Fantasy books

Fourth Wing

Rebecca Yarros · 2023

Violet Sorrengail spent her life expecting a quiet post among the archives. Instead her mother, the commanding general, orders her into the Riders Quadrant, where cadets compete to bond with dragons and the dragons incinerate anyone they reject. Violet is smaller and more breakable than the rest, and she has inherited her mother's enemies, chief among them Xaden Riorson, a wingleader with good reason to want her gone. Getting through the year takes her wits, a handful of allies and a willingness to look at what the college is really training its riders for. Beyond the walls the war keeps worsening and the wards that shield Navarre are failing, and the people in charge are keeping a secret that matters more than any cadet's survival.

Iron Flame

Rebecca Yarros · 2023

Violet survived her first year at Basgiath War College when almost nobody expected her to. The second year is built to break the survivors instead: harder training, worse injuries and a new vice commandant who wants her to prove how powerless she is by turning on the man she loves. Violet has two things he has not counted on, a mind that refuses to stop working and the stubbornness to match. What she also has now is the truth about what the college has hidden for centuries, and that knowledge is worth killing for. The war outside the walls has stopped being something cadets read about, and the people who have been lying to Navarre are running out of ways to keep it quiet.

Onyx Storm

Rebecca Yarros · 2025

Onyx Storm picks up the Empyrean series with Navarre, Poromiel and the newly freed province of Tyrrendor forced into an alliance against the venin, the magic-wielders whose advance nobody has been able to stop. Violet and Xaden leave the continent behind to search the southern isles for answers: more dragons of Andarna's kind, a possible cure for what Xaden is becoming, and any ally willing to stand with them. The journey turns up family history neither of them expected and costs the group more than they can afford. The third book of the Empyrean series trades the classroom for a wider war, and the choices made away from home are the ones that follow them back.

Fae and faerieFairytale retelling

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Sarah J. Maas · 2015

Huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods and a creature arrives at her door to demand payment for it. She is taken across the wall to a land of faeries she has only heard about in warnings, and into the keeping of Tamlin, a High Lord who rules the Spring Court. The hostility between them thaws into something neither of them planned, and Feyre learns how much of what she was told about the fae was a lie. Something older is loose in that country, though, and it is draining the courts of their power. The first book in the series sets up the bargain, the blight and the cost of saving a world that has already cost Feyre everything else.

A Court of Mist and Fury

Sarah J. Maas · 2016

Feyre came out of the events Under the Mountain with the powers and the lifespan of the High Fae and none of her old certainties intact. The bargain she struck with Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court, pulls her away from the Spring Court one week in every month, and those weeks show her a version of Prythian she was never allowed to see. Meanwhile the courts are drifting toward open war with Hybern, and Feyre's own gifts are stranger and stronger than the people around her are willing to admit. The second A Court of Thorns and Roses book is where the series shifts from a single bargain to a much wider conflict.

A Court of Wings and Ruin

Sarah J. Maas · 2017

The third A Court of Thorns and Roses book opens with Feyre back in the Spring Court, playing a role she has no intention of finishing. Holding it together means gathering intelligence on Tamlin while pretending to be exactly what he expects, and a single mistake would unravel everything she has built across the courts. Prythian is moving toward a war it is not ready for, and the alliances that decide it will not all be comfortable ones. Feyre has to work out which of the High Lords she can trust while preparing for a conflict that will reshape the whole of the faerie lands.

Fantasy romanceDark fantasy

Throne of Glass

Sarah J. Maas · 2012

Celaena Sardothien is pulled out of a salt mine to compete for a job she does not want. Win the king's tournament, and she serves as his champion for four years before earning her freedom. Lose, and she goes back to the mines, or dies on the way. The castle comes with its own problems, among them the crown prince who need not be provoked and the captain of the guard who keeps interfering on her behalf. Then the other competitors begin dying, one at a time, and Celaena's road out of Endovier becomes a matter of finding whatever is hunting in the palace before it reaches her.

