Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, and Other Speculative Fiction
by a cat
Love is in the air! It’s the time of the year that we like to get all mushy and gushy and heart-melty sweet ❤️
And what better way than with a fun little fantasy quiz to determine your preferred relationship dynamic?
Oh, and while you’re in the lovey-dovey mood……. Bookshops & Bonedust (available for pre-order now) is the delightfully cozy romantical fantastical sequel to Legends & Lattes!
It’s that time of year where love is everywhere and we at Tor Publishing Group are ready to celebrate the only way we know how—expressing love through books! Share the love with our adorable Valentine’s Day cards, featuring pairings from Legends & Lattes, Book of Night, Wolfsong, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and One For My Enemy!
Artist credit: Alicia Ramos Castillo (learn more here)
Artist credit: Little Chmura (learn more here)
Artist credit: Chris Sickels – Red Nose Studio (learn more here)
Artist credit: DracoKiro (learn more here)
Artist credit: Rosie Fowinkle (learn more here)
Here at Tor, we love a good list of good books, and we compile a lot of them! Having more books than time to read them is an all too common dilemma, but fear not! This list is for “snackable” SFF that are either easy to devour in one sitting OR won’t take up too much space on your TBR while delivering all the potency of flavor that sometimes, only brevity can bring.
Check it out!
Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth“I’m cursed, haven’t you heard?” Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the Archive, where the genes of the dead are stored, humanity will end. Antigone’s parents – Oedipus and Jocasta – are dead. Passing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but with her militant uncle Kreon rising to claim her father’s vacant throne, all Antigone feels is rage. When he welcomes her and her siblings into his mansion, Antigone sees it for what it really is: a gilded cage, where she is a captive as well as a guest. But her uncle will soon learn that no cage is unbreakable. And neither is he.
Nettle & Bone by T. KingfisherMarra never wanted to be a hero. As the shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter, she escaped the traditional fate of princesses, to be married away for the sake of an uncaring throne. But her sister wasn’t so fortunate—and after years of silence, Marra is done watching her suffer at the hands of a powerful and abusive prince. Seeking help for her rescue mission, Marra is offered the tools she needs, but only if she can complete three seemingly impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of princes and witches, doing the impossible is only the beginning.
by Holly BlackBook of Night is a decadent bookly snack. Its mood is both scrappy and sultry, full of long shadows, mystery noir, and twisty emotions. Charlie Hall is a thief, or she was. Now she just wants to tend bar and recover from her gunshot wound in relative peace. But in a world of power-hungry shadow magicians who will always want to take from each other, good thieves are in high demand. Unlike Charlie and an entire cadre of manipulative magi, Book of Night won’t place high demand on your TBR. It’s a friendly, snackable length, and it definitely should be your next read!
by Travis BaldreeThis book isn’t just snackable. It’s delicious! Battle-hardened adventurer Viv has decided to hang up her sword to build a more fulfilling life for herself as the proprietor of Thune’s first coffeeshop. We’re talking lattes, we’re talking cinnamon rolls, we’re talking good times and found family. This is the perfect comfort read to pair with a snack at your coziest local coffee spot.
by Sarah GaileyDon’t let the relatively short length of this powerful novel fool you, this snack delivers an acutely emotional flavor. Evelyn Caldwell’s research was instrumental in the progression of cloning technology. Martine is a submissive clone of Evelyn that her husband created using that research so he could cheat on his wife with an adjusted version of his wife. Pretty gross, but don’t worry, he’s dead. And now Evelyn and Martine have to clean up after that death.
