Octavia Butler’s classic series, originally published in the 1990s, consists of Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Eerily (for contemporary readers), it begins in what was once the near-future for Butler but is now our present moment. It’s a dystopian work where the double whammy of global climate disaster and economic crisis results in the destruction of the small community protagonist Lauren grew up in. When the duology begins, Lauren is 15 years old and living with a condition called “hyperemphathy” (yup, empathy as disability — sooo many metaphors there). When her family and their community is torn asunder, Lauren demonstrates her survival and her innate and powerful leadership skills. The journey she takes is one that will have you thinking about race, class, ability, and (perhaps most importantly of all) empathy. While racism isn’t the primary focus of this duology, it’s a consistent part of the background and has important implications for the very real moment we’re living through right now.

Alright, so I’m not entirely certain I should be calling this one a series. After all, Will Do Magic for Small Change was published five years after Redwood and Wildfire and nobody seems to be talking about the two books as a set. However, where Redwood and Wildfire follows Redwood, a Black American woman, and Aidan, her male Seminole Irish performing partner, as they perform their way from Georgia to Chicago, Will Do Magic for Small Change catches up with their granddaughter Cinnamon Jones. She’s no performer, but she’s a fascinating character in a book that dives head first into violence, racism, gender, sexuality, and more. Will Do Magic is one of the most refreshing, original reads I’ve encountered in a while, not in the least because of the transatlantic links Hairston forges between Cinnamon’s life in Pittsburgh and the history of an alien called the Wanderer who appeared in West Africa in the late 1800s.

The Marrow Thieves and Hunting By Stars comprise Cherie Dimaline’s spellbinding YA series (although I hope there are are more books to come). The premise is disturbing and memorable: humankind has lost the ability to dream, with the exception of Indigenous people. The result: the Recruiters hunt Indigenous people, imprison them, and harvest their bone marrow (hence the title)…among other things. Frenchie, the young Métis protagonist, is navigating life in this dystopian landscape, wherein North America has also been ravaged by climate change. As the series unfolds, the connections between Dimaline’s SFF world and histories of settler colonial violence are undeniable.

There’s no way to do N.K. Jemisin’s multiple award–winning trilogy justice in a blurb, I’m just gonna warn you. This series was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement as well as reservation/boarding school histories of Indigenous peoples in Australia and elsewhere. In an interview with WIRED Magazine, Jemisin said the series “is, in a lot of ways, my processing the systemic racism that I live with, and see, and am trying to come to terms with.” That interest in power and systems of oppression is evident throughout the series, in which orogenes (those with the power to help control the geological instability plaguing future-Earth) are removed to a “school” called the Fulcrum where they are trained to use their powers to serve the government. Jemisin’s exploration of the intricacies of how oppression operates is one that has stuck with me far more vividly than many texts that don’t engage with SFF to explore power, racism, and oppression. And there’s a reason this series got so much critical acclaim — it’s ridiculously well written, richly conceived, and powerfully dynamic.

Don’t let the name fool you: Marie Lu’s Legend Trilogy is a four-book YA series. The first three books were published between 2011 and 2013, but in 2019 she published Rebel to bring the series up to date with political happenings. The series most obviously deals with class in its dystopian U.S. setting, but there’s a lot in there that touches on race, too (even if some of it is pretty subtle). Legend introduces readers to wealthy soon-to-be soldier June and slum-dwelling criminal (if you consider a Robin Hood figure “criminal”) Day, young teens from different walks of life in the Republic. As you might imagine, their storylines collide and there’s danger, desperation, romantic tension, and adventure. Prodigy and Champion follow the pair of teens as they navigate dangerous politics, bodily harm, and threats to their (remaining) family. Good thing Lu penned Rebel, because the original trilogy didn’t offer much by way of a conclusion. It shifts the narrative to Day’s younger brother, Eden, years in the future. Interestingly, the fourth book is set in Antarctica despite being inspired by the 2016 presidential elections and exploring “the systematic oppression of the lowest classes, who are unable to raise their status because of the lack of resources available to them.”

This YA urban fantasy series opens with Sierra planning the mural she wants to pain on a building near her home in Brooklyn. Unfortunately for her, shadowshapers (all manner of undead creatures and ghosts) descend upon the city and Sierra has to use her art to combat them. She ends up playing an important leading role in her Nuyorican community, and the subsequent books get more explicitly into the dangers Black and Brown youth face in the contemporary world. As a bonus, if you like this trilogy then you’ll be happy to know there are two additional novellas that follow characters in the same story world: Ghost Girl in the Corner and Dead Light March.

Fair warning: if you pick up The Grace of Kings (book one of Liu’s four-book Dandelion Dynasty), you’re in it for the long haul since the series weighs in at something in the realm of 3,600 pages. I’ll say this, though: it’s 100% worth it. The books each have their own distinct perspective (sometimes presenting narratives that directly contradict or challenge those from previous books), which makes sense when you consider Liu’s concept of a “silkpunk aesthetic” involved developing a “narrative structure built with elements adopted from both the Western and Chinese literary traditions.” Additionally, it demanded a lot of thought around what the world might look like “and what sort of Orientalizing pitfalls had to be avoided to thwart the expectations of the dominant Western interpretive framework.” In other words, Liu sought to develop an aesthetic for his saga that would challenge racism in literary aesthetics and readerly expectations alike. The result is incredible.

I had to list No Gods, No Monsters even though it’s the first book of a projected series and none of the others have been published at the time of this article. It’s just such a timely book. It takes a good, long look at racist violence. It kicks off with Laina struggling with grief over her brother’s death at the hands of a police officer. When a mysterious stranger provides her with footage of the shooting — footage that also reveals her brother’s ability to shapeshift — she puts it online. Things spiral from there, as you might imagine. But the resultant story is a powerful one that touches on racism and its many ripple effects (plus, you know, real monsters and secret societies and stuff).

