James Nicoll Reviews

Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree (November 2025)

Return to the cozy fantasy world of the #1 New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes series with a new adventure featuring fan-favorite, foul-mouthed bookseller FernFern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!If only things were so simple…It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint. 

A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover. 

As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when nothing seems inevitable. 

Woven From Clay by Jennifer Birch (August 2025)

In this fresh and imaginative contemporary fantasy, a golem must master the magic that binds her together and finds an unexpected ally in the mysterious boy sent to ensure her demise. 

Terra Slater might not know anything about her birth family or where she comes from, but that’s never stopped her, and she fully intends her senior year to be her best yet. Until the dark and mysterious Thorne Wilder — a magical bounty hunter — moves to town, bringing revelations that wreck all of her plans. 

When Terra learns she is a golem, not born but crafted from mud and magic by a warlock, her world is upended. Worse, Cyrus Quill, the warlock who made her, is a fugitive, on the run from the witches who want to hold him accountable for his past crimes. But Quill’s sentence is death, which would unravel the threads of magic that hold Terra — and all of the other golems that he crafted — together. 

Desperate to save herself and her friends, Terra strikes a deal with Thorne and his coven to preserve the warlock’s life and his magic. If she can prove her worth to the coven by mastering the magic within her, the golems will survive. If she can’t, they’ll perish along with Cyrus. As Thorne helps her to see and manipulate the tapestry of magic that surrounds them, their unexpected alliance evolves into something more and Terra comes to understand the depths of her magic, her humanity, and her love for the people most important to her. 

Thief of Night by Holly Black (September 2025)

The highly-anticipated sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black’s stunning adult debut, Book of Night. 

There’d always been something wrong with Charlie Hall. Crooked from the day she was born. Never met a bad decision she wasn’t willing to double down on. She may be good enough to steal a shadow from a tower, but will she be good enough to steal back a heart? 

Pluto by Ben Bova & Les Johnson (November 2025)

Hugo Award winner Ben Bova and Les Johnson complete Bova’s Outer Planets series, a Grand Tour (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) of the human settled solar system, with a final encounter on Pluto. 

Major Larry Randall has been called to Pluto to retrieve Dr. Aaron Mikelson. Mikelson, no longer human after a horrific accident, is now melded to an AI. His enhanced senses have detected an alien artifact on Pluto’s surface, and he’s not leaving without it. 

Transferred to the research vessel studying Pluto, Randall and the other scientists are stumped as to the artifact’s purpose and origin. Looking for similar signs of aliens they make their way to Pluto’s moon, Charon, where, buried deep under its icy surface, something stirs — and wakes. 

Against a backdrop of unknown alien technology and potential interplanetary war, Mikelson’s inhuman ego and obsession will risk humanity by calling something unknown to our solar system. 

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum (March 2026)

Best friends Benny and Joy like to say that they’ve been saving each other’s lives since the moment they met. Until the day Joy disappears and Benny is accused of her murder…

Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different ​“against-all-odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend — and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.

The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously-unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny is desperate to find them, even when the police soon zero in on him as their prime suspect.

Millions of devoted listeners think they know the ​“real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by, and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans could guess the secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world — and from each other. 

Three Stories of Forgetting by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida (December 2025)

A haunting exploration of the memories of three men and the reverberations of slavery, colonialism, and empire. The discrete yet overlapping tales in Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s Three Stories of Forgetting explore the lives of three men — perhaps already dead in the eyes of God — who live within the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the spoils of the Portuguese Empire. They are all incarnations of our despair in the face of the questions that history does not answer. In ​“The Vision of the Plants,” Celestino, an old slave trader, returns to the solitude of his home and garden after a life of horrors. In ​“Seaquake,” Boa Morte da Silva, an Angolan who served on the Portuguese side in the Colonial War and has become a valet in Lisbon, writes to his daughter asking for forgiveness. And in ​“Bruma,” an old slave initiates a young Eça de Queiroz into the world of French literature, even as he finds himself trapped by his own demons. Left to their agony, remorse, and guilt, or undeserved peace, the three men may be tormented ghosts who cannot find rest. Perhaps the land they aspire to, their home in this world, is a place hidden in their souls, somewhere between nowhere and goodbye. Their lives are unstable chapters in postcolonial history and allegories of the reading and rereading of that history, and of literature. All three have been expelled from their lives, sent on a solitary journey into the night. 