Fae and faerieParanormal romance

House of Earth and Blood

Sarah J. Maas · 2020

Bryce Quinlan's life in Crescent City ends the night a demon kills the people closest to her. When the murders start again with someone else already imprisoned for them, Bryce joins the investigation on her own terms, and the Archangels hand her a partner with nothing left to lose either. Hunt Athalar is a Fallen angel bound into service, and the deal on offer is simple: find whoever is killing in the city and his freedom is back on the table. Working together means going through the parts of Crescent City that respectable people avoid, and it means both of them admitting what they want. The first Crescent City novel starts with a murder and opens out into the city's politics, its magic and its oldest grudges.

Vampire romanceFantasy romance

From Blood and Ash

Jennifer L. Armentrout · 2020

Poppy has been the Maiden for as long as she can remember, chosen at birth and kept apart from everyone. She is not to be touched, looked at or spoken to, and the life waiting for her is an Ascension she never got to choose. What she would rather do is train with the guards and fight the things that took her family. Then Hawke, a guard sworn to keep her safe until that day arrives, starts treating her like a person instead of an object, and the rules stop holding. The first Blood and Ash book is about a girl working out how much of her life was arranged for her, in a kingdom where the answers have teeth.

Vampire romanceFantasy romance

A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire

Jennifer L. Armentrout · 2020

Everything Poppy believed has been rewritten, including her feelings about the man who took her. She is surrounded by people who see her as a symbol rather than a person, and the one certainty she has left is that Casteel Da'Neer, the Prince of Atlantia, is the most dangerous thing in her life. He needs her alive and whole for his own plans, and she needs him to reach her brother and settle what has become of Ian. The second Blood and Ash book widens the map: Atlantia is waiting for its prince, factions inside it want Poppy gone, and the abilities she is only beginning to understand make her more valuable and more feared than she was before.

Vampire romanceFantasy romance

The Crown of Gilded Bones

Jennifer L. Armentrout · 2021

Poppy has the love she never expected and a great deal of unfinished business: Casteel's brother to free and her own to find. She also has a birthright she never asked for. The blood in her veins makes her the rightful ruler of Atlantia, which means a crown or a refusal, and neither option is quiet. Rival powers would rather she never took either, and older forces are moving back into play behind the courts. The third Blood and Ash novel pushes Poppy and Casteel past the borders they know, into the question of who has been running this conflict from the start and what it will cost to end it.

Vampire romanceDark fantasy

The Serpent and the Wings of Night

Carissa Broadbent · 2022

Oraya is human, the adopted daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, and tolerated rather than welcome in a world built to eat her. Her way out is the Kejari, a tournament run in the name of the goddess of death, where the prize is a favour from a god and the competition is the worst each vampire house can send. She has no chance of surviving it alone. Raihn is the one ally available to her, which raises a problem: he is a dangerous fighter, he is a direct threat to her father's throne, and he is the strongest rival in the field. The first Crowns of Nyaxia book is a contest where the only thing more dangerous than trusting the wrong person is wanting them to win.

Vampire romanceDark fantasy

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

Carissa Broadbent · 2023

The Kejari is over and almost nothing Oraya trusted survived it. She is a prisoner in the kingdom she was raised to inherit, grieving the only parent she had, and no longer certain what her own blood means. Raihn has the throne and a court that will not accept a Turned king who was once a slave. With the House of Blood pressing in from outside, his offer of a private alliance is the only route Oraya has to take her kingdom back and settle the betrayal she cannot forgive. Taking it means using an old and ruinous power tied to her father's secrets. The second Crowns of Nyaxia book is about what a person will trade for a crown, and who pays for it.

Historical fantasyFantasy romance

Divine Rivals

Rebecca Ross · 2023

Iris Winnow has the job she wanted at the Oath Gazette and nothing else in order. Her brother is missing at the front of a war between two gods, her mother is drinking through the grief, and the only place Iris can put any of it is in letters she writes to her brother's typewriter and leaves under her wardrobe door. The replies come from somebody else entirely, and in person her rival for the columnist post is Roman Kitt, who is cold, good at the job and impossible to like. The first Letters of Enchantment novel is a war story told through newspaper desks, enchanted typewriters and two people who do not know they are already writing to each other.

