Every Orbit Book Coming in Winter 2026

January 2026
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.
Who will inherit this new Earth?
Children of Ruin
Children of Memory
In the sunny city of Singapore, the government takes care of everything—even the weird stuff.
Benjamin Toh is a middle manager in the Division for Engagement of Unusual Stakeholders (DEUS), and his job is straightforward: keep the supernatural inhabitants of Singapore happy and keep them out of sight. That is, don’t bother the good, normal citizens, and certainly don’t bother the bosses. Sure, he’s overworked and understaffed, but usually, people (and senior management) don’t see what they don’t want to see.
But when an entire housing estate glitches out of existence on what was meant to be a routine check-in, Ben has to scramble to keep things under control and stop the rest of the city from disappearing. He may not have the budget or the bandwidth, but he has the best—if highly irregular and supernaturally inclined—team to help him. Together, they’ll traverse secret shadow markets, scale skyscrapers, and maybe even go to the stars, all so they can just do their goddamn job.
“Banks is a phenomenon.” –– William Gibson
Two and a half millennia ago in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe, the artifact appeared.
It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.
Now it is back.
Diplomat Genar-Hofoen of Special Circumstances is sent to investigate but, sidetracked by an old flame and the spoiled-brat operative Ulver Seich, and faced with the systematic depravities of a race who call themselves the Affront, it’s anyone’s guess whether he’ll succeed . . .
Praise for the Culture series:
“Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution.” –Independent on Sunday
“Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future.” –Guardian
“Jam-packed with extraordinary invention.” –Scotsman
“Compulsive reading.” –Sunday Telegraph
The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
The State of the Art
Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist
Also now available:
The Culture: The Drawings- an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.
After the explosive finale of the Tournament of Kings, Fia and Irian manage to escape to the wildlands, dodging pursuit by her cunning sister Eala. With Fia locked in her own mind, battling a powerful celestial entity, Irian must form new alliances to come up with a plan to defeat Eala’s terrifying magic.
With both the human and fae realm under threat, Eala’s rampage must be stopped, no matter the cost. On Bealtain Eve, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, Fia and Irian will finally face off against the swan princess and forge the ending to their love story that was written in the stars.
★ “Cozy, heartfelt, and deeply satisfying” –Publishers Weekly (Starred)
What if cottagecore and goblincore fell in love?
When a halfling, Pansy, and a goblin, Ren, each think they’ve inherited the same cottage, they make a bargain: they’ll live in the house together and whoever is driven out first forfeits their ownership.
Amidst forced proximity and cultural misunderstandings, the two begin to fall in love.
But when the cottage – and their communities – are threatened by a common enemy, the duo must learn to trust each other, and convince goblins and halflings to band together to oust the tall intruder.
“An adorable delight!” ―Sarah Beth Durst, NYT bestselling author of The Spellshop
“An adorable story that will fulfill your cottagecore dreams.” ―M. Stevenson, author of Behooved
“Cozy fantasy lovers will tuck into this lovely story and want to savor every last morsel.” ―J. Penner, author of A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic
Things should be good, right?
With an epidemic of demon-induced blunt honesty sweeping the town, hints of another Archdemon making plans to invade, her mom's mysterious and possibly criminal old flame showing up, time is running out for McKenna to find Bastien, figure out who's keeping which secrets, how dangerous they are, and decide whose side she's on: the powerless or the powerful.
Yuri Gagarin is a private investigator, who picks up small cases from his local community, runs into trouble with the local police, and generally ekes out a living as best he can. He’s aboard the Halcyon – a starship, hurtling through space, carrying thousands of passengers with thousands more sleeping the journey away.
Only his usual investigative work – catching cheating spouses, and small time con artists – is about to take a turn. He’s hired by a mysterious woman called Ruby Red to look into a death in one of Halcyon’s most elite families . . . and then warned off the case again by a second mysterious woman called Ruby Blue. Caught between the two, he’s about to be embroiled in a murder mystery in which – at any moment – he could be the latest victim.
Gripping, fast-paced fun, this is a classic noir mystery with a science fiction twist, which will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat to the end.
