If you’re someone who (like me) loves a mystery, loves a speculative world, and loves it best when you don’t have to pick between the two, 2025 is shaping up to be an incredible reading year. I want a book that’s different enough to make me feel like I’m really somewhere else while I’m turning the pages, and engrossing enough to make me forget the real world when insomnia tries to grab me at three in the morning—and these five books do not disappoint on either count. This list is a sampling of the upcoming excitement in store for those of us who like our crime with a stiff dose of otherworldliness.
This line-up of books will take you from the aroma of mall air to lilac- and rot-scented worlds of enigmatic golden paths; from posh vampire homes in London to cramped academic quarters on Jupiter. Whatever you’re looking for, spring and summer this year will be a great time to be a speculative crime reader.
Lincoln Michel, Metallic Realms
(Atria)
Lincoln Michel’s Metallic Realms (May 13th) is a rococo house-of-mirrors that is at once a tour-de-force rocket-ride across the length and breadth of sci-fi as a genre, a celebration of the unreliable narrator, and a combined paean and satire of “fandom.” Trying to describe the specifics of this book is maddening. It’s a linked collection of short stories embedded in a history of the greatest sci-fi collective no one has ever heard of; it’s a study of the psychology of a narrator whose approach to friendship ranges from unhinged to downright criminal; it’s a parody of writers, from the catty competition to the lofty ideals to the Muji pens. It’s all of these things, and also a love letter to the writing we love to love. Michel has long argued that the accusations lobbed between camps of the literary-versus-science-fiction skirmishes (“your books are too hokey” v. “yours are too dreary”) are claptrap. With Metallic Realms, he sets out to prove that both genres can be stronger together—and succeeds resoundingly.
Vivian Shaw, Strange New World
(Orbit)
Vivian Shaw’s Greta Helsing (ultra-competent “doctor to the undead”) returns one last time in Strange New World (May 20th). Dr. Helsing is forced to step in when her supernatural clients get caught in the fallout of the forces of Heaven and Hell trying to fulfill the terms of a brand-new treaty. This book is witty and fun, underpinned by smart and considered questions about the meaning of redemption—excellent escapism and philosophical inquiry combined into one satisfying read. It works both as the capstone of a series and a standalone. Those who have been fans since Greta Helsing’s early adventures in Strange Practice will be delighted by this last dance with beloved old favorites, with some fantastic new characters enlivening the mix (angel-as-overeager-undergrad-intern is one I will never forget); but the skill and clarity of Shaw’s writing means that this is also an excellent introduction to Helsing’s supernatural clinic for new readers.
Megan Giddings, Meet Me at the Crossroads
(Amistad)
Megan Giddings’s thoughtful and magical Meet Me at the Crossroads (June 3rd) follows a young woman trying to piece together what actually happened to her twin sister when she disappeared behind a mysterious door that opened into another world. This book is uncategorizable: part ghost story, part mystery, part horror, and part meditation on grief. It is slow, and wise, and also gripping; it is speculative fiction that feels more true than plenty of realism. Giddings’s characters are fully realized in a way that has kept them living in my head for months after reading this book. Its unflinching portrait of the difficulty of living with uncertainty and grief offers solace instead of comfort.
Malka Older, The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses
(Tor)
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses (June 10th) finds Malka Older’s Holmes-and-Watsonesque pair Mossa and Pleiti called in to a university on Jupiter to deal with a delicate matter of academic intrigue—before it tips from slander to slaughter. In this third installment of the Mossa and Pleiti series, Pleiti must go it alone—for the first time—through most of the investigation. The extended period watching Pleiti gain confidence in her own unique approach to investigation is a delightful twist on the formula Older had played out so gratifyingly in the previous two volumes. The romance between the two women feels more grounded and adult as they begin to navigate the thornier, deeper problems that arise in a long-term relationship. I have adored this series since The Mimicking of Known Successes, but in this third installment it feels like it soars to new heights: more complex, more thought-provoking, somehow even more thrilling.
Kashana Cauley, The Payback
(Atria)
In the Los Angeles of Kashana Cauley’s timely and riotous The Payback (July 15), paramilitary “Debt Police” beat up anyone who defaults on their student loans—and it’s up to a ragtag trio of former retail workers to pull the heist that will stop them. When once-and-future costume designer Jada Williams finds herself on the receiving end of the Debt Police’s violence, she pulls her ex-coworkers from the mall (Lanae, a punk rock singer and Audrey, a hacker) into a scheme to wipe the databases of their loan company. The only criminal experience between the three of them is Jada’s history lifting watches left behind in fitting rooms and getting caught for it—perhaps not the most promising basis for pulling off a massive crime. They may not be the heroes they want—“I thought someone would stand up for us,” Lanae says, to which Jada responds “You mean us Black women?”—but they’re the heroes they have. The book delivers outstandingly on this spectacular premise. Cauley’s prose sings, snappy and clever, painting a picture of a world that feels at the same time utterly absurd and chillingly close at hand.
