Congratulations to Robert Jackson Bennett! A TRADE OF BLOOD debuts at #8 on the Indie bestseller list and #16 on USA Today!
Detective Ana Dolabra must prove a condemned man’s innocence and confront a terrifying magical technology in this fantasy-mystery from the author of The Tainted Cup, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy awards.
Mo Ellery’s 29th birthday is a disaster. After one small accident—the exposure of her boyfriend’s genitals (well, maybe not that small) on a work video call—she manages to get fired, dumped, and kicked out of their overpriced Chicago apartment. Luckily, a sign appears to guide Mo to her new life: “Looking for flexible part-time work? Become a school crossing guard!” It’s everything Mo has been looking for: health insurance. How hard can it be?
A few weeks later, Mo is adjusting to her new low-paying job, her bisexual reawakening, and her new neighborhood’s wacky characters. There’s Claudia, an old woman who refuses to let Mo help her cross the street, and Marlowe, a tween cell phone prodigy whose antics terrify her. But Mo’s greatest nemesis is Poodle Dude, a guy with an SUV full of poodles who speeds through her intersection each morning. . . until the day he speeds into a sinkhole. Mo tries and fails to shield innocent eyes from his bloody corpse, but succeeds in accidentally becoming the guardian to his three poodles.
The heir to one of the Empire’s most powerful families sits in jail, accused of murder. His hands are covered in the victim’s blood, and he can neither deny his guilt nor explain his actions.
But if the great detective Ana Dolabra cannot save him from the noose, the farming canton of Sapirdad will explode into war, threatening to plunge the whole Empire into starvation and chaos.
As Ana investigates—her assistant Dinios Kol, as ever, acting as her eyes and ears—she fears her task is even more daunting than it seemed. For this murder is just the latest in a deeper, subtler web of death, woven by a mastermind with an ancient weapon at his disposal.
With their customary skill, Ana and Din pursue their adversary through the canton’s wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses. Yet even they are not prepared to learn the horrifying secret behind their opponent’s powers.
An eccentric detective turns to the fantastical to solve a cold case in a short story by the Hugo Award–winning author of The Tainted Cup.
On a long carriage journey with her assistant Din, brilliant investigator Ana Dolabra ponders a solution to an impossible crime that has remained unsolved for centuries. A lavish wedding for two noble scions of the Empire descended into chaos when the newlyweds were found murdered in their marriage bed. But Ana—an expert in ancient myths, awakened beasts, and magic—knows that nothing is impossible, only unimaginable.
Publishers Weekly: Johnson (Those Beyond the Wall) breathes new life into an old horror trope in this clever inversion of the classic haunted house story. The building at its center is a Civil War–era family home in rural Mississippi, recently inherited by Avery Abernathy. Determined to turn it into a peaceful sanctuary from hectic city life, Avery sets about renovating the place with help from his moody older brother, Tobias, and his close friend Shantell. They quickly sense that something about the dwelling is, if not wrong, then too right: local history suggests the house and its residents have escaped every misfortune that has plagued the surrounding town for over a century. Meanwhile, the central trio’s maladies, including anxiety and nicotine addiction, fade away within the house’s walls. Still, weirdness abounds: the exterior indicates an attic that’s not accessible from the inside, and mysterious figures appear in the windows. And if the house is indeed manipulating their perceptions, memories, and emotions, it must have its reasons. Johnson largely sidesteps ghostly phenomena to keep the focus on her well-developed Black protagonists, each of whom is haunted by past traumas the house exploits for its own macabre purposes. She also allows the house to speak directly to the reader, revealing designs that transcend those typically ascribed to horror’s well-known malignant dwellings. This chiller will be a hit with anyone seeking a fresh take on genre conventions. (Sept.)
In an alternate Spanish Golden Age, the Council of the Sea Beyond has risen to unrivaled power, exploiting the Otherworld’s most precious resources for their own gain. Estevan seeks to uncover their secrets, but he risks the exposure of his own: that he is a faerie, masquerading as a mortal.
The Hungry Girl is the human whose place he took. Lost among the fae and desperate to find some purpose for her existence, she leaps at the chance to help a group of Spanish explorers in the Sea Beyond … only to be horrified at the atrocities they commit.
A faerie pact has separated them—but only together can they bring down Spain’s worlds-spanning empire and save the homes they have both come to love.
Congratulations to DMLA authors Premee Mohamed (One Message Remains) and Tashan Mehta (Mad Sisters of Esi) for making the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction shortlist!
Publishers Weekly: Eden Robins (Remember You Will Die) and MW Garguilo (The Stupendous Switcheroo) join forces under a new pseudonym for this witty and wacky millennial sleuthing story. After 29-year-old Mo Ellery loses her Chicago office job, her boyfriend, and her apartment all at once, she becomes a school crossing guard. When her daily nemesis, whom she’s nicknamed “Poodle Dude” for the dogs he drives around recklessly in his Kia Sportage, ends up dead in a sinkhole near Mo’s crosswalk, Claudia, an energetic old woman who has been refusing her assistance crossing the street, claims there’s foul play involved. She insists Mo take the dogs home and help her investigate. Though Mo is reluctant, Claudia’s bullying and the help of clever pink-haired tween Marlowe rope her into an investigation that intensifies when another character ends up dead. Mo is an appealingly reluctant investigator, and her disappointments and romantic troubles will resonate with readers trying to make their lives work in their 20s and 30s. The authors maintain a bright tone throughout, leaning more into social hijinks than thriller beats, but for mystery fans in Mo’s demographic, this is a winningly relatable diversion.
Featuring two Bram Stoker Award–winning tales, McCammon’s Shoppe of Olde Curiosities is a career-spanning collection gathering nineteen short stories showcasing the author’s imaginative range of frightening terror, fantastical worldbuilding, and characters confronting the unknown around them and within themselves.
Pursuing a life of celebrity fame, Erik Van Helsing’s desire to cash in on his famous family’s name as vampire hunters unveils a legacy he cannot escape in “Blood is Thicker Than Hollywood”―a spinoff tale from the novel They Thirst.
A woman surviving in a post-apocalyptic landscape fights off loneliness when she reads aloud to the “Children of the Bedtime Machine”―a tribute to the wondrous storytelling style of Ray Bradbury.
As “Death Comes for the Rich Man” in 1703 Colonial America, Matthew Corbett is hired to delay the Grim Reaper to give a regretful old sinner time to make amends with his estranged daughter.
Publishers Weekly: Bennett continues to make genre-blending appear effortless in his stellar third Ana and Din novel (after 2025’s A Drop of Corruption), a suspenseful whodunit set in an immersive and imaginative alternate world. The endearing duo of Ana Dolabra, an eccentric genius, and her assistant, Imperial Investigator Din Kol, whose augmented abilities allow him to perfectly recall crime scenes, are tasked with probing a murder. The solution initially appears obvious: Castus Armenta, a member of a powerful family, was seen fleeing an inn covered in blood; the butchered corpse of his secret lover from a rival family, Zansay Burav, was then discovered within. But as the Burav clan cries for Castus’s head, Ana and Din’s examination of the murder site reveals anomalies, most notably that the victim herself seems to have deliberately staged some aspects of the scene after being attacked. For his part, Castus has no discernible motive and no memory of what happened. The investigative scope widens as each of Castus’s three siblings also perish under odd circumstances. Meanwhile, an unexpected reunion unsettles Din, one of several complications in his personal life that could impact the inquiry. The case is as clever and fairly clued as ever, and it’s a pleasure to revisit these sharply drawn characters. This series shows no signs of slowing down.