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is best known for her landmark book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and Not a Nation of Immigrants is important reading that looks not only at history but also at the power of the stories we tell. Dunbar-Ortiz challenges the settler-colonial narrative of the U.S. as a nation of immigrants, examining the roots and repercussions of this myth. In so doing, she taps into concurrent discussions about narratives of “progress” and imperialism.

This book is a collection of written and visual art, which makes it a really accessible entry point into thinking about LGBTQIA+ identity as it connects with mental and emotional wellbeing. It’s a uniquely formatted book featuring almost 40 different pieces by queer artists which traverse subject matter ranging from the mental health industry (both positive and negative) to religion and classical mythology to navigating public spaces. Suffice it to say, the diverse array of voices represented in this collection get at the depth and complexity of LGBTQIA+ experiences from a multitude of angles.

I love this book for its powerful essays that reframe the story the U.S. tells about itself and also for its inclusion of creative works that intersperse the critical essays. The book manages to move both chronologically from 1619 to the present and also thematically, opening with an essay on origins and moving on to topical essays that focus on everything from inheritance to sugar to justice. And if you’re wondering what the significance of 1619 is, that’s part of why this book is so important.

Alice Wong opens the introduction to this book with the line, “Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society,” and the collection goes on to illuminate the myriad ways this statement is true. It’s an incredibly dynamic compilation. Composed of narratives written by people with disabilities — some impacting bodies, others brains — the collection is hugely impactful. Significantly, it’s not meant to be exhaustive (hence the robust “Further Reading” section that follows the narratives themselves). Instead, the essays are often both deeply personal and also political, pushing against dominant narratives pertaining to disabled peoples. And it’s no wonder: the collection’s publication was timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

While this book is technically aimed at YA audiences, it’s great for adult audiences, too. Beyond the Gender Binary opens with a concise explanation of the term “gender binary” and immediately connects it to power and systems of oppression. From there, Vaid-Menon deftly merges personal experiences and social theory, offering a strong critique of binaristic thought and gender norms. It’s a smart book with the ability to speak to a very wide range of readers.

“This book is for everybody who wants to step away from the buzzwords in immigration, the talking heads, the kids in graduation caps and gowns, and read about the people underground.” So writes Karla Cornejo Villavicencio in the introduction to The Undocumented Americans. It’s an unconventional book: part memoir, part interviews, part poetry (in a manner of speaking). Then again, Cornejo Villavicencio is trying to get readers to glimpse the daily lives of undocumented Americans (like herself). There’s hate and anger and fear in this book, but there’s also love and beauty and community. It’s not for nothing that this book was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

When I first read the title of this book, I thought it was some sort of technical analysis only relevant to people working in the tech industry. While I certainly hope such people are reading this book, that’s absolutely not what Invisible Women is. It’s a really smart and relevant work on nonfiction that looks at how the gender default in western societies is presumed maleness. Of the many things wrong with that, Caroline Criado Perez focuses on the ways this bias has crept into data collection, which is used to shape almost every aspect of contemporary life. Because of this, this gendered data gap has tremendous and far-reaching implications. Let’s just say this book made me so mad, but in the best possible way. As Criado Perez writes in the introduction, the book identifies a significant problem in hopes of inspiring change: “For too long we have positioned women as a deviation from standard humanity…. It’s time for a change in perspective. It’s time for women to be seen”

In this follow-up to the hugely popular How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi writes for parents. Sharing his personal experiences as a parent caught between wanting to protect his young child from racism and raise a socially aware child, Kendi writes about how teaching kids about racism provides them with a “protective education.” This framing is so important because it’s natural for parents to want to protect their kids and oftentimes this results in not talking to them about racism for fear of introducing them to this “hard topic” and therefore causing harm. However, as Kendi discusses, teaching kids about racism can actually help safeguard kids (whatever their skin color) from its damaging impacts.

This book isn’t about a “hard topic” itself, but rather is a kind of guide about how to engage in conversations about such topics during our contemporary moment. Guzmán’s book is all about how to reach across perspectival divides in order to really hear one another. The book is divided into sections that focus on various aspects of human experience and conversation in hopes of providing readers with the tools they’ll need to engage others in meaningful conversation. (For what it’s worth, I feel this book would pair really nicely with Claudia Rankine’s Just Us: An American Conversation, in which Rankine’s essays powerfully illustrate the challenges and rewards of having conversations about race and racism in the U.S. today.)

Craving some dark academia to go with the dark winter nights? Look no further than Babel. This delectable volume follows the orphaned Robin Swift from his birthplace in Canton to London. It’s 1829 and this London is similar to ours except that Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation (a.k.a. Babel) is focused on both language and magic. The wealth and power of the British Empire comes from the magical silver bars composed of meanings lost in translation. Given this premise, it’s no wonder the novel delves into global power dynamics. After all, in the 1800s, the sun hadn’t yet set on the British Empire so colonization was in full swing. Robin can’t avoid these dynamics as he becomes more and more enmeshed in the perilous power struggles undergirding Babel.

“Before you arrive, you remember your lola, smoking.” So begins Simon Jimenez’s wild fantasy epic in the second person. The book switches between first, second, and third person narration in a really innovative way; right from the start, that direct address will pull you headfirst into the novel. It’s the story of the wronged Moon goddess, the sons she cursed the last emperor with (a.k.a. the Three Terrors, very aptly named), and a young warrior who gets tangled up in this larger-than-life conflict. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s at least one love story in the mix. It’s one of the most unique SFF books I’ve ever read, and it’s absolutely worth spending the winter with.

Seventeen-year-old Charlie Reade had a hard childhood, so when he befriends Radar, his elderly neighbor’s dog, he isn’t expecting to inherit the man’s big old house. And he’s definitely not expecting to discover that the shed out back is a Narnia-esque portal to another world. The ensuing adventures are perilous and creepy in that classic King way. Fairy Tale is a story of epic proportions, and Charlie and Radar find themselves at the heart of an inter-world battle between good and evil. You know King can do evil on a grand scale, so bring your brave face with you if you decide to while away your winter with this incredible contemporary fantasy.

