13 Jun, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
Nadia Afifi’s 2025 A Rebel’s History of Mars is an upcoming science fiction novel.
Orthodox Nabateans like Azad live happily constrained lives. Few choices burden them. Few find cause to complain… if only because those who do complain are efficiently whisked off to prison.
Azad’s cossetted life ends abruptly when a dying patient arrives at his workplace, Central Nabatean Hospital.
6 Jun, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
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Mina Ikemoto Ghosh’s 2023 Numamushi is a stand-alone historical fantasy novella.
The great nameless snake calls the river home. When a badly burned baby human floats by, the snake’s first instinct is to put the infant out of its misery. Its second impulse, the one it acts upon, is to rescue the little human, treat its wounds, and raise it as the great white snake’s own child1.
The snake names his foundling son Numamushi. Numamushi names the snake Father.
30 May, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
2025’s The Floating World is the first volume in Axie Oh’s Floating World secondary universe duology.
Ren and her adopted family (Auntie, Big Uncle, and Little Uncle) comprise a dance troupe that travels from village to village, performing. It’s a good life until a demon attacks Gorye village.
23 May, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
Emily Yu-Xuan Qin’s 2025 Aunt Tigress is a stand-alone modern fantasy.
Classmates might see Tam Lin as a timid student. Potential girlfriends might note Tam’s shyness and touch aversion. Current maybe-girlfriend Janet knows Tam’s secret. Tam can see supernatural beings.
Or rather, Janet knows a very small part of Tam’s secret, which is that Tam is not exactly human.
16 May, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
2022’s A Quiet Teacher is the first of Adam Oyebanji’s Quiet Teacher mystery series.
To the students and staff at Pittsburgh’s prestigious Calderhill Academy, Greg Abimbola is a language teacher whose good looks are made piratical by his eyepatch. Staff and students might be surprised to learn that Greg Abimbola is not the teacher’s real name and that his skill set extends far beyond teaching spoiled children Russian.
9 May, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
Wen-Yi Lee’s 2023 The Dark We Know is a stand-alone horror novel.
Isadora “Isa” Chang grew up in the isolated mining town of Slater. The community was repressive, her father was abusive, and two of her three close friends died. Isa fled, enrolling at a distant art school. She left the town, her sister and mother, and her best friend Mason Kane behind.
Art students are often short on money. Thus, when Isa’s father dies, the promise of a small inheritance is enough to tempt Isa back to Slater.
2 May, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
Kate Mascarenhas’ 2018 The Psychology of Time Travel is a time travel murder mystery.
In 1967, four geniuses — Margaret Norton, Barbara “Bee” Hereford, Grace Taylor, and Lucille Waters — emerged from their Cumbrian laboratory and presented the world with a functioning time travel machine.
Margaret, Lucille, and Grace founded the Conclave, “an elite quango with responsibility for all time travel missions.” Margaret graciously accepted the position of director; a position she would ruthlessly cling to for the rest of her life. Her colleagues accepted positions within the Conclave suitable to their lofty status (but less than Margaret’s).
As for poor Barbara…
25 Apr, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is a stand-alone time travel novel.
Commander Graham Gore was just one of the hapless explorers in the Franklin Expedition1, which was attempting to find a Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. He appears in the history books as one of the casualties of the ill-fated expedition. In this novel he is given an afterlife… of sorts.
18 Apr, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
Nuzo Onoh’s 2024 Where the Dead Brides Gather is a stand-alone horror novel.
Ten-year-old Bata has been plagued by nightmares ever since she suffered a serious accident. Then Bata discovers that the terrible dreams are but a precursor to the revelation of Bata’s supernatural potential.
11 Apr, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
Trang Thanh Tran’s They Bloom at Night is a stand-alone horror novel.
Perhaps the oligarchs will get their wish and flee to the Moon and Mars1. The common folk have no such escape. Indeed, Nhung — Noon to her Anglophone neighbors — cannot even escape Mercy, Louisiana.
Hurricane Arlene rolled over Mercy almost two years earlier, leaving ruins and a red tide in its wake. The red tide refuses to go away, leaving Mercy a toxic wasteland. A wise person would leave.
Unfortunately for Nhung, her mother Non Bien Tien refuses to relocate. Nhung’s father and brother vanished at sea. Nhung’s mother is convinced that the pair were reincarnated by the water spirit Sông as marine animals somewhere near Mercy. Nhung’s mother will not abandon family.
Harbormaster Jimmy Boudreaux is the last rich bastard standing in Mercy, which makes Jimmy functionally the local government. Among his many commercial ventures, loans to would-be boat owners. Jimmy financed the Wild Things, Nhung’s family’s fishing boat. Therefore, Jimmy has a lot of leverage over Nhung and her mother.
Jimmy has a little job for Nhung. People keep vanishing in Mercy. Rumor has it that a monster is responsible. Maybe the monster exists. Maybe it does not. Either way, it’s Nhung’s job to track it down and capture the creature.
Accompanied by Jimmy’s knife-happy daughter Covey, Nhung sets out to search for a monster that may or may not exist. Failure will cost Nhung and her mother the Wild Things. Success means confronting something beyond human ken.
Something with an intense interest in Nhung.