Amal El-Mohtar

First-time novelist Sabaa Tahir creates Capital Letter Fantasy in An Ember in the Ashes, with rebel Scholars battling an ancient, brutal Empire. Critic Amal El-Mohtar calls it "frequently riveting."

Ken Liu's debut is an epic saga of gods, kings and rebels, set in an invented world with echoes of pan-Asian myth. Reviewer Amal El-Mohtar calls it "beautiful, nuanced, fierce, original and diverse."

Genevieve Valentine's new novel is set in a world where diplomats are the equivalent of Hollywood stars, glamorous Faces manipulated by behind-the-scenes handlers and stalked by eager paparazzi.

Rachel Hartman continues her tale of half-dragon musician and unwilling diplomat Seraphina in Shadow Scale. Reviewer Amal El-Mohtar says the new book doesn't just live up to the old, it outgrows it.

Claire North's new novel imagines a world where "ghosts" can leave their own bodies at death and jump to whoever's close enough to touch. Scary, but "reader, I loved it," says reviewer Amal El-Mohtar.

In Jo Walton's new novel, the goddess Athene assembles a history-spanning group of thinkers and sets them to creating Plato's famed Just City — but then she makes the mistake of inviting Socrates.

Karen Lord's new The Galaxy Game picks up where her previous novel, The Best of All Possible Worlds, left off — in a complicated galactic civilization trying to come to terms with a genocide.

Irish poet Eavan Boland's latest volume meditates on the gulf between ideas of nation and individual lives of women; reviewer Amal El-Mohtar calls it a "beautiful kind of conversation."

Edward Carey's illustrated young adult novel about the keepers of mystical trash heaps (yes, you read that right) in an alternate Victorian London combines thrills with intelligence and compassion.

Ben Tripp's young adult debut is a charming romp through a thoroughly theatrical 18th-century England populated by swashbuckling highwaymen, fairies and circus performers.