It’s been a long 2022, so we’re taking a moment to think about all the books that helped us make it through the year. As we prepare to jump into 2023, Tor Publishing Group’s staff looks back on some of the stories we’re thankful for!
by Olivie BlakeI’m grateful for Blake’s incredible Atlas series, and The Atlas Paradox in particular. I often find the world a bit scary and overwhelming, and as a result really enjoy media that unpacks the thorniness of being alive. None of the powerful magicians that comprise the cast of Paradox are okay, but in watching the complicated ways they struggle against, help, and even hurt each other, the real world feels less confusing and intimidating.
by T. Kingfisher by Holly BlackI’m thankful to exist in the same universe as Holly Black, and I’m so thankful that with Book of Night she’s expanding the type of stories she tells. I’ve loved her young adult books, and to see her progress into a different realm of storytelling has been fantastic. I’m so excited to be able to keep reading her, and see what she does next!
by Neon YangI’m grateful for The Genesis of Misery because it’s an outrageously creative work of space opera, a delightfully genderspun/queered mecha novel, and also a deeply nuanced genre-reception/refraction/retelling of the Joan of Arc mythos. But more than that, I’m grateful for Neon Yang for 1) existing, 2) writing this book, and 3) continuing to be one of the most lovable human beings on the planet with one of the most staggeringly vast imaginations.
by Travis BaldreeThis year, I am immensely grateful for Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree and even more grateful for my extremely patient coworkers, as they listened to me rant about how much I loved this book at least three times per week since I read it. No, I am not sorry, and yes, you should definitely add this to the top of your TBR pile as soon as possible. I didn’t know I needed cozy fantasy in my life until I got my hands on this book. Warm, comforting, and joyful, Legends & Lattes follows Viv, a battle weary orc who hangs up her sword and takes a chance on building something for herself-the first ever coffee shop in the town of Thune. This book has found family, giant cinnamon rolls, and a gentle love story that will have you savoring this tale until you’ve turned the final page.
by Seth DickinsonI am grateful for Seth Dickinson’s epic fantasy novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant because it made my cold, dead heart feel so many things. This gorgeously written, tragic book was without a doubt one of my favorite reads of the year. Baru, a young woman from a colonized land who joins the enemy empire to take them down from the inside, is one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever read. I found myself rooting for her even as she made horrible, heart-rending decisions. If you want to cry ugly tears in 2023, give this one a read.
by Sarah GaileyI’m grateful for Sarah Gailey and their novel Just Like Home. I’ve never read a haunted house book like this one, and believe me, I’ve read a lot of haunted house books. I took so much gratification in hand-selling Just Like Home this year at New York and San Diego Comic Cons. I’m so grateful I get to work with authors who are not only great writers, but great people.
You like cookies? You like books? Of course you do—you’re not a monster!
(Unless we’re talking the Cookie Monster)
Actually if you are, in fact, a monster, dear reader, you should probably head over to our horror imprint’s blog at tornightfire.com. BUT monster or no, we’ve composed a sampling of delicious holiday treats and delectable reads for you to check out!
Biscotti — Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
We’re starting this list with that crunchiest of cantuccini paired with the wholesomest high fantasy around. Yes—biscotti is our treat match for Legends & Lattes. Pair this baked goodie with your favorite espresso drink : )
Gingerbread Man — The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang
Science fiction mechas are assembled from all manner of precious alloy, but what’s the strongest mineral combination of all? That’d be C12H22O11, or sugar. Since the gingerbread man is basically a mech constructed from the above chemical structure, we recommend you snack on these whilst perusing the pages of The Genesis of Misery.
Classic Sugar Cookie — Daughter of Redwinter by Ed McDonald
And speaking of sugar, we can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet stuff, so here it is in its classic form: The Archetypal Sugar Cookie. For those who love the classics, we have to suggest you partake in this treatly feast with a copy of Daughter of Redwinter in your non-cookie-eating hand. It’s a fantasy adventure about a young woman with a bow and arrow she can shoot and ghosts she can unfortunately see, trying to keep alive in a world that would destroy her over her secret ghost-sight powers.
Snickerdoodles — The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
Okay, okay. Some personal bias here, but because snickerdoodle cookies are (subjectively, in this writer’s opinion) the most delicious of all cookies, the perfect book match is The Book Eaters. In this book about a reclusive family that literally eats books, the youngest scion has a hankering for brains. Anyway, you’ll be hungry too if you read this with a plate of snickerdoodles in front of you, so you can enjoy stomach-growling solidarity with the novel’s subject matter.
