Here’s the full list of science fiction titles heading your way in June!
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.
June 3
Fenrir — Eric Flint, Ryk E. Spoor (Baen)
It was just a dot of light… a dot of light that appeared out of nowhere. Stephanie Bronson thought she might have found a distant supernova. Instead, what she’d found was something more than a thousand miles across, moving towards the Sun at almost a third the speed of light from the constellation of Lupus, the Wolf. Even more frightening, the object—called Fenrir, after the Norse Wolf of the World’s End—was slowing down. It was not a comet or even a rogue planet. It was an alien vessel. And despite the increasingly detailed and insistent messages of greeting from Earth, it showed no sign of responding. As the world braced itself for the arrival of the immense, frighteningly silent alien visitor, Stephanie held hope that they still might communicate with Fenrir—until something happened that no one had imagined: Fenrir flared and its drive died, leaving the huge ship careening out of control to a fiery death inside the orbit of Venus. There was—just possibly—a chance for Earth to act—to rescue the now-shipwrecked “Fens.” But even Stephanie—or those trying to stop her and the rescue ship Carpathia—could not imagine that not merely the fate of the aliens, but that of Earth itself, would be decided by Fenrir.
The Two Lies of Faven Sythe — Megan E. O’Keefe (Orbit)
The Black Celeste is a ghost story. A once-legendary spaceship collecting dust in a cosmic graveyard known as the Clutch. Only famed pirate Bitter Amandine knows better, and she’ll do anything to never go near it again. No matter the cost. Faven Sythe is crystborn, a member of the near-human species tasked with charting starpaths from station to station. She’s trained to be a navigator her entire life. But when her mentor disappears, leaving behind a mysterious starpath terminating in the Clutch, she is determined to find the truth. And only Amandine has the answers. What they will find is a conspiracy bigger than either of them. Their quest for the truth will uncover secrets Amandine has long fought to keep buried—secrets about how she survived her last encounter in the Clutch, and what’s really hidden out there amongst the stars.
Shroud — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit)
They looked into the darkness and the darkness looked back… New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists—and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud. Under no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that. Forced to stage an emergency landing, in a small, barely adequate vehicle, they are unable to contact their ship and are running out of time. What follows is a gruelling journey across land, sea and air. During this time, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s dominant species. It also begins to understand them.
Bee Speaker (Dogs of War #3) — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Head of Zeus)
The end of the world has been and gone. There was no one great natural disaster, no all-consuming world war, no catastrophic pandemic. Only scores of storms, droughts, and selfish regional conflicts. Humanity was not granted a heroic end. Instead, it bled to death from a thousand cuts. But where Earth fell apart, Mars pulled together. Engineered men and beasts, aided by Bees—an outlawed distributed intelligence—survived through co-operation, because there was simply no alternative. Fast forward to today. A signal—’For the sake of what once was. We beg you. Help.’—reaches Mars. How could they refuse? A consortium of Martian work crews gather the resources for a mission: a triumphal return to the blue-green world of their ancestors. And now here they are—three hundred million kilometres from home. And it has all already gone horribly wrong.
Of Monsters and Mainframes — Barbara Truelove (Bindery Books)
Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans. To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team of monsters: A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.
I Can Fix Her — Rae Wilde (Clash Books)
Johnny spots her ex, Alice, at the local cafe with a vague sense that she’s been there before. Though she’s still angry about their breakup and Alice’s subsequent ghosting, Johnny can’t resist the draw of a second shot at their relationship and accepts Alice’s invitation back to her apartment. Once there, promises are exchanged. There’s talk of wonder and change and dreams made real. But after spending the night together, they face a morning in which Alice is still Alice, Johnny is still Johnny, and the dog has doubled in size. Over the course of a week, increasingly bizarre changes in the world around them force Johnny to consider whether the pair can change just as easily, if they can change at all. Or if both her relationship and the bounds of reality are destined to implode. The narrative of I Can Fix Her operates on nightmare logic, putting forth an irresistible tale in which the world, the narrator, and time itself are not to be trusted.
Galaxy Grifter (Blackjack Interstellar #1) — A. Zaykova (Orbit)
Levi is an interstellar con artist: all charm, no conscience. His only real love is his spaceship, Caerus—his symbol of status and freedom—which he is forced to surrender as loan collateral to the most dangerous gang in his current quadrant. Desperate to get his ship back by any means necessary, Levi swindles a valuable antimatter-tech blueprint from an alien diplomat, which he plans to sell for millions of credits to the highest bidder. To decode the document, Levi hires Vera, a programmer whose inherited debt keeps her trapped on an asteroid in the galactic backwaters. Certain that Levi is merely using her, she plans to steal the blueprint for her creditors and finally gain her freedom. Their alliance is plagued by fiery sexual tension, betrayals, and an impossible choice when they learn that an alien government intends to use the stolen technology to plan humanity’s genocide and that they will stop at nothing to retrieve their plans.
