We are absolutely obsessed with sci-fi & fantasy books, and while there is still much work to be done to diversify the genre, we love that there are increasingly more books by Black authors featuring Black characters leading revolutions, wielding superpowers, and being the kickass heroes saving the world!
There is so much room for YA books to depict all kinds of experiences for Black characters, not just the stories rooted in trauma that they have been limited to in the past. If you’re looking for books that celebrate Black love & laughter and recs for even more non-European inspired fantasies, we’ve got you covered. But now it’s time to dive into the rich worlds, inventive magic systems, and heart-stopping sci-fi adventures that some of our favorite Black YA authors have created.
From Jamaican– or West African-inspired fantasies to zombie-filled alternate histories, these SFF books by Black authors are stories you won’t be able to put down!
32 YA Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books by Black Authors
1. Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
📚 Check out the sequels: Bloodmarked and Oathbound
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC-Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape–until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies.
A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.
And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts–and fails–to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.
The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.
She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets–and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down–or join the fight.
2. (S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi
“Our new home with its
thick walls and locked doors
wants me to stay trapped in my skin—
but I am fury and flame.”
Fifteen-year-old Marisol is the daughter of a soucouyant. Every new moon, she sheds her skin like the many women before her, shifting into a fireball witch who must fly into the night and slowly sip from the lives of others to sustain her own. But Brooklyn is no place for fireball witches with all its bright lights, shut windows, and bolt-locked doors.… While Marisol hoped they would leave their old traditions behind when they emigrated from the islands, she knows this will never happen while she remains ensnared by the one person who keeps her chained to her magical past—her mother.
Seventeen-year-old Genevieve is the daughter of a college professor and a newly minted older half sister of twins. Her worsening skin condition and the babies’ constant wailing keep her up at night, when she stares at the dark sky with a deep longing to inhale it all. She hopes to quench the hunger that gnaws at her, one that seems to reach for some memory of her estranged mother. When a new nanny arrives to help with the twins, a family secret connecting her to Marisol is revealed, and Gen begins to find answers to questions she hasn’t even thought to ask.
But the girls soon discover that the very skin keeping their flames locked beneath the surface may be more explosive to the relationships around them than any ancient magic.
3. Needy Little Things by Channelle Desamours
Sariyah Lee Bryant can hear what people need–tangible things, like a pencil, a hair tie, a phone charger–an ability only her family and her best friend, Malcolm, know the truth about. But when she fulfills a need for her friend Deja who vanishes shortly after, Sariyah is left wondering if her ability is more curse than gift. This isn’t the first time one of her friends has landed on the missing persons list, and she’s determined not to let her become yet another forgotten Black girl.
Not trusting the police and media to do enough on their own, Sariyah and her friends work together to figure out what led to Deja’s disappearance. When Sariyah’s mother loses her job and her little brother faces complications with his sickle cell disease, managing her time, money, and emotions seems impossible. Desperate, Sariyah decides to hustle her need-sensing ability for cash–a choice that may not only lead her to Deja, but put her in the same danger Deja found herself in.
4. The Ancient’s Game by Loni Crittenden
Sixteen-year-old Kellan DuCuivre is the descendant of traitors. She never knew her family members or which one of them betrayed the isle of Nanseau. But like all Du orphaned after the war, Kellan is forbidden by law from practicing makecraft, the trade of carving magic into metal that was perfected by the Guild of Engineers and their maker apprentices. No one can know that Kellan has been using makecraft in secret and that, in the wake of a tragic miscarve, she’s been helping her adoptive father, Edgar, run his celebrated makeshop.
But Edgar’s condition is worsening, and his shop is on the brink of ruin. On the eve of the Eighty-Fourth Annual Makers’ Exposition in Nanseau’s sparkling city of Riz, Kellan is thrust into the Guild’s twisted web of political intrigue and ancient secrets when she strikes a dangerous deal with one of its members to save Edgar and his shop. Now Kellan must compete in a rigorous gauntlet against the nation’s elite for a coveted spot as a maker’s apprentice.
But danger lurks at every turn. And as Kellan falls into a budding relationship with the illegitimate son from one of Nanseau’s most revered families, she’s put into the limelight when something sinister begins targeting the Gauntlet’s competitors and wreaking havoc on Riz. Amid a crumbling city and a ticking clock, winning the Gauntlet won’t just be a test of survival—it will mean pulling back the veil of secrets behind the Guild and uncovering the shrouded legacies of Nanseau itself.
5. Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
📚 Check out the sequel: Deathless Divide
Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.
In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.
But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.
But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.
But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies.
And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.
6. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
📚 Check out rest of the series: Children of Virtue and Vengeance, Children of Anguish and Anarchy
They killed my mother.
They took our magic.
They tried to bury us.
Now we rise.
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.
But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.
Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.
Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.
7. The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
📚 Check out the rest of the series: The Merciless Ones, The Eternal Ones
In this world, girls are outcasts by blood and warriors by choice. Get ready for battle.
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.
But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity-and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.
Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki-near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.
Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she’s ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be-not even Deka herself.
8. Beasts of Prey by Ayana Gray
📚 Check out the rest of the trilogy: Beasts of Ruin, Beasts of War
There’s no such thing as magic in the broken city of Lkossa, especially for sixteen-year-old Koffi, who indentured to the notorious Night Zoo, knows the fearsome creatures in her care and paying off her family’s debts to secure their eventual freedom can be her only focus. But the night those she loves are gravely threatened by the Zoo’s cruel master, Koffi unleashes a power she doesn’t fully understand, upending her life completely.
As the second son of a decorated hero, Ekon is all but destined to become a Son of the Six–an elite warrior–and uphold a family legacy. But on the night of his final rite of passage, Ekon encounters not only the Shetani–a vicious monster that has plagued the city for nearly a century and stalks his nightmares–but Koffi who seems to have the power to ward off the beast. Koffi’s power ultimately saves Ekon, but his choice to let her flee dooms his hopes of becoming a warrior.
Desperate to redeem himself, Ekon vows to hunt the Shetani and end its reign of terror, but he can’t do it alone. Koffi and Ekon form a tentative alliance and together enter the Greater Jungle, a world steeped in wild, frightening magic and untold dangers. The hunt begins. But it quickly becomes unclear whether they are the hunters or the hunted.
9. Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen
📚 Check out the sequel: Soul of the Deep
A way to survive.
A way to serve.
A way to save.
Simi prayed to the gods, once. Now she serves them as Mami Wata–a mermaid–collecting the souls of those who die at sea and blessing their journeys back home.
But when a living boy is thrown overboard, Simi does the unthinkable–she saves his life, going against an ancient decree. And punishment awaits those who dare to defy it.
To protect the other Mami Wata, Simi must journey to the Supreme Creator to make amends. But all is not as it seems. There’s the boy she rescued, who knows more than he should. And something is shadowing Simi, something that would rather see her fail. . . .
Danger lurks at every turn, and as Simi draws closer, she must brave vengeful gods, treacherous lands, and legendary creatures. Because if she doesn’t, then she risks not only the fate of all Mami Wata, but also the world as she knows it.
10. A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown
📚 Check out the sequel: A Psalm of Storms and Silence
For Malik, the Solstasia festival is a chance to escape his war-stricken home and start a new life with his sisters in the prosperous desert city of Ziran. But when a vengeful spirit abducts his younger sister, Nadia, as payment to enter the city, Malik strikes a fatal deal—kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran, for Nadia’s freedom.
But Karina has deadly aspirations of her own. Her mother, the Sultana, has been assassinated; her court threatens mutiny; and Solstasia looms like a knife over her neck. Grief-stricken, Karina decides to resurrect her mother through ancient magic . . . requiring the beating heart of a king. And she knows just how to obtain one: by offering her hand in marriage to the victor of the Solstasia competition.
When Malik rigs his way into the contest, they are set on a heart-pounding course to destroy each other. But as attraction flares between them and ancient evils stir, will they be able to see their tasks to the death?
11. So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole
📚 Check out the sequel: This Ends in Embers
Faron Vincent can channel the power of the gods. Five years ago, she used her divine magic to liberate her island from its enemies, the dragon-riding Langley Empire. But now, at seventeen, Faron is all powered up with no wars to fight. She’s a legend to her people and a nuisance to her neighbors.
When she’s forced to attend an international peace summit, Faron expects that she will perform tricks like a trained pet and then go home. She doesn’t expect her older sister, Elara, forming an unprecedented bond with an enemy dragon–or the gods claiming the only way to break that bond is to kill her sister.
As Faron’s desperation to find another solution takes her down a dark path, and Elara discovers the shocking secrets at the heart of the Langley Empire, both must make difficult choices that will shape each other’s lives, as well as the fate of their world.
12. Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko
📚 Check out the sequel: Redemptor and the companion: The Maid and the Crocodile
Nothing is more important than loyalty. But what if you’ve sworn to protect the one you were born to destroy?
Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar to compete with other children to be chosen as one of the Crown Prince’s Council of 11. If she’s picked, she’ll be joined with the other Council members through the Ray, a bond deeper than blood. That closeness is irresistible to Tarisai, who has always wanted to belong somewhere. But The Lady has other ideas, including a magical wish that Tarisai is compelled to obey: Kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust. Tarisai won’t stand by and become someone’s pawn–but is she strong enough to choose a different path for herself?
With extraordinary world-building and breathtaking prose, Raybearer is the story of loyalty, fate, and the lengths we’re willing to go for the ones we love.
13. This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron
📚 Check out the sequel: This Wicked Fate
Briseis has a gift: with a single touch she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms.
When Briseis’s aunt dies and wills her a dilapidated estate in rural New York, Bri and her parents hope that surrounded by plants and flowers, she will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they never expected–it comes with a mysterious set of instructions, a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world, and generations of secrets. There is more to Bri’s sudden inheritance than she could have imagined, and she is determined to uncover it.
From the bestselling author of Cinderella Is Dead comes an enchanting story about a young woman with the power to conquer the dark forces descending around her.
14. The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
📚 Check out rest of the series: The Everlasting Rose, The Beauty Trials
Camellia Beauregard is a Belle. In the opulent world of Orleans, Belles are revered, for they control Beauty, and Beauty is a commodity coveted above all else. In Orleans, the people are born gray, they are born damned, and only with the help of a Belle and her talents can they transform and be made beautiful.
But it’s not enough for Camellia to be just a Belle. She wants to be the favorite–the Belle chosen by the Queen of Orleans to live in the royal palace, to tend to the royal family and their court, to be recognized as the most talented Belle in the land.
But once Camellia and her Belle sisters arrive at court, it becomes clear that being the favorite is not everything she always dreamed it would be. Behind the gilded palace walls live dark secrets, and Camellia soon learns that the very essence of her existence is a lie–that her powers are far greater, and could be more dangerous, than she ever imagined. And when the queen asks Camellia to risk her own life and help the ailing princess by using Belle powers in unintended ways, Camellia now faces an impossible decision.
With the future of Orleans and its people at stake, Camellia must decide: save herself and her sisters and the way of the Belles, or resuscitate the princess, risk her own life, and change the ways of her world forever.
15. A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow
📚 Check out the sequel: A Chorus Rises
In a society determined to keep her under lock and key, Tavia must hide her siren powers.
Meanwhile, Effie is fighting her own family struggles, pitted against literal demons from her past. Together, these best friends must navigate through the perils of high school’s junior year.
But everything changes in the aftermath of a siren murder trial that rocks the nation, and Tavia accidentally lets out her magical voice at the worst possible moment.
Soon, nothing in Portland, Oregon, seems safe. To save themselves from drowning, it’s only Tavia and Effie’s unbreakable sisterhood that proves to be the strongest magic of all.
16. House of Marionne by J. Elle
📚 Check out the sequel: Shadows of Perl
Bury your secret or die for it.
17-year-old Quell has lived her entire life on the run. She and her mother have fled from city to city in order to hide the deadly magic that flows through Quell’s veins.
Until someone discovers her dark secret.
To hide from the assassin hunting her and keep her mother out of harm’s way, Quell reluctantly inducts into a debutante society of magical social elites called the Order that she never knew existed. If she can pass their three rites of membership, mastering their proper form of magic, she’ll be able to secretly bury her forbidden magic forever.
If caught, she will be killed.
But becoming the perfect debutante is a lot harder than Quell imagined, especially when there’s more than tutoring happening with Jordan, her brooding mentor and assassin-in-training.
When Quell uncovers the deadly lengths the Order will go to defend its wealth and power, she’s forced to choose: Embrace the dark magic she’s been running from her entire life, or risk losing everything, and everyone, she’s grown to love.
Still, she fears the most formidable monster she’ll have to face is the one inside.
