Multicultural Speculative Fiction
Explore a diverse world of multicultural speculative fiction with our curated list of groundbreaking books. Discover unique voices, rich cultures, and imaginative stories that redefine the genre.
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Wind Follower
by Carole McDonell
McDonnell's fantasy debut portrays a land inhabited by the black-skinned Theseni, brown Ibeni and tan Doreni. Peace among the three tribes is disrupted by the paler-skinned, domineering Angleni as well as inner clan conflicts. Loic tyu Taer, the son of the wealthy headman of the Doreni Pagatsu clan, falls in love at first sight with Satha tya Monua, the impoverished but proud daughter of his father's old Theseni friend.
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So Long Been Dreaming
by Uppinder Mehan
An anthology of stories of imagined futures, written by leading writers of color from around the world.
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Havoc After Dark
by Robert Fleming
Bold and provocative, the short stories in this collection blend traditional horror with political and sociological chills in which realistic themes such as slavery, war and capital punishment are harrowingly explored. Challenging the genre, Havoc After Dark takes real-life horrors from today's headlines and turns them into real-life nightmares. From slavery to Nazi torture, from suicide of the soul to death of the body, here are stories that cut to the bone and sear the psyche: a haunting collection that readers won't forget.
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Acacia
by David Anthony Durham
"Acacia" offers a thrilling work of literary imagination that creates an all-enveloping and mythic world. Durham has written a timeless tale of heroism and betrayal, of treachery and revenge, of primal wrongs and ultimate redemption.
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Zahrah the Windseeker
by Nnedi Okorafor
Zahrah, a timid thirteen-year-old girl, undertakes a dangerous quest into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle to seek the antidote for her best friend after he is bitten by a snake, and finds knowledge, courage, and hidden powers along the way.
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Dark Matter
by Sheree R. Thomas
This volume introduces black science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction writers to the generations of readers who have not had the chance to explore the scope and diversity among African-American writers.
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Crystal Rain
by Tobias S. Buckell
The only hope for a planets delivery from the fearsome Azteca lies in a mythical artifact said to be hidden somewhere in the frozen north. Tobias S. Buckell is a dazzling new voice, and "Crystal Rain" is an explosive debut.--Hugo Award winner Robert J. Sawyer ("Hominids").
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Warchild
by Karin Lowachee
When Jos' parents are killed in an attack on their trading ship, the boy is kidnapped by the attackers and then escapes - only to fall into the alien hands of humanity's greatest enemies. He is soon coerced into becoming a spy against the human race.
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When Fox is a Thousand
by Larissa Lai
When Fox is a Thousand is a lyrical, magical novel, rich with poetry and folklore and elements of the fairytale. Larissa Lai interweaves three narrative voices and their attendant cultures: an elusive fox growing toward wisdom and her 1000 birthday, the ninth-century Taoist poet/nun Yu Hsuan-Chi (a real person executed in China for murder), and the oddly named Artemis, a young Asian-American woman living in contemporary Vancouver.
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Matters of the Blood
by Maria Lima
Keira Kelly, half-breed descendant of a powerful paranormal family has chosen to live apart from her clan and among humans in the Texas Hill Country. When she experiences a prophetic vision that foretells the vicious murder of her human cousin, Marty Nelson, she vows to determine the truth. Keira begins to uncover long-concealed secrets and risks alienating everyone she knows, from her former lover, Sheriff Carlton Larson, to the enigmatic Adam Walker, once a friendly acquaintance and now much more.
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Mindscape
by Andrea Hairston
MINDSCAPE takes us to a future in which the world itself has been literally divided by the Barrier, a phenomenon that will not be ignored. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epidimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Although a treaty to end the interzonal wars has been hammered out, power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart it. Celestina, the treaty's architect, is assassinated, and her protegee, Elleni, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, takes up her mantle. Now Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work. Can they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?
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The Bone Whistle
by Eva Swan
Young, brash Darly can't overcome her anger at a father she never knew. Viv, her secretive mother, can't get over the man himself. What Darly doesn't know, and what Viv refuses to tell her, is that her father is not of human blood. One of the elusive wanaghi, the fey-like folk who live beneath the Dakotan hills, he left Viv to return to his own kind before realizing that she would bear his child. When the gift of a bone whistle brings Darly's father to her, she finally discovers who he is. She decides, against her mother's advice, to follow him to his land under the hills. There she meets the rest of her family . . . and a young man who steals her heart. Even knowing the dangers, Darly can't help but fall in love and into the intriques of the wanaghi.
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Monkey Beach
by Eden Robinson
As Lisamarie travels by speedboat, five hundred miles north of Vancouver, searching for her drowned brother's body, she recounts her life which has included visits by ghosts and shapeshifters and tormenting premonitions.
