Here’s the full list of science fiction titles heading your way in August!
Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Release dates are subject to change.
August 5
Escaping Denver — Teague Bohlen (Blackstone)
For internet sleuths, nothing beats a firsthand account—especially when it’s your own. Desperate for tangible evidence of a shadow government, monstrous creatures, and a laboratory complex built deep beneath the Denver International Airport, Jessica wrangles a gaggle of like-minded armchair adventurers to break into the facility, seeking not only validation but vindication too. Using the Escaping Denver podcast as a loose guide, this ragtag team discovers that it’s not breaking in that’s hard—it’s getting out.
Teo’s Durumi (Alliance #2) — Elaine U. Cho (Zando)
Teo Anand, former ne’er-do-well second son of the Anand Tech empire and current solar fugitive, has just crash-landed on the Moon after escaping the latest attempt on his life. But if anyone can help exonerate him, it’s his best friend, bold Korean space pilot Ocean Yoon. Falsely accused of murdering his family, Teo is running out of both time and options. But loyalties are uncertain in their group of steadfast comrades and tentative new allies, and it’s difficult to know who to trust in the tangled web that awaits them in Artemis, a city on the Moon rich in Korean history and haunted by ghosts from Teo’s and Ocean’s pasts. Further complicating matters are Haven—the pensive medic whose beliefs challenge Ocean’s—and the dashing Phoenix—a space raider who’s come blazing into Teo’s life in more ways than one. All the while, Corvus, the real culprit behind the slaying of the Anands, is sowing a path of destruction that threatens to swallow the solar whole. The crew will wrestle with clashing ideals, flying bullets, and undeniable feelings as they race toward a stunning final stand.
Star Wars: Sanctuary (Bad Batch) — Lamar Giles (Random House Worlds)
A good soldier knows that life is all about change—whether it’s on or off the battlefield. Surviving, living, means adaptation. Hunter is well acquainted with this lesson. He’s on the run from the Empire, Echo’s off on a mission with Captain Rex, and Crosshair is… still Crosshair, but amidst all the change, Hunter still has Tech, Wrecker, and Omega. And it seems that his small family might have finally found a safe place to land, far from the increasingly vigilant eyes of the Empire: Pabu. But their potential new island home is in desperate need of resources if there is any hope for the fledgling community to recover from a devastating sea wave. That’s where Phee Goena, self-proclaimed liberator of treasures, comes in, with a couple of jobs she swears will get them the funds they need. Despite Hunter’s concern with Phee’s precarious plans, the rest of the crew is fine following her lead. Things go wrong almost immediately, as Phee’s droid blows the crew’s cover at a high-stakes auction, and they barely make it out with the relic they’d been paid to acquire. Hunter insists they finish their first mission and deliver the relic before taking on more work, but Phee and the others push forward with a second job: ferrying a couple on the run, one of whom is due to give birth at any moment. Hunter worries that they’re risking too much, especially when their mysterious new passengers cling to lies and secrets that trace back to an Imperial Security Bureau officer hot on their trail. As Hunter tries to get the crew back on a stable, safe path far, far away from anything to do with the Empire’s watchdogs, their overlapping missions only invite more danger and chaos. On the verge of failing both their desperate passengers and their community on Pabu, the Batch must remember that the only way they succeed, the only way they survive to fight another day, is by trusting each other.
Mindscape — Andrea Hairston (Tor Books)
The world has been divided by the Barrier. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epidimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart a potential treaty to end the internal wars. When the treaty’s architect is assassinated, her protegee, Elleni, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, is forced to take up her mantle. Now Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work. Can they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?
Automatic Noodle — Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom Publishing)
You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food—the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around—for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war. But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.
Behind the Veil (TransDimensional Hunter #3) — John Ringo, Lydia Sherrer (Baen)
When Lynn Raven set out to win the championship for groundbreaking augmented reality game TransDimensional Hunter, the worst she thought she’d face was sunburn, mosquito bites, and annoying spectators. The more she plays, though, the higher the stakes become—and the stranger the obstacles she has to face. From dodging fans-turned-stalker to managing inter-team sabotage to surviving the increasingly bizarre antics of a game algorithm that seems to have it out for her, Lynn isn’t sure how much more she can take. And then the other shoe drops. If Lynn has any hope of coming out alive and on top, she’ll have to up her game beyond anything she thought possible. And even that might not be enough.