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (October 2025)

He was sent to kill a pest. Instead, he found a monster. 

Enter the decadent, deadly city of Tiliard, a metropolis carved into the stump of an ancient tree. In its canopy, the pampered elite warp minds with toxic perfume; in its roots, gangs of exterminators hunt a colossal worm with an appetite for beauty. 

In this complex, chaotic city, Guy Moulène has a simple goal: keep his sister out of debt. For her sake, he’ll take on any job, no matter how vile. 

As an exterminator, Guy hunts the uncanny pests that crawl up from the river. These vermin are all strange, and often dangerous. His latest quarry is different: a worm the size of a dragon with a deadly venom and a ravenous taste for artwork. As it digests Tiliard from the sewers to the opera houses, its toxin reshapes the future of the city. No sane person would hunt it, if they had the choice. 

Guy doesn’t have a choice. 

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi (September 2025)

Brimming with dark humor, violence, and mystery, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is a blood-soaked slasher sure to keep readers guessing until the very last page. 

Rose DuBois is not your average final girl. 

Rose is in her late 70s, living out her golden years at the Autumn Springs Retirement Home. 

When one of her friends dies alone in her apartment, Rose isn’t too concerned. Accidents happen, especially at this age!Then another resident drops dead. And another. With bodies stacking up, Rose can’t help but wonder: are these accidents? Old age? Or something far more sinister?Together with her best friend Miller, Rose begins to investigate. The further she digs, the more convinced she becomes: there’s a killer on the loose at Autumn Springs, and if she isn’t careful, Rose may be their next victim.

The Definitions by Matt Greene (December 2025)

Nestled in an idyllic locale beside the sea, The Center is a place of rehabilitation and rebuilding. Students arrive nameless, their memories and sense of identity wiped by a strange illness.

Each day, they attend classes that will help them relearn the right ways to speak and live; they practice the roles they’ll assume once they’ve graduated and returned to society. In their free time, they negotiate a burgeoning social hierarchy and watch old DVDs together; stories of characters whose names they adopt: Maria, Chandler, Chino, Gunther … But as shards of memories―of pets, lovers, errands, and beloved music―begin to threaten the strict curriculum of The Center, some students start to question the definitions given to them, and explore the ways in which they might define themselves.

A stunning, intimately told story about what makes us who we are, The Definitions examines the limits of language, the power of human connection, and the ways the human spirit can flourish even under the most oppressive conditions. 

Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings (September 2025)

A richly imagined dark fantasy that pulses with the beautiful destruction of a town reclaimed by the natural world. 

Sub-tropical Bellworth is founded on floodplains and root-bound secrets. And Charlie, remarkable only for vanished friends and a successful sister, plans to leave for good, just as soon as he deals with his dead aunt’s house. Then Grace arrives, desperate, with roses pressing up through her skin, and drags Charlie into the ghost-choked mysteries of Bellworth, uncovering the impossible consequences of loss and desire — and a choice Charlie made when he was a boy. But peeling back the rumors and lies that cocoon the suburb disturbs more than complacent neighbors and lost souls. And Charlie and Grace are forced to a decision that threatens not only their lives, but all they believed those lives could be. 

When They Burned the Butterfly by Wen-Yi Lee (October 2025)

In this fierce, glamorous adult fantasy debut, Silvia Moreno-Garcia meets Fonda Lee, with the feverish intensity of R.F. Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy. 

