When Among Crows and To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth
Veronica Roth’s first two Curse Bearer novellas, *When Among Crows* (2024) and *To Clutch a Razor* (2025), reimagine Polish folklore within a contemporary urban‑fantasy framework. The books follow Dymitr, a Polish‑American Knight of the Holy Order, as he confronts monsters like strzyga, zmora, and upiór while grappling with his own transformation into a zmora. Roth ties the Knights’ magic to personal pain, creating a morally ambiguous battle between self‑appointed paladins and their prey. The dual settings—Chicago’s diaspora community and rural Poland—highlight cultural clash and family loyalty.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Grady Hendrix’s *Witchcraft for Wayward Girls* uses horror to expose the systemic oppression of women during the Baby Scoop Era, when unwed pregnant teens were confined to maternity homes and forced to surrender their children. Set in a 1970s institution,...
Crisis at Proxima by Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson
Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson’s *Crisis at Proxima* attempts to revive classic hard‑science storytelling, but the review finds it mired in technobabble, shallow world‑building, and dated cultural tropes. The novel’s plot—centered on a fertility crisis and an awakened Atlantean...
The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains by Reena McCarty
Reena McCarty’s debut, The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains, fuses American frontier myth with fae lore, following Poppy Hill, a century‑old returnee thrust into the modern legal world of faerie contracts at Carter Lane. The novel details a post‑World‑War legal...
This Brutal Moon by Bethany Jacobs
"This Brutal Moon" concludes Bethany Jacobs' Kindom Trilogy, a multi‑planetary space‑opera that follows the Jeveni laborers' revolt against a corrupt tripartite Kindom. The narrative centers on characters like Chono and Six, whose personal moral choices drive the political intrigue. Jacobs...
Podcast: I Wish You Died Laughing
Strange Horizons released a new fiction podcast episode titled “I Wish You Died Laughing” on March 9, 2026. The story, written by speculative‑fiction author Lio Abendan, is narrated by Jenna Hanchey and presented by Michael Ireland. It appears in the magazine’s Fiction...
ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction Edited by Marissa Van Uden
ECO24, edited by Marissa van Uden, is the first annual collection of the year’s best speculative ecofiction. The anthology leans heavily toward grim, dystopian visions that expose environmental collapse, unequal responsibility, and the erosion of empathy. Through stories ranging from...
The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu
Kim Fu’s new novel, The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts, follows Eleanor Fan as she uses an inheritance to buy a dilapidated house in a rain‑soaked, terraformed valley. The story blends personal grief over her mother’s death with the broader anxieties...
The Inescapable March by Hana Carolina
Hana Carolina’s novella *The Inescapable March* traps warrior‑mage Arran and flamboyant actor Hyacinx in a magical time‑loop that forces them to relive a siege and their own deaths repeatedly. The story’s non‑linear structure—chapters that jump between “The End” and “The...
The House of Illusionists and Other Stories by Vanessa Fogg
Vanessa Fogg’s new collection, The House of Illusionists and Other Stories, compiles a decade’s worth of her speculative fiction, previously featured in venues such as Lightspeed and Podcastle. The stories are united by a preoccupation with tragic endings, collapsing societies,...
New Meat in a Clean Room Edited by Ira Rat
*New Meat in a Clean Room* is a tightly curated horror anthology edited by Ira Rat, featuring six stories that fuse post‑punk alienation, splatterpunk violence, and hauntological motifs. The collection’s aesthetic—sterile clean rooms turned filthy—serves as a metaphor for bodily...