A fresh new masterpiece, from the master of science fiction.
Not even the Church of the Invincible Sun is invincible – and somebody has to do its dirty work. Enter Sister Svangerd and her accompanying priest, both first-rate practitioners. Their mission is simple: to make a meddlesome princess disappear (permanently).
To get to her, they must attend the legendary Ecumenical Council, the once-in-a-century convening of the greatest spiritual minds the world has to offer. But when they arrive, they find instead a den of villainy that would make the most hardened criminal blush.
To complicate matters further, it appears that some people who were definitely grim reapered might be not quite dead after all. What began as a little assassination is about to escalate into a theological debate with terrifying consequences for everyone.
For more from K. J. Parker, check out:
Saevus Corax Deals With the Dead
Saevus Corax Captures the Castle
Saevus Corax Gets Away with Murder
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It
A Practical Guide to Conquering the World
The Two of Swords
The Two of Swords: Volume One
The Two of Swords Volume Two
The Two of Swords: Volume Three
The Fencer Trilogy
Colours in the Steel
The Belly of the Bow
The Proof House
The Scavenger Trilogy
Shadow
Pattern
Memory
Engineer Trilogy
Devices and Desires
Evil for Evil
The Escapement
The Company
The Folding Knife
February 2026
When Malt, the goddess of death, is accidentally turned human by a wayward spell, she finds she’s ill-equipped to deal with the trials of a mortal life. After all, why would a goddess need to know how to gather food or light a fire?
Unable to fend for herself, she teams up with warrior Bellis on a perilous journey to the afterlife to try to restore her powers. Frustrated by her frail human body and beset with blisters, Malt might not make the best travelling companion.
But as animosity slowly turns to attraction, these two very different women must learn to work together if they are to have any hope of surviving their quest.
★ “An utterly ingenious horror-romcom, darkly zeitgeisty, and unnervingly plausible—funny as hell, too. You will not forget this book.” ―Heather Aimee O’Neill, author of Read With Jenna book club pick The Irish Goodbye
Modern dating is dead.
Finding a human connection online has become impossible. Enter Liv: a dating app that matches people with dead bodies. Somehow, it has taken the world by storm. Millions of users are convinced that life with a corpse presents a better alternative to conventional relationships.
Flailing against Liv’s popularity, venture capital superstar Tom Williamson—whose company is funding Liv—isn’t buying it. Mostly because dating an embalmed cadaver, let alone monetizing it, is obscene.
Believing that Liv is the future, Auden White, the insufferable “visionary” behind the app begins demanding more and more funding, quickly making enemies with Tom.
It’s no secret that Tom struggles with people, dead or alive, but when he has a chance meeting with the woman who knows Auden (and his secrets) best, Mara Reed, he realizes everything is about to change for all three of them.
With Liv’s userbase growing by the day, the need for cadavers rapidly increases. Humanity might not want to connect with other living, breathing people anymore, but they do want to connect with something. What could go wrong?
★ “A wildly entertaining debut. Sarah G. Pierce cleverly skewers our modern era of disconnection and corporate overreach. But amid the horror and humor there is a deeply human love story at the heart of this book.” ―E.K Sathue, author of Youthjuice
★ “A razor-sharp satire of venture capitalism, online influence culture, and The Discourse, Pierce holds a mirror to an all-too familiar reality where the unthinkable becomes thinkable if there’s profit to be made and prestige to be gained. A human romance in a world gasping for human connection, this one goes places!” ―Bitter Karella, author of Moonflow
★ “Combines the romantasy of Sarah J. Maas, the cutthroat political corruption of Game of Thrones, and the feminist/sapphic history and mythology revisionism of Madeline Miller’s Circe, set in a fantastically researched Tudor Court with all its machinations, à la Alison Weir.” ―Library Journal (starred review)
As tradition has it, the king of Elben must marry six queens and magically bind each of them to one of the island’s palaces or the kingdom will fall.
Clever, ambitious Boleyn is determined to be her beloved Henry’s favorite queen. She relishes the games at court and the political rivalries with his other wives. Seymour is the opposite―originally sent to Boleyn’s court as a reluctant spy and assassin, she ends up catching Henry’s eye and is forced into a loveless marriage with the king.