Singapore, 1972: Newly independent and grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters in Chinese secret societies are the last conduits of their ancestors’ migrant gods, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place magic has not been assimilated and legislated away. 

Loner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never needed more company than the flame she can summon at her fingertips. But when her mother dies in a house fire with a butterfly seared onto her skin and Adeline hunts down a girl she saw in a back-alley barfight — a girl with a butterfly tattoo — she discovers she’s far from alone. 

Ang Tian is a Red Butterfly: one of a gang of girls who came from nothing, sworn to a fire goddess and empowered to wreak vengeance on the men that abuse and underestimate them. Adeline’s mother led a double life as their elusive patron, Madam Butterfly. Now that she’s dead, Adeline’s bloodline is the sole thing sustaining the goddess. Between her search for her mother’s killer and the gang’s succession crisis, Adeline becomes quickly entangled with the girls’ dangerous world, and even more so with the charismatic Tian. 

But no home lasts long around here. Ambitious and paranoid neighbor gangs hunt at the edges of Butterfly territory, and bodies are turning up in the red light district suffused with a strange new magic. Adeline may have found her place for once, but with the streets changing by the day, it may take everything she is to keep it. 

Red City by Marie Lu (October 2025)

Alchemy is the hidden art of transformation. An exclusive power wielded by crime syndicates that market it to the world’s elites in the form of sand, a drug that enhances those who take it into a more perfect version of themselves: more beautiful, more charismatic, simply more.

Among the gleaming skyscrapers and rolling foothills of Angel City, alchemy is controlled by two rival syndicates. For years, Grand Central and Lumines have been balanced on a razor’s edge between polite negotiation and outright violence. But when two childhood friends step into that delicate equation, the city — and the paths of their lives — will be irrevocably transformed.

The daughter of a poor single mother, Sam would do anything to claw her way into the ranks of Grand Central in search of a better life. Plucked away from his family as a boy to become a Lumines apprentice, Ari is one of the syndicates’ brightest rising stars. Once, they might have loved each other. But as the two alchemists face off across opposite sides of an ever-escalating conflict, ambition becomes power, loyalty becomes lies, and no transformation may be perfect enough for them both to survive the coming war. 

The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez (September 2025)

A gorgeous, atmospheric debut fantasy rooted in history, folklore, and sapphic romance — perfect for fans of Katherine Arden, Ava Reid, Hannah Whitten, and Naomi Novik.

The forest eats the girls who wander out after dark.

As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the wood’s curse has plagued her village, but the Ozmini Church only comes to collect its tithe, not to protect heretics with false stories of monsters in the trees. So when a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes an impossible bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest. If she brings the monster out, he will spare her mother from execution.

When she ventures into the shadowed woods, Malka finds a monster, though not the one she expects: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself, but only if Malka helps her fulfill a promise first and free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.

But a deal easily made is not easily kept. And as their bargain begins to unravel a much more sinister threat, protecting her people may force Malka to endanger the one person she left home to save — and face her growing feelings for the very creature she was taught to fear. 

Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire (September 2025)

Seanan McGuire’s New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-nominated October Daye series continues as Toby Daye is thrust once again into danger… and this time she has more than ever to protect. 

Something is rotten in Faerie. In the aftermath of Titania’s reality-warping enchantment, things are returning to what passes for normal in the Kingdom in the Mists — until it’s discovered that the royal vaults have been looted, and several powerful magical artifacts are missing. None are things that can be safely left unsecured, and some have the potential to do almost as much damage as Titania did, and having them in the wrong hands could prove just as disastrous. 

At least the theft means that Sir October ​“Toby” Daye, Knight errant and Hero of the Realm, finally has an excuse to get out of the house. Sure, she’s eight and a half months pregnant, but that doesn’t mean she can’t take care of herself. But with the sea witch offering to stand godmother to Toby’s child, maybe there are greater dangers ahead for Toby and her family than it appears.…

Old enemies will resurface, new enemies will disguise themselves as friends, and Queen Windermere must try to keep her Hero on the case without getting herself gutted by the increasingly irritated local King of Cats. Sometimes, what’s been lost can be the most dangerous threat of all. 