17. Nubia: The Awakening by Omar Epps and Clarence A. Haynes
📚 Check out the sequel: Nubia: The Reckoning For Zuberi, Uzochi, and Lencho, Nubia is a mystery. Before they were born, a massive storm destroyed their ancestral homeland, forcing their families to flee across the ocean to New York City. Nubia, a utopic island nation off the coast of West Africa, was no more, and their parents’ sorrow was too deep for them to share much of their history beyond the folklore.But New York, ravaged by climate change and class division, is far from a safe haven for refugees, and Nubians live as outcasts, struggling to survive in the constantly flooding lower half of Manhattan, while the rich thrive in the tech-driven sky city known as the Up High.To many, being Nubian means you’re fated for a life plagued by difficulties and disrespect. But Zuberi, Uzochi, and Lencho are beginning to feel there might be more. Something within them is changing, giving each of them extraordinary powers. Extraordinary and terrifying powers that seem to be tied to the secrets their parents have kept from them.And there are people Up High watching, eager to do anything they can to become even more powerful than they already are. Now Zuberi, Uzochi, and Lencho will be faced with the choice—do they use their inheritance to lift their people, or to leave them behind. The fate of their city, and their people, hangs in the balance.
18. A Blade So Black by L.L. Mckinney
📚 Check out rest of the series: A Dream So Dark, A Crown So Cursed
The first time the Nightmares came, it nearly cost Alice her life. Now she’s trained to battle monstrous creatures in the dark dream realm known as Wonderland with magic weapons and hardcore fighting skills. Yet even warriors have a curfew.
Life in real-world Atlanta isn’t always so simple, as Alice juggles an overprotective mom, a high-maintenance best friend, and a slipping GPA. Keeping the Nightmares at bay is turning into a full-time job. But when Alice’s handsome and mysterious mentor is poisoned, she has to find the antidote by venturing deeper into Wonderland than she’s ever gone before. And she’ll need to use everything she’s learned in both worlds to keep from losing her head… literally.
Debut author L.L. McKinney delivers an action-packed twist on an old classic, full of romance and otherworldly intrigue.
19. Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon Smart
📚 Check out the sequel: Empress Crowned In Red
Divided by their order. United by their vengeance.
Iraya has spent her life in a cell, but every day brings her closer to freedom—and vengeance.
Jazmyne is the Queen’s daughter, but unlike her sister before her, she has no intention of dying to strengthen her mother’s power.
Sworn enemies, these two witches enter a precarious alliance to take down a mutual threat. But power is intoxicating, revenge is a bloody pursuit, and nothing is certain—except the lengths they will go to win this game.
“A thundering waterfall of magic, vengeance and intrigue.” —Samantha Shannon, New York Times & Sunday Times bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree and The Bone Season.
20. Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron
📚 Check out rest of the series: Reaper of Souls, Master of Souls
A girl with no gifts must bargain for the power to fight her own mother’s dark schemes—even if the price is her life.
Heir to two lines of powerful witchdoctors, Arrah yearns for magic of her own. Yet she fails at bone magic, fails to call upon her ancestors, and fails to live up to her family’s legacy. Under the disapproving eye of her mother, the Kingdom’s most powerful priestess and seer, she fears she may never be good enough.
But when the Kingdom’s children begin to disappear, Arrah is desperate enough to turn to a forbidden, dangerous ritual. If she has no magic of her own, she’ll have to buy it—by trading away years of her own life.
Arrah’s borrowed power reveals a nightmarish betrayal, and on its heels, a rising tide of darkness that threatens to consume her and all those she loves. She must race to unravel a twisted and deadly scheme… before the fight costs more than she can afford.
21. Sing Me to Sleep by Gabi Burton
📚 Check out the sequel: Drown Me With Dreams
Saoirse is a killer: Her ability to sing men to an early death makes her the top assassin in the kingdom.
Saoirse is a liar: If the royal family ever finds out she’s a siren, she’ll be executed immediately.
Saoirse is a soldier: As the top student at the most prestigious training academy in Kierdre, Saoirse has spent years honing herself into the perfect killing machine.
Saoirse is a spy: When her little sister is blackmailed, Saoirse takes a dangerous job to protect her-personal bodyguard to the crown prince. One misstep, and Saoirse will lose her life.
But the biggest threat of all is to her heart. Prince Hayes would call for her death in an instant if he knew the truth. But the closer Saoirse gets to Hayes, the harder it gets to resist him.
22. Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker
Thirty years ago, a young woman was murdered, a family was lynched, and New Orleans saw the greatest magical massacre in its history. In the days that followed, a throne was stolen from a queen.
On the anniversary of these brutal events, Clement and Cristina Trudeau—the sixteen-year-old twin heirs to the powerful, magical, dethroned family—are mourning their father and caring for their sick mother. Until, by chance, they discover their mother isn’t sick—she’s cursed. Cursed by someone on the very magic council their family used to rule. Someone who will come for them next.
