Staff Picks

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Wondering what to read? Locus reviewer Alex Brown says: Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity is an exceptional speculative anthology. Editor Lee Mandelo did a fantastic job selecting a wide range of stories. I enjoyed every story in this collection, and I think most readers will have a similar experience. This book isn’t just about joy and imagining futures where everything …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus reviewer Alexandra Pierce chooses Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings: A lush, gothic story about home and family and place and secrets.

Read Alexandra’s full review online or in the September 2025 issue of Locus. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

For your reading pleasure, Locus staff Tim Pratt picks Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me by Django Wexler: The concluding volume in the Dark Lord Dani duology – a snarky time loop epic portal fantasy – delivers on the promise of the hilarious opening volume, How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying. I haven’t had this much fun …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Add it to your reading list! Locus reviewer Colleen Mondor says: Turning the Freaky Fridaybody-switching trope on its head, Ann Liang’s I Am Not Jessica Chen finds teen Jenna suddenly inhabiting the body of her brilliant and beautiful cousin, Jessica. What she learns not only makes her reconsider how she perceives herself, but also to appreciate Jessica on an entirely different level. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Wondering what to read? Locus reviewer Paula Guran says: His Most Feared Constellation by R.L. Summerling (The Dark #119) is set in winter. An old man in decline is waiting for Jade, a smart and caring daughter who never appears. Bit by bit the past is revealed. An accomplished story more chilling than winter.

Read Paula’s full review online or in the …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus contributor Jake Casella Brookins picks Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman: Everything and anything I try to say about this book sounds like hyperbole, and it all falls short of the actual text. Carefully and brilliantly structured, this story of a journalist piecing together his adopted parents’ revolutionary past-in a future world that is sometimes …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Add it to your reading list! Locus reviewer Charles Payseur picks Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness by B. Pladek (Lightspeed 1/25): A heartbreaking story about Jude, a trans man living in what was the Midwest and now is its own nation, Lakes United, part of a fractured former United States. After his friends leave the area, Jude finds himself …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Don’t miss it! Locus reviewer Adrienne Martini chooses Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soilby V.E. Schwab: Schwab has done something remarkable here. Bury Our Bones is a story about women – specifically three of them, but also universally about the experience of presenting as a woman across centuries and the Western hemisphere. It’s about hunger and freedom in a world that …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

For your reading pleasure,Locus staff Tim Pratt picks Wire Mother by Isabel J. Kim: This story (from the October 2025 issue of Clarkesworld) is a biting near-future tale about AI companions and teen angst, from one of our most interesting writers.

Read the story at Clarkesworld. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Looking for reading recs? Locus reviewer Maria Haskins chooses Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei: A book about three sisters, a world at the edge of ecological collapse, and a seafaring journey that is both beautiful and terrible. Kitasei fills every corner of this story with all the complex textures of love and strife between siblings. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus staff Arley Sorg recommends Beyond the Glittering World: An Anthology of Indigenous Feminisms and Futurisms, Darcie Little Badger, Stacie Shannon Denetsosie, and Kinsale Drake, eds.: A strong assortment of works and a wonderful journey. Each author brings their own perspective and concerns, as well as their own style. Another amazing book that deserves far more attention …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

For your reading pleasure, Locus reviewer Alex Brown chooses Costumes for Time Travelers by A.R. Capetta: Queerness is where this story really shines…. Delightfully, the novel is only 224 pages long. If you don’t read a lot of young adult fiction, particularly young adult fantasy, you may not realize how unusual it is to get a YA book under 350 pages, much …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Add it to your reading list! Locus contributor Eugen Bacon picks Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World by Tavia Nyong’o: This creative nonfiction is like Franz Kafka’s axe that shatters the frozen sea within us, the kind of text that wounds us, stabs us and wakes us with a blow to the head. At 87 pages, this three-chaptered scholarly …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Don’t miss it! Locus reviewer Paula Guran says: Wolf Moon, Antler Moon by A.C. Wise (Reactor 1/13) is a terrific dark fantasy novelette. There’s a great deal to this magnificent story including superb characterization. Read it.

Read Paula’s full review online or in the March 2025 issue of Locus. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Check out our year-end picks! Locus staff Arley Sorg says: When Devils Singis exactly the right amount of creepy and intense. Kaur is a wonderful storyteller, and if you like immersive, character-driven tales that lean dark and gritty, you’ll really enjoy this one. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