But when the two queens become the unlikeliest of things―friends and allies―the balance of power begins to shift. Together, they uncover a dark and deadly truth at the heart of the island’s magic. Boleyn and Seymour’s only hope of survival rests on uniting all six of the rival queens―but Henry will never let that happen.
“A luscious and luminous read” ―Tasha Suri, author of The Jasmine Throne
★ “Once again Abdullah deftly conjures magic.” ―Library Journal (starred review)
Neither here nor there, but long ago…
After fleeing a patricidal prince, legendary merchant Loulie al-Nazari and banished prince Mazen bin Malik find themselves in the realm of jinn. But instead of sanctuary, they find a world on the cusp of collapse.
The jinn cities, long sheltered beneath the Sandsea by the magic of its kings, are sinking. Amid the turmoil, political alliances are forming, and rebellion is on the rise. When Loulie assists a dissenter—one of her bodyguard’s old comrades—she puts herself in the center of a centuries-old war.
Trapped in a world that isn’t her own and wielding magic that belongs to a fallen king, Loulie must decide: Will she carry on someone else’s legacy or carve out her own?
The Sandsea Trilogy
The Stardust Thief
The Ashfire King
“Banks is a phenomenon.” —William Gibson, author of The Sprawl Trilogy
Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time. Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been awaiting from the Plain of Sliding Stones. Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt.
This is the time of the encroachment and everything is about to change. Although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, and the crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent—an emissary who holds the key to all their futures.
Praise for the novels of Iain M. Banks:
“Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution. ” —The Independent on Sunday
“Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future.” —The Guardian
“Jam-packed with extraordinary invention.” —The Scotsman
“Compulsive reading.” —The Sunday Telegraph
Also by Iain M. Banks:
The Culture
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
The State of the Art
Against a Dark Background
The Algebraist
“Perfect for readers who love slow-burn romance steeped in lush fantasy!” ―Danielle L. Jensen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Fate Inked in Blood
Queen Coralys rules the Kingdom of the Five Isles, but when disaster strikes, killing her husband and destroying half her nation, she pleads with the gods for salvation. And they do save her, turning back the terrible winds and tide and snatching her islands from the brink of destruction.
But the gods have a wicked sense of justice and they demand an exchange for their help: Coralys must marry the first man to set foot on her pier. Coralys expects the fleet of a neighboring country to come to rescue her people, led by its prince, a loyal ally. What she gets instead is a fisherman so sunburnt and stinking that her court can barely keep their breakfast down.
Coralys marries the fisherman just as she promised the gods, and sets out with him in his unkempt dinghy, with nothing but hopes of revenge against the gods to keep her from despair. But what she does not know is that the fisherman is actually the god of the sea. And he stepped on her dock for a reason.
His own kingdom besieged, his body terribly wounded, and his place as a god threatened, the fisherman has plans to turn the tides set against him and finally offer a place of refuge for his people. But working the magic he needs will require the help of the one woman bent on his destruction.
“Intricately wrought and deeply imaginative … the kind of delicious slow-burn fantasy that made me love reading.” ―Hannah Whitten, author of The Foxglove King
March 2026
The third and final book in the Forged for Destiny series!
As Raul fights battle after battle using his newly acquired abilities, he comes to a decision about whether or not to take the throne of Estis for himself or put his fake destiny aside and let another become king.
Thora Grieve finds herself destitute and an outcast after the sudden death of her husband, but a glimmer of hope arrives when a family friend offers her the chance to study botany under the tutelage of a famed professor. Once at the university, Thora becomes entranced by a mysterious young woman, Olea, who emerges each night to tend to the plants in the private garden below Thora’s window.
Hungry for connection, Thora befriends Olea through the garden gate and their relationship quickly and intensely blossoms. Thora throws herself into finding a cure for the ailment confining Olea to the garden and sinks deeper into a world of beauty, poison, and obsession. Thora has finally found the freedom to pursue her darkest desires, but will it be worth the price?
