Welcome to Future Fiction, my reimagining of the Waiting on Wednesday meme! There are so many amazing new books coming out, that I can no longer pick just one. My goal with Future Fiction is to share at least three new books each week, a combination of recent cover reveals and books that I’ve recently added to my TBR pile. I’m still going to be linking up with Wishful Endings/Can’t Wait Wednesday, and I also want to give a shout out to Jill at Breaking the Spine for starting the original Waiting on Wednesday meme. I hope you’ll find some new books to add to your TBR piles, and as always, I look forward to hearing what YOU’RE looking forward to:-D
Science fiction, thriller and dark fantasy. Those are the genres I’m sharing today, take a look:
Ex Machina meets This is How You Lose the Time War: Seth Haddon’s science fiction debut, Volatile Memory, is a heart-filled, vengeful sapphic sci-fi action adventure novella.
With nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the call goes out that a lucrative piece of tech is waiting on a nearby planet, she relies on all the swiftness of her prey animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.
What you found wasn’t your ticket out—it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallized, and I was alive.
Masks aren’t supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.
Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once her ex-husband.
Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon. Releases in January 2025 from Tordotcom. I’ll admit this blurb is a little on the confusing side, but I can’t resist the cover, so this is definitely going on my TBR. I’m very curious about how masks play a part in the story!
A pulse-pounding new Southern thriller from the author of the runaway bestseller A Flicker in the Dark.
Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared on her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist… until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew.
With the entire summer now looming ahead—a summer spent with nothing to do in her childhood home, with her estranged mother—Claire decides on a whim to accept a seasonal job at Galloway Farm, a muscadine vineyard in coastal South Carolina less than an hour away from where she grew up. At first glance, Galloway is an idyllic escape for Claire. A scenic retreat full of slow-paced nostalgia, as well as a place where her sister seemed truly happy in that last summer before she vanished, it feels like the perfect plan to pass the time. However, as soon as Claire starts to settle in, she stumbles across an old diary written by one of the vineyard’s owners, and what at first seems like a story of young rebellion and love turns into something much more sinister as it begins to describe details of various unsolved crimes. As the days stretch on, Claire finds herself becoming more and more secluded as she starts to obsess over the diary’s contents… as well as the lingering feeling that her own sister’s disappearance may be somehow tied to it all.
Galloway was supposed to be a place to help her move forward, but instead, Claire quickly finds herself immersed in her own dark and dangerous past.
Forget Me Not by Stacy Willingham. Releases in August 2025 from Minotaur Books. For some reason I have yet to read a Stacy Willingham book, and I’m hoping this will be my first. The cover is making me very curious about the story as well…
Practical Magic meets Gone Girl in Ava Morgyn’s next dark, spellbinding novel about a woman who is more than a witch – she’s a hunter.
Piers Corbin has always had an affinity for poisonous things – plants and men. From the pokeweed berries she consumed at age five that led to the accidental death of a stranger, to the husband whose dark proclivities have become… concerning, poison has been at the heart of her story.
But when she fakes her own death in an attempt to escape her volatile marriage and goes to stay with her estranged great aunt in the mountains, she realizes her predilection is more than a hunger – it’s a birthright. Piers comes from a long line of poison eaters – Bane Witches – women who ingest deadly plants and use their magic to rid the world of evil men.
Piers sets out to earn her place in her family’s gritty but distinguished legacy, all while working at her Aunt Myrtle’s cafe and perpetuating a flirtation with the local, well-meaning sheriff to allay his suspicions on the body count she’s been leaving in her wake. But soon she catches the attention of someone else, a serial killer operating in the area. And that only means one thing – it’s time to feed.
In Ava Morgyn’s dark, thrilling novel, The Bane Witch, a very little poison can do a world of good.
The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn. Releases in March 2025 from St. Martin’s Griffin. This cover has been out for a while, but for some reason I haven’t feature it yet. I think this sounds really good, and I love the idea of witches who eat poison. Plus, pretty cover!
The blurb of Volatile Memory is on the confusing side indeed, but on a second read, it makes sense (still…I could have written a better one LOL). Intriguing!
Roberta R. recently posted…Offbeat Offline: October 2024 (Back and Refreshed…Ha, I Wish)
I haven’t managed to read a book by Stacy Willingham yet either but I’ve seen them around a lot and this one does sound pretty intriguing. Once the blurb mentioned that diary I was hooked. And I love the sound of the last book. Practical Magic meets Gone Girl sounds amazing and I adore witchy reads. I hope you enjoy all three of these and I’ll keep an eye out for your thoughts on the sci fi one too as I’m currently undecided over it.
You bet that Forget Me Not will be on my TBR!