All right, this is the shortest book you’ll find on this list. It’s not quite 350 pages long, so if you’re a little short on time but still want a sizable story to settle down with, this one’s for you. It’s set 30 years in the future when space colonies are a thing and the Earth’s population is dwindling. The landscape is bleak and populated by a hodgepodge mixture of scavengers, outcasts, and misfits. If you’re wondering about the title, yes, it’s a Biblical reference and it’s not an accident. Onyebuchi’s characteristic worldbuilding prowess is on full display in this sci-fi epic — get that cup of tea ready and cozy up by the fire with your cat, because once you open this book, you’ll have trouble closing it again.

The Stardust Thief is the first book of the Sandsea Trilogy, which makes it a great place to start. (Bonus: the second book is tentatively expected in November 2023, so if you like this one then you’ll have built-in reading for next winter, too!) Chelsea Abdullah’s novel centers on Loulie al-Nazari (a.k.a. the Midnight Merchant) and Qadir (her bodyguard…who also happens to be a jinn). As if that wasn’t recipe enough for a whole winter’s worth of fantasies, there’s also a forced quest for a magic lamp (yup, you read that right) accompanied by a cruel prince and a thief. You may have guessed this, but these characters have their fair share of secrets they’re trying to keep from one another. Their journey will keep you on the edge of your seat, so don’t forget your lap blanket for this one!

It feels like forever ago that N.K. Jemisin released The City We Became, the first book in the Great Cities series — and it kind of was: that book came out right as the pandemic began sweeping the globe. The World We Make catches up with New York City’s newly minted avatars as they navigate the political and personal perils of their new roles. Jemisin’s masterful worldbuilding is just as rich in this book, and her characters are rendered in wonderful depth. The exploration of white supremacy and systemic racism is no less pronounced in this much-awaited addition to the Great Cities series, which took on the entrenched racism of Lovecraft’s narratives in imaginative and unexpected ways. I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait for the next book, but Jemisin’s worlds are so memorable that even a few years won’t dim the memory of this alternate NYC.

Weighing in at over 1000 pages collectively, Daughter of the Moon Goddess and Heart of the Sun Warrior make up Sue Lynn Tan’s Celestial Kingdom duology. It begins when the Moon Goddess’s daughter, Xingyin, angers the Celestial Emperor. In her solitary imprisonment on the moon, she finds an unlikely friendship in the emperor’s son. The power struggles and politics that ensue complicate Xingyin’s newfound friendship and unearth a host of other problems she’ll have to deal with. Without plot spoiling, I’ll say there’s magic and mythology and plenty of good turns in these books — more than enough to keep your imagination engaged all winter long.

It was supposed to be a trilogy. As you might guess, Speaking Bones — the fourth and final book of Ken Liu’s epic Dandelion Dynasty quartet — was finally released in the middle of 2022. That means that if you’re looking for some SFF to take you all the way through this dark season, you have four books, for a total of over 3,500 pages of wonderful winter reading, to hunker down with. Ken Liu describes this fantasy series as “silkpunk,” and it’s pretty apt that he’s coining terms to describe the genre he’s working in because it’s one of the most inventive SFF works I’ve encountered in recent years.

What better place to start a list of California history books than with one that begins before what we think of as “California” even existed? (None. There is no better place.) We Are the Land foregrounds Indigeneity in California — a state in which genocidal narratives operate to complete the work of actual genocide in effectively scrubbing any Native American presence from the story of California. The book offers a resounding refusal of this erasure, instead offering a comprehensive history of Native California that encompasses past and present to underscore the continual presence and centrality of Indigenous peoples throughout settler colonization, missionization, statehood, and the present.

The space California occupies in the national imagination is often at odds with racism, which is all the more reason to read Jefferson’s book. Focusing on Black Americans in Southern California from 1910 to 1960, Living the California Dream asks important questions about the ways public leisure spaces functioned as sites in which African Americans pushed against racial hierarchies. The book posits that the visibility of leisure in such spaces offered Black communities a means of disrupting the status quo during the Jim Crow era, framing recreation in a brilliant new light. If you find this book interesting, you might also want to take a peek at Lynn M. Hudson’s West of Jim Crow: The Fight Against California’s Color Line.

The first half of the 20th century was characterized by intense nationalist sentiment and policymaking, much of which manifested itself in (among other things) exclusionary immigration laws for Asians. Angel Island delves into a comprehensive history of the experiences of the diverse body of Asian immigrants who were detained prior to reaching, excluded from, or granted entry to the country through this immigration station. It was highly relevant when it came out in 2010 to mark the centennial of Angel Island, and is perhaps even more relevant today given the renewed vigor of anti-Asian hate in the current moment.

Ocampo’s engaging exploration of masculinity, heterosexism, and race offers an important look at the tensions that attend second-generation immigrant men’s experiences of queerness. Navigating the pressures placed upon them by the older generation, the men included in this study are celebrated for their strength and the community they build together. At the heart of the book is a questioning of the concept of Americanness in the face of difference — whether racial or sexual. If you enjoy Brown and Gay in LA, you’ll probably also want to read Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons’s Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians.

Gualtiere’s book is powerful in many ways, not the least for how it firmly inscribes Arabs into the U.S. American — specifically, Californian — landscape, thereby defying dominant narratives that portray Arabs as inherently Other. Tracing immigration pathways that often result in Syrian immigrants entering the U.S. through its southern border, Arab Routes tells a comprehensive history of Southern California. Perhaps most interesting is Gualtieri’s discussion of histories of solidarity, both across the U.S.-Mexico border and across racial and ethnic lines, and the implications of such histories for the present day.

Just as California is often imagined in terms of its progressive stance on racism, so does it tend to be imagined as equally progressive in terms of its environmental policies. Evolution of a Movement takes a hard look at the work environmental justice activists have been doing since the 1980s, thereby removing the rose-colored glasses to provide a more realistic aspect of environmental justice organizing. Perkins compiles over a hundred interviews with activists throughout California in order to expose the evolving political and activistic landscape in which environmental justice activism occurs. Since there’s a strong chance that reading this book will also lead you to seek out books that look at California’s natural history, you might also want to consider Allan Schoenherr’s A Natural History of California or Obi Kaufmann’s stunningly illustrated The California Field Atlas.