The Emergency by George Packer (November 2025)

A classic, prophetic novel from one of the most important and original writers of our time. 

George Packer’s bestselling nonfiction work exploring American life has won many prizes, including the National Book Award. With The Emergency, he turns to fiction, bringing us a visionary novel that goes to the nerve center of what it means to live in a time of fracture and upheaval. 

An empire has collapsed from boredom and loss of faith in itself. In the Emergency that follows, youth rebellions of urban Burghers and rural Yeomen embrace radical new ideas of humanity. Doctor Hugo Rustin, chief surgeon at the Imperial College Hospital, is increasingly estranged from his city and his family — from his wife, Annabelle, who finds fulfillment in their changed community; and especially from his teenage daughter, Selva, who has turned against her father’s values. When an incident at the hospital leads to Rustin’s disgrace, he seeks redemption in a quixotic and dangerous journey into the countryside, with Selva as his companion, just as the conflict between Burghers and Yeomen is reaching a crisis. 

The Emergency is a novel of ideas and a taut page-turner. It asks what we owe each other across divided generations and classes — what common human bonds remain when a society falls apart. In creating a vividly imagined world, Packer takes us deep into the heart of our troubled moment. 

Making History by K. J. Parker (September 2025)

In K. J. Parker’s new whip-smart dark fantasy, a group of scholars must do the impossible for a ruthless king. The cost of refusal, of course, is death. 

History isn’t truth, it’s propaganda. 

Seeking war with his neighbor, the tyrannical ruler of Aelia convenes several of his kingdom’s professors for a chat. King Gyges only just invaded Aelia a few years back and, naturally, his public image can’t take the hit of another unjustified assault. 

His totally sane solution? Simple, really. These scholars must construct a fake ancient city from scratch to verify Gyges’s apocryphal claims. 

Now these academics must put their heads together to make history. Because if they don’t, they’ll lose their heads altogether. 

The Last Wish of Bristol Keats by Mary E. Pearson (November 2025)

From NYT bestselling author Mary E. Pearson comes the thrilling conclusion of the Courting of Bristol Keats romantic fantasy duology – limited edition printing with stenciled edges!Everyone needs something to hold onto, even if it’s a lie. 

After Bristol Keats nearly loses her beloved King Tyghan to the monsters her mother had unleashed, their love deepens to a whole new level. Together, Bristol and Tyghan work to understand and reconcile their differences, moving forward with their common goal of saving Elphame. But when a daring rescue attempt turns into a disaster, and a beloved knight dies, Bristol is forced to confront the fact that her mother is more powerful than she could have ever imagined — and more dangerous. Meanwhile, Tyghan’s heart is laid bare when he encounters his former best friend and betrayer again, Bristol’s own father, and must wrestle with a new secret that throws everything he thought he knew about his past into question. 

Bristol is Elphame’s last chance for survival, but where do her loyalties truly lie? If she fully embraces the magic that has always been her birthright, she could become a different kind of monster from her mother. Is she willing to risk losing the people she loves most, if it means keeping them safe?Brimming with dark secrets, lush world-building, and addictive romance, The Last Wish of Bristol Keats is the unforgettable conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Mary E. Pearson’s first adult series. 

The Heist of Hollow London by Eddie Robson (September 2025)

Arlo and Drienne are ​‘mades’ — clones of company executives, deemed important enough to be saved should their health fail. Mades work around the clock to pay off the debt incurred by their creation, though most are Reaped — killed and harvested for organs when their corporate counterparts are in medical need.

But when the impossible happens and the too-big-to-fail company that owns them collapses, Arlo and Drienne find themselves purchased by a scientist who has a job for them.