Sen Hoshiakari is an exiled prince of a clan that lost everything in his father’s failed rebellion. Deprived of his birthright, Sen is determined to restore his family’s lands and honor at any cost. Rui is a peasant girl who saved Sen’s life on the night his family were put to the sword. But now, she is adrift and unsure of her place in the world, not knowing that the gods themselves have plans for her …
As civil war throws the empire into chaos, and demons seek vengeance on the living, Sen and Rui must fight for both their clan and their shared future … But vengeance demands a bloody price.
After Earth fell, ark ships hunted for a new home. They sought lost worlds terraformed in Earth’s forgotten past. A ship crewed by maverick humans, spiders and a spectacularly punchy mantis shrimp captain is about to rediscover one such world, and an ark.
Then human crewmate Alis wakes to discover that she, her captain and the ship’s intelligence are the only ones left on their ship.
But what happened to those who left to explore the ark … and the world below?
Children of Strife is the extraordinary next volume set in the Children of Time universe, featuring epic adventure, first contact and the nature of intelligence among the stars.
Aicha is the story of Morocco’s warrior goddess, her strange magic, fierce rebellion, and devastating romance. Soraya Bouazzaoui weaves an epic tale of female rage and hidden myths, perfect for fans of The City of Brass and The Stardust Thief.
The Portuguese empire has planted its flag across Morocco, ruling with an iron fist. But eventually, all empires must fall.
Aicha, the daughter of a Moroccan freedom-fighter, was born for battle. She has witnessed the death of her people, their starvation and torture at the hands of the occupiers, and it has awakened an anger within her. An anger that burns hot and bright and that speaks to Aicha’s soul.
Only Aicha’s secret lover, Rachid, a rebellion leader, knows how to soothe her. But as the fight for Morocco’s freedom reaches its violent climax, the creature that simmers beneath Aicha’s skin begs to be unleashed. It hungers for the screams of those who have caused her pain, and it will not be ignored.
Industrial Revolution Beckons. Spiritual Catastrophe Looms. And the Empire of the Wolf teeters on the brink.
The true horror of the Great Silence has been revealed. As nation after nation succumbs to the mind-plague and Sova scrambles to enlist help from across the globe, Ambassador Renata Rainer has been given a simple task: save the world. While she travels to the Principality of Casimir to enlist the help of the Empire’s oldest enemy, Lieutenant Peter Kleist returns to the haunted forests of the New East to search for ancient answers—and finally confront the terrible fate that awaits him.
In their wake, a task force of engineers, soldiers, and arcane experts will try and unpick the final secrets of the Great Silence—on both sides of the mortal plane. But time is running out. Count Lamprecht von Oldenburg has returned to the capital, armed with a terrible vision and enough madness to see it through. Those who stand in his way face a simple choice: join the revolution, or die.
As the world tips towards chaos, all paths converge on the Eye of the Sea, where the fabric of reality wears thin—and where the Empire of the Wolf must confront the most terrible enemy it has ever known.
April 2026
“Brutal, uncomfortable, and visceral.” —Brandon Baker, author of Whatever Remains of Us In the End
“Deeply unsettling. The perfect book for horror readers.” —Sadie Hartmann, author and co-owner of Night Worms
“Feral, disgusting, and absolutely unhinged. I couldn’t look away.” —Ally Wilkes, author of Where the Dead Wait
SIT. SPEAK. STAY.
Lonely, broke, and depressed, Gia is desperate for a lifeline. When Nathan, a wealthy stranger on a sugar dating site approaches her with a very specific offer, she can’t refuse.
The instructions are simple, he says. For eight hours a day, she must wear the collar. Drink from the bowl. Sleep in the cage. Be a dog.
Be his dog.
Then, she can go home and be Gia again, and if she ever feels uncomfortable or unsafe, she can always leave.
Those were the terms of the agreement. But Gia soon finds out Nathan isn’t a man who keeps his promises.
In this harrowing tale of survival and revenge, Mia Ballard crafts a visceral, unflinching descent into the dark heart of lost autonomy and the feral rage it awakens. Shy Girl is a scream against the cage of expectation, where justice isn’t quiet—it’s bloody and unapologetic.