All too often, it seems that people want to focus on California’s coastlines or its cosmopolitan cities; Chasing the Harvest looks instead to California’s fields and the people who work them. It’s an oral history in the vein of Studs Terkel‘s work. Presenting the oral histories of migrant farm workers in California, Thompson’s book showcases a diverse array of experiences in the agricultural fields that produce so much of the U.S.’s crops. It’s essential reading for understanding histories and contemporary realities of agricultural labor — and the exploitation of agricultural laborers — in California.

What do concepts of the American West, American dream, and oppressive HOAs have in common? For Zarsadiaz in this insightful history of Asian assimilation in L.A., the answer is suburbia. Odd as that may sound, this look at the last decades of the 20th century and manifestations of the “model minority” myth in suburbia is a very compelling take on race, power, and privilege. I’ve never been asked to think about the model minority mythos in this way and I have to admit it leaves me with plenty to mull over.

Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness rose swiftly to critical acclaim upon its publication in 2010 for its critique of how the U.S. American prison system disproportionately targets Black Americans in a manner that functions as an extension of Jim Crow racist discrimination. Golden Gulag was published the same year and details the astounding rise in rates of incarceration in California that began during the Reagan administration. Tracking economic and labor histories, Gilmore unflinchingly examines the systemic racism and related dynamics to consider the implications of the California prison system for not only the so-called Golden State, but also the rest of the U.S. and even the globe.

Okay, so The Other California focuses on Baja California…but given the histories that led to the formation of California as part of the United States, I figured it made sense to problematize my own paradigm and offer a text that traverses settler colonial borders. With that in mind, Castillo-Muñoz’s book covers over 100 years from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. It looks at influential international dynamics that shaped the borderlands of Baja California. Also worth checking out is Frank P. Barajas’s Mexican Americans with Moxie: A Transgenerational History of El Movimiento Chicano in Ventura County, California, 1945–1975.

Most people know Louise Erdrich as the author of the 1984 novel Love Medicine, the writer who brought us a bookstore haunted by its most annoying customer (during the COVID-19 pandemic, nonetheless!) in The Sentence, or the owner of the amazing Birchbark Books in Minneapolis. Regardless of how you came to Erdrich, it may surprise you that she’s written a sci-fi novel. The premise of Future Home of the Living God is fascinating: evolution has begun to reverse itself, humans are birthing (or rather, failing to birth) babies that are not quite homo sapiens, and pregnant protagonist Cedar Hawk Songmaker is on the run because the government is rounding up expectant mothers in a totalitarian attempt to keep humanity on the books. It’s as terrifying and beautiful as it is heartbreaking. It was already a relevant book that asked crucial questions about bodily (and Indigenous) sovereignty, but after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it feels even more urgent.

Kazim Ali is a critically acclaimed poet…and this book is an honest-to-goodness Choose Your Own Adventure book. For reals. For everyone who grew up during the heyday of CYOA books, this is a double win. Not only is an amazing poet working in YA fantasy, but he’s doing so in this interactive and (for some) nostalgic form. Amazing! Citadel of Whispers centers on a young Whisperer named Krishi. As Krishi, the reader is simply attending school to learn the ropes as a Whisperer, but when a new student arrives everything is turned upside down. Suddenly the reader is faced with decisions that have tremendous consequences for the land of Elaria. It’s hard not to get pulled into this story world, especially given the CYOA format of the book.

Chang-rae Lee is best known for his poignant literary realism in works such as A Gesture Life and My Year Abroad. The poignancy remains in On Such a Full Sea, which is set in B-Mor (formerly Baltimore) in the post-environmental-collapse near future. Class divisions are extreme, mechanisms of control are rigidly enforced, and the landscape is starkly divided into former urban centers (now labor colonies) and the lawless rural Open Counties. Within this context, when Fan absconds from B-Mor in search of the man she loves, all bets are off. As the narrative unfolds, it retains Lee’s signature storytelling style even as Fan’s journey takes her into uncharted territory (both literal and literary).

The Candy House is the follow-up to Egan’s highly acclaimed A Visit From the Goon Squad. As such, it delves further into the future. While Goon Squad walked that line between literary fiction and dystopian sci-fi (staying much closer to our own time), The Candy House is far more future-oriented and therefore goes deep on future technologies and their impact on human lives. With characters able to upload their memories to what I can only describe as a sort of logical extreme of contemporary social media, there’s an important questioning of privacy (among other things) at the heart of this one.

Adam Silvera is best know for his YA dramatic fiction, although his book More Happy Than Not admittedly gets a little speculative. Regardless, Infinity Reaper is the second book in the Infinity Cycle YA fantasy series. Book 1, Infinity Son, is set in an alternate New York City and centers on brothers Emil and Brighton. They may live in a world full of magic, but until they find themselves the targets of an attack they aren’t aware of Emil’s magical powers. Infinity Reaper picks up where the first book left off, following the same characters as Brighton’s powers take shape. Between attempting to save the world, queer romances, and deepening backstories, you’ll be wishing for the last book in the trilogy to make an appearance ASAP.

Nora Roberts is a staple in contemporary romance novels. This isn’t her first foray into SFF, but it’s her most recent and notable. The Choice is book 3 of The Dragon Heart Legacy — which is, incidentally, a fantasy series that’s also classifiable as romance. The series follows Breen Kelly as she returns to the magical world called Talamh from, of all places, Philadelphia. Breen has magick and a limited amount of time in which to hone her skills. Maybe it helps that she has an attractive fey to help her do this. Either way, this third installment in the series sees Breen take on the conflict that’s been looming in her future since the earlier books.

