Future Fiction #398 – Cover Reveals & Newly Discovered SFF Books

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

---

What, Summer of Horror is over? 😉 Here are three new covers, all of them brightly colored and spectacular, all by women authors, take a look!

---

A dynamite horror novel set in a rural West Virginia diner where the coffee’s fresh, the customers are strange, and, lately, something in the woods has developed a taste for the townsfolk.

Grady Hendrix meets The Bear in this terrifying debut about monsters, summoned evil, and found family.

The woods are watching. Something ancient is waking. And the graveyard shift just clocked in.

The Waffle Hutch is open twenty-four hours a day, slinging hash browns and coffee to the weird and the weary. When a string of gruesome deaths rattles the coal mining town of Mahigan, West Virginia, and rumors of creatures in the woods begin to spread, the night crew senses something waiting at their doorstep. And the diner’s newest hire seems to know more than he’s letting on.

Jimmy Hughes was supposed to disappear. A disgraced Michelin-starred chef on the run, he finds refuge in Mahigan behind the line at Waffle Hutch, frying eggs and dodging questions. But as bodies pile up, Jimmy and his coworkers realize that something feral is feeding on their town. Haunted by the past he tried to outrun, Jimmy begins to fear that what he tried to escape may have its claws in those he’s only begun to trust.

Set in a forgotten corner of Appalachia where ancient forces still hold sway and told in alternating points of view from the diner’s unforgettable ensemble cast, Werewolves of Waffle Hutch is a feast of camp, terror, and darkly comic storytelling that reimagines werewolf mythology through the lens of eco-fiction and Appalachian folklore. Equal parts horror and heart, it’s a story of monsters, outcasts, and the broken people who fight like hell to protect their own.

Werewolves of Waffle Hutch by Reba McQueen. Releases in May 2027 from Hyperion Avenue. Any book with a comparison to Grady Hendrix gets my attention, and any book with the words “werewolf” and “waffle” in the title definitely gets my attention!

---

Sometimes your sisters won’t talk to you. And sometimes a goddess gives you snakes for hair and a lethal stare. And sometimes the only way you can face your demons is by leaving the cave you call home. . . even if the outside world is filled with idiots. Just another day in the life of a gorgon.

Fifteen years after Athena turned them into gorgons, Medusa and her sisters’ relationship has gone from inseparable to impossible. Euryale is annoyingly perfect, and Stheno has disappeared. Guilt-ridden and traumatized by the past, Medusa spends her days hiding in her cave, enduring patronizing visits from Eury, slamming a bottle of ouzo (or six), and turning wannabe heroes into stone. Fun!

But when some kid named Perseus tries to behead her to save his mother from a wicked king, Medusa sees an opportunity: take Perseus under her wing (literally), rescue his mother, and finally prove to her sister that she definitely has her life together. But the journey across Ancient Greece quickly brings fresh horrors: screeching, topless harpies hound their every move, a hot demigod keeps trying to kill her (or worse, date her), and Medusa’s newfound crew wants to…be friends. Ugh.

This gorgon’s got a decision to make: go back to her safe, sad life or finally take off the bedazzled sunglasses and face not only gods and monsters, but her worst enemy yet – herself.

A Gorgon’s Guide to Getting a Life by Ellen Meny. Releases in May 2027 from Ace Books. This cover is one of my favorite recent covers for sure! And the story sounds hysterical. I can’t wait:-)

---

From New York Times bestselling author Olivie Blake comes NEWPHORIA!, a playful yet biting dystopian satire about what happens if we get the future we deserve.

It’s 2075 and time once again for the annual Senecan Games, a fight-to-the-death tournament in which the sinful are contestants, as nominated online by their neighbors, mutuals, and IRL friends. But who has time to stream murder games in this economy?

Just as the Senecan begins, Wolfie Anderson-Spencer, an archival researcher of millennial culture at Oxford, discovers historical memes may have been erased from his carefully curated files. As his forebears would say: highly sus!

This seemingly individual IT issue leads Wolfie to the sinister discovery of outwardly unrelated secrets, including a survivalist cult’s mysterious massacre, a pop star’s cancellation and election to the first Senecan games, and a lonely young woman named Dolores who has managed to avoid the watchful eye of big tech―until now. She just may be the only hope of saving humanity from the dark web of exploitation that we unwittingly opted into.

Moving back and forth in time, from the makeshift swamps of London to the abandoned ruins of the Central California coast, NEWPHORIA! is an eccentric, character-driven novel that explores technofeudalism, the dopamine hit of clicking “buy,” and what happens if we actually get the future we deserve.

Newphoria! by Olivie Blake. Releases in August 2027 from Tor Books. This sounds absolutely bonkers! I haven’t read anything by Blake yet, but I have a bunch of her books on my TBR. And check out the cover!

---

What do you think of this week’s Future Fiction picks? Let me know in the comments!