Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Check out upcoming Top Ten themes on Jana’s blog!
This week’s theme is: the books releasing in the second half of the year that we’re most excited for!
Now, a lot of books that deserve to be on this list are not, simply because I have arcs of them, so I’m not still anticipating them, you know? Though even so, I couldn’t NOT include a few that I’ve gotten to read already!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC with chronic pain, bisexual MC, polyamory
Published on: 18th August 2026
Goodreads
A queer, gothic horror romance set in a necromancy-tinged London, sure to entrance fans of The Death of Jane Lawrence and Mexican Gothic.
London, December 1849
Irene Shallcross Haley has dedicated her life to necromancy, a forbidden, reviled art that is passed along through sentient grimoires bound in human skin. With her undead husband St. John—a marriage of kindred spirits and platonic convenience—she has been protecting the knowledge of generations of witches that came before her. Like any magic, it has come at a cost: her reputation, her relationship with her sister, and her soul. But when Irene’s love, Agnes, is hanged for witchcraft, Irene refuses to let Agnes be one more thing that is taken from her.
A true resurrection has not been achieved in two thousand years, but Irene is determined. With the help of St. John, Irene bangs on the doors of the Halls of the Dead, demanding the third part of their triumverate back…or did she? Because the Agnes that awakens comes with both a hunger for raw flesh and a malignant ghost tied to her soul.
Necromancy is the art of saying no—no, I won't let you go; no, I won't let you be destroyed—and Irene’s work is not yet done. She must find a way to bring Agnes back to her true self, she must navigate her feelings for her resurrected lover as well as St. John, and she must do all of this without catching the attention of Sir Silas Underhill, the man who sentenced Agnes to death.
Death is not the end of love. But Irene may realize it can actually be the beginning.
One of the three I’ve already read, but GODS DAMN! This is SUCH an incredible take on necromancy, revelling in the dirt and rot and ick, taking so many horror tropes and reframing them as beautiful, wondrous, loving. The prose is gorgeous, the story heart-rending and glorious – there’s NOTHING of it I didn’t adore! I’m already dying to reread it, and I can’t WAIT for everyone else to be able to read it too!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Genderfluid MC
Published on: 1st September 2026
Goodreads
When shapeshifter Aren's foster mother is killed in a mysterious disaster, he must infiltrate a foreign court to learn what caused the same disaster the last time it happened-three hundred years ago in the elfland.
Who are you when you can wear any face?
Aren is a shapeshifter, able to run with a centaur herd, fly on a hawk’s wings, and scurry through the kitchens to the screams of the innkeeper’s wife.
At age six, she’s a human foundling, abandoned to the care of the village hedgewitch. With refugees fleeing a strange upheaval in the north, spirits singing to her from a haunted forest, and the hedgewitch working to stop a looming disaster, she won’t escape her childhood unchanged.
At nineteen, he’s an elf, flirting his way through the Queen’s Court to find out what killed his mother and cursed his village. Unfortunately, it only takes one misstep to alert the elves to the shapeshifter in their midst. With the palace hunting the imposter and a human delegation arriving at Court—including a too-familiar human prince—Aren must walk a careful line to piece together the truth of what happened all those years ago.
For readers who enjoy Witch King by Martha Wells, Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare, and Uprooted by Naomi Novik.
SO INCREDIBLY HYPED! The way shapeshifting is described in the synopsis just hits ALL my buttons – especially the gender-fluidity! I check for ebook preorder links several times a week for this one, but alas, they haven’t appeared yet. I’LL KEEP LOOKING THOUGH.
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Published on: 8th September 2026
Goodreads
Castles traded places sometimes. Everyone knew that. It was always something that might happen, except that it never had. It was one of those unlikelihoods, like finding treasure, or being eaten by a wolf, or having a handsome, powerful stranger turn up to right all your wrongs. It could happen, except it didn’t.
Until all of a sudden it did.
Far above the valleys and villages of the Kingdom of Thaletal, a Great Game is played. Players move castles around the realm like chess pieces - and the ordinary villagers are mere pawns at the whim of their tactics.