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Salt Fish Girl
by Larissa Lai
"... a sci-fi, fantasy, critical social commentary, poetry, and product of the postmodern. Calling this an 'Asian book' or a 'woman's book' limits its scope and depth, a book that delves into memory, both personal and historical. It is also a creative challenge to conventional discussions on immigration and geographic/cultural displacement by exposing the power dynamics in the process. At the same time, however, the circular setup of the novel, the watery motifs, and gendered violence situates the book within women's experiences. Salt fish girl is also laden with loss, denial, forgetting and abandonment that is a common thread in an asian diasporic experience. Larissa Lai's poetic and lucid writing style fits so well with the fantastical yet tactile tone of the book. It is dream-like and yet feels intensely real. A delightful find. ... story about two Asian women -one a shapeshifter and the other obsessed with scent and her dead mother - who lived in very different times, but are somehow related ... And as a former Vancouverite, I also appreciated the book's run-down Pacific edge of the future setting."--Amazon.com reviews.
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The Phantom Queen
by Ven Begamudré
In the court of the Phantom Queen, an ancient storyteller enthralls the assembled company with a tale of love and battle and magical powers. But is there a connection between the teller and the tale?
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Kindred
by Octavia Butler
Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. ("You have to read them.") From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now. “I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.” Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present. Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times). “Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.” —N. K. Jemisin This book has been published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the cover available.
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My Soul to Keep
by Tananarive Due
When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to keep Jessica and his daughter with him forever. Harrowing, engrossing and skillfully rendered, My Soul to Keep traps Jessica between the desperation of immortals who want to rob her of her life and a husband who wants to rob her of her soul. With deft plotting and an unforgettable climax, this tour de force reminiscent of early Anne Rice will win Due a new legion of fans.
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Thunderland
by Brandon Massey
Despite the devastating aftermath of a gale ripping through his town, Jason Brooks's life seems to be looking up - he is making new friends and re-establishing ties with his recovering drunk mother and estranged father. However, everything changes with the arrival of an enigmatic stranger who invades their world - threatening not only his family's harmony, but also their lives. Award-winning newcomer Brandon Massey invites the reader into a dark, raw, and haunting tale. Prepare to be terrified... Spellbinding. Keeps you turning the pages' - Zane'
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Imaro
by Charles Saunders
Imaro is a rousing adventure... a tale of a young man’s continuing struggle to gain acceptance amongst his people, and to break the cycle of alienation and violence that plagues his life. Imaro is heroic fantasy like it’s never been done before. Based on Africa, and African traditions and legends, Charles Saunders has created Nyumbani (which means “home” in Swahili), an amalgam of the real, the semi-real, and the unreal. Imaro is the name of the larger-than-life warrior, an outcast, who travels across Nyumbani, searching for a home. Like his contemporaries, Karl Edward Wagner (Kane) and Michael Moorcock (Elric), Charles Saunders brings something new to the traditional heroic fantasy tale. A broad knowledge of, and passion for, the history and myths of Africa led to the creation of a heroic fantasy character the likes of which the world has never seen. Imaro is no Tarzan… no Conan… Imaro is a warrior out of African legend. Saunders' novel fuses the narrative style of fantasy fiction with a pre-colonial, alternate Africa. Inspired by and directly addresses the alienation of growing up an African American fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which to this day remains a very ethnically homogonous genre. It addresses this both structurally (via its unique setting) and thematically (via its alienated, tribeless hero-protagonist). The tribal tensions and histories presented in this fantasy novel reflect actual African tribal histories and tensions, and provide a unique perspective to current and recent conflicts in Africa, particularly the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing conflict in The Sudan.
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The Shadow Speaker
by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
/DIVDriven by vengeance. Destined for peace. Niger, West Africa, 2070: After fifteen-year old Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, her world shatters. In an era of mind-blowing technology and seductive magic, Ejii embarks on a mystical journey to track down her father's killer. With a newfound friend by her side, Ejii comes face to face with an earth turned inside out—and with her own magical powers. But Ejii soon discovers that her travels across the sands of the Sahara have a greater purpose. Her people need to be protected from a force seeking to annihilate them. And Ejii may be just the hero to do it. DIVThis futuristic, fantastical adventure heralds a bright new talent on the YA fantasy scene.
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49th Parallel Psalm
by Wayde Compton
Wayde Compton's first poetry book: a stunning set of poems documenting the migration of Blacks to Canada, specifically when the first Black settlers-facing an increasingly hostile racist government-left San Francisco and travelled north to British Columbia beginning in 1858. With recurring themes of the unknowable, the crossroads, the trickster, and entropy, 49th Parallel Psalm jumbles history, time, and the Canadian black literary canon. Shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
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Edinburgh
by Alexander Chee
A gifted Korean-American man confronts the terrors of his past as an adult when he confronts the molestation he suffered at the hands of his choir director.
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Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler
In a futuristic society filled with chaos, young Lauren Olamina begins a journey that will test her will and ultimately start a new faith. Includes questions for discussion.
