It’s a deliciously spooky season, and what better to associate with ghosts and goblins than a bit of mystery and magic? It has been an excellent year for queer fantasy books that blend riddles with hauntings, or impossible tasks with a dash of romance. If you’re looking for something that will give you shivers the way fall air chills your skin, grab one of these recent queer fantasy stories—and see if you can solve the mysteries faster than the protagonists!
The Grimoire of Grave Fates edited by Hanna Alkaf and Margaret Owen
A professor at a magic school is dead. He wasn’t well-liked (that’s an understatement—most of the students, especially those who weren’t white cis boys, absolutely hated him). But when one student finds the body, and others find mysterious clues that reveal there’s more to this death than an accident with gargoyles. Alkaf and Owen create a truly remarkable collection of short stories in this anthology, as one tale leads into the next, bridged by collected evidence from the authorities working to solve the crime. The stories are written by a host of familiar names (Kwame Mbalia, Darci Little Badger, Kat Cho, and L. L. McKinney among them), but despite the different voices and different (frequently queer) protagonists of each story, the queer fantasy collection successfully builds clues and evidence until the conspiracy unravels before the readers’ eyes.
Short story anthologies frequently have a few stories that are hit or miss—not all stories appeal to all readers equally—but by binding the stories so closely together, while also allowing each of the writers and protagonists to have a unique voice and story to tell, Alkaf and Owen have done something truly remarkable here. It’s a murder mystery, a magical school story (with a very, very cool magical academy set up), and a series of stories about chosen kids—some of whom are given a prophetic setup, but most of whom become a chosen figure because they make the decision to be a hero. It’s a stand-out in all of its genres, and an incredibly good read.
Saint Juniper’s Folly by Alex Crespo
Jaime doesn’t intend to get trapped in a haunted house, but when he ventures into Saint Juniper’s Folly, the woods between Saint Juniper and Wolf’s Head, Vermont, he’s stuck within the walls of a forgotten estate. When Theo, a teen burdened with the expectations of his family that he’s not even sure he wants to live up to, hears a scream in the woods, he ventures in and discovers Jaime, locked behind a forcefield with no way out. Theo’s able to pass food to this prickly boy through the barrier, but not go through himself. He’s determined to help Jaime, even as Jaime tries to push him away. What they need is a witch. Luckily, Taylor has been waiting for an excuse to go into Saint Juniper’s Folly to solve her own family mysteries—and the truth behind her mother’s death—so she’s exactly the witch they need.
Told in the alternating voices of the three protagonists, Crespo’s novel blends two mysteries into one solution, and there are tense moments when it looks like tragedy may be the only result. Taylor’s magic relies more on real-world wicca than fantasy tropes, which lends a grounded feel to this ghost story. The friendship among the group, and Jaime and Theo’s slowly building romance, makes the stakes beautifully personal. While it’s not so spooky readers need to keep the lights on, it offers some great Halloween vibes, as well as a sense of hope in the face of generational trauma.
The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson
Another spooky forest calls out to the protagonist of Kosoko Jackson’s new dark academia thriller. As one of the only students of color at the kingmaking Regent Academy in rural Vermont, Douglas Jones knows better than to talk about hearing voices coming from the woods. He doesn’t need anything else to draw attention to him—not his history of getting arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, and not his place as a scholarship student, at the school only due to the patronage of the lawyer who cleared his name. But why did the lawyer insist he attend the school? When a student is murdered, and only Douglas and the groundskeeper’s son, Everett Everly, even remember the student’s existence, Douglas decides he can’t stay silent. He has to figure out what’s wrong with the woods and the school, and in doing so, he awakens something even more dangerous than he imagined.
Jackson’s voice is always strong, and Douglas is a sympathetic, angry narrator from the beginning, willing to put up with casual homophobia and racism but not about to let anyone call him stupid. The sense of wrongness at the school drenches the novel from the first page, and as Douglas finds out more, the uneasy sense of pending terror only gets worse. This is an excellent choice for readers looking for prep school horror.
