This Week in Fantasy and Science Fiction: 10 Books Releasing October 19–25

Mark Lawrence and Susanna Clarke return to familiar worlds this week, Katee Robert launches a new fantasy series, and Alix E. Harrow collects her short fiction. Our ten picks for October 19–25 also include a new print edition of The Wandering Inn, a near-future family story and a ghost-hunting Ebenezer Scrooge.

All ten books below have US release dates of October 20, 2026. The list includes novels, short fiction and new editions, with those distinctions noted so you can find the right book for your shelf. You can also catch up on last week’s new releases.

1. The Bookshop Book by Mark Lawrence

Release date: October 20, 2026

Mark Lawrence returns to the world of the Library Trilogy with a shorter, standalone story about a bookshop and the people caught between its pages.

The Red Archer enters a shop where books can open into other lives. Among them is Rose Penrose, who has spent her life inside a book her mother wrote. Their paths meet as Rose tries to escape the story that has contained her. For readers who enjoyed the trilogy’s shifting boundaries between books and reality, this offers another way into that world.

2. The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City by Susanna Clarke

Release date: October 20, 2026

Susanna Clarke takes readers back to the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, seven centuries before that novel. A fairy invasion has surrounded Durham with trees, and Bishop Ranulf heads to New Castle to negotiate with the young Raven King. Saving the city is only part of his concern; he would quite like to protect himself, too.

This is an illustrated short story, rather than a new full-length novel, with a much earlier England and its uneasy relationship with magic at the center.

3. Fae and Fare by pirateaba

Release date: October 20, 2026

The Wandering Inn continues its print release with Fae and Fare, the first part of Book Two.

Erin Solstice is trying to keep her inn running as winter brings a fresh set of magical problems, while courier Ryoka Griffin faces dangers of her own. The appeal remains the combination of everyday work, friendships and an increasingly complicated fantasy world.

4. The Tarot Trials by Katee Robert

Release date: October 20, 2026

Kestrel has spent her life preparing for the Tarot Trials. Her mother once won a place among the five rulers known as the Cinque, then was executed for alleged treason. Now Kestrel enters the competition as Champion of the Moon, armed with powers of shadow and illusion and questions about her mother’s death. Learning whom to trust may be as dangerous as the trials themselves. Katee Robert’s new fantasy series combines a deadly contest with court politics, shifting alliances and tarot-based magic.

5. The Slantwise Histories: Collected Stories by Alix E. Harrow

Release date: October 20, 2026

Alix E. Harrow gathers her short fiction in a collection that includes the Hugo-winning A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies. The Six Deaths of the Saint and The Knight and the Butcherbird are also included, alongside five new stories and the author’s preferred versions of earlier work. These stories move through altered histories, strange places and encounters with ghosts. It is a substantial collection for readers who know Harrow through her novels and want to explore her shorter work.

6. Goblin Market by A. J. Hackwith

Release date: October 20, 2026

Toast is a changeling who was eventually returned to her goblin parents. These days, she guides mortals through a market where memories and talents can become currency. When her human sister returns and the ancient beast that sustains the market disappears, Toast has more to worry about than difficult customers. The Summer Court has its own plans for the place. A. J. Hackwith’s fantasy follows a goblin trying to save her home while dealing with the human family she thought she had left behind.

7. Stellar Smoke by Tanaïs

Release date: October 20, 2026

Qamar returns to the island ashram where she grew up after a breakup and a difficult stretch in her music career. She hopes to reconnect with her estranged mother, Veda, but finds that she has disappeared. An artificial intelligence called VEDA offers a different route into her life and the family’s history. Set in the near future, Tanaïs’s novel brings technology into an intimate story about memory, inheritance and the gaps between the people we know and the lives they have kept from us.

8. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2026, edited by Olivie Blake and John Joseph Adams

Release date: October 20, 2026

Guest editor Olivie Blake joins series editor John Joseph Adams for this year’s selection of twenty science fiction and fantasy stories. The annual anthology draws on work published during the previous year, making it a useful way to sample writers and magazines you may have missed. Its settings and premises range from a sentient spaceship carrying frozen embryos to a magical university and a tailor who works with memories. Readers looking for several different kinds of speculative fiction will find them in one volume.

9. Ebenezer Scrooge: Ghost Hunter by J. S. Barnes

Release date: October 20, 2026

Seven years after the events of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge has found another use for his experience with ghosts. Alongside his charitable work, he investigates hauntings with Captain Ambrose. A request from Louisa Fell brings the pair to her ancestral home in eastern England, where a new supernatural mystery awaits. J. S. Barnes takes Dickens’s reformed miser into a gothic investigation, giving a familiar character a different sort of ghost story to contend with.

10. The Unsolvable Case by Courtney Smyth

Release date: October 20, 2026

The Undetectables reach their final case just three days before Samhain. Mallory, Diana and Cornelia are investigating a copycat killer, while their ghostly colleague Theodore is on the run after the agency’s last case. The danger extends beyond the detective agency to the wider magical community. Courtney Smyth’s fourth Undetectables book closes the series with another supernatural murder mystery. This is its US publication week; the UK edition arrived in September.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.