Historical fantasyFantasy romance

Ruthless Vows

Rebecca Ross · 2023

Iris comes home from the front with injuries and no idea where Roman is. Behind enemy lines, Roman has lost his memory and is writing for the other side, piecing together who he used to be by putting words on paper for a government he does not remember choosing. A letter arrives under his door, from an author who is familiar in a way he cannot place. The second Letters of Enchantment book keeps the two of them on opposite sides of the same war, with only the typewriters between them, each one writing towards somebody who may not be there when the fighting stops.

Epic fantasyFantasy romance

The Hurricane Wars

Thea Guanzon · 2023

Talasyn grew up in a nation under siege by the Night Empire and found her family among the soldiers fighting it. She is also carrying light magic, a power that is supposed to be extinct and which cuts straight through the empire's shadows. Prince Alaric has spent his life being shaped into his father's weapon, and he has never lost a battle until he faces her. When their powers meet they produce something neither of them understands, and both sides of the war want it. The first Hurricane Wars novel throws them into an alliance that neither trusts, in front of an enemy that is not the one they have been fighting.

Quicksilver

Callie Hart · 2024

Saeris Fane has two secrets: powers she does not advertise, and a sideline stealing from the Undying Queen's reservoirs. In the middle of a job she meets Death and reopens a gateway between realms, which lands her in a country of ice and snow where the fae turn out to be real. The first human to set foot there in a thousand years, she accidentally binds herself to Kingfisher, a warrior with his own plans for the alchemy she carries. He needs her magic to protect his people and is not especially concerned about what it costs her. The first Fae and Alchemy novel is a mortal thief, an immortal soldier and a bargain neither of them can walk away from.

Vampire romanceParanormal romance

Bride

Ali Hazelwood · 2024

Misery Lark is the daughter of the most powerful Vampyre on the Southwest council and has spent years living quietly among humans, which is the closest thing to freedom she has had. Now the council needs a marriage to hold its peace with the Weres, and Misery is the daughter it can spare. Lowe Moreland, the Alpha she is handed to, does not trust her for a second and tracks every move she makes in his territory. He has good instincts, because Misery has reasons of her own for agreeing to any of this, and they have nothing to do with politics. A standalone paranormal romance about a marriage of convenience between two people who each came into it to get something back.

Dark fantasyParanormal romance

Phantasma

Kaylie Smith · 2024

Ophelia's sister is gone, and the only way to bring her back is to win a wish. That means entering Phantasma, a contest staged inside a mansion that rearranges itself, where nine challenges get worse as the house gets to know you and only one contestant walks out with the prize. Ophelia is not equipped for it. What she has is an offer of help from Blackwell, a stranger who is charming, evasive and extremely good at reading her, and who wants ten years of her life in exchange for guiding her through. The first Phantasma book is a haunted-house tournament where the rules are clear and the man explaining them is not.

Myth retellingFantasy romance

A Fate Inked in Blood

Danielle L. Jensen · 2024

Freya guts fish for a living and is married to a man she would happily hit with an axe. She also carries a drop of a goddess's blood, which makes her a shield maiden whose magic can turn aside any attack, and which a prophecy says will unite the fractured nation of Skaland under whoever controls her fate. When her husband sells her out to the local jarl, that secret comes out in a fight she is not supposed to survive. The jarl binds her with a blood oath and sets his son, Bjorn, to guard her, which is awkward, because Bjorn is precisely the distraction she cannot afford. The first Saga of the Unfated novel is Norse-inspired, bloody and built on a bad bet.