Lion’s Legacy by L. C. Rosen
Opening as the protagonist is on the run from literal undead warriors, this take on the problems of the treasure hunting archaeologist trope keeps all the best cinematic elements of the genre. Tennessee Russo used to be on a hit treasure hunting show with his dad, an archaeologist unapologetically modeled after Indiana Jones. After they have a big blow-up over who has the right to keep an artifact they find—Ten thinks it should go back to the family that helped them find it, while his dad’s perspective is that it belongs in a museum (that will pay them well for it)—Ten’s dad leaves him, on his own, in a foreign country. Two years later, Ten’s dealing with being dumped by his first boyfriend and subsequently feeling estranged from their entire friend group of Good Upstanding Queers. When his dad shows up, Ten has no real desire to forgive him for their fight.
But then Ten’s dad explains he’s going after the Rings of the Sacred Band of Thebes, an army made up of 150 gay married couples, and he wants Ten to come with him. Better yet, he’ll let Ten decide what to do with the rings when they find them. When Ten looks at his options, he knows there’s no real choice—he has to go, and he’ll have to make the hard choices about who deserves to own history once it’s recovered. Rosen really embraces the best parts of pulp adventure, with fantastic puzzles, bad guys you love to hate, a dash of romance, and artifacts full of both wonder and hidden dangers. The narrative is also unabashedly queer: it frequently refers to how much queer history has been hidden or erased, and how even when it’s found, scholars insist that couples must have just been “good friends” or “brothers in arms.” Ten doesn’t have time for any of that revisionism—and neither does Rosen. This is a great choice for anyone who has ever been frustrated by the way artifacts get moved from their native nations—especially by pulp heroes in fedoras—but still loves the adventure of discovery.
Spellbound by F. T. Lukens
Edison Rooker just wants to touch magic again. When his grandmother died, the magical government—the Consortium—moved him from his magical small town neighborhood into the city, in a place where other non-magical folk, like him, live instead. But he’s determined he belongs, so he applies for a job with a curse breaker, Antonia Hex, one of the most powerful sorcerers in Spire City. Despite her initial reluctance, she takes him on as staff and gives him a name—Rook—but says he will not learn any more about magic than absolutely necessary for office staff. It’s against Consortium rules, after all. Things, of course, do not go as planned, especially after Rook meets Sun, a real apprentice, who mistakes Rook for Antonia’s. Apparently, there are reasons Antonia’s not supposed to take on an apprentice…which means the Consortium might become very interested in Rook. And that’s bad because Rook is hiding tech he invented so that anyone can see magic. It could change the world, and the people in power are not fond of the idea of that type of change.
Lukens builds a really vibrant magical world, piece by piece, in a way that makes readers feel at home there immediately, even though the details fill in more with each chapter. While the mysteries in this one are minimal—more hidden histories than riddles to be solved—the way the story unfolds gives those secrets a delicious weight that drives the story forward. The growing friendship (and more) between Rook and Sun, who is nonbinary, is a wonderfully sweet take on the grumpy/sunshine trope, and while Rook frequently feels like a big cinnamon roll, he’s also complex, and really just wants to create a place for himself in the world with an enviable drive toward that goal. The cursed items also add a bit of spooky flair, and one encounter with a particularly angry curtain is scarier than it has any right to be. If you like your scares light and your romance sweet, this is a perfect pick.
Gorgeous Gruesome Faces by Linda Cheng
If you like your scares much creepier and your romance utterly problematic, on the other hand, Cheng’s new psychological horror novel is going to be your cup of tea. (Just make sure you brew the tea on your own, by hand, and that no one slips anything mysterious into it.) Alternating chapters between the present and the past, the narrative follows Sunday Lee as she tries to process her haunted grief over the loss of her friend, Mina. Years ago, Sunday, Mina, and Candice were the stars of a show about a pop group. They were family. Except when something went wrong—clues early on suggest some sort of ritual Sunday refused to finish—Mina throws herself off a balcony, and Candice ghosts Sunday. Career and friendships in tatters, Sunday retreats from the world as much as she can, until she discovers that Candice, whose vlog following never waned when their show ended, is in Sunday’s hometown at a workshop geared toward making the next big K-pop star. Sunday auditions as well, and gets in, but soon strange things start happening to the contestants, reminding Sunday of what happened to Mina, just before she killed herself. Sunday hints that she knows what Candice is capable of, even as she craves her former friend’s attention and approval. Driven by the dual goals of proving herself and finding out what sinister powers are behind the injuries in the workshop—which might finally help her understand Mina’s death—Sunday knows she’s in danger. But she just can’t stop flirting with peril, and the last person she wants to save is herself.