Cristina, once a talented and dedicated practitioner of Generational magic, has given up magic for good. An ancient spell is what killed their father and she was the one who cast it. For Clement, magic is his lifeline. A distraction from his anger and pain. Even better than the random guys he hooks up with.
Cristina and Clement used to be each other’s most trusted confidant and friend, now they barely speak. But if they have any hope of discovering who is coming after their family, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other and their family’s magic, all while solving the decades-old murder that sparked the still-rising tensions between the city’s magical and non-magical communities. And if they don’t succeed, New Orleans may see another massacre. Or worse.
23. Blood at the Root by Ladarrion Williams
📚 Check out the sequel: Bones at the Crossroads
Ten years ago, Malik’s life changed forever the night his mother mysteriously vanished and he discovered he had uncontrollable powers. Since then, he has kept his abilities hidden, looking out for himself and his younger foster brother, Taye. Now, at 17, Malik is finally ready to start a new life for both of them, far from the trauma of his past. However, a daring act to rescue Taye reveals an unexpected connection with his long-lost grandmother: a legendary conjurer with ties to a hidden magical university that Malik’s mother attended.
At Caiman University, Malik’s eyes are opened to a future he never could have envisioned for himself–one that includes the reappearance of his first love, Alexis. His search for answers about his heritage, his powers, and what really happened to his mother exposes the cracks in their magical community as it faces a reawakened evil dating back to the Haitian Revolution. Together with Alexis, Malik discovers a lot beneath the surface at Caiman: feuding covens and magical politics, forbidden knowledge and buried mysteries.
In a wholly unique saga of family, history and community, Malik must embrace his legacy to save what’s left of his old family as well as his new one.
24. Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye
This is what they deserve.
They wanted me to be a monster.
I will be the worst monster they ever created.
Fifteen-year-old Sloane can incinerate an enemy at will—she is a Scion, a descendant of the ancient Orisha gods.
Under the Lucis’ brutal rule, her identity means her death if her powers are discovered. But when she is forcibly conscripted into the Lucis army on her fifteenth birthday, Sloane sees a new opportunity: to overcome the bloody challenges of Lucis training, and destroy them from within.
25. The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste
In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.
Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.
Then an enemy’s iron bullet kills her mother, Venus’s life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother’s killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.’s most influential politicians.
As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it’s hard to tell who to trust…Herself included.
26. That Self-Same Metal by Brittany N. Williams
📚 Check out the sequel: Saint-Seducing Gold
Sixteen-year-old Joan Sands is a gifted craftswoman who creates and upkeeps the stage blades for William Shakespeare’s acting company, The King’s Men. Joan’s skill with her blades comes from a magical ability to control metal–an ability gifted by her Head Orisha, Ogun. Because her whole family is Orisha-blessed, the Sands family have always kept tabs on the Fae presence in London.
Usually that doesn’t involve much except noting the faint glow around a Fae’s body as they try to blend in with London society, but lately, there has been an uptick in brutal Fae attacks. After Joan wounds a powerful Fae and saves the son of a cruel lord, she is drawn into political intrigue in the human and Fae worlds.
27. The Upper World by Femi Fadugba
If you had the chance to change your future, would you take it?
Today
During arguably the worst week of Esso’s life, an accident knocks him into an incredible world—a place beyond space or time, where he can see glimpses of the past and future. But if what he sees there is true, he might not have much longer to live, unless he can use his new gift to change the course of history.
Tomorrow
Rhia’s past is filled with questions, none of which she expects a new physics tutor to answer. But Dr. Esso’s not here to help Rhia. He’s here because he needs her help—to unravel a tragedy that happened fifteen years ago. One that holds the key not only to Rhia’s past, but to a future worth fighting for.
Soon to be a major Netflix movie starring Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya! (Get Out, Black Panther, Judas and the Black Messiah)
28. Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland
It is 1937, and Laura Ann Langston lives in an America divided—between those who work the mystical arts and those who do not. Ever since the Great Rust, a catastrophic event that blighted the arcane force called the Dynamism and threw America into disarray, the country has been rebuilding for a better future. And everyone knows the future is industry and technology—otherwise known as Mechomancy—not the traditional mystical arts.
Laura disagrees. A talented young queer mage from Pennsylvania, Laura hopped a portal to New York City on her seventeenth birthday with hopes of earning her mage’s license and becoming something more than a rootworker.
