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Audio Review: TWELVE MONTHS by Jim Butcher

Mar 132026
 

Kirkus: James Marsters’ weary delivery perfectly captures Harry Dresden’s fractured psyche as he navigates a year of mandatory mourning and political maneuvering in Chicago. Marsters doesn’t just read; he inhabits Harry’s exhaustion, using deliberate pacing and a somber tonal palette that underscores the protagonist’s post-traumatic stress. Marsters’ gift for distinct vocal characterizations remains sharp, effortlessly pivoting from the ethereal, detached elegance of the Sidhe to the grounded warmth of Harry’s remaining allies. By leaning into the book’s quieter, more introspective moments, Marsters elevates this urban fantasy’s emotional stakes, transforming a year of Dresden’s life into a poignant study of grief. It’s an immersive performance that makes the wizard’s vulnerability feel hauntingly real. Marsters’ soulful performance makes this a compelling entry in the Harry Dresden series.

Review: AND SIDE BY SIDE THEY WANDER by Molly Tanzer

Mar 122026
 

Publishers Weekly: A far-future gang attempts an interstellar museum heist in this crafty sci-fi novella from Tanzer (Creatures of Charm and Hunger). Led by Tarquin Lennox, a wealthy human man affiliated with Earth’s last corporation, the crew also includes Arakachi Misora, “a set of sextuplets folded into a single body” acting as the team’s muscle; Jack Kirby, a powerful machine intelligence there to interface with the computer systems; Tchick-tchick, the insect-like alien hive mind captaining their space craft; and Fennel Tycho, Jack’s former attaché and the tale’s first-person narrator. Their mission: to liberate six masterpieces of Earth art from a distant Celerian museum and replace them with exact copies. In the 21st century, humanity allowed the Celerians to temporarily safeguard these pieces in exchange for technological solutions to Earth’s “multifarious” problems, but the aliens subsequently refused to return them. The mission gets off to a rocky start when the team learns they no longer have corporate support—Tarquin has gone rogue. As they forge ahead, Fennel recounts the wacky sequence of events that brought her and humanity to this point, complicating the otherwise straightforward adventure with poignant observations about the significance of original art and art history. This bite-size romp is a wild and thought-provoking ride. (May)

Review: SECONDHAND LUCK by Kim Harrison

Mar 062026
 

Library Journal: Petra Grady continues to develop her bond with the shadow, Pluck, as the first weaver/shadow pair in nearly a millennium. Even with the support of researcher and boyfriend, Benedict Strom, at St. Enoc, there are some who do not welcome the weaver who can use shadow magic. When Petra and Benedict discover another weaver, they find she is chased by Thoth, a shadow who set mages against weavers thousands of years ago and left betrayal in his wake. As Thoth continues his quest to destroy any stability between the two sides, Petra and Pluck find themselves running from both the university and the mage courts. If they cannot find a way to defeat Thoth and reveal the truth and their innocence, then Petra and Pluck could lose everything. While the pacing is a little bumpy, the novel’s worldbuilding is immersive. VERDICT Harrison’s follow-up to Three Kinds of Lucky continues to develop the world of this contemporary fantasy. Fans will find it completely different than the “Hollows” series, but the spirited protagonists and character relationships showcase Harrison’s prose.

Starred Review: TRACE ELEMENTS by Ada Palmer and Jo Walton

Mar 052026
 

Library Journal: This collection of essays, some original and many revised and updated, represents a wide range of thought and many sterling examples of what makes science fiction and fantasy popular and so appealing for readers, along with what causes some readers not to like it. They also offer insight into where the speculative fiction conversation with itself, its past, and its readership is going in the future. Readers interested in the study of genre and those who have been captivated by SF’s ability to explore the future while commenting on the present will find their TBR piles expanding exponentially. These essays provide a thoroughly researched but highly opinionated exploration of the science fiction and fantasy genres by two award-winning novelists who have, in addition to writing in the genre, spent significant time thinking and writing about their genre and analyzing where speculative fiction has been and where it might be going.