Epic fantasyFantasy romance

The Bridge Kingdom

Danielle L. Jensen · 2019

Lara is a princess raised in secret and trained for one job: marry into the Bridge Kingdom and open it up from inside. The bridge is the only safe crossing in a storm-damaged world, and whoever holds it gets rich while everyone else goes without, including Lara's own people. She arrives as a bride and a spy, and King Aren turns out to be nothing like the enemy she was briefed on. As she learns how the bridge actually works and who it starves, the story she was raised on stops making sense. The first Bridge Kingdom novel is a slow-burn political romance about an assassin who has to decide which kingdom deserves to survive her.

When the Moon Hatched

Sarah A. Parker · 2024

Raeve works as an assassin for a rebellion and is good at not being caught, until a rival bounty hunter ruins her run and she ends up a prisoner of the fae who run the capital, kept alive as a message rather than a person. Kaan Vaegor took a king's head and wore the melted crown, and none of it filled the hole left by the person he lost. A rumour sends him into the city's high-security prison, where he finds Raeve, and something about her pulls at a history neither of them can fully see yet. The first Moonfall novel runs two damaged people along the same track, in a world where dead dragons hang in the sky as moons.

Witch and magicFantasy romance

Heartless Hunter

Kristen Ciccarelli · 2024

After a revolution that took witches from rulers to hunted, Rune spends her days playing the empty-headed socialite and her nights as the Crimson Moth, smuggling other witches out of the republic. When a rescue goes bad, she decides the safest place to hide is right under the nose of Gideon Sharpe, the revolution's most implacable witch hunter, by courting him in public. Gideon despises everything Rune pretends to be, then discovers the cargo hidden in her family's merchant ships, and decides the best way to catch the Moth is to court her back and watch. The first Crimson Moth novel pairs two people running the same con from opposite ends, each increasingly sure the other is the villain they are looking for.

Fantasy romanceEpic fantasy

Powerless

Lauren Roberts · 2023

In Ilya the Elites hold the powers the Plague left behind, and the Ordinary are not welcome. Being born without an ability has been a crime since the king ordered the Ordinary out, which makes Paedyn Gray a criminal by accident and a thief by necessity. She survives by passing as a Psychic, reading people carefully enough that nobody asks the obvious question. Then she saves a prince without knowing who he is, and he pulls her into the Purging Trials, a competition designed to show off the powers she does not have. The first Powerless novel is a contest she cannot survive honestly, next to a prince she cannot afford to want.

Fantasy romanceEpic fantasy

Reckless

Lauren Roberts · 2024

Paedyn survived the Purging Trials, killed the king and set the country alight. Now she is running, and the person chasing her is Kai Azer, the young king's new Enforcer and the one she would rather not be running from. His orders are straightforward: find her, bring her back, do what the crown requires. The trail takes them across the Scorches and into Dor, a city with no Elites left and no reason to respect either of them. The second Powerless novel keeps the hunter and the hunted moving in the same direction and lets the distance between duty and what they want shrink to nothing.

Fairytale retellingFae and faerie

Once Upon a Broken Heart

Stephanie Garber · 2021

Evangeline Fox has believed in true love and happy endings for as long as she can remember, right up until the person she loves announces he is marrying someone else. To stop the wedding she strikes a bargain with the Prince of Hearts, an immortal with a reputation for cruelty and a smile that does most of the work. The price he names is three kisses, to be given when and where he chooses. After the first one, Evangeline understands that she has badly miscalculated, and that the Prince of Hearts intends to take far more from her than she agreed to. The first Once Upon a Broken Heart novel is a fairytale bargain set in a north that punishes people for hoping.

Fairytale retellingFae and faerie

The Ballad of Never After

Stephanie Garber · 2022

Evangeline Fox is back in a partnership she had every reason to walk away from, because a curse has been set loose and the only way to break it runs through the Prince of Hearts. Their road goes through magic, lost stories and worse company, and neither of them is honest about why they keep going. The second Once Upon a Broken Heart novel takes the bargain out of the first book's wedding and turns it into a journey, where the question is not whether the curse can be lifted but whether either of them can be trusted with the answer. It ends on a choice that the third book has to live with.