When Poppy Hill was a child she was stolen from her family’s Montana homestead and taken to the land of the fae, where she spent more than a century as a cook in the Wild King’s castle. Now back in the human world, she works for a company that brokers fairy bargains, looking for loopholes in their contracts.
Then a bargain that Poppy is negotiating goes disastrously wrong and she has to return to the world she grew up in to try to rectify her mistake, facing danger, intrigue and a pesky ex-boyfriend along the way.
★ “Masterful . . . . This is space opera at its best.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Mercy of Gods
The monstrous Carryx empire was built by subjugation and war. Thousands of species are bound to their Sovran’s command in an endless, blood-soaked test: be useful in the eternal conflict or be slaughtered.
Dafyd Alkhor, highest among their human captives, is feared and despised by the very people he champions. Ruthless in carving out his niche in the eternal war machine of the empire, he will reshape human nature itself as a tool for their alien masters’ use. But Dafyd’s loyalty is not what it seems.
The Swarm, an agent of the Carryx’s deathless enemy, has been smuggled into the Carryx world-palace along with the human slaves. Its mission: discover a way to bring down the empire’s eternal reign. But the longer it lives among and within humanity, the more it forgets that it is a weapon.
As the human captives spread through the battlefronts of empire, the awesome power of the Carryx becomes clear. And with it, a desperate plan for their destruction.
But empires hide secrets, and even the deathless enemy may not be what it appears…
“The start of something truly epic.” ― Fonda Lee on The Mercy of Gods
“Corey is always one of the most engaging voices in the genre.” ― Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time
For More from James S. A. Corey, check out:
The Captive’s War
The Mercy of Gods
The Faith of Beasts
The Expanse
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban’s War
Abaddon’s Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon’s Ashes
Persepolis Rising
Tiamat’s Wrath
Leviathan Falls
Memory’s Legion
The Expanse Short Fiction
Drive
The Butcher of Anderson Station
Gods of Risk
The Churn
The Vital Abyss
Strange Dogs
Auberon
The Sins of Our Fathers
Lore has failed. She couldn’t save King Bastian from the rotten god speaking voices in his mind. She couldn’t save her allies from being scattered across the continent—their own lesser gods whispering to them in their dreams. She couldn’t save her beautiful, corrupt city from the dark power beneath the catacombs. And she couldn’t save herself.
Banished to the Burnt Isles, Lore must use every skill she earned on the streets of Dellaire to survive the prison colony and figure out a way to defeat the power that’s captured everything and everyone she holds dear. Somehow, her friends must help her collect the far-scattered pieces of the broken Fount—the source of all the god’s powers—and bring them back together on the Burnt Isles, returning all magic to its source and destroying, once and for all, the gods corrupting the land.
But as Lore gets closer to her goal, her magic grows stronger… and to a woman who’s always had to fight for survival, that kind of power may be hard to give up.
When Claudia Jolicoeur is rejected from Cygnus University, a devilish stranger named Dorian appears in her nightmares and offers her a bargain: he will get her into Cygnus if she learns how to free him from a prison of stars. He takes a bite of her soul to seal the deal, and Claudia wakes to a letter from the High Sage of Cygnus stating she will take the place of Odette Dufort, a Rhetoric student who passed away.
Her arrival raises suspicions, rumors that she had a hand in Odette’s death spread like wildfire, and Cassius MacLeod, the High Sage’s apprentice and Claudia’s fellow Rhetoric student, seems hellbent on humiliating her. Determined to clear her name, she searches for any evidence that could prove her innocence. When someone—or something—starts slipping her pieces of Odette’s diary, Claudia uncovers a horrifying truth: over the last century, celestial witches at Cygnus have been murdered. Odette was one of them, and Claudia could be next. For her own protection, Claudia needs to free Dorian—and fast.
By night, she studies the stars, slowly unraveling the mystery of Dorian’s prison. By day, she and Cassius wage rhetorical war as debate partners in class. What begins as a fierce rivalry devolves into something deeper, darker, and dangerously sensual. As Claudia inches closer to the truth, she must decide: would trusting Cassius be the last mistake she ever makes?