When 16-year-old Burr's peaceful village is disrupted by the arrival of an ominous new castle, he decides he's had enough. But what starts as a plucky coup soon escalates - and soon the castle is wrenched away to a far-flung corner of the kingdom, where whispers mount of a mysterious ancient maiden whose magpies collect her debts at dangerous prices.
Here, the stakes are higher than the tallest turrets, and every move counts. Burr must work with his sisters and friends - and rely on the unexpected help of a strange and intriguing heiress - to unravel the secrets of the Magpie Maiden and the origins of the Great Game before he becomes just another casualty of the Players' deadly contest.
A new Frances Hardinge is always a cause for celebration!!! I have no idea what this is going to be like, except awesome – all of Hardinge’s books are wildly unique and wildly different from each other, so there’s no point trying to predict anything. But I’m sure I’ll love it!!!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Autistic queer MC, nonbinary queer MC, MLM MCs
Published on: 15th September 2026
Goodreads
Grey’s Anatomy meets A Deadly Education in this dark academia fantasy from USA Today bestselling author Freya Marske.
At the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr, every mage with the healer’s gift has five years to master their power and to prepare for the infamous Grand Exam—a five-day trial whose results will determine their entire future.
The list of exam rules includes:
• You will perform five practical cases.
• Your exam group is chosen at random.
• You pass together, or fail together.It does not include:
• On the first day, your exam group will find a classmate's dead body in the exam hall.And as they will soon discover, this particular group all have something to hide... and all have a connection with the dead girl, a brilliant scholar who would have been first in their class.
Five scholars. Five secrets. Five days in which to solve a murder, pass the most important exam of their lives, and uncover a secret larger than all of their own combined. One with the potential to change the world.
Are you ready?
Let’s begin.
Have I already gotten to read this? Yes. Am I still VIBRATING WITH EXCITEMENT for its release? YES YES A GAZILLION TIMES YES! This is one I’ll be rereading the second it hits my Kobo on pub day – I swear, this is Marske’s best book yet; clever, gorgeous, twisty and DEEPLY joy-making.
And if that’s not enough, I’m WILDLY anticipating the Illumicrate edition come September!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Biracial bisexual Vietnamese MC
Published on: 6th October 2026
Goodreads
From USA Today bestselling author Nghi Vo, this all-consuming tale of ballrooms and bloodshed weds The Gilded Age with the Gothic vision of Guillermo del Toro.
Pick a face, pick a fate.
Judith Ban, former convent girl, courtesan, and failed thief, is on the lookout for her next identity. The daughter of a Vietnamese adventuress and a French naval officer, she’s no stranger to risk, but she’s unprepared for the secrets of New York’s legendary Four Hundred, or for the women who build their power at the city’s heart through blood-soaked, gold-etched rituals of demonic marriage.
In exchange for enough wealth to outrun her past, Judith strikes a deal with the matriarch of the powerful Howard family: she will stand in for the missing Howard granddaughter, who was poised to make her debut when she disappeared. With Miss Iphigenia Marshall’s face stitched over her own, Judith is white, rich, and about to risk body and soul in the deadly games that determine which girls will find a match—and which will be devoured. If she can keep her wits and her life, her reward will be a husband with undreamt-of power who will be hers to command... so long as she can keep his infinite hungers fed. But to survive the season, Judith will have to seduce a storm in the shape of a man, before the night to which everything has been leading—the Scarlet Ball where the demons choose their brides.
A razor-sharp subversion of romance tropes and nightmare of manners, Vo's fusion of history and fantasy does for Edith Wharton what her acclaimed debut The Chosen and the Beautiful did for F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Like Bodies of Magic, I was lucky enough to snag an early copy of this, and OBVIOUSLY I devoured it. This one…is so unspeakably glorious it hurts to even think about. I realise that makes no sense at all, but I don’t know how to put it any better than that. It’s so incredibly decadent, and defiant, and, and – exquisite. Painfully so. Just. Utterly breathtaking. I think this is Vo’s best yet – it’s definitely my favourite of hers, and that spot has a LOT of contenders!
