood on its lips, and I loved it completely."
Lady Macbeth (2024) Ava Reid "Lady Macbeth doesn't retell Shakespeare so much as slice cleanly through it, revealing what was hidden beneath. I couldn't look away."
The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love (2024) (Love's Academic, book 1) India Holton "Holton continues to be the world's leading engineer of the romp. The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love is positively confectionary: a sweetly earnest love story wrapped in layers of sharp word-play, deadly magical birds, and cheeky narrative awareness."
Someone You Can Build a Nest In (2024) John Wiswell "Someone You Can Build a Nest In is sweetly furious, darkly funny, and gruesomely wholesome. It's a love story for the unloved, a happily-ever-after with a higher-than-average body count. I just adored it."
The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (2024) Sofia Samatar "The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain does what only Samatar can do: cut to the bone, but with a loving hand. It's a hopeful, humane, and bruisingly perceptive fable about the chains we build, and what it takes to break them."
Happy Medium (2024) Sarah Adler "Happy Medium is a sincere and sincerely funny romance populated by a higher-than-average number of goats and ghosts. I stayed up late to finish it, and fell asleep smiling."
The Frame-Up (2024) Gwenda Bond "The Frame-Up is Gwenda Bond at her absolute best: magical, romantic, and fun as hell. Dani and her crew will leave your pockets empty and your heart full."
The Fox Wife (2024) Yangsze Choo "The Fox Wife is a rich tangle of myth, mystery, and history, delivered with Choo's inimitable grace and precision. It's not a book so much as a beguilement; it enchanted me entirely."
The Book of Love (2024) Kelly Link "Link has made a modern myth, grand enough to capture all the agony and absurdity and radiance of love itself. This is one of those books that cuts your life in two: before you read it, and after."
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years (2024) Shubnum Khan "The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a dark and heady dream of a book, which reveals itself in layers as a gothic horror, a tragic romance, and a classic coming-of-age tale. Hauntingly gorgeous."
The Witchwood Knot (2023) (Victorian Faerie Tales, book 1) Olivia Atwater "The Witchwood Knot is my favorite Atwater book yet - which is saying something. A sharp and beautiful gothic romance that understands exactly what I love best about both of those genres: that everyone gets what they deserve."
The Navigating Fox (2023) Christopher Rowe "The Navigating Fox is something only Christopher Rowe could deliver: a twisty New Weird noir mystery that follows a bad priest, a pair of mapmaking raccoons, a bison queen, and a very clever fox. There's nothing like it; you have to read it."
Ink Blood Sister Scribe (2023) Emma Törzs "Ink Blood Sister Scribe is so many things at once: an adventure, a puzzle, a twisty thriller, and a tender romance."
Feed Them Silence (2023) Lee Mandelo "Feed Them Silence is a toxic love story with the world we're killing, delivered in Mandelo's visceral, melancholic prose. You'll want to put it down, but you won't."
The Family Fortuna (2023) Lindsay Eagar "Full of gorgeous monsters and fallen angels, rich language and deep longing, The Family Fortuna is a feast of a book. I swallowed it whole."
The Magician's Daughter (2023) H G Parry "The Magician's Daughter is that most rare and precious thing: a brand-new classic, both wholly original and wonderfully nostalgic. It's an absolute treasure."
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride (2023) Roshani Chokshi "A fairy tale in the oldest and truest sense: a haunting dream full of blood and love, vicious truths and beautiful lies. It swallowed me whole, and I went willingly."
The Last Dreamwalker (2022) Rita Woods "A beautiful and compelling book about the histories we hide and the places we forget. It's about buried truths and dreams too long-deferred, and the hope that comes after."
Siren Queen (2022) Nghi Vo "Searing and seductive, Siren Queen is the kind of book that leaves you wrecked on its shores. When I look up at the stars, I'll think of Luli."
The Hacienda (2022) Isabel Cañas "A haunted history, a gory gothic, a forbidden romance. This book kept me up at night, and it was worth every second of lost sleep."
Spear (2022) Nicola Griffith "If Le Guin wrote a Camelot story, I imagine it would feel like Spear: humane, intelligent, and deeply beautiful. It's a new story with very old bones, a strange place that feels like home. It's exactly what I needed."
Nettle & Bone (2022) T Kingfisher "Nettle & Bone is what happens when all the overlooked bit players of classic fantasy somehow wind up on the main quest. It's funny, frightening, and full of heart; I loved it."
Where I Can't Follow (2022) Ashley Blooms "Haunting and hopeful, a hard story full of shocking warmth and unexpected beauty. The little doors of Blackdamp are the kind of make-believe that feels true, a magic so vivid it feels more like a memory than a work of fiction."
A Marvellous Light (2021) (Last Binding, book 1) Freya Marske "Mystery! Magic! Murder! Long looks full of yearning! This book is a confection, both marvelous and light."
The Jasmine Throne (2021) (Burning Kingdoms, book 1) Tasha Suri "An intimate, complex, magical study of empire and the people caught in its bloody teeth. I loved it."
For the Wolf (2021) (Wilderwood, book 1) Hannah Whitten "Atmospheric, folkloric, and half-familiar. If you ever wished Beauty and the Beast had more eldritch forest monsters and political machinations, this is the romance for you."
A Master of Djinn (2021) (Dead Djinn Universe, book 1) P Djèlí Clark "A Master of Djinn is everything you might expect from Clark: cinematic action, a radical reimagining of real history, and magic on every page. I loved it."
She Who Became the Sun (2021) (Radiant Emperor, book 1) Shelley Parker-Chan "She Who Became the Sun is epic, tragic, and gorgeous. It will wreck you, and you will be grateful."
The Midnight Bargain (2020) C L Polk "Smart, sexy, and sincere, The Midnight Bargain is an alter-Regency romance with fantastical magic and very real teeth."
Flyaway (2020) Kathleen Jennings "hirley Jackson Down Under: a brooding, bruising fairy tale about blood and history and sharp-toothed things waiting in the woods. I loved it."
Mexican Gothic (2020) Silvia Moreno-Garcia "The subversive, seductive, satisfying haunted house story I didn’t know I needed . . . I genuinely couldn’t put it down."
The Unspoken Name (2020) (Serpent Gates, book 1) A K Larkwood "Takes all the tropes of fantasy – orcs and epic quests, dead gods and undead souls, daring rescues and last-second escapes – and spins them into something wild and new. A dizzy, delicious debut."
Unnatural Magic (2019) (Unnatural Magic, book 1) C M Waggoner "I didn't think you could fit so many things I loved into one book--tough-talking lady-trolls and cowardly captains, true love and found families, Holmesian hijinks and gender politics--but C.M. Waggoner made it look easy. Unnatural Magic is a raucous, indulgent delight."