David Yoon is an interesting one: he worked in tech for a while until he got a toehold in the literary world with his YA fiction (like Frankly in Love). After a couple of heartwarming YA novels, he came out with Version Zero, which is a techy thriller at its best. (For the record, I think it would pair wonderfully with Dave Eggers’s The Circle.) The novel follows Max and two of his closest friends (one of whom he’d love to be closer to, if you catch my drift) as they embark on a dangerous path. Max was a starry-eyed young employee at one of the biggest social media firms in the world…until his ethics got in the way and he went from rising star to mega hacker. The novel heats up from there, going in some really unexpected directions as Yoon asks important questions about the role of for-profit technology in our lives.

Katherine Locke typically produces books for young people, whether children’s picture books or YA novels. Their Red Balloon books are sort of fantasy, but the majority of their work is either romance or is focused on queer and/or Jewish experiences. While This Rebel Heart engages with Jewish history — specifically, the Holocaust — it’s set over a decade after the end of WWII in an alternate, magical Budapest. It follows young Csilla as she escapes the Hungarian secret police and is thrown into a dangerous struggle for freedom. Locke manages to ground This Rebel Heart in actual history even as it embarks on a highly fantastical journey.

If you thought Kazim Ali’s poetry packed a punch, just wait until you read this book. Northern Light is Ali’s writerly effort to grapple with his and his family’s history in a remote community in Canada. He recounts the formative years he spent on Indigenous lands as the child of Indian immigrants, learning about the impact of his father’s work on a dam on both the people and the environment in Jenpeg. The story he tells — of beautiful people, a unique community, and settler colonial dynamics — is an important and powerful one. The poet’s voice is evident in some of the most resonant passages, shaping the story Ali tells in wondrous ways.

This book is part nature writing, part memoir, part cultural criticism…and every bit of it is rendered in thoughtful and striking prose. Oh, and did I mention Fumi Nakamura’s incredible illustrations? There’s something magical about the combination of personal storytelling and naturalist information. Essays like “Peacock” will have you near tears on behalf of the child Nezhukumatathil, whose closed-minded teacher does such terrible damage over a simple drawing of a bird. Others, like “Axolotl,” will immerse you in fascinating details of the unusual amphibian’s wondrous abilities even as it infuriates you about the impact of racist microaggressions. And while such a culmination of ideas could easily feel contrived, World of Wonders is as natural as the amazing creatures that populate its pages.

Ross Gay opens this surprising and insightful book of essays by asking “what happens if joy is not separate from pain? … What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?” Going against conceptualizations of joy as antithetical to critical thought or at odds with pain, Gay invites readers to lean into sorrow and pain in order to create space for conversation, exchange, and (perhaps) even healing. The essays range in focus from athletic endeavors to emotions to nature and more, covering a rather impressive amount of ground even as they manage, somehow, to come together to form a cohesive set of ideas. It’s as philosophical a book as it is political, and ultimately it feels simply essential.

With the ability only a poet can possess, Castillo lets readers into his journey as an undocumented immigrant to the U.S. His experiences (and those of his family members) not only expose some of the realities at the core of immigration policies, but they also render in robust, living prose the impact of such policies on real people. By sharing experiences like the time the teenaged Castillo was hit by a car and his mother declined to press charges out of humble fear, he gives voice to the complex emotional and legal landscape so many undocumented immigrants walk every day. Even though Children of the Land includes its fair share of trauma and pain, it also holds space for love and hope in that special way that is so often the purview of poetry.

Crazy Brave, Harjo’s memoir from about a decade ago, was about the poet’s journey into the world of art and language. Poet Warrior delves into the work of the poet — not only how she came to poetry, but what she hopes and dreams her poetry can accomplish for other human beings. The prose is compassionate and caring, tending to the reader even as Harjo recounts the personal traumas and triumphs that were formative to her development and aims as a poet. It’s a special kind of memoir in that it is without a doubt about Joy Harjo’s life and work…but it’s also about poetry, about politics, about the art of the poetic craft, and about being a human creature in this vast, complex world of ours.

Vuong may have just published another brilliant poetry collection, Time is a Mother, but if you haven’t read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous then you should definitely do so ASAP. Understood to be loosely autobiographical, its premise alone is enough to make it stand out: the novel is composed of a series of letters from the unnamed narrator to his mother, who can’t read English. The letters are lyrical and poignant, tracing connections across generations. It’s largely about the narrator’s queer sexuality and general outsiderness as a young Vietnamese American in a largely white community. It’s about love and loss, grief and family, colonialism and race. And it’s pretty much everything you might dream of in an epistolary novel by a poet.

This book leaves an impression — after all, it’s not subtitled “An Asian American Reckoning” for nothing. In a series of essays, Cathy Park Hong tackles an ambitious array of social issues in what I can only describe as an effective and memorable way. In “Bad English,” for instance, she theorizes about the subversive possibilities afforded by intentionally engaging in “bad” English as an Asian American. Conversely, in “United” she explores histories of Asian exclusion in relation to contemporary instances of anti-Asian hate. As I mentioned before, the focus of each essay runs the gamut, but throughout it all there’s a blend of humor, insight, and sensitivity that will have you unable to stop reading.

Rankine is perhaps best known for her poetry collection Citizen, but in Just Us she tackles racism from a different angle. The title’s play on words (just us/justice) cuts right to the heart of the book: it’s about having the necessary conversations about race and racism (past and present) in the United States in service of being better as a nation. The most powerful thing about Rankine’s prose, for me, is that she models for all readers what it means to have these conversations: what it costs her, what it feels like to be a Black American woman speaking her truth, what it’s like to come up against various walls (like white rage), and why she keeps on trying to talk about the myriad dimensions and impacts of race. The form is a little unusual and extremely engaging, including photographs, data, cultural criticism, and more.

Chin’s 2009 novel isn’t as new as the other books on this list, but it’s a wild ride! A little raunchy and a lot irreverent, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen follows Chinese American twins Moonie and Mei Ling Wong on their larger-than-life misadventures from adolescence to adulthood. It’s episodic in nature (as you may have guessed from the subtitle), but reads as a novel. One of my favorite characters in this book is their grandmother — an erstwhile revolutionary, immigrant, and badass caretaker who I’d literally pay money to meet if she was a real person.