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Through the Necromanteum
by Laurance Pearsongreer
NECROMANTEUM: a method to commune with the UNLIVING and the dead past. Project FAR-REACH: is a TOP SECRET alliance between pragmatic engineers, paranoid military officers, and a physician of the New Age. They dared explore the limits of space/time. They used DEATH as a gateway.
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Phoenix Tales
by Gregory Bernard Banks
These dark, thought-provoking, and sometimes humorous tales masterfully blend elements of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to delve into humanity's never-ending struggle to master death and achieve eternal life.
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Sleeping Helena
by Erzebet YellowBoy
What does a girl do with eight gifted and meddling aunts, one of whom can see into the future, yet who can not escape the curses of the past? The answer is: not much, for someone has conspired to put the girl and her aunts to sleep for one hundred years. Unlike the traditional tale of Sleeping Beauty, however, Sleeping Helena's years flow backwards-back in time to a fateful day that changed not only the lives of her family, but of an entire nation. No prince, but a King's own lover will find the beauty in her chamber. While the fate of the nation has been decided and can not be undone, the fate of the family rests on a lover's kiss, and what Helena will do should she awake.
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Ragamuffin
by Tobias S. Buckell
“First-class space adventure, with tip-top characterization, action, and world-building.”—Booklist on Ragamuffin
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Cimmerian City
by Rae Lindley
Today, corporations are the new aristocracy. A laundry list of side effects accompanies almost every new drug introduced on the market. What if these side effects changed us? Imagine waking up in a futuristic world were corporations are the new aristocracy. The world has been divided into 2 hemispheres and 2 races: Humans and quick tough skinned vampire-like creatures that are children of the side effects of 20th century pharmaceutical experiments...Dracins. Imagine dying as a human...and waking up as something else. This is the life of Raven Blackheart, a formerly bored college student turned agent for the Tech Corporation, the largest corporate entity in the Western Hemisphere. Vice President Tyler Deamond, directs Raven as a go between and the last hope for the unification of Humans and Dracins. As deaths start occurring within the corporation headquarters, Raven notices someone is working their way up the food chain. Alliances are questioned as Deamond's intentions aren't quite as noble as they seem. A figure emerges from Raven's past who may have all the answers to the disappearance of her father... Cimmerian City is a futuristic sci-fi thriller where government has become big business, pharmaceuticals carry a veil of ghastly side effects and a third world war is brewing between the two races. Relax...It's just the 21st century.
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Black Sheep
by Ben Peek
This is the story of Isao Dazai, a Japanese-born man who has recently immigrated to Australia with his family. The future that Isao lives in is a world of mass race segregation where each of the world's cities have been divided into three separate walled ghettos, defined by three 'mass racial' categories: Asian, African and Caucasian. Living in Asian-Sydney, Isao knows that simply wanting to cross the city's boundaries is one of the greatest of crimes in this new world, as is his inability to leave his Japanese culture behind. Within months of arriving in Sydney, he is charged with the crime of multiculturalism and sentenced to Assimilation, a radical and invasive punishment created by the Australian Government. This new punishment strips Isao of his personality and skin pigmentation and leaves him with cold, white skin, and nothing but a number to identify himself with.
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Dark Thirst
by Angela C. Allen
A collection of vampire tales with an African American flavor includes six tales of the undead by some of today's leading African American writers, including Omar Tyree, Donna Hill, and Monica Jackson.
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Slave to Sensation
by Nalini Singh
Changeling Lucas Hunter persuades Sascha Duncan, a member of a race of psychics who are forbidden to feel emotions, to help him find the killer of several Changeling women.
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The Island of Eternal Love
by DaĂna Chaviano
Hearing the life story of a mysterious old woman in a Little Havana bar, Cuban-American Cecilia learns about three generations of a family of diverse origins that includes such members as a reverent Chinese widow, an African slave, and a Spanish matriarch
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The Coyote Kings of the Space-age Bachelor Pad
by Minister Faust
Hamza and Yehat are The Coyote Kings–best friends, one a disgruntled dishwasher and the other a video store clerk, but each brilliant in his own right. Yehat builds prototypes of space-age inventions in his spare time, while Hamza, a former English honors student who was kicked out of the university, writes lush, lyrical poems when he’s not blocked–which, these days, is nearly always. When the gorgeous, mysterious Sherem shows up in E-Town decked out in desert finery, Hamza’s creative spark is ignited. Who is this sophisticated woman that speaks arcane African tongues, quotes from obscure comics andStar Warsmovies, yet seems somehow too ethereal for the world Hamza inhabits? And what is the lost artifact that she and a cast of coiffed collectors and criminal cultists so desperately seek? As Hamza falls blindly in love with Sherem, little does he know that he and Yehat play the biggest part of all in the recovery of the ancient relic–and in the future of all living beings. . . .
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Demon
by Tosca Lee
Lucian, a fallen angel, dictates his memoirs to a book editor, covering such topics as the creation of the universe, the fall of Lucifer, and the struggle for mankind.