To help bookstores and libraries share books published by independent literary presses, we’ve put together this roundup of fiction with speculative and science-fictional elements.
Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen
LittlePuss Press | May 19, 2026
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 978-1-964322-02-5
In this novel, a “magical girl-gone-bad and a renegade mech pilot must stay on a date forever, even if it means destroying the world.”
We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine by Deni Ellis Béchard
Milkweed Editions | January 28, 2025
Distributer: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 9781571311481
This novel “tackles the most pressing issues of our time—from AI and the genetic modification of humans to gender roles, discrimination, free speech, and class divisions.”
Love & Murder by Katie Christine Bishop
Black Heron Press | August 5, 2025
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 9781936364466
This animal fable is “a treatise on nature of humanity (as portrayed by cats) under the stress of environmental degradation.”
Thanks for Meeting Me Here by Jill Bronfman
Raven Chronicles Press | August 5, 2026
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 9798991403276
In this novel, “Miranda has wound up with a mix of biological and artificial body parts,” and “she and her daughter are in danger because their government is waffling on whether she deserves any human rights.”
Mean Higher High Water by D. S. G. Burke
Vine Leaves Press | January 13, 2026
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 978-3-98832-234-0
This novel follows Nia, whose “fiancé died in the explosion of the world’s first zero-emissions jet, an incident that put a fiery punctuation mark on global climate cooperation.”
Graywolf Press | March 17, 2026
Distributor: Farrar, Straus and Giroux via Macmillan
ISBN: 978-1-64445-379-7
The Spoil is “a mesmerizing novel about the perplexities of memory, Las Vegas real estate, DIY projects, and demons.”
Translated from the Korean by Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar
Kaya Press | July 15, 2025
Distributor: Distributed Art Publishers
ISBN: 9781935717119
In this novel told as a series of interlinked stories, “an ordinary South Korean high school classroom becomes ground zero for the discovery of a radical new source of energy: children capable of conducting and amplifying the telepathic and telekinetic powers of those around them.”
Translated from the French by Pablo Strauss
Coach House Books | May 20, 2025
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
ISBN: 9781552454992
Horsefly is “a terrifying tale about the ways in which we try to dominate nature, and how nature will, inevitably, wreak retribution upon us.”
Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel
The Feminist Press | March 31, 2026
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 9781558613546
Event Horizon is “an exquisite existential novel, dark as deep space, woven with reflection on oppression, solidarity, trauma, and loss.”
Raven Chronicles Press | September 5, 2025
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 9798991403214
According to Charles Tung, “FUTURE X explores a mash-up of genres best suited to engage realistically and speculatively the challenges of storytelling at a time of species-level existential danger.”
The Glass Garden by Jessica Lévai
Lanternfish Press | May 13, 2025
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
ISBN: 9781941360873
According to Charlie Allison, this novella about two sisters exploring a discovery on a distant exoplanet is “lush botanic space horror.”
SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide by Cannupa Hanska Luger
Ayin Press/Aora | September 2, 2025
Distributor: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 9781961814264
This series of interrelated works “seeks to reimagine Indigenous life and culture in a postcolonial world where space exploration has reduced and reconfigured the earth’s population.”
Red Hen Press | March 24, 2026
Distributor: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 9781636284767
According to Claire Stanford, Yellow “weaves a thick spell, moving from the Vietnam War to the Covid-19 pandemic, from a backyard in Louisiana to the vastness of outer space.”
Quantum Nightmares: A Collection of Short Stories by Jose M. Rodriguez
Catalyst Press/Flare Books | October 7, 2025
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
ISBN: 9781963511215
This collection of dystopian short stories “contains the nuggets of bizarre psychological truth that help explain today’s divisive United States, where myth collides with belief and fact is hard to find.”
Tupelo Press | June 1, 2025
Distributor: Chicago Distribution Center
ISBN: 9781961209268
This novel “enacts an incisive and moving exploration into what it means to be human in the age of AI and increasing transhumanism.”
Graywolf Press | June 9, 2026
Distributor: Farrar, Straus and Giroux via Macmillan
ISBN: 978-1-64445-394-0
According to Donna Seaman, this novel tells a “crystalline, poetic, witty, and haunting post-depopulation tale of loss, adaptation, unexpected beauty, and surpassing love.”