For your reading pleasure, Locus reviewer Adrienne Martini picks Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher (AKA Ursula Vernon): Vernon at her most Vernon-y and a great place to start if you are new to her work… The whimsy decorates the load-bearing ideas about science and faith that builds a world that feels fleshed out. Add that to Vernon’s underlying faith in curiosity …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus reviewer Charles Payseur says: Esther Alter’s May Magical Girl Antifa War Machine , which follows a friend group of four trans women all bound by their shared experience of touching a strange source of power and being changed to be capable of reshaping the planet. But it’s not power alone that drives them – they are …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Add it to your TBR pile! Locus staff Tim Pratt picks King Sorrow by Joe Hill: A giant, sprawling, funny, brutal, heartwarming occult thriller about a group of friends who use magic to solve a problem and cause worse problems. (There’s a dragon on the cover, so no big spoiler to say: there’s a dragon.) It’s one of those novels I’m going …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Don’t miss it! Locus reviewer Joanne Anderton picks Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings: It’s a beautifully dark sub-tropical gothic about families and floods and the secrets that emerge once the water recedes. Jennings’s writing is gorgeously rich. This book crept over my head like floodwaters and drew me in. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

For your reading pleasure, Locus reviewer Alex Brown picks Sọmadịna by Akwaeke Emezi: Akwaeke Emezi’s ninth book is also their third young adult novel. Like their other YA novels, Pet and its prequel Bitter, Sọmadịna features a Black teen girl who must draw on her inner strength to face down a powerful, cruel force far greater than her. She must confront a …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Add it to your reading list! Locus reviewer Paula Guran says: Otto by Rhonda Pressley Veit (Remains #2) is a splendid dark novella. A man intent on just living a relatively happy and stable life is drawn into a relationship with a woman who has a tragic past A rich readable tapestry.

Read Paula’s full review online or in the July 2025 …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus contributor Jake Casella Brookins says: Leyna Krow’s Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids is a dazzling, vivid collection. Throughout its 16 stories, Krow expertly threads together a handful of elements: magical or absurd developments, incisive snapshots of familial loves and fears, and haunting reflections on climate change disasters. Shared thematic concerns and a handful of connected stories …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus staff Sandra Han recommends Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung: It features ghosts, curses, traditions, and an eerie hallway at work. Bora Chung’s third short story collection is preoccupied with alienation and loneliness, and unafraid to confront the horror in Korea’s treatment of marginalized communities. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Don’t miss it! Locus reviewer Colleen Mondor says: Set on an island off the Scottish coast during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Great Britain’s Big Freeze, Anbara Salam’s TheSalvageratchets up the tension with a protagonist who is trying tosalvage a shipwreck that might be haunted. As Marta Khoury faces a professional crisis, a personal implosion and a population who sees enemies everywhere, …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

For your reading pleasure, Locus reviewer Alexandra Pierce picks The Incandescent by Emily Tesh: Reading this as a teacher was incredibly powerful. Reading it not as a teacher will still give you a superbly crafted and plotted novel experience.

Interested in this title? Your purchase through the links below brings us a small amount of affiliate income and helps us keep doing …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus reviewer Paula Guran says: One rarely finds top-rate sword & sorcery these days, but Molly Tanzer’s authorized Jirel of Joiry novelette-the first in 85 years- Jirel and the Mirror of Truth (New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine #3) is a yummy yarn that entertains and honors Moore’s creation.

Read Paula’s full review online or in the …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Don’t miss it! Locus reviewer Alex Brown says, Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman is the only YA speculative fiction book I’ve seen in years with a 13-year-old protagonist. Hartman is so good at writing teens who feel like real teens. I’m a high school librarian, and it can be really difficult to find books for younger teen readers who want adventure and …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Add it to your TBR pile! Locus reviewer Maria Haskins recommends Summer in the House of the Departedby Josh Rountree: A heartbreakingly, achingly beautiful story about ghosts and grief, set in a house where magic is threaded into the everyday world. It’s Bradbury-esque in the very best way.

  …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus staff Arley Sorg recommends As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories by Terese Mason Pierre, ed.: The work in As The Earth Dreamsprovides the kind of literature I crave: brilliant stories that challenge and provoke, while exploring what it means to be human in fresh and interesting ways. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

For your reading pleasure, Locus contributor Eugen Bacon picks Monsters and Other Tales of Humanityby Carla E. Dash: This themed collection of poignant cautionary tales will appeal to the literary-minded reader who is curious about unusual offerings in storytelling, and open to an audacious writer who is not afraid to take you where you would rather not go.

You can read …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Add to your reading list! Locus reviewer Russell Letson says: I’d pair Edward Ashton’s TheFourthConsort and Adrian Tchaikovsky‘s Shroud. Both are (among other things) First Contact stories, and in both the humans represent extractive or expansionist regimes expecting easy pickings, which they do not get. And Tchaikovsky continues to examine totalizing authoritarian systems, which is becoming a hallmark of his work. …Read More

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Don’t miss it! Locus reviewer Paula Guran says:

Shorted by Alex Irvine (Reactor 7/30), an SF novelette set in 2059 Los Angeles in which people are basically stocks. You are bought if people think you will gain value; sold if the reverse is true. Highly original and frankly chilling. One of my favorite SFnal tales of the year.

Read the story …Read More