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
Today I have three mystery-tinged stories, take a look:
Welcome to Serenity Falls – the most idyllic, and safest, town in the US – a place to grow up, grow your family and grow old together. For Dan and his daughter, Sadie, it’s the perfect relocation option. A fresh start, thousands of miles from their troubled past in the UK.
But their idyll is shattered when they find a dead body in the swimming pool of their new house – a house Dan’s late mother kept secret from him all his life.
It’s just the start of a series of disturbing discoveries. Abandoned houses where people have seemingly just upped and left. The strange woman Sadie sees around town putting up ‘missing’ posters for a child who drowned almost thirty years ago. An ice cream van that drives around at night making sure residents are asleep…
As plans gear up to celebrate Serenity Falls’ fiftieth anniversary, something is stirring beneath the surface of the blissful façade. Is Serenity Falls really the perfect town or is it founded on something far darker? And is someone so desperate to keep its secrets that they’d resort to anything to preserve them?
Welcome to Serenity Falls.
Once you’re here, you’re here to stay.
Serenity Falls by C.J. Tudor. Releases in September 2026 from Penguin. OK, so I just realized this is the UK edition of C.J. Tudor’s new book, and being a US resident I don’t usually share other country’s releases. But I can’t help it! I’m super excited for this book, and hopefully there will be a U.S. release announced soon.
S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed meets Percival Everett’s Erasure in this literary thriller following the grandson of a famous Black actress from the 1920s to the 1940s, now a filmmaker himself, who returns to his grandmother’s cabin retreat in the California mountains only to encounter the legacy of her rage born in Old Hollywood.
Award-winning author Tananarive Due returns with the follow-up to the multi-award-winning The Reformatory in this generational novel of rage. With flashbacks to Johnny’s grandmother—who brushed shoulders with giants like Lena Horne, Clark Gable, and Hattie McDaniel—this novel explores three generations, beginning with Mazelle Washington’s life as a young actress. Fifty years after Mazelle’s death, Johnny will discover the secret she kept and nurtured since she was a child, when she had a dark wish come true.
A monster lurks outside Mazywood, hidden for generations, and Johnny brought his family to its hunting grounds.
Mazywood by Tananarive Due. Releases in September 2026 from Saga Press. I’m very excited to see a new Tananarive Due book coming out this year! This sounds really good, I cannot wait.
After a cheesy ghost tour in one of California’s oldest towns stumbles upon an actual haunting, a skeptical historian of the occult becomes entangled in solving a murder case.
When Professor Harper Grae loses a bet with a friend, she finds herself on a local nighttime tour of “haunted” locations in Monterey. Harper’s a lifelong non-believer in the occult, though her academic career is devoted to the historical and societal significance of witchcraft, ghosts, and medicinal poisons of all sorts. But her skepticism immediately gets tested when the tour stumbles on the body of local artist Delilah Mason—who’s found murdered on the grounds of a nearly two-hundred-year-old mansion, once home to the infamous Perles family.
On the night Mason’s body is found, Harper catches sight of something in the house that she can’t shake, something that’s impossible to explain, at least not rationally. Soon the murder investigation reveals that this is the second time a woman has been found murdered beneath a sprawling cypress tree in the gardens of the Perles Mansion. And when Harper’s closest friend is questioned by the police, Harper fears the authorities will fail to uncover the real killer.
As Harper asks questions around town and digs deeper into the supernatural speculation and rumors surrounding the murders—two women killed in similar circumstances, separated by nearly two centuries —she sees evidence she can’t ignore that the notorious mansion truly is haunted by the ghost of Isabel Perles.
What will it cost Harper to rethink everything she’s always believed to admit that the veil between the living and the dead might actually be crossed?
The Séance Garden by Juliet Blackwell. Releases in July 2026 from Berkley. I love the sound of this supernatural mystery! I know this author has written a lot of books, but I haven’t read any yet. This might be my first:-)
Serenity Falls and the Seance Garden both sound really good!
Right?? Very different from each other, but so good.
I’m very excited for more Tananarive Duel!
Me too!
These all sound so good!
They do, I can’t wait to read them:-)
I love Mazywood’s cover! But I’m more drawn to Serenity Falls.
There’s something about an ice cream truck, right? 😉
Serenity Falls sounds amazing! I’m dying to know more already!
Me too!
It’s a new title for me but I’m really loving the sound of The Séance Garden. The occult and mystery, it sounds so good!
Yes, I agree! I love the mystery/occult combo.
I have enjoyed some Juliet Blackwell. Xe Sands narrates some of her books and I really like her also.
I have never read her books, but this one sounds perfect for me.
Well CJ Tudor seems great even if I suspect it will be some horror or mild horror!
I can’t wait to read it!
Ooh, these all sound great! I’m particularly intrigued by Mazywood, though!
Me too, it sounds so good!
I just added them all to my want to read list. There are SO many good sounding books coming this year.
So true! I feel so overwhelmed with all the choices, lol.
Great minds think alike, Serenity Falls is already in my monthly wrap up cover section! I too hope for a US release but meh, I am fine reading the UK one (and adore the cover!) I am also definitely interested in (and love the cover of) Mazywood! The Séance Garden is new to me, but I am definitely interested! Excellent choices as always!
Yes, I love the UK cover! I hope the US uses the same one. Thanks Shannon!
These all sound so good! I hope you enjoy them—and that you get a US release of that first one!
Me too!
Ooh, The Seance Garden sounds really interesting. I like when a skeptic’s beliefs are tested.
I’m excited to check out The Seance Garden:-)
I am particularly drawn to The Seance Garden, though the C.J. Tudor book is also calling to me! But I’m trying to be extra choosy right now as I’m struggling to keep up with my Netgalley arcs!
You and me both! But the Tudor does sound good:-)
Ooh adding all three of these to my TBR, they all sound so intriguing. I think I’m most drawn to the first (and quite frankly its beyond time for me to try something by the author) but I definitely hope to read all three eventually. I hope you dont have to wait too long for Serenity Falls over there.
I will be stalking the author’s social media for a US release announcement:-)
I’m SO excited to hear that CJ Tudor has a new one coming out this year. I love her books. 😀
Me too, I can’t wait!
I like the sound of all three of these, and would love to read them all if possible. Greedy, I know.
Lynn 😀