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This much-anticipated sequel to Children of Blood and Bone returns to the story of Zélie and Amari, who have succeeded in bringing magic back to the West Africa-inspired land of Orïsha, but are now embroiled in a deadly political battle for the throne. Throughout the series, Adeyemi, a Nigerian American scholar of West African mythology, religion, and culture, weaves a suspenseful tale that’s equal parts magical fantasy and justice narrative, featuring complex female heroines and enchanting world-building. If you’re looking for something fun and fast but supremely thoughtful, the Legacy of Orisha series is a good place to start.

N. K. Jemisin’s latest fantasy novel doesn’t come out until March, but Powell’s staffers are already raving about it (bookseller perk: advance reader copies). In The City We Became, a diverse group of Manhattanites rally to defend the city’s six souls from an ancient, deep-seated evil. Jemisin consciously plays with Lovecraft’s fixation on urban settings while upending his equation of darkness with evil, providing five riveting protagonists from different cultural backgrounds who must learn to use their powers and work together to save their home from a supernatural threat. It’s urban and funny and an apt allegory for gentrification; this short, smart novel is a fine addition to Jemisin’s award-winning canon.

Continuing the trend of Black women writers kicking the (mostly) Anglo butt of the sci-fi/fantasy genre, Nnedi Okorafor’s beautiful, postapocalyptic Who Fears Death tells the story of Onyesonwu, a child of rape who grows up to be a sorceress who must sacrifice herself for her people. Despite the grandeur and spirituality of the narrative, Okorafor centers the story on trenchant social issues like the ostracizing of rape victims, gender inequality, and the allure and dangers of tradition in Saharan Africa, making this immersive novel at once a captivating fantasy and a critical lens through which to examine our own societies’ failings.

Song of the Shank is a spellbinding work of fiction perfect for fans of books that integrate the fantastical into the known in order to illuminate historical nuances and absurdities (think The Underground Railroad). Based on the true story of Blind Tom Wiggins, a black slave and musical prodigy, Song of the Shank examines the fraught history of Reconstruction through Tom’s relationships with friends, unscrupulous managers, and the listening public. Allen, an award-winning poet, ably fills in the holes in Wiggins’s historical record, bringing to life the impressions and experiences of an autistic savant and the swelling hope and crushing blows of Black life in America in the years immediately preceding and following the Civil War.

Caribbean-born Turnbull’s fantastic take on alien invasion is set in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where a mostly benign — but very aggressive — alien people called the Ynaa have settled to conduct a mysterious research project. The islanders benefit from advanced Ynaa technology, but are also victims to the Ynaa’s paranoia; the Ynaa are quick to perceive a threat and quicker to terminate it. At the heart of the story are the brother of one of the Ynaa’s victims; a young woman who has returned to the island from college, pregnant; her close friend, Derrick, who works for the Ynaa ambassador; the ambassador herself, who finds her loyalty torn between the islanders and the Ynaa; and Derrick’s grandmother, who refuses Ynaa intervention to treat her cancer. Using the tropes of the alien invasion narrative and a plethora of points of view, Turnbull explores the violence inherent in colonialism and resistance, crafting a propulsive story with nuanced characters, human and alien, to whom you will grow deeply attached.

The sequel to Due’s My Soul to Keep, The Living Blood is the kind of wildly imaginative story — blending adventure, horror, thriller, espionage, natural disaster, magic, love story, African and African American culture, and family drama — that only a disciplined author like Due could successfully wrangle into a cohesive plot. When the book opens, Jessica has followed her husband (a member of a secretive Ethiopian sect that traded its souls for immortality centuries ago) to an African jungle, where she uses her (now immortal — this is a sequel, remember) blood to heal sick mortals and strives to protect her magical daughter, Fana, from the murderous clutches of the sect. It sounds crazy and it is crazy, but it’s absolutely fascinating, fantastic, and smart.

Is it fair to classify Whitehead as a sci-fi or fantasy writer? He would eschew the label, but there’s no question that the way Whitehead threads fantasy and horror into novels that are also trenchant explorations of systemic problems is nothing short of magical. His excellent debut, The Intuitionist, about an elevator inspector who stumbles upon the intellectual blueprints for an elevator that carries people into the future, and his zombie novel Zone One, are overtly speculative and tied to horror tropes, respectively. While the novels’ fantastical elements make for an engrossing, perfectly discombobulating reading experience, Whitehead’s crisp prose and head-on recognition of issues like gender and race discrimination, loneliness, loss, and hope are what keep us returning to his endlessly imaginative and beautiful books.

This anthology of 25 short stories centers on the experiences of Americans on the margins, whether they be queer, of color, or othered by virtue of physical or cognitive diversity. As you’ve probably guessed, the editors took their title from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which prioritizes the experiences of marginalized citizens like women, immigrants, Indigenous groups, and blue collar workers. A People’s Future of the United States not only features some of our favorite Black sci-fi and fantasy writers (N. K. Jemisin, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Violet Allen, Tananarive Due), but also closely examines the politics of marginalization and the social structures — real and imagined — that support discrimination and violence. The 25 stories range wildly from terrifying to heartbreaking to hilarious, but each insists on the primacy of all voices in building a way forward from oppression, isolation, and fear.