Peanut Butter Blossom — Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
The scrumptious flavor profile of these cookies is a blend of two components (chocolate + peanut butter), much like the title to T. Kingfisher’s hit novel, Nettle & Bone. Blossoms indicate plants, and though nettles sting, they nonetheless possess a plethora of medicinal properties, according to Wikipedia. Peanut butter is also good for you, I’m pretty sure. For these reasons, this pairing exists, and you should devour both cookies and book.
*we couldn’t find any royalty-free images of peanut butter blossoms, so we doctored an image that includes peanut butter and blossoms
Jam Thumbprints — The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Here we have a dazzling romance with a splash of magic paired with decadent in taste, opulent in aesthetic cookies. We’re matching the classic buckeye cookie with The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The struggle between conformity and passion is delightfully metaphorized by the pull of the jam thumbprint to look as cool as possible while constrained by the necessity to maintain an acceptably cookie-caliber taste.
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies — The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller
This book by Sara A. Mueller is about Charm, a necromancer / courtesan that has to figure out which of her patron’s garbage sons killed him. The identity of her murdered client complicates things, since he is—was—the emperor who conquered Charm’s home and is responsible for her current predicament (the murder mystery AND her involuntary position). Anyway, this book is paired with oatmeal raisin cookies, because they’re something only a cursed chef (opinion alert) would cook up, and Charm has a lab with heavy mad science vibes where she conducts her deathly arts.
We are in the midst of winter, and the holidays loom on the horizon, offering portents of fun times to come and the social obligation of procuring gifts for the loved ones in your life! Don’t worry. We’re here to give you book recommendations to help you take care of the second part, so you can get right to the holiday snacking and relaxing!
Take the quiz. Discover your perfect bookly gift.
Hello hello, and welcome back to our annual TOR BOOKS HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE, where we give you what we think are the best gifts for the hyper specific, super chaotic individuals in your life. From your childhood BFF to your mildly traumatized game master, we have a whole slew of bookish picks for you this holiday season. Enjoy, and Happy Holidays, y’all!
By Rachel Taylor and a cat
Anyone who acts as game master for Dungeons & Dragons (or any other TTRPG, to be frank) deserves an award for powering through all the shenanigans their party puts them through. From attempting to fight a dragon with a fork to accidentally leading your party off a cliff, your deeply stressed out GM deserves a cozy novel to help them decompress. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree is out now and, for an extra little something, you can submit your receipt to get an adorable acrylic charm, a perfect addition to your gift!
You remember the Tumblr exodus of 2019, and for shame—you were part of it, you fragile soul. But not your cousin. Resolute, they stood by their blog and posted through the long, long night. Three years later, Tumblr is resurging and you need a gift for the one who never lost faith. What’s more Tumblr than magic danger-nerds alternatively hooking up with and hating each other as they conduct research and mainline caffeine and/or alcohol? Redeem your past mistakes with the perfect bookly gifts for your cousin: Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six and thrilling sequel, The Atlas Paradox.
You love the players at your table, but even after years of collaborative TTRPG storytelling, you’ve never once anticipated the many ways they have conspired to unravel every plot thread you’ve ever written. How then could you ever predict what they might like as a gift? Easy. Just listen to us: Daughter of Redwinter by Ed McDonald is a fantastic epic fantasy about a girl who can A) see ghosts, and B) turn people into them with an expertly placed arrow, if she takes the mind. Of course, if anyone finds out about her power, she’s dead, and circumstances have led her to become a ward in the monastery of the very warrior-magi that would execute her. Oops! What gamesplayer can resist a quick-paced and twisting tale of magic, adventure, and deceit?