Cho’s debut collection is a mesmerizing mélange of wondrous imagery and sharp irony. So much of the book’s beauty comes from its thoughtful treatment of language. In several poems, Cho incorporates Korean language words (sometimes playing with how those words can be mistranslated or confused for others) in her exploration of growing up in small-town Indiana as a Korean American. As such, the poetry is full of ups and downs. At times, The Symmetry of Fish captures the poignancy of the mundane, as in the lines, “some don’t understand that we can miss people next to us / how space disappears by sitting with someone in a car not saying / anything.” At other times, Cho’s pointed irony bubbles to the surface, which is evident in poems such as the one entitled “Ode to Wanting to Run Over Other People’s Children in the Church Parking Lot.” It’s an introspective collection that, for this reader, was best encountered slowly for maximum enjoyment.

In some places, Hedge Coke catalogs the vast array of endangered and extinct flora and fauna; that these lists include only species indigenous to California only amplifies the overwhelming sense of devastation. That they’re delivered between and alongside lists of atrocities (such as massacres) fosters a connection between the environmental destruction humans have wreaked and other consequences of human violence and discrimination. Even as Look at This Blue reads as a love song to California, this is no starry-eyed Disney love song. It’s a battle-worn love song that exposes the damage and trauma, acknowledging small moments of healing alongside damning evidence of harm. Near the center of the collection, Hedge Coke writes, “Not breaking this up for comfort.” And it’s apt: her poetry is relentless, but in its relentlessness is a call to action — an insistence that we can do better, be better. To this end, a five-page-long section titled “Do the Work” containing contact information for a wide array of environmental and social justice organizations follows the poetry, providing a direction for some of the intense feelings the collection calls forth.

Alive at the End of the World is a poetic onslaught of raw emotion — in the best kind of way. It’s one of the more intense collections I’ve read in a while, as Jones simultaneously explores his grief over his mother’s passing, widespread violence in the U.S., and the latest iterations of racism — as well as the pasts they tap into. In one poem, Jones introduces a robot-boy character and writes, “The end of the world is a boy who feels all the pain we give him but never bruises, never has a history to show for who happened to him. The end of the world is a boy all alone in an electric dark telling himself a story to keep from crying without tears.” Oof. The whole book is full of powerful moments like that, each composed of carefully curated words set against a backdrop of the repeated refrain that this is the end of the world. This book feels absolutely necessary right now.

The Wanting Way will feed you for an entire season, if not more. Part of Milkweed’s series by neurodivergent writers, the collection uses language in a distinctive and memorable way. There’s something about Wolfond’s images that just captivate. Additionally, the sparing manner in which the words are arranged on the page creates a sense of quiet that complements wintertime perfectly. For example, in “The Ways of Yearning” he writes, “I must follow the thread to the end I ask others to unravel with me / It’s not about me / it’s us / we / unravel / unball.” It’s the kind of collection you can return to again and again, and each time it’ll speak to you in a new way.

Chen Chen’s second collection feels urgent. It grapples with the experience of being queer and Asian American in the current moment with its attendant pandemic, Trumpism, and rampant gun violence. The focus of the poems rove just as freely between anti-Asian hate, homophobia, and political rhetoric as they do across surprising visions of the world we live in. Lines such as these spring up throughout the collection like unexpected flowers composed of words: “Some of my favorite sunlights / include those that arrive in December / like gasps, like they’ve walked into a surprise // party, & they are the party, & it / is a ghost party.” There were moments where I laughed out loud — such as the opening of a poem called “Doctor’s Note” that reads, “Please excuse Chen Chen from class. He is currently dead. He came in last Thursday, exhibiting clear signs of dying, such as saying in a clear voice, I am nothing except the desire to listen to Coldplay” — and others that made me pause for days to consider what I’d read and contend with the emotions that lie always just below the surface of this collection.

In this series of epistolary prose poems to 16th century friar Diego de Landa — a figure described as a “Spanish murderer, pillager, and rapist” in the book’s introduction — Dominguez writes with a profound intensity. Each poem is self-contained even as it connects to others in the collection. Common themes of colonization, racism, and homophobia permeate the collection and descriptions of violence sit uncomfortably alongside images of flowers and nature. But this discomfort is vital to the collection’s impact. Take these lines as an example: “My mouth sprouts mimosa flowers and I begin vomiting acres of rain. I get so sick when I enter language without my body. All of my talismans of self crumble under the weight of whiteness which demands acquiescence: the colonizers require you to colonize too and be colonized over and over and over again until you forget how to pronounce your name.” Need I say more?

Bluest Nude is populated by women — strong women, young women, literary women, queer women, knowing women, hungry women…you get the idea. For instance, near the end of the titular poem “Bluest Nude,” in which Codjoe crafts a mini-epic tracing specific aspects of the narrator’s experiences as a woman, the poem reads, “The women and I walk / a tightrope of night. Our eyes adjust to growing / darkness. We make of our vision: knowingness. // It’s love the women and I make.” While women are present throughout the collection, there are also many poems that explore the role of the artist. In “On Seeing and Being Seen,” which is as much about an erotic night as it is about an artist’s vision, Codjoe writes, “On the lit-up hotel bed, / I remember thinking, My body is a lens / I can look through with my mind.” It’s moments like these that stick with you. Deceptively simple turns of phrase and striking images that leave a mark, returning long after you’ve set the book down.

The poems in this bilingual collection are powerfully evocative. Described as being poems about a decolonial Puerto Rico, Salas Rivera’s poems feel almost tangible in their sensorial and fast-paced rhythms. Take these lines from “the right to burn one’s mouth”: “how pretty the sea that consumes. / how astounding the pain, if stunning.” Obviously I’ve taken these words out of the context of the poem, but even on their own, they illustrate the curvature of Salas Rivera’s poetry. Reading Antes Que Isla es Volcán is an immersive experience that will plunge you straight into a pensive place.