But four months later, she’s got little to show for it other than an empty pocket and broken dreams. With nowhere else to turn, Laura applies for a job with the Bureau of the Arcane’s Conservation Corps, a branch of the US government dedicated to repairing the Dynamism so that Mechomancy can thrive. There she meets the Skylark, a powerful mage with a mysterious past, who reluctantly takes Laura on as an apprentice.
As they’re sent off on their first mission together into the heart of the country’s oldest and most mysterious Blight, they discover the work of mages not encountered since the darkest period in America’s past, when Black mages were killed for their power—work that could threaten Laura’s and the Skylark’s lives, and everything they’ve worked for.
29. The Kindred by Alechia Dow
To save a galactic kingdom from revolution, Kindred mind-pairings were created to ensure each and every person would be seen and heard, no matter how rich or poor…
Joy Abara knows her place. A commoner from the lowly planet Hali, she lives a simple life—apart from the notoriety that being Kindred to the nobility’s most infamous playboy brings.
Duke Felix Hamdi has a plan. He will exasperate his noble family to the point that they agree to let him choose his own future and finally meet his Kindred face-to-face.
Then the royal family is assassinated, putting Felix next in line for the throne…and accused of the murders. Someone will stop at nothing until he’s dead, which means they’ll target Joy, too. Meeting in person for the first time as they steal a spacecraft and flee amid chaos might not be ideal…and neither is crash-landing on the strange backward planet called Earth. But hiding might just be the perfect way to discover the true strength of the Kindred bond and expose a scandal—and a love—that may decide the future of a galaxy.
30. Wildblood by Lauren Blackwood
Eighteen-year-old Victoria is a Wildblood. Since she was kidnapped at the age of six and manipulated by the Exotic Lands Touring Company, she’s worked as a tour guide ever since with a team of fellow Wildbloods who take turns using their magic to protect travelers in a Jamaican jungle teeming with ghostly monsters.
When the boss denies Victoria an earned promotion to team leader in favor of Dean, her backstabbing ex, she’s determined to prove herself. Her magic may be the most powerful on the team, but she’s not the image the boss wants to send their new client, Thorn, a renowned goldminer determined to reach an untouched gold supply deep in the jungle.
Thorn is everything Victoria isn’t – confident, impossibly kind, and so handsome he leaves her speechless. And when he entrusts the mission to her, kindness turns to mutual respect, turns to affection, turns to love. But the jungle is treacherous, and between hypnotic river spirits, soul-devouring women that shed their skin like snakes, and her ex out for revenge, Victoria has to decide – is promotion at a corrupt company really what she wants?
31. The Unquiet by Mikaela Everett
For as long as anyone can remember, there have been two Earths. Two versions of every city, every building, even every person. But the people from the second Earth know something their originals do not: two versions of the same thing cannot exist. For the people born on the second Earth to survive, they must kill their originals and take their places.
Lirael had one purpose from the moment she was sent to Earth 1 as a child—to learn everything she could about her other self. When the time comes, she kills her original and slips seamlessly into her life. But as Lirael takes over her original’s life, she begins to wonder if there’s more. More than mindlessly following orders, more than living life in a holding pattern, waiting for a war that will destroy everything and everyone she has come to love.
An intricate, literary stand-alone from an astonishing voice, Mikaela Everett’s The Unquiet takes readers deep inside the psyche of a strong teenage heroine struggling with what she has been raised to be and who she really is. The Unquiet will electrify fans of Neal Shusterman’s Scythe and Kim Liggett’s The Grace Year.
32. It Waits in the Forest by Sarah Dass
Unlike the other residents of the small Caribbean Island of St. Virgil, Selina DaSilva does not believe in magic. With a logical mind and a knack for botany, Selina used to dream of leaving the island to study Pharmacology—until a vicious, unsolved attack left her father dead and her mother in a coma.
Now her guilt over her mother’s condition keeps her tethered to the island, relegated to conning gullible tourists with useless talismans and phony protection rituals. But when one of those tourists ends up at the center of a string of strange murders, the truth that Selina has been denying can no longer be there is evil lurking in the forests that surround St. Virgil. Another thing that can’t be avoided? Selina’s ex-boyfriend Gabriel, newly employed at the local newspaper and eager to put his investigative skills to use.
Desperate to put an end to the killings and claim justice for Selina’s family, these two former lovers race to find answers. But evil bides its time. And as long-buried feelings and long-hidden secrets about Selina’s family’s past begin to reveal themselves, only one answer remains—and it waits in the forest.