So your ex-boyfriend (who you’re still friends with, DESPITE THE ADVICE OF OTHERS) just finished House of the Dragon and he won’t stop texting you about how much it sucks to have to wait 2 years for season 2. He’s right, but you can still give him a new epic fantasy to obsess over with The First Binding by R.R. Virdi. At over 800 pages, it’ll keep him busy for quite a while AND it also doubles as a premium bludgeoning weapon for you if he doesn’t appreciate your gift. Win win!
He’s mister doom-and-gloom. If there’s an upsetting tweet, you’ve seen it because he’s retweeted it. You don’t quite know him well enough to be comfortable with direct intervention. You need to gift him Last Exit by Max Gladstone. It’s a book about the death of idealism and the rot that creeps through the cracks of reality like so many corrosively fecund vines. It’s about a generation who thought they would transform the world and failure’s fallout. He’ll still be very DOOM-ful, but in an artistically fun, yet still scary way.
So your brother watched The Wheel of Time on Amazon Prime and has fallen down the 14+ book-deep rabbithole that is Robert Jordan’s timeless epic fantasy series. Help him delve even further into the lore with Origins of the Wheel of Time by Michael Livingston! He’ll be able to learn even more about all the mythology and legends that inspired Robert Jordan’s universe and you’ll get some peace and quiet while he’s absorbed in his new book.
Who among us hasn’t spent some time reading fix-it fics on Ao3? Well, no one compares to your sister, who currently has 30 tabs open on her iPhone filled with her favorite OTP falling in love 30 different ways (IF THE SHOW WON’T GIVE THEM A HAPPILY EVER AFTER, THE INTERNET WILL). You can’t buy her the perfect 100 chapter slow burn coffee shop fix-it fic of her OTP, but you CAN buy her Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell! It features all the choicest tropes like mutual pining, slowburn, and fake dating and will be sure to put a smile on her face for the holidays.
Do you want to give your mother a gift that’s also a hint about how you feel about your tumultuous parental relationship? Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey is the gift for her! It’s got great thriller vibes, with a daughter coming back to her family home for the first time after her father was arrested for being a serial killer…which she kind of caused. And mom’s still holding a grudge over a DECADE later. It’s got drama, monsters, and enough parallels to make your mom go ‘Wait, is this f*cking play about US?!’
A million years ago (Or two and a half. Whatever. Time is meaningless mush) your loved one planned to attend the My Chemical Romance reunion. A show that would eventually be put off and off and off due to ongoing events until earlier this year. It was epic, but you know what else is? Book of Night by Holly Black. Your loved one won’t have to wait 900~ days for this literary event, and just like an MCR show, they’ll want to acquire (more) goth clothes and tattoos after.
Did your childhood BFF simply devour every book in front of her? Is she still That Person whose TBR pile is precariously stacked in the corner of her living room, a threat to anyone who brushes too close? Give her a book to really whet her appetite for reading in The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean, where a very special family literally sustains themselves entirely by eating books. Did we bite a book while reading this to see if we were book eaters? Who’s to say.
Does your college best friend have an encyclopedic knowledge of historical retellings? Do they have, at minimum, one historically linked tattoo that prompts a 20 minute lecture whenever someone asks what it means? Do they have five different editions of The Song of Achilles on their shelf? And most importantly, do they crave a new, queer retelling to sink their teeth into? Look no further! Neon Yang has a Joan of Arc inspired, post-apocalyptic sci-fi story for you. Check out The Genesis of Misery, starring a queer and diverse array of pilots, princesses, and prophetic heirs.
You love them, but no one makes you feel old like your nebulously but definitely queer niece. They’re so cool, and are very helpful in keeping you up to date on the hippest trends, but every time you talk to them, you feel the pent-up years in your joints. Get your niece A. K. Larkwood’s The Serpent Gates series, including The Unspoken Name and The Thousand Eyes. It’s about a gay orc death priestess who rebrands herself as a garbage wizard’s personal assassin and picks up a gods-cursed, magi-baddie mid-adventure. There are cosmic gods, ancient ruins, devious machinations, and a lot of awesome gay stuff.