The reward: Debt paid off, freedom from servitude, and enough cash to last a lifetime.

The job: Infiltrate a highly secure corporate reclamation facility in the heart of dead London, and steal a data drive.

They’re going to need a team. 

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (February 2026)

A tragic love story, a bewitching twist on history, and a blood-drenched hunt for purpose, power, and redemption — The Red Winter by debut author Cameron Sullivan is the story of the first werewolf

In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears most: the terrible Beast of Gevaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.

Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel – who takes payment in living hearts – it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.

Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.

But Gevaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastian’s unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastian’s arcane activities – not to mention his demonic counterpart – have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war.

Daedalus Is Dead by Seamus Sullivan (September 2025)

A delirious and gripping story of fatherhood and masculinity, told through the reimagined Greek myth of Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos, Ariadne, and the Minotaur. 

Daedalus of Crete is many things: The greatest architect in the world. The constructor of the Labyrinth that imprisoned the Minotaur. And the grieving father of Icarus, who plunged into the sea as father and son flew from the grasp of the tyrannical King Minos. 

Now, Daedalus seeks to reunite with Icarus in the Underworld, even as he revisits his own memories of Crete, hoping to understand what went so terribly wrong at the end of his son’s life. Daedalus will confront any terror to see Icarus again — whether it be the vengeful spirit of Minos, the cunning Queen Persephone, or the insatiable ghost of the Minotaur. 

But the truth, stalking Daedalus in the labyrinth of his own heart, might be too monstrous for him to bear. 

Kill the Beast by Serra Swift (October 2025)

The Witcher meets Howl’s Moving Castle in this debut original faerie tale of revenge, redemption, and friendship — for fans of T. Kingfisher, Naomi Novik, and cozy fantasy with a dash of gritty adventure. 

The night Lyssa Cadogan’s brother was murdered by a faerie-made monster known as the Beast, she made him a promise: she would find a way to destroy the immortal creature and avenge his death. For thirteen years, she has been hunting faeries and the abominations they created. But in all that time, the one Beast she is most desperate to find has never resurfaced. 

Until she meets Alderic Casimir de Laurent, a melodramatic dandy with a coin purse bigger than his brain. Somehow, he has found the monster’s lair, and — even more surprising — retrieved one of its claws. A claw Lyssa needs in order to forge a sword that can kill the Beast. 

Alderic is ill-equipped for a hunt and almost guaranteed to get himself killed. But as the two of them search for the rest of the materials that will be the Beast’s undoing, Alderic reveals hidden depths: dark secrets that he guards as carefully as Lyssa guards hers. Before long, and against Lyssa’s better judgment, an unlikely friendship begins to bloom — one that will either lead to the culmination of Lyssa’s quest for vengeance, or spell doom for them both. 

Greenwild: The Forest in the Sky by Pari Thomson (June 2025)

Discover the epic finale to Daisy’s adventures and journey to a spectacular magical land in The Forest in the Sky! The much-anticipated final instalment in Pari Thomson’s bestselling, award-winning Greenwild trilogy includes stunning black-and-white illustrations throughout by Elisa Paganelli. 

With the support of the Iffenwilders and their mighty water magic, Daisy and her friends are finally setting off to rescue the Botanists held prisoner in the heart of the Amazon rainforest — including Daisy’s Ma. But when an unexpected attack sends the rescue mission spinning off course, Daisy and Max are separated, and Max shipwrecked on an impossible shore with no way of escape. Even Daisy’s arrival in Amazeria — the stunning Amazonian pocket of the Greenwild, teeming with green magic — is in jeopardy as the mysterious Great Reaper draws ever closer. 

In the shadows of the great rainforest, it’s impossible to know who to trust. Daisy and her friends must draw on every ounce of courage they have to fight for Daisy’s Ma, for the Greenwild, and for everything they hold most dear.