Broken Halves of a Milky Sun is full. It’s full of love and heartbreak, women and death, queerness and despair. Nin drives the collection straight into the aftermath of colonialism — in this case, in Angola — and they do so unflinchingly. For example, the poem “The Sound of it is ‘Waweh'” breaks open the agony mothers experience upon losing a child, opening with the lines, “There is a story…well…there are many stories…but there is one in particular that echoes. In my country, this story, it echoes everywhere. The sound of it is ‘Waweh.‘” In some ways, this is a difficult collection to read — but only because it challenges readers to contend with hard histories, both personal and collective. Perhaps because of this, it’s an extremely beautiful collection, especially in the way it offers queer love as an antidote, or at least a balm, to the devastation. As Nin writes in the poem “Language must be adequate”: “And now / there is no shame / I have learned / silence is a prison / and so is fear.”

dg nanouk okpik’s poetry is transformative. Not only does it change the reader, but it’s also full of elements that are always transforming in surprising ways. Take these lines from the poem “Early Morning Sky Blue Pink,” in which the narrator sits rolling ice silt clay: “I bundle beat an Inuit drum; / … / I see in my head daily this drum and this song: / Sky blue pink sky blue pink sky pink blues. I realize the silt / is not clay, but quicksand, in which I’m neck high.” The collection as a whole is, on one level, preoccupied with the threats to Indigenous ways of life caused by industrialization and climate change. In its inspection of these dynamics, okpik’s collection dredges up histories that require reckoning with.

Simidele is Mami Wata, a mermaid. She’s also struggling with memories of her life as a human, before she swam the ocean depths in search of souls to usher to safety. Given that Bowen’s novel blends Yoruba cosmologies, mermaid lore, and histories of the transatlantic slave trade, these souls belong to those who’ve lost their lives aboard enslavers’ ships crossing the Atlantic. And when Simidele breaks all the rules and saves a living boy, there must be consequences. This engrossing tale will have you dreaming of mermaids…and luckily for you, the sequel Soul of the Deep was released in September.

“Everyone has their own way of telling our story.” Thus begins the story of Blanca and Roja, sisters whose fates are bound up in a desperate wish made long ago by a woman who wanted a daughter. After just a few short paragraphs, McLemore’s writing will have you absolutely captivated in this enchanting retelling of Swan Lake (with traces of Snow White). As with all good fairy tales, this story of family and love takes a turn when the magical destiny awaiting one of the sisters ensnares others and grows more dangerous as it changes.

Cinderella’s legacy is no happily-ever-after in Kalynn Bayron’s powerful retelling. Instead, two centuries later, an oppressively heteropatriarchal monarchy mandates that all teenage girls attend the Annual Ball so they can be married off. In a realm where domestic violence is rampant, this is bad enough. What’s worse is that Sophia’s attraction to women is a dangerous kind of desire in her world. When she flees the ball without her best friend and love interest, Erin, she finds herself at Cinderella’s tomb in the woods, where she meets Constance. As their love story burgeons, their plot to take down the monarchy comes with higher and higher stakes.

Wendy Darling (yup, that Wendy Darling) lives in Oregon, and all is not well in her small community. When several kids go missing on Wendy’s 18th birthday, it dredges up the trauma of her own brothers’ disappearances just a few years earlier. So when a mysterious boy named (you guessed it) Peter Pan turns up asking her to help him find his shadow to prevent more disappearances, Wendy decides to see if she can find some answers for herself. Lost in the Never Woods is definitely one of the darker tales on this list because of its exploration of trauma and mental health — ironic that the inclusion of real-world challenges makes it more frightening than if it stayed solely in the realm of the fantastic.

A mysterious prophecy, an emergency ball, and a kingdom on the brink of darkness lie at the heart of Gina Chen’s new novel. Violet is a Seer tasked with faking a prophecy about Prince Cyrus’ future bride. As if this wasn’t hard enough, the prince’s choice of mate was the subject of an unfinished prophecy uttered by another Seer on her deathbed — one that indicated the kingdom’s fate rested on his choice. It’s up to Violet to figure out how to save the kingdom, the prince, and herself in this fantastical fairy tale that will have you reading until the wee hours of the morning.

This Beauty and the Beast retelling centers on Yeva, a strong young woman who would rather take aim at her prey than exchange pleasantries with the ladies at court. Because of this, she’s not terribly broken up about it when her family is forced to relocate on the edge of town, however unfortunate the circumstances. However, his sudden disappearance leads Yeva to track the Beast, tracing her father’s footsteps to the mysterious kingdom that readers will find simultaneously familiar and freshly rendered.

The Dauntless Path trilogy began as a retelling of The Goose Girl. Interestingly, book 3, A Darkness at the Door (released this last summer) is set in the same storyworld but functions as a sequel to Book 2, The Theft of Sunlight. It reunites readers with Rae, who found self-acceptance in the previous volume, in spite of ableist mistreatment, in her quest for her best friend’s little sister who was taken by snatchers. Having been held captive on a snatcher’s ship, she ends up entangled with a dangerous Fae and joining forces with a thief to attempt to save the other stolen children. It’s a complex installment in Khanani’s powerful series.

No list of fairy tale retellings would be complete without Malinda Lo’s Ash on it. Even though this book was first published in 2009, it’s a classic queer retelling of Cinderella. The novel follows the eponymous Ash as she attends the royal hunts (thanks to her somewhat terrifying and creepily powerful fairy godparent, Sidhean) behind her awful stepmother’s back. It doesn’t take long for her to fall for the king’s huntress, Kaisa — a bold woman who’s unlike anyone else Ash has ever known. As their relationship develops, Ash has to reckon with her past in order to proceed with her future.

I’d be remiss to leave off this latest treasure from the author who brought us the creepy delights of Mexican Gothic and the enchanting romance of The Beautiful Ones. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s latest tale introduces another strong, spunky heroine: Carlota Moreau, daughter of the mad scientist introduced over a century ago by H.G. Wells. In the remote and lush confines of her father’s estate, Carlota has lived a life of isolation, surrounded primarily by the “hybrids” her father has created. Enter Eduardo Lizalde, a handsome young man who’s just what the Doctor didn’t order for his sheltered (and also intelligent, beautiful, and passionate) daughter. It’s an otherworldly tale — as much science fiction and romance as it is thoughtful and complex. If you know Moreno-Garcia’s work, you know this is one of those books you’d better plan on not being able to set down.