Fairytale retellingFae and faerie

A Curse for True Love

Stephanie Garber · 2023

Evangeline appears to have got the ending she was promised: a husband, a castle in the Magnificent North and a story that everybody else recognises. What she does not have is any memory of how she got there, or what it cost her. Her husband would prefer it stayed that way, and the first item on his list is killing the Prince of Hearts. The third and final Once Upon a Broken Heart novel pays off every bargain made across the trilogy, and asks what is left of true love once it has been used as currency by everyone holding it.

Fantasy romanceFairytale retelling

Caraval

Stephanie Garber · 2017

Scarlett Dragna has spent her life on a small island under her father's control, saving up every story she has heard about Caraval, the once-a-year performance where the audience takes part. The invitation finally arrives, her sister Tella gets her off the island, and then Tella vanishes. This year's Caraval is built around her, and whoever finds her first wins. Scarlett is told that nothing in the game is real, that nobody is hurt, and that the sailor who carried her across the water is not to be trusted. She has five nights to work out which parts of that are true. The first Caraval novel is a romance wrapped inside a game of misdirection.

Witch and magicParanormal romance

Kingdom of the Wicked

Kerri Maniscalco · 2020

Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe, witches who live quietly among humans and keep their magic out of sight. They work at the family's Sicilian restaurant, and one night Vittoria does not come back for her shift. Emilia finds her sister's body, and what was done to it is worse than the murder itself. Grief turns into something she can act on: she will find whoever did this and make them pay, whatever the price turns out to be. The price, as it happens, is forbidden magic, a summoning that answers, and the attention of a prince of Hell who has his own interest in the family. The first Kingdom of the Wicked novel is a revenge story with a demonic bargain at its centre.

Witch and magicHistorical fantasy

Serpent & Dove

Shelby Mahurin · 2019

Louise Le Blanc ran from her coven two years ago and survives in the city of Cesarine by stealing whatever she can and using no magic at all, because witches in Cesarine are hunted, feared and burned. Reid Diggory is a Chasseur sworn to the Church, and his life has been built on one rule: a witch does not get to live. Neither of them meant to meet. One badly chosen stunt leaves the two of them bound to each other in a marriage the Church cannot easily undo, in a city where Lou's real enemies are already looking for her. The first Serpent & Dove novel puts a witch and a witch hunter in the same house and lets the arithmetic do the rest.

Fantasy romanceDark fantasy

The Shadows Between Us

Tricia Levenseller · 2020

Alessandra has a plan. Win the Shadow King's attention, marry him, kill him, and keep the kingdom. Nobody knows how much power the newly crowned king really has, or whether the shadows that move around him are working for him or reporting on him, and Alessandra does not much care either way. What she did not plan for is the number of other people who want him dead, which turns keeping him alive into a problem she has to solve personally. The Shadows Between Us is a standalone with a heroine who is the most dangerous person in the room, a king who knows it, and two people who are better suited than either would admit.

Myth retellingParanormal romance

A Touch of Darkness

Scarlett St. Clair · 2019

Persephone is the Goddess of Spring in title only, because plants have died under her hands since she was a child. She moves to New Athens to work as a journalist and keep her head down, and loses that plan in a single night at a card table in a club she had no business entering. Hades runs the god of the dead's business in the mortal world as a gambling empire, and his favourite bets are the ones nobody can win. What he offers Persephone is a contract: create life in the Underworld, or lose her freedom with it. The first Hades x Persephone novel is a modern myth retelling built on a bargain that both of them expect to regret.

Myth retellingParanormal romance

Neon Gods

Katee Robert · 2021

Persephone Dimitriou has spent years being useful to the Thirteen Houses that run the city of Olympus, and one evening her mother announces that she is to marry Zeus. Instead of accepting it, Persephone crosses the river into the undercity and makes a bargain with a man she had always assumed was a myth. Hades has kept out of Olympus politics for years and has his own reasons to want the city's order disturbed; Persephone is exactly the leverage he needs, and the arrangement suits them both until it stops being an arrangement. The first Dark Olympus novel is a modern Hades and Persephone retelling where the power struggle is the setting and the romance is the point.