Also like Bodies of Magic, we should be getting a special edition, this time from Owlcrate. AND WOW AM I EXCITED TO SEE WHAT THEY DO WITH IT!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 8th October 2026
Goodreads
Bekka Trevelyan is an arcanist, and the first woman to be made a Gentleman Scholar of Arcany at the University of Kabakak. Her graduate work was in refining a device to measure the potency of the winds of magic. Over her Yule holidays from teaching, she travels east on a field trip to test her theory about the Winds in the true Wyld. Instead, she finds herself swept up in the investigation of a kidnapping of an indigenous woman and her child by a demon that has possessed the body of a tracker.
Tam Warden was a war hero, and then a sort of government enforcer. He gave up rank and fame to marry across class lines. But government isn't done with him yet. He's called back to action to investigate Bekka's claims - discreetly. This is delicate work, because the truth could unbalance the nation.
Essa Bateman is a mercenary spy, a hard woman with no attachments and very few ethics. Few, it turns out, is more than 'none.' She sees the ripples of unrest from the underbelly of society, but deciding what to do about them is a different beast entirely.
In a world where gunpowder is manufactured from the souls of executed criminals, and the ultra-rich seek immortality at any price, where children labour in factories and the desperate poor turn to vampirism, where slavery is rampant and gangs rule the streets...
A few people are about to be heroes. They just don't know it yet.
Few authors hold me as spellbound as Cameron does when he’s writing SFF, and he kept this one seriously under wraps – we only learned about it when the cover was revealed! Even now, I know no more than is in the book description, but honestly, I wouldn’t even need that – if it’s his name on the cover and it’s shelved in SFF, I MUST HAVE IT!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Major lesbian character
Published on: 13th October 2026
Goodreads
The Thrice-Bound Fool is the epic, rollicking next chapter in the bestselling and “awesome as hell” (Nicholas Eames) fantasy adventure series that began with The Blacktongue Thief.
Professional thief and inveterate trickster Kinch Na Shannack has always enjoyed a good book. But now his life, and the future of all of Manreach, depends on him deciphering a very bad book indeed; a stolen, sentient tome that tries to kill him every time he opens it—and often when it’s closed.
Galva, veteran of the goblin wars and death’s sworn handmaiden, has vowed to protect Kinch while he mines the book for its dark magic and even darker secrets. She does so not for Kinch’s sake—though the cheeky bastard is growing on her—but because the book is the key to stopping the shadowy tyrants out to kill the queen she serves, and loves.
The ruthless, all-seeing Taker’s Guild dogs their every step, and thief and knight must flee the known world entirely if they hope to succeed in their mission. But trouble finds Kinch wherever he goes, and the pair may have traded the devil they know for horrors far darker and hungrier as they enter lands unknown.
NEW BLACKTONGUE BOOK! Blacktongue Thief was my introduction to Buehlman, and I adored it; when we got the prequel, Daughters’ War, I adored that too. NOW WE’RE GETTING BACK TO KINCH, and unsurprisingly, more shenanigans are ensuing. I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Genres: Adult, Horror, Speculative Fiction
Published on: 13th October 2026
Goodreads
The youngest son in a family of historians who has been hunted by dark forces associated with Dracula finds himself in peril at the hands of a new threat—a thrilling novel from the bestselling author of The Historian.
When his mother passes away suddenly, Jay Turner finds himself at a crossroads. She was always secretive, raising him alone in Boston and staying single until her death. Returning to their brownstone to clear out her possessions, he finds two unusual objects: a partially burned scrap of newspaper bearing the name “Gael Brogan,” and a small antique volume bound in leather.
The sight of the volume is chilling. As a young scholar, his mother had been given the medieval book—one of a set commissioned by Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Dracula, just before his death in 1477. She'd always warned Jay of how dangerous it was, and had donated it to a museum before she died . . . yet here it sits before him.
Taking leave from his position as a history instructor at a boys’ boarding school, Jay sets out to learn more about Gael Brogan, a prominent nineteenth century actor whose last and most famous role was the Count himself in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As Jay begins to dig deeper—helped by a mysterious woman named Rhiannon he meets along the way—he uncovers a frightening story of a young actress who fell under Brogan's sway long ago. And before long, Jay and Rhiannon realize that something similarly implacable is also pursuing them.
Hypnotic and atmospheric, Mystery Play is a novel richly steeped in lore, pulsating with tension as it chronicles a dark secret history of rituals, religion, and immortality.