Like The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Sally Thorne’s latest novel builds on a classic (this time, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), bringing together historical fiction and romance. Who exactly is Angelika Frankenstein? Why, she’s Victor’s little sister. And while big brother is busy piecing together human remains to reanimate in his laboratory, Angelika decides to follow his example and (as the title implies) make herself a man. As you might expect, things don’t exactly go smoothly. Suffice it to say, Angelika ends up embroiled in a love triangle, trying to solve a mystery, and questioning the role of science in her love life. It’s a quirky and fun read that’s perfect for the Halloween season.

Okay, I know this one came out last year, but it’s so perfectly appropriate for Halloween. I mean, protagonist Wallace is a dead man (literally) trying to figure out exactly what to do with his afterlife as he slowly and inevitably falls in love with his ridiculously attractive, sensitive, and magical reaper. The characters in Klune’s novel are the kind you wish were real people so you could be besties with them. While you might not think there’s a lot that could happen to a guy who’s no longer living and is essentially confined to the tea shop he’s sort of haunting, Klune delivers a beautiful tale that also has some pretty nail-biting moments of suspense. Under the Whispering Door is part love-story, part mystery, and part philosophy. It’s also a really good story about love and what it means to truly live one’s life.

Kit Mayquist’s self-professed Gothic novel starts out innocently enough: young woman (Lena) needs a job, like, yesterday, and ends up scoring a position with one of the wealthiest families in town. The Verdeaus seem, erm, a bit eccentric. But as you know, in any Gothic tale, eccentricity quickly slides into creepy. It doesn’t take long for Lena to figure out there’s something (or maybe, lots of things) really wrong with the Verdeaus…but they’re not the only ones with a little darkness in their hearts. Without plot spoiling, let’s just say Mayquist’s novel is Gothic, sure, but also has undercurrents of romance and revenge that make it downright unputdownable.

This novel has it all — time travel, mystery, Indigenous cosmology, and even a few laughs along the way. It’s the second book featuring Detective Monique Blue Hawk (she makes her initial appearance in Hatak Witches), but it’s no less gripping than the first. Devon Mihesuah takes readers on a wild journey across time as Detective Blue Hawk — still recovering from the harrowing events of the previous book — searches for answers about the Renewal Dance in the wake of a young man’s mysterious disappearance. Mihesuah’s characters are refreshingly relatable as they struggle not only with the dangers of this mystery but also the dynamics of their relationships in the contemporary moment.

Edinburgh is famously haunted, and T.L. Huchu’s novel plays that up with a protagonist who’s a ghosttalker in Auld Reekie. Ropa’s getting by serving as a messenger for the dead, but it’s not long before the ghosts have a message for her: Edinburgh’s children are being turned into husks. There’s magic and mystery in these pages, and with a protagonist like Ropa, you’ll be glad you went along for the ride. Treat: If you like The Library of the Dead, you’ll be happy to know the second book in the Edinburgh Nights series, Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments, was released a few months ago.

In book three of the Fix-It Witches series, Ann Aguirre’s latest protagonist has been through the proverbial wringer. Leanne Vanderpool has had a hard time with love and has all but given up on it. After all, the other witches in her coven (a magical tech-repair firm) are family enough for her. However, Leanne has no shortage of ambition — and why shouldn’t she when she’s capable of so much more than she’s being asked to do? — and when it seems like that ambition is leading her into politics, she decides she’d better find a man to hang on her arm so people don’t go digging into her past. There be secrets there…and as you might imagine, the combination of a witch with a past, her political aspirations, and the down-and-out guy who ends up unwittingly entangled in Leanne’s life is an entertaining and charming combination.

No seasonal reading list would be complete without a witch or two, and protagonist Mika Moon (and her swoon-worthy librarian love interest) is a great candidate for the job. She’s a modern-day British witch trying to fly under the radar, even while maintaining a social media presence. But it turns out one of her followers sees through the online persona in which she pretends to be a witch, and enlists her help in teaching three young witches how to master their powers. Everything spirals as she takes on the task, meeting a mysterious and zany cast of characters along the way. Mandanna’s novel delivers layers of complexity as the narrative threads weave together to create a story that’s both fun and thoughtful.

If there’s such a genre as “paranormal heist,” The Monsters We Defy is its poster child. Set in the roaring ’20s, Leslye Penelope’s dazzling novel features medium Clara Johnson — a woman who’s in quite the pickle. In order to liberate herself from the debts she owes to the spirits, she has to steal something precious and magical from one of the most wealthy and powerful women in town. Even difficult tasks are never as simple as they seem, and Clara’s heist is no exception. As she assembles her team, Penelope treats the reader to elements of historical fiction about Washington, D.C.’s illustrious “Black Broadway.” This is an inventive and thrilling read from cover to cover!

If you’re looking for a Halloween read with a specifically literary bent, Witches is a great option for you. In many ways, it centers on journalist Zoe’s relationship with healer Feliciana as they unravel the multifarious impacts of patriarchal society on women’s lives. Of course, what brought Zoe and Feliciana together in the first place was Feliciana’s cousin Paloma: she was murdered, and someone needs to figure out what happened. This is where the book’s interest in the literary really shine, because Paloma had a past in which women, healing, and the Language were inextricably intertwined.

Perhaps you’d prefer a compendium of literary curiosities rather than a full-blown novel. In that case, Kim Fu’s short story collection is perfect for you. Offering 12 tales of magic and wonder, this collection is one of the most imaginative I’ve experienced in recent memory. The stories run the gamut from fantastical to supernatural to grotesque, but each and every one of them is extraordinary. Part of the power of the stories in Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is that they’re incredibly thought-provoking. For me, that meant I was left with a quiet, introspective desire to ponder the larger significances at the heart of each story. That feeling is one of the things I love most about literature’s power.