The Cruel Prince

Holly Black · 2018

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her sisters were taken to live in the High Court of Faerie. Ten years later she wants to belong there, despite being mortal and surrounded by fae who would rather she did not exist at all. Prince Cardan, the youngest and least pleasant of the High King's sons, takes every opportunity to make that clear. To win a place at court Jude has to defy him, and in doing so finds out how much of Faerie's scheming she is naturally good at. The first Folk of the Air novel is a mortal girl working out exactly how much damage she is prepared to do.

The Wicked King

Holly Black · 2019

Jude has bound Cardan to her and installed herself behind the throne, which means she now has to hold a court that would happily see her removed from it. Cardan makes the job as difficult as he can, humiliating her in public while being unable to leave her alone in private. Somewhere close to her is somebody working against her, and working out who it is means trusting almost nobody in Faerie. The second Folk of the Air novel is a court thriller in which the mortal in the room is the one giving the orders, and is starting to enjoy it more than is good for her.

Dark fantasyHistorical fantasy

Belladonna

Adalyn Grace · 2022

Signa was orphaned as a baby and raised by a succession of guardians who cared more about her inheritance than about her, and every one of them has died. Her last living relatives are the Hawthornes, an eccentric family at Thorn Grove, an estate that is both glittering and gloomy. The patriarch is drinking his way through his grief, his son is fighting for what is left of the family's reputation, and his daughter is ill in a way no doctor can name. When the children's dead mother appears to Signa insisting that she was poisoned, Signa starts asking questions in a house that would rather she did not. The first Belladonna novel is a gothic mystery where the heroine's unwanted gift for death is the only reason anyone gets an answer.

Witch and magicDark fantasy

Sorcery of Thorns

Margaret Rogerson · 2019

Elisabeth was left at one of Austermeer's Great Libraries as a foundling and has grown up among the grimoires kept there, books that whisper on the shelves, rattle their chains and turn into monsters of ink and leather when something provokes them. She wants to train as a warden, one of the people who keep those books and the kingdom safe from each other. Everybody knows that sorcerers are evil, and that the libraries exist because of the things they made. Elisabeth's certainty holds right up until a volume is destroyed under circumstances that point at her, and the only person offering to help is a sorcerer. Sorcery of Thorns is a standalone about a girl who has learned a rule and then met the exception to it.

Fantasy romanceHistorical fantasy

The Night Circus

Erin Morgenstern · 2011

Le Cirque des Rêves appears without warning, opens only at night and leaves as quietly as it came. Inside its black-and-white tents the audience sees astonishing things; behind them, two magicians are playing a game that only one of them can finish. Celia and Marco were trained from childhood by rival instructors for exactly this contest, and neither was given the choice to decline. The circus was built as their board, and the performers and regular visitors caught up in it are as invested in the result as the players are. The Night Circus is a standalone told out of order, a slow assembly of tents, performers and a duel that turns into something neither of them was taught to expect.

Dragon fantasyEpic fantasy

The Priory of the Orange Tree

Samantha Shannon · 2019

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years, and the arrangement depends on Queen Sabran producing a daughter. She is still unmarried, the assassins are getting closer, and the truce that keeps the world intact is thinner than the court admits. Ead Duryan is a lady-in-waiting whose real loyalty belongs to a hidden order of mages, and she has been quietly using forbidden magic to keep the queen alive. Far across the sea, Tané has trained her entire life to ride a dragon and is one decision away from losing that future. The east and west have stopped talking, and the thing they were both built to guard against is beginning to wake. The Priory of the Orange Tree is a standalone epic told from several sides of the same story.