Hi yes excuse me, A FREAKING HISTORIAN SEQUEL??? WE’RE GETTING A SEQUEL TO THE HISTORIAN??? AND I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT UNTIL IT POPPED UP ON NETGALLEY??? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Genres: Horror, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Asexual autistic MC
Published on: 27th October 2026
Goodreads
CG Drews, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Don't Let the Forest In and Hazelthorn, weaves a disturbing and intoxicating siren-call in Scorpion Deep, about a lonely boy who accidentally awakens an obsessive eldritch sea god.
The only thing Jonathan Covey wants from the gloomy, moldering isle of Kelcarrow is to leave it. Summer is ending, and his friends are looking forward to college on the mainland, unaware that Jonathan was not accepted to join them. He'll be left behind with nothing but the ocean's haunts and a rising dread of being abandoned.In an act of wild desperation, Jonathan pays a tithe to Scorpion Deep, an eldritch sea god who many of the locals have dismissed as myth. He wants to forget the past, he wants to follow his friends, and most of all he wants to finally escape.
To his shock and horror, the ritual works—Scorpion Deep awakens. And despite his terror, Jonathan can't help but feel drawn toward the ageless entity that seems just as mutually obsessed with him. As scales start growing down his spine and Scorpion Deep's adoration of him turns bloody, Jonathan realizes the only way to end the nightmare is to destroy the monster one way or another.
But once a god has awoken, the only way to be free is to pay a price of blood.
Also by CG Drews
Don't Let the Forest In
Hazelthorn
Drews’ queer YA horror has been a consistent delight, and I fully expect to fall utterly in love with Scorpion Deep too! Drews’ prose, autistic queers, and now a feral sea god? Ohhhhhhhhh this is so going to end up on the favourites shelf.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Gay MC, bi/pansexual love interest, M/M, asexual secondary character, Indigenous American secondary character, Indigenous American nonbinary secondary character
Published on: 8th December 2026
Goodreads
The Misfit Caravan is the long-anticipated fourth novel in the Tarot Sequence—a modern fantasy about chosen family, old trauma, and the monsters that come with both.
Rune Saint John is the last scion of the Sun Throne—one of New Atlantis's ancient ruling Arcana, a spell-caster of terrifying power, and, right now, the man trying to pack two luxury RVs with his entire found family for an American road trip. What starts as a chance to heal and put recent losses behind them becomes something far more dangerous: a reckoning with new and organized enemies, murdered fae, and buried truths that refuse to stay buried.
Racing from one American mystery to the next, Rune and his companions follow a trail of violence toward Sanctuary City, the secret underground stronghold of the mainland fae. There, Rune confronts revelations that crack his world open. As loyalties are tested and safety unravels, he realizes the most dangerous lies aren't the ones told by enemies—they're the ones stitched into the lives of the people he loves most.
According to my sources, KD is very close to handing in the manuscript of Misfit Caravan to his editor! I’m not sure if that’s the first draft or the final one – surely the latter, if they’re aiming for a December release? Which would be THE BEST YULE GIFT EVER!!!
Tell me which books YOU’RE most looking forward to in the rest of the year!
I like the European cover of Traitors’ Nest way more than the NA one. So much prettier. I’m a bit confused as to when it’s actually coming out, though. Kobo says Sep. 8th, but Goodreads says Aug. 8th or 27th, and UK Amazon says Aug. 27th as well. I hope this means the release date has been moved up a bit.
I’ve mentioned this numerous times already, but I’ll keep mentioning it because I’m so excited: new Becky Chambers and new Yoon Ha Lee, both in October. Those two, plus Traitors’ Nest and The Goblin Crown, are my ‘most excited for’.
2026 is shaping up to be a great year. I still need to finish Cameron’s other series. However, new Tarot Sequence, another Markse and Vo PLUS another SM Hallow Novel (trying to keep my expectations reasonable for that one. I still think about How To Survive this Fairytale). I will be well fed!
There is no need to keep expectations reasonable for Hallow’s new novel, it is SUBLIME. Incredibly different, mostly because it’s structured typically and leans into horror, but easily as excellent as Fairytale!