VERDICT Highly recommended for collections of literature studies, particularly but not limited to studies of SF and fantasy, and collections where Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great and An Informal History of the Hugos, as well as both authors’ novels, have been popular.

Review: LOST IN YELLOWSTONE by Nicole Maggi

Mar 032026
 

Kirkus: What’s the connection between a missing person, a severed foot in a sneaker, and a group of troubled kids?

Emmeline Helliwell, a special agent for the National Park Service, is sent to Yellowstone to unravel the mystery of a foot blown out of a geyser in front of a group of tourists. She’d rather be anywhere else, having left Yellowstone three years earlier, when she was unable to close a missing persons case, abandoning her boyfriend, fellow park ranger Holden Thrush, with no explanation. Although the coroner’s report shows the foot belonged to a malnourished teenager, no one has reported a teen missing from the vicinity. Emme gets a clue from a sharp-eyed tourist who noticed something red when the foot flew her way. Awkwardly, the only person available to help Emme with the investigation is Holden. At the geyser, they spot something red, and both get burned recovering it—but it turns out to be a useful clue: a red pocket knife. They manage to connect it to Higher Purpose, a wilderness school for troubled teens. Despite its fancy promotional video, the school is a dump, and by checking permits and interviewing the handyman, Emme and Holden learn that a group from the school is in Yellowstone right now and another was there a few months ago. Locating the area of the park the Higher Purpose group set off from, they follow the students’ trail on horseback until they come upon three woefully unprepared teens who’d been kicked out of the main group after having been taken from their homes (with their parents’ permission), then mistreated and starved. Clearly, the school is worse than Emme could have imagined. But are its owners killing their students?

Stunning scenery and romantic tensions combine in a ripped-from-the-headlines mystery.

 

Review: THE TRICKY BUSINESS OF FAERIE BARGAINS by Reena McCarty

Mar 022026
 

Library Journal: In McCarty’s debut, a human named Poppy tries to prevent diplomatic chaos but gets caught up in Fae court machinations. Three years ago, Poppy was returned to the human world after 100 years of serving on the Otherside, in the land of the Fae. She works for an organization that handles legal bargains between humans and the othersiders. After growing up in the Wild Lands of the Fae, she isn’t adjusting well, and when a deal goes wrong, she seizes the chance to return to the Otherside and fix her error. However, Poppy soon realizes that the stakes of her mission are far greater than she thought and that the fate of both worlds may rest upon her choices. This is a fantasy with a distinctly unsettling edge, featuring Fae who can be dangerous and cunning. While the focus of the book is Poppy’s struggle to find a place in one world or the other and understand her previous life, the worldbuilding leaves room for more adventures to come. VERDICT For readers seeking fae-related fantasy with more intrigue and introspection than romance.

Review: SECONDS TO SPARE by Rachel Reiss

Feb 262026
 

Kirkus: Two 18-year-olds get stuck in a time loop during a flight from Kona to Los Angeles that seems about to end without warning, with the plane heading into a nosedive, before the cycle abruptly restarts.

Aloha Airlines Flight 1333 was supposed to take Evelyn Werth back home across the Pacific Ocean along with her father’s ashes. But something went wrong, and just as the plane drops, apparently about to crash, time rewinds and Evelyn ends up back where she was 28 minutes earlier. To make things worse, the rest of the passengers and crew have no awareness that anything is amiss. Several things consistently happen: The pilot announces that the internet is out, the plane experiences five and a half minutes of turbulence followed by 11 minutes of calm, a woman in the last row collapses, and then the nose of the plane tips forward, and it begins a terrifying descent. After living through this sequence hundreds of times, Evelyn accidentally wakes up the only passenger who has slept throughout: Orion “Rion” James. He joins her in experiencing and remembering the loops, but this new development triggers a life-threatening change. Evelyn and Rion, who both present white, share the first-person, present-tense narration in this romantic thriller that explores different aspects of mortality and grief. The tension, dynamic pacing, suspense, and romance make this a strong page-turner.