Witch and magicParanormal romance

A Discovery of Witches

Deborah Harkness · 2011

Diana Bishop is a historian who has spent years keeping her own magic at arm's length, and a witch by lineage whether she likes it or not. Working late in the Bodleian Library she calls up an alchemical manuscript that half the supernatural world has been hunting, and every creature in Oxford notices. Among them is Matthew Clairmont, a vampire geneticist who is at least as interested in Diana as he is in the book. Working out what the manuscript is draws them closer together, and the closer they get the more obvious it becomes that they are crossing a line that has consequences. The first All Souls novel is part history, part research and part courtship, in a world where witches, daemons and vampires have coexisted under an old and thinning truce.

Vampire romanceParanormal romance

Twilight

Stephenie Meyer · 2005

Bella Swan moves to Forks to live with her father and expects rain, not the Cullens. Edward is strange in ways she cannot stop cataloguing: the cold skin, the speed, the eyes that change colour, the fact that the entire family keeps to itself. Working out what he is turns out to be the easier problem. The harder one is that being close to him puts everyone else in Bella's life in danger, and that neither of them seems capable of walking away from the other. Twilight is the book that made the modern vampire romance unavoidable, and underneath the folklore it is a small-town love story with something genuinely hungry in it.

Fantasy romanceEpic fantasy

A Dawn of Onyx

Kate Golden · 2022

Arwen Valondale offers herself up to save her brother and ends the day a prisoner of the Onyx Kingdom, the most feared power on the continent. The king wants her rare magic put to work healing his soldiers, and Arwen can do it, which is precisely why she does not want to. Getting out means crossing the woods around the castle, which nobody sensible enters alone, so her best option is another prisoner who is clever, infuriating and very good at finding the things that frighten her. The first Sacred Stones novel sets its politics around a captive healer, a kingdom that runs on war, and a power inside her that has not woken up yet.

Myth retellingFantasy romance

This Woven Kingdom

Tahereh Mafi · 2022

Alizeh is a servant, treated as disposable by everyone around her, and that is exactly how she has stayed alive. She is also the last heir of an ancient Jinn kingdom, hiding in plain sight because the people who destroyed her family would finish the job if they found her. Crown Prince Kamran has spent his life hearing prophecies about the death of his king and has never imagined they could involve the strange-eyed girl working in his palace, the one he cannot stop thinking about. The first This Woven Kingdom novel follows a girl with almost nothing left to protect and a prince who works out far too late what he has been looking at.

Fairytale retellingFantasy romance

To Kill a Kingdom

Alexandra Christo · 2018

Lira is siren royalty and the most dangerous of her kind, with the hearts of seventeen princes to prove it. When she kills one of her own, the Sea Queen punishes her by turning her human and stripping away her song, then sets the terms: bring back Prince Elian's heart by the winter solstice, or stay like this forever. Elian spends as little time on land as he can and hunts sirens for a living. When he pulls Lira out of the water, neither of them says who they are, and both of them start wanting to. To Kill a Kingdom is a standalone retelling of the little mermaid with a great deal more killing in it.

Vampire romanceParanormal romance

Crave

Tracy Wolff · 2020

Grace comes to an isolated academy in Alaska after losing both parents, and finds a school that is not the one it advertises. The students belong to factions, none of them human, and every one of them dislikes the new arrival on principle. Then there is Jaxon Vega, a vampire who has kept himself sealed off for a century and has a reason for it, which Grace recognises because it matches the one she is carrying. The first Crave novel is a gothic boarding-school romance where the students are monsters, nobody has written the rules down, and being noticed is the dangerous part.

Cozy fantasyWitch and magic

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

Sangu Mandanna · 2022

Mika Moon is a witch who has spent her life moving on, keeping her magic hidden and her distance intact, because the witches in her family have a habit of dying young. To share a little of what she loves she posts videos playing the owner of a magic teashop, and one of those videos reaches a man who needs exactly what she can do. Three young witches are being raised at a house called Nowhere House by adults with no magic between them, and a lawyer's visit in six weeks will expose all of it unless the children learn to control themselves. Mika takes the job. The household turns out to be warm in a way she has never experienced, with one exception: Jamie, the librarian, has no interest in a stranger living in his home.