Cheng’s writing is hypnotizing, and the eerie feeling permeates the story. Even when the scenes describe happy or wondrous moments, especially when Sunday stands up for herself, the sense that something dire is lurking just at the edge of each page lends to a feeling of dread. Sunday also touches on issues of identity, especially as one of the few non-Korean girls in the worship, and on how her own Asianness was criticized when she was on the popular show as some detractors considered the show too Asian while others found fault in the way it leaned into stereotype. But the heart is Sunday’s relationship to the two girls who were her closest friends—and the loss of both, even when one remains right in front of her. Full of ghosts, drama, and danger, this is a great choice for horror lovers.
Cursebreakers by Madeleine Nakamura
In this debut adult novel (and the only non-YA title on this list), Adrien Desfourneaux narrates his own account of how things went terribly wrong, as accurately as he can, for posterity. Adrien is a complex first-person narrator, diagnosed with the magical equivalent of being bipolar, and due to a former research study that cost volunteers their lives, he’s a disgraced physician forbidden from practicing. He’s found work as a professor, but he knows he’ll spend his life being watched by the law enforcement that polices magic users. But when officers of the Vigil—and university students—start to exhibit symptoms similar to those his study accidentally caused, Adrien can’t help but investigate. And when those patients are suddenly imbued with their own magic, when they didn’t have any natural talent before, Adrien knows that there’s something even more suspicious going on. The Vigil officer assigned to observe Adrien’s classes, with whom Adrien shares a mutual dislike, is worried enough about the growing list of victims to enlist Adrien’s help in solving the mystery, and the two embark on a mission that uncovers an even greater conspiracy than either of them suspected.
Nakamura’s narration languishes in its prose, which is a delight for readers who enjoy that style of narration. Adrien is a narrator who is full of himself while also feeling utterly insignificant, which infuses every aspect of his voice. His growing rivals-to-friends buddy relationship with the Vigil officer drives the story, and a sub current of unrequited romance between Adrien and another character lends even more pathos to the story. For dark academia readers who wish more of the stories would focus on the professors, this is an excellent queer fantasy title to pick up.
By Any Other Name by Erin Cotter
Technically, this is fantasy adjacent, but how could this list not include a queer murder mystery set in Elizabethan London? Will Hughes is an out-of-work actor struggling to return to the poor family who sold him off as an indentured servant. He escaped that fate, changed his name, and befriended Christopher Marlowe, a mentor whom he idolizes. Except that when Will really needs help, Marlowe isn’t there for him, betraying Will so spectacularly that the teen questions everything he thought he knew about his friend. When Marlowe is murdered, and Will accidentally foils a plot against the queen’s life, Queen Elizabeth appoints Will to replace his mentor as her spymaster—which was Marlowe’s secret identity all along. With Marlowe’s assassin still out there, Will has to turn to the annoyingly handsome Lord James Bloomsbury to help him catch the villain, and save both the queen’s life and their own.
Cotter gives readers the poor underside of a London where theaters are closed due to a resurgence of the plague, where a City Guard can just beat witnesses and leave them in the gutter, and where privacy and security are both luxuries. But it’s also a place of dreams, especially in the theater, and Cotter does a fantastic job juxtaposing those feelings, especially when centered in Will’s narration. Marlowe is fantastically sketchy when readers meet him, even through Will’s rosy glasses, which gives the mystery exactly the setup it needs for readers to feel just as invested as Will. Pair this one with the Shakespeare-focused fantasy That Self-Same Metal by Brittany N. Williams, or enjoy it on its own for an Elizabethan spy adventure.
Alana Joli Abbott is a reviewer and game writer, whose multiple-choice novels, including Choice of the Pirate and Blackstone Academy for Magical Beginners, are published by Choice of Games. She is the author of three novels, several short stories, and many role-playing game supplements. She also edits fantasy anthologies for Outland Entertainment, including Bridge to Elsewhere and Never Too Old to Save the World. You can find her online at VirgilandBeatrice.com.