August 12
Acts of God — Kanan Gill (Blackstone)
Private detective P. Manjunath thinks like fire and works like dust as he sets out to investigate existential cataclysms unfolding all over the globe–not knowing that the ripples in reality he sees are being caused by Dr. Krishna, a scientist in a utopian future and technically the God of their world. As Manjunath’s investigation disrupts God’s plans, a Danish police officer attains enlightenment, a lapel pin gives disruptive advice, a sentient wall provides the key to creativity, a pill cures the human condition, and everyone in the world develops a lisp at the same time. A blend of philosophical provocation, inventive lyricism, humor, and chaos, Acts of God marks the evolution of one of the finest voices in comedy.
The Feeding — Anthony Ryan (Blackstone)
Fifteen years ago the feeders rose from the shadows to transform the world into a graveyard. The few survivors exist in fortified settlements surrounded by the empty ruins of a destroyed civilization. For years the citizens of New City Redoubt have relied on an elite cadre of Crossers to navigate the feeder-infested wasteland between settlements in order to trade for vital supplies. But the Outside is becoming ever more dangerous, and the ranks of the Crossers grow thinner with every crossing. Layla, only a child when the Feeding destroyed the old world, spends her days scavenging the ruins for valuable scrap and her nights helping her adoptive family eke a living from the Redoubt’s only movie theater. Now, with her father slowly dying, Layla resolves to join the Crossers to retrieve the medicine that can save him. Smart, ruthless, and fast on her feet, Layla quickly gains the respect of her fellow Crossers. But, in a world lost to the deadliest predators, can even the most cunning prey survive?
The Hungry Gods — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris)
Amri was a Rabbit, one of a tribe of survivors scratching out an existence in the blasted landscape of a shattered, poisoned world. The Seagull fight, the Pigeon trade and the Cockroach scavenge, but the Rabbit had one rule: If you want to see tomorrow, you run. But they didn’t run fast enough when a weapon fell from the sky and consumed their home, and now Amri is alone, in the company of a fallen god named Guy Vesten. A god who promises revenge against the three gods who turned against him, and who killed her tribe. But gods don’t die easily. Guy will need followers, like any god, and warriors to aid him in his quest. And if Amri is to find a place in the world that is to come, she may as well be standing at his right hand, as his priestess…
Artificial Wisdom — Thomas R. Weaver (Del Rey)
2050: Investigative journalist Marcus Tully is grieving his wife and unborn child, ten years after they perished in a deadly heat wave that gripped the Persian Gulf. Now the whole planet is both burning and drowning, and the nations of the world decide to elect a global leader to steer humanity through the climate apocalypse. The final two candidates: a former U.S. president… and Solomon, the first artificial intellect to hold political office. But as Election Day races closer, Solomon’s creator is murdered, and it’s up to Tully to find the culprit. Soon Tully is unraveling a conspiracy that goes to the highest levels. As the investigation heats up and the planet hurtles ever closer to the brink, Tully must find the truth and convince the world to face it. Because salvation has a price—but is humanity willing to pay it?
August 19
A Mother’s Guide to the Apocalypse — Hollie Overton (Redhook)
For Olivia Sullivan, the summer of 2024 was the beginning of the end. Political upheaval and natural disasters were bad enough, but danger arrives on her doorstep, threatening her triplet daughters. Olivia finds herself scrolling doomsday-prepping forums for hours determined to protect her family from the coming apocalypse. Olivia’s husband and friends insist she is being irrational, until she is swept away in a flash flood that devastated LA. At least that’s the story her daughters, Rosie, Bettie, and Cassie, were always told. Twenty years later, the triplets discover a box of their mother’s belongings that calls into question everything their father told them about their mother and her death. Reeling from this betrayal, the family returns to California, determined to uncover Olivia’s true fate. Confronted by an unfamiliar world where nothing and no one are what they seem, the sisters must unravel the truth about their father and the mother who may have abandoned them, while struggling to hold onto the one constant in their lives—each other.
