Best Fantasy Books

A new Grishaverse story from Leigh Bardugo, releasing June 30, 2026. Set after Crooked Kingdom, A Darker Shore is a mystery told through found documents from Ketterdam, with illustrations, original music, and in-world collectible items.

Victoria Aveyard's adult fantasy debut, releasing September 8, 2026. Tempest is the first book of the Lyrian Sea duology — a romantic, pirate-flavored epic billed as the Red Queen author's most romantic book yet.

Wax and Wayne pursue the legendary Bands of Mourning — a set of metalminds said to grant any user the full power of the Lord Ruler — leading them into uncharted lands and the revelation of a hidden civilization.

Roland the Gunslinger, wounded and feverish on a beach between worlds, must draw three companions from our world through mysterious doors: Eddie Dean, a heroin addict from 1987 New York; Odetta Holmes, a woman with a fractured personality; and Jack Mort, a serial killer whose removal from his world has unforeseen consequences.

Roland's ka-tet journeys through a decaying post-apocalyptic landscape toward the city of Lud, where a murderous computer named Blaine the Mono issues riddles to all who would ride him out of the dying city. Jake Chambers returns to the group, but his paradoxical existence threatens to destroy Roland's mind.

After resolving the Blaine cliffhanger, Roland tells his ka-tet the story of his first quest at fourteen: his love affair with Susan Delgado in the town of Hambry, and the betrayal that shaped everything he became. A 600-page flashback that is simultaneously the longest and most essential Dark Tower novel.

Maia, the half-goblin, despised youngest son of the elvish emperor, wakes one morning to learn that his father and all three of his elder brothers have been killed in an airship accident — making him, utterly unprepared, the new emperor of the Elflands.

Nobody Owens was raised by ghosts in a graveyard after the murder of his family. Growing up among the dead, learning their ways and secrets, Bod must eventually reckon with the world of the living — and the man who killed his family is still out there, waiting. A coming-of-age story set among the most protective community imaginable.

Thor's hammer has gone missing, and only Magnus Chase and his friends can recover it before the giants invade. Rick Riordan's second Norse adventure is funnier, faster, and bolder than the first, introducing a groundbreaking new hero along the way.

Three days. One hill called the Heroes. Two armies trying to take it. Abercrombie compresses an entire war into a single brutal engagement, following soldiers on both sides as they fight, scheme, and die. A standalone novel set in the First Law world that is less interested in victory than in the human cost of the pointless fights that constitute war.

The finale of the Wax and Wayne series pits Elendel against an existential threat while the Cosmere's larger machinations come into direct contact with the Scadrian world for the first time.

The Vivacia has been taken by the pirate Kennit, Althea and Brashen are fitting out the mad liveship Paragon to pursue her, and in Jamaillia the political situation threatens to destroy the Bingtown Traders' way of life entirely. The middle volume of the trilogy deepens every character and storyline, and Kennit's chapters represent some of Hobb's most complex and demanding writing.

In 1893 New Salem, three estranged sisters — Juniper, Agnes, and Bella Eastwood — are reunited and discover they carry the last remnants of old witchcraft. Their reunion coincides with the rise of the suffragist movement, and the question of who gets to claim power — and how — becomes urgent and dangerous.

Percy Jackson wakes up with no memory at a Roman demigod camp. With new friends Hazel Levesque and Frank Zhang — both carrying heavy secrets — Percy must journey to Alaska to free the god of death and stop a giant army from destroying Camp Jupiter.

The new dark romantasy from Raven Kennedy, bestselling author of the Plated Prisoner series, releasing September 22, 2026. The Sweetest Fiend opens Played by the Piper, a fae-magic, captive-romance reimagining inspired by the Pied Piper.

The Union's industrial revolution has created a class of newly dispossessed workers whose anger is being channelled toward violence. The old powers — the banking houses, the Inquisition, the magi — are trying to control events and failing. The Age of Madness trilogy's middle volume watches everything Abercrombie built in A Little Hatred begin to collapse.

Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, along with their insufferable cousin Eustace Scrubb, are pulled into a painting of a ship and join King Caspian's voyage to the edge of the world.

Perrin Aybara finally confronts the Prophet of the Dragon while Mat Cauthon prepares a desperate mission to rescue Moiraine from the Aelfinn and Eelfinn. The Last Battle draws close as every major character moves into their final position.

Three Discworld witches — the formidable Granny Weatherwax, the cheerfully bawdy Nanny Ogg, and the romantically-inclined Magrat Garlick — find themselves entangled in a political murder. A king has been killed, the heir spirited away, and the witches are drawn into a plot that echoes Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear simultaneously.

Yumi is a yoki-hijo on a world of geothermal heat, summoning spirits through elaborate rituals. Painter is an artist on a world of perpetual darkness, holding back nightmare creatures with his brush. When their lives inexplicably intersect, each must learn from the other while solving the mystery of their connection.

As the Vega twins strengthen their powers and their alliances, darker forces move against Solaria — and the cost of the throne they were born to claim becomes terrifyingly clear.

The Vega twins face their most dangerous challenges yet as the threat from the Shadow Beast grows and the complicated feelings between the twins and the Heirs can no longer be ignored.

Four months after the events of the first book, Kell is trapped in Red London, confined by King Maxim after the near-catastrophe of the black stone. Lila Bard is somewhere on the seas, pursuing her own ambitions. When the Essen Tasch — a magical tournament held every four years — draws competitors from all three Londons, their paths converge again.

Simon Snow is the Chosen One at the Watford School of Magicks — and also the worst student in the school's history. His roommate and nemesis Baz is a vampire who has been missing all term. When Baz returns, the quest to defeat the Insidious Humdrum collides with feelings Simon has been trying to ignore. A deliberate and affectionate riff on the Harry Potter archetype.