This month’s list comes to you from smoky orange skies and toxic lettuce, so what better time to distract ourselves with haunted seaside villages, mysterious salt pillars, and demon hunters? Robert Jackson Bennett’s fantasy detectives are on a new case, while new mothers fight to save their realm in Laura E. Weymouth’s latest fantasy. Meanwhile, Suyi Davies Okungbowa brings his Nameless Republic trilogy to an end, while C.L. Clark bides their time between epic series with another novella that packs so many punches into a tiny package. And don’t miss K.S. Shay’s debut Portrait of a Witch Undone from our 2026 SFF preview!
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Laura E. Weymouth, The Castle & the Cloister
(Saga Press, August 4)
Craving expansive fantasy in which women cross social boundaries to form bonds through shared trials and pledge loyalty when worlds wobble? The tale follows Fia, a young mother who serves as a postulant to Honoria’s sun goddess Raea. Her test is a three-day mission to carry a message to Honoria’s queen, after which she would be free to return to her infant under protection. Upon arrival at the royal court, she discovers Queen Ariana recovering from a difficult birth, and the two women—bonded by their history as battlefield nurses—agree that Fia will become Ariana’s wet nurse. Yet the stability of Honoria is threatened as Ariana’s husband presses his claim against the Inver invaders. And looming over it all is an Inver Priest quietly scheming from within a mountain…
Kim Bo-Young (translated by Sophie Bowman), A Plagued Sea
(Tor Nightfire, August 11)
The English rendering of Kim Bo-Young’s taut novella relocates a well-known Lovecraftian premise to Korea: a remote coastal town battered by an earthquake, and the uncanny changes that follow in the wake of the disaster. Bodyguard Mu-young finds herself trapped in Haewon Village when she insists on escorting her niece there; three years pass, the girl is gone, and Mu-young is forced into a quiet guard duty—keeping the island’s quarantine against sea-born horrors. When a bureaucrat from Seoul arrives, stubbornly ignoring warnings to steer clear of contagion, Mu-young must decide whom she is truly meant to shield.
Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Season of the Serpent
(Orbit Books, August 11)
As the Nameless Republic — a West African-inspired setting — nears the end of its sprawling arc, Suyi Davies Okungbowa speaks to readers about why epic fantasy persists: a place where magic collides with mayhem, wonder collides with monsters, and order collides with chaos. With the Third Great War looming, the fates of the trio first introduced in Son of the Storm—Danso, a scholar drawn into the fires of war; Lilong, a frontline fighter seeking her reclaimed magic; and Esheme, a fixer flirting with dangerous destinies—are sealed in a continent poised for upheaval. Oon stands on the threshold of a new era, where relationships among these figures might reshape the entire land.
Robert Jackson Bennett, A Trade of Blood
(Del Rey, August 11)
It’s been a while since literature has offered a continuing SFF arc that refuses to end with a single trilogy, and the third installment—far from the last—of Robert Jackson Bennett’s Shadow of the Leviathan keeps up the momentum. Detectives Ana and Din set out to probe what seems like a straightforward homicide of a noblewoman, only to uncover a much more intricate web: the victim and her lover belonged to rival clans; the accused appears to be the killer, yet Din’s enhanced perception hints that some of the crime was staged after the fact; and soon the killer’s siblings begin to vanish one by one.
Natasha Pulley, The Salt King
(Bloomsbury, August 18)
A priest suddenly becomes a pillar of salt, but is this a sign from scripture or a warning of forthcoming calamity? Natasha Pulley’s kaleidoscopic novel follows a Vatican priest who returns to the mining town of his youth to confront the cult surrounding the titular Salt King. Simultaneously, eerie salt-related phenomena surface at mining sites across the globe, building toward a reckoning on a planetary scale. Pulley deftly balances grand stakes with tender, growing romances and ties between unlikely allies flung together by the extraordinary.
Chuck Wendig, The Calamities
(Del Rey, August 18)
Chuck Wendig’s new horror-fantasy duology answers a provocative question: what if the wealthiest families who pull the strings on the world were literally demonic? With echoes of Leigh Bardugo, Clive Barker, The Library at Mount Char, and Evil, the opening volume of The Fiends follows Mourning Mayne, a squandered heir whose father summons him to return home and embrace a dark inheritance. Yet the Maynes’ empire rests on trafficking human souls, forcing Mourning to decide where his true loyalties lie amid a system built on such a horror.
C.L. Clark, Fortune’s Wake
(Grimdark Magazine, August 24)
Sapphic beastslayers? More like a tight, grimdark tale wrapped into a novella—with the author noting it unfolds over a single, brutal afternoon for a rookie warrior. Kova of Stormwatch leaves behind her mother and beloved to study under the legendary Sayre Boarbane… only to have Sayre seize the opportunity to drag her straight back home. Yet Kova soon discovers her beloved has begun a new relationship, one that may tie to the monsters pulling Stormwatch’s people toward the sea. It looks like Kova will finally get a chunk of that adventurous life she’s been craving.