June 10
Just Emilia — Jennifer Oko (Regal House Publishing)
The past, present, and future collide in a DC Metro elevator as three women get caught up in a gripping time-traveling tale of memory, emotion, and unspoken truths about their shared history. Synopsis: When Emilia Fletcher finds herself trapped inside a Washington, DC Metro elevator, getting out is the least of her problems. Sharing the confined space with her are Em, a troubled teenager plagued by suicidal thoughts, and Millie, an elderly woman yearning to mend ties with her estranged daughter. As the hours drag on, hunger, exhaustion, and panic set in, revealing an almost incomprehensible truth: they are the same person. Locked in an uncompromising match of memories, the three women excavate and attempt to reckon with the shared shame and suffering stemming from an unresolved trauma that has cast a profound shadow over their lives.
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses (Investigations of Mossa and Pleita #3) — Malka Older (Tor Books)
When a former classmate begs Pleiti for help on behalf of her cousin—who’s up for a prestigious academic position at a rival Jovian university but has been accused of plagiarism on the eve of her defense—Pleiti agrees to investigate the matter. Even if she has to do it without Mossa, her partner in more ways than one. Even if she’s still reeling from Mossa’s sudden isolation and bewildering rejection. Yet what appears to be a case of an attempted reputational smearing devolves into something decidedly more dangerous—and possibly deadly.
June 17
The Folded Sky (White Space #3) — Elizabeth Bear (Saga)
Information doesn’t want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace. Sunya Song’s job is to stop that from happening. She’s an archinformist: a specialist historian whose job usually involves sitting at a console at her university job near the Galactic Core, sorting ancient documents and restoring corrupted files. But now, the research opportunity of a lifetime has sent her—along with her teenage children and alien wife—halfway across the galaxy to preserve the data and aid in the retrieval of the archaeological find of the century: an ancient alien artificial intelligence called Baomind. As vast as a stellar system, the Baomind orbits a dying red giant, and the star’s time has nearly ended. The isolated research station and its small fleet of ships come under attack by fanatic Freeport pirates who believe that artificial intelligence is an abomination that must be destroyed, putting the lives of Sunya and her family at risk. Tens of thousands of lightyears from home, isolated from all help, Sunya is the only one who can save them all.
UnWorld — Jayson Greene (Knopf)
Anna is shattered by the violent death of her son, Alex, and tormented by the question of whether it was an accident or a suicide. Samantha is Alex’s best friend, and the only eyewitness to his death. She keeps returning to the cliff where she watched him either jump or fall, trying to sift through the shards. Aviva is an “upload,” a digital entity composed of the sense memories of a human tether. But she’s “emancipated,” having left her human behind. Set free from her source and harboring a troubling secret, she finds temporary solace in the body of Cathy, a self-destructive ex-addict turned AI professor and upload-rights activist. With UnWorld, Jayson Greene envisions a grim but eerily familiar near-future where all lines have blurred—between visceral and digital, human and machine, real and unreal. As Anna, Cathy, Sam, and Aviva’s stories hurtle toward each other, the stakes of UnWorld reveal themselves with electrifying intensity: What happens to the soul when it is splintered by grief? Where does love reside except in memory? What does it mean to be conscious, to be human, to be alive?
Star Wars: Trials of the Jedi (The High Republic) — Charles Soule (Random House Worlds)
The Force is everything. A single life connected to all life. All things connected to all other things. This is what the Jedi believe, and this is why they fight. For life… and the light. For too long, the light has been threatened by Marchion Ro, a sinister despot who will stop at nothing in his quest for power. The conflict with Ro and his marauding Nihil forces has left scars across the galaxy and held the Republic hostage. Countless lives have been lost, beacons of hope have fallen, and the collective courage and resolve of the Republic have been tested like never before. Through it all the Jedi Order has endured, an unwavering candle against the encroaching darkness. But the Jedi have yet to solve the mystery of the Nameless creatures who feed on the Force. Ro has loosed them upon the galaxy, striking fear into the heart of even the most stalwart Jedi. And yet with every life saved and world freed from Nihil control, the all-consuming blight, which devours everything wherever it appears, threatens to wipe it all away. Everything now depends on nine brave Jedi, led by Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann, who embark on a treacherous journey to the Nameless homeworld. Their quest: to finally solve the mystery of the Nameless and their connection to the Force, and to stop the blight before its damage becomes irreversible. But a final confrontation with Marchion Ro awaits. Ro, who is willing to sacrifice everything he’s achieved to secure a final victory against the Jedi and carve his name into the very stars for all time. Nothing less than the fate of everything, perhaps even the Force itself, is at stake.