We get it. Your sibling buddy is bummed that The Expanse has finished its TV run and is still hopelessly in love with its marriage of adrenaline-flooding action and introspective parsing of human expansion / empire. Again, we do get it, and what you need to get is Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broaddus.
Your nephew reads through books at speeds generally known only to muscle cars and lightning, and he needs long fantasy books now! The time required to produce the next installment in an epic series is often as long as the books themselves, which is unfortunate since it’s time for you to gift your nephew another book. Here’s the good news: Brandon Sanderson writes as fast as your nephew reads, and his long-awaited continuation of the Mistborn series, The Lost Metal, is the perfect gift. And then next year you can get him the next Brando Sando, and the book cycle of giving goes on and on and on.
We hope you and your loves ones have a happy and safe holiday season! Did we miss a super niche friend/family member that you want to see a gift for? Let us know in the comments!
HEY HELLO HI—exciting news! Tor authors are coming to screens and stores near you 😎
Check out this month’s exciting virtual and in-person events!
Monday, November 7
Auntie’s Bookstore
402 W Main Ave
Spokane, WA 99201
7:00 PM PT
Wednesday, November 9
Barnes & Noble
1321 N Columbia Center Blvd
Suite 700
Kennewick, WA 99336
5:00 PM PT
Thursday, November 10
University Book Store
4326 University Way
Northeast Seattle, WA 98105
6:00 PM PT
Friday, November 11
Brick & Mortar Books
7430 164th Ave NE
Suite B105
Redmond, WA, 98052
7:00 PM PT
Monday, November 14
Changing Hands
6428 South McClintock Drive
Tempe, AZ 85283
6:00 PM CT
Tuesday, November 15
BookPeople
603 N Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78703
7:00 PM CT
Wednesday, November 16
The Novel Neighbor
7905 Big Bend Blvd
St. Louis, MO 63119
7:00 PM CT
Thursday, November 17
Schuler Books
2660 28th Street Southeast
Grand Rapids, MI 49512
7:00 PM ET
Friday, November 18
Capital Books
1011 K Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
6:00 PM PT
Saturday, November 5
Left Bank Books, in conversation with Ryka Aoki & Ann Leckie
Virtual Event
1:00 PM CT
Saturday, November 12
Boswell Book Company
Virtual Event
11:00 AM CT
Saturday, November 5
BookPeople
Virtual Event
7:00 PM CT
Saturday, November 5
Left Bank Books, in conversation with Everina Maxwell & Ann Leckie
Virtual Event
1:00 PM CT
by a cat
A favorite part of working at Tor is roughly once a month, we’ll put out a goofy little social media quiz, which is both fun and can also make one feel like they are losing one’s mind in the writing of, because let’s face it: the wilder these things are, the better they perform.
ANYWAY, Halloween rocks, because instead of one fun thematic quiz, we have three, and that’s pretty epic 😎
ANYWAY^2, we’re compiling them all into one feature for your scary season pleasure 🎃
Enjoy!
It’s very important that you read the book that matches your candy taste because this quiz is backed by the coldest hardest candy science, but perhaps more importantly, if you know what happened to the Hubba Bubba Max Sour Double Rasberry flavor, please share with the class. Some of us are both desperate and disparate. For the love of God, Monstresor!
This one was very fun (and slightly time-consuming) to make! Can you crack the code to steal the Liber Noctem from the haunted library? If you find yourself fumbling over the locked display, utterly flummoxed, then perhaps you should conduct a more thorough investigation of the premises.
Ever wonder how you’ll die? It’s a morbid thought, but kinda legendary that we can defy the infinity of death with fun jokes about books! Take this quiz to receive your very own major character death and a hot book rec!
Books. Candy. Two great, ultimately non-specific, tastes that go great together!
To help with that specificity, the us literary / confectionary researchers at Tor have developed a quick quiz to discern the fine points within your taste for treats, and recommend a piece of fine fiction.
Take the quiz. You deserve a little treat : )
