Vampiric Broodmothers, Gig-Economy Ghosts, and Medieval Abortionists: November’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

Where I live is currently enjoying gorgeous fall foliage, so in a leaf-peeping season frame of mind, I bring you this latest batch of books: colorful, expansive, and falling at your feet to read. Imagine your TBR stack as a leaf pile including snarky spy thrillers in space, queered fairytales, and shivery horror. These books span from a far-future with flicker ghosts to the present transformed by a magical RPG to a medieval realm where a scholar/harlot/healer rides for women’s rights. I’m grateful for all of these books, and for the opportunity to share them with you readers every month. And may the extra hour afforded by the time change encourage all of us to curl up under a blanket with some tea, and replace our doomscrolling with reading.

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Curtis C. Chen, Kangaroo Forth
(Curtis C. Chen, November 3)

Perhaps appropriately, there isn’t much information about the latest installment of Curtis C. Chen’s interstellar spy series—secret agent Kangaroo’s latest adventures must still be classified. But what we can tell you is that Kangaroo Forth will likely transport us to futuristic planets (Mars, the Moon, and Venus have shown up in past volumes), with Kangaroo using his trusty pocket universe that only he can control, and plenty of wit to balance out the spy thriller intrigue.

Ry Herman, This Knight Topples Empires
(Dial Press Trade Paperback, November 3)

With The Minor Character Chronicles, Ry Herman queers familiar fairytales, starting with This Princess Kills Monsters, which casts an archetypal damsel in a new light. Follow-up This Knight Topples Empires draws from the Romanian fairytale “The Girl Who Became a Boy,” as Jules searches for a way to prove themself beyond their random magical power of making flowers bloom. Like the first book, there are magically-inclined sisters, genderbending quests, and characters carving out new spaces for themselves within the fairytale canon.

Caitriona Moran, The Trial of Magdalena Overmorrow
(Putnam, November 10)

Scholar, healer, harlot—midwife Magdalena Overmorrow stands accused of aiding Astoleyn’s women with obtaining magical abortions, but unlike her accusers, she does not consider it a crime. Forced to stand trial in 11 months’ time, Magda is sent not to the dungeon but to a remote northern city, where she will be closely observed by the dour Lord Proctor of Cair Gramora. Except that when she arrives, she discovers that the Lord Proctor is young and handsome, a fellow scholar and perhaps more. Magda must protect herself from accusations of witchcraft, from him or the cair’s residents; but when local women begin coming to her with familiar desperate requests, she must decide how much she is willing to risk her safety and freedom.

Caitlin Starling, Milkteeth
(St. Martin’s Press, November 10)

Breastfeeding vampires—that’s it, that’s the tweet. No, but there’s so much more to Caitlin Starling’s latest horror novel, about vampiric broodmother Beatrice. Before freshly-turned immortals can live and hunt on their own, these fledglings can only nurse the blood of other vampires for three years—special vampires like Beatrice, who seems uniquely gifted to care for others’ young. But when an unexpected new fledgling forces Beatrice’s body to adapt to unprecedented hunger and increased output, she questions her own undead physiology and purpose within the vampires’ culture.

Melissa Caruso, The Last Star in the Void
(Orbit Books, November 10)

Star investigator Kembral Thorne has proven herself keen at solving other people’s murders, but in the conclusion to the Echo Archives trilogy, she’ll have to solve her own. Armed only with cryptic messages, Kem must navigate rips in the layers of reality—from the merely uncanny to the utterly nightmarish—in order to stay alive for her toddler daughter and nemesis-turned-girlfriend Rika Nonesuch. But Rika is also searching for a solution, one which might threaten her humanity if it means saving Kem and her kiddo.

In Churl Yo, Play Role Play
(Castle Bridge Media, November 10)

In this contemporary fantasy, grieving daughter Hattie returns to Seattle for the first time in the two years since her mother’s death. Estranged from her father, Hattie nonetheless wishes to honor her mother’s final request—which turns out to be a letter sending Hattie and her father on linked quests to “recover memories and find what was lost.” But what begins as emulating her mother’s favorite role-playing game turns fantastical, as the RPG itself bleeds into the real world, channeling Hattie’s grief and forcing her to rely on her father once more.

Adam Oyebanji, Line of Descent
(DAW, November 17)

A generation ship is one of my favorite sci-fi settings, even moreso when the author crafts a murder mystery within such constrained quarters. Archimedes is just four decades shy of the end of its 133-year journey when a number of bizarre, unsettling occurrences force the thirty thousand inhabitants to debate whether to turn around and return home. It starts with the alleged kidnapping of one of the ship’s pro-abort-mission dissidents, and culminates in the discovery of a corpse inside an artificial womb—the same incubator tanks that gave birth to the generation that includes security officer and reluctant investigator Faisal Vasconcelos. This sounds excellent.

Lin Darrow, Dead New World
(Podium Entertainment, November 17)

This fascinating riff on a cyber-noir ghost story is set in 3025, where the dead can be resurrected as holographic specters. Known more disparagingly as flicker ghosts, they struggle on the fringes of society, not quite accepted and competing with one another for gig-economy jobs. Despite falling short of her deceased musician and movie star housemates, Hildy Doval stumbles upon an intriguing mystery: a headless ghost known as the Graverobber has been snuffing other flicker ghosts out of existence. Hildy’s chase after the Graverobber coincides with an election that will determine if she and her fellow specters get to continue on in this awkward afterlife, or if they’re destined for oblivion.