Thrilling and captivating. (seat map) (Speculative thriller. 14-18)

 

Starred Review: TWELVE MONTHS by Jim Butcher

Feb 202026
 

Kirkus: This is wizard Harry Dresden’s yearlong mourning period for Karrin Murphy, the woman he loved.

If you keep upping your protagonist’s powers throughout a series, then you must balance the scales by increasing the number and strength of their enemies—as well as seriously messing with their personal life. Over the course of the Dresden Files, Harry Dresden, Chicago PI and now one of the most powerful wizards in the world, thought his first love was dead (she wasn’t), sacrificed his half-vampire girlfriend on an altar to save their child, lost another girlfriend when they learned she’d been mind-controlled into their relationship, bound himself into servitude as the Fae Queen Mab’s Winter Knight, and, for the length of an entire book, thought he himself was dead (he wasn’t). But nothing has hit quite as hard as the death of Karrin Murphy, the former police lieutenant who was his quasi-partner, friend, and, after a slow burn across many books, lover. Chicago is in a terrible state following a battle with Ethniu the Titan and her Fomor army, and Harry is doing his best to confront the monsters, dark magic, and anti-supernatural prejudice running wild amid the slowly rebuilding city. He’s also trying to save his half brother Thomas from two different death sentences, train a new apprentice, and juggle a relationship with Thomas’s half sister Lara, the dangerously seductive vampire Queen Mab is forcing him to marry. But he’s doing all this while nearly crushed by grief that threatens his judgment and disturbs his control over his magical powers. Butcher really makes you feel the dark, depressive state Harry exists in as well as the effect it’s having on his friends. Despite all that happens in it, this book is a pause as well as a setup for the series’ planned conclusion, an epic conflict with the eldritch creatures known as “the Outsiders.” It’s a tough, redemptive pause that could be a real drag, but thankfully, it’s not, because Butcher shows balance, too: Even as the crises pile up, so do the help and goodwill from unexpected sources.

The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.

Review: TRACE ELEMENTS by Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

Feb 182026
 

Booklist: This collaboration between two prominent sf authors blends historical research, anecdotal narratives, and even a few poems. Sf fans might already be familiar with authors Walton (Or What You Will, 2020) and Palmer (Perhaps the Stars, 2021), but this collection of both authors’ nonfiction is an extensive plunge into sf’s deep end. While not having an overarching theme, these articles cover a broad range of topics, including the contract between author and reader, the histories of various genres and mediums that evolved alongside sf, and the writers’ own experiences with writing and living as disabled authors and  instructors, with each piece showcasing a massive amount of depth. These articles, many of them co-written, show off their individual writing strengths, including historian Palmer’s ability to synthesize an encyclopedia’s worth of information and Walton’s skill in deconstructing tropes based on the stories she’s read and watched. While this book is a dense read, it’s also a comprehensive academic tome about what sf is and, perhaps most importantly, what it can be.

Starred Review: DEATH TIMES SEVEN by Anne Perry

Feb 122026
 

Library Journal: Cementing her place in a long line of legendary British crime novelists such as Sayers, Christie, and Conan Doyle, prolific bestseller Perry (author of the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt books) puts her usual skillful historical spin on the genre in this compelling yarn, begun before she died in 2023 and later seamlessly finished by her friend and fellow author Zackheim (The Bone Weaver). The seventh installment in Perry’s Daniel Pitt series (following The Fourth Enemy) is set in pre–World War I England and features barrister Pitt, son of Thomas and Charlotte, and his brilliant pathologist wife Miriam. Readers follow Daniel as he’s thrown into two separate high-stakes murder cases: one, an ongoing sensational London murder trial; the other, the puzzling murder and assault of his law partner’s parents in rural Ipswich. The tension between the two cases drives the story as Daniel is torn between the murders, the locations, and doubts about his abilities. VERDICT Even after more than 100 books, Perry’s storytelling skills were sharp until the end. The strong storyline, intricate plotting, incisive exploration of social issues, and Perry’s trademark active prose make this one of her best. A highly recommended addition to all historical detective fiction collections.

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