Hold My Year: 9 Exciting New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of December 2025

Three of the most fantastic speculative authors working today have combined their powers for good to bring us a collection of short works. These inspired essays, interviews, and stories address the future, social justice and change, and alternate worlds, from such literary luminaries as NK Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, adrienne maree brown, and Nisi Shawl.

In this exciting fantasy debut, a young woman who has trained her whole life to protect her clan’s throne hides in plain sight at her enemy’s school after her clan is assassinated. In the city of Za’skar, Khamilla Zahr-zad works to master magic and martial arts in order to exact her revenge, but the more time she spends at the academy and learns about history, the less sure she is about her plans.

New York Timesbestselling author Brandon Sanderson, best known for the Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive series, returns with ten works of short fiction, ranging from tech fantasy to space opera to detective thrillers, along with a never-before-published novella.

Here’s another epic fantasy debut, this time with a spin on Arthurian legend. Vera has never felt like she quite fit in. Still, when a stranger shows up at her workplace and tells her she was once Queen Guinevere of Camelot, it’s a little hard to accept. But he insists that her missing memories are what will save the past and future, and he shows her a portal back to Camelot that will help her to find herself again.

For dark academia fans, this is an exciting novel about an elite university hiding terrible secrets. Ellory Morgan has worked hard to attend Warren University, but once there, she hears rumors about the occult and the use of forbidden magic, and that its success has come at the cost of its BIPOC students.

In this exciting graphic novel, Cosmo is accidentally propelled into space while trying out his new jetpack. (I hate when that happens.) Cut off from the world, he has adventures on his own and meets all kinds of creatures. Once the book is over, you can flip it upside down for more!

New York Times bestselling author Romina Garber is back with this dark romance set at a New Hampshire boarding school.Lorena Navarrohad been hoping to find love at school with a human, but instead, she accidentally awakens William, the world’s last vampire, who has been asleep for almost three centuries! Will he choose love over his destiny?

And last, but not least, this YA fantasy follows four sisters who are said to have descended from Persephone, the queen of the underworld. When one of the sisters falls in love with a ghost named Henry residing in their New York City brownstone, another sister banishes him to the underworld, causing all kinds of chaos and sending the sisters on a rescue mission to save him.