James Nicoll Reviews

Secrets, Spells, and Chocolate by Marisa Churchill (December 2025)

Outcast Sylvie must survive her first year at her magical culinary school in this fast-paced, whimsical fantasy.

The culinary world is full of secrets. For one, recipes can become powerful spells. Of course, fourteen-year-old Sylvie Jones knows this. Sylvie has been dreaming of attending her mom’s alma mater, Brindille School of Culinary Arts and Magic, since she was old enough to reach the stove. Unfortunately, the last name Jones has a horrible stain on it — something that could destroy her dream. So, when Sylvie is given the opportunity to prove that she’s got the skills to be a great chef and put an end to the rumors that her famous chef mother cheated her way to victory at the world’s greatest magical cooking competition, The Golden Whisk, she takes it.

But the opportunity she’s been given may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. If Sylvie truly wants to make her own mark and earn a place at Brindille, she needs to uncover the truth about what happened all those years ago. But some will go to great lengths to ensure Sylvie fails, and she soon finds herself tangled in a web of deceit.

With the unlikely help of frenemy Georgia Shaw and rising-star-student Flora Jackson, Sylvie must find a way to get to The Golden Whisk All-Star competition and uncover the past before time runs out. Will she be able to redeem her family’s name and save her future, or will it all end in burned butter and broken dreams? 

Spread Me by Sarah Gailey (September 2025)

Spread Me is a darkly seductive tale of survival from Sarah Gailey, bestselling author of Just Like Home. A routine probe at a research station turns deadly when the team discovers a strange specimen in search of a warm place to stay. Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the isolation and the way the desert keeps temptations from the civilian world far out of reach. 

When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it inside. But the longer it’s there, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can’t be ignored any longer. 

One by one, Kinsey’s team realizes the thing they’re studying is in search of a new host — and one of them is the perfect candidate.…

The Forest on the Edge of Time by Jasmin Kirkbride (February 2026)

The Future of Another Timeline meets The Bone Clocks in this dazzling piece of time-travel climate fiction. 

Recruited by the mysterious Project Kairos to change history and save the future from ecological disaster, Echo and Hazel are transported through time to opposite worlds. Echo works as a healer’s assistant in Ancient Athens, embroiled in dangerous politics and wild philosophy. Hazel is the last human alive, in a laboratory on a polluted island with nothing but tiny robots and an untrustworthy AI for company. 

Both women suffer from amnesia but when they fall asleep, their consciousnesses transcend time and they meet in their dreams. Together, they start to uncover their past – but soon discover the past threatens humanity’s survival. 

If Echo and Hazel have a chance of changing the future, they must remember to forget…THE FOREST ON THE EDGE OF TIME is a novel about family and duty and the worlds we try to save along the way. 

The Universe Box by Michael Swanwick (February 2026)

Discover the vast worlds and pocket universes of Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide), the only author to win science fiction’s most prestigious award five times in six years. In his dazzling new collection, the master of speculative short stories returns with tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend. With two stories original to this collection, Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling.

“Swanwick’s wildly imaginative and beautifully written short stories have been, for several years, one of the primary joys of the field.”

—Washington Post Book World

In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves) sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.