Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.
Sarah Kim
50
Harper Voyager The City of Brass, by S. A. Chakraborty
Now 35% Off
The first novel in Chakraborty’s trilogy is set in 18th-century Cairo, where a thief-slash-exorcist named Nahri accidentally summons a djinn warrior. Together, they travel to the “city of brass,” a magical metropolis called Daevabad. Nahri’s story continues in two fast-paced sequels, The Kingdom of Copper and The Empire of Gold, while a spinoff story compilation, The River of Silver, is forthcoming this October.
49
Anchor The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
Now 50% Off
The only book on this list written during National Novel Writing Month, Morgenstern’s debut novel is an atmospheric fairy tale about Le Cirque des Rêves—a traveling magical circus that only appears at night in Victorian England. The nonlinear story is full of surprising secrets that keep coming until the very end.
48
Vintage The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Now 32% Off
The author of Never Let Me Go has only written one fantasy novel, but he knocked it out of the park. In the Dark Ages after the death of King Arthur, a mysterious “mist” prevents Britons from storing long-term memories. An elderly couple, convinced that a son they can barely remember is missing, journeys across the country to find him, where they stumble upon ogres, a dragon, and Sir Gawain.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
47
Broadway Books The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins
Now 30% Off
Carolyn and her eleven siblings live together in the house of their father, a seemingly immortal man whose library grants them special powers. To say anything else would spoil this riveting, one-of-a-kind novel full of surprises and paced like a thriller.
46
Tordotcom Ring Shout, by P. Djèlí Clark
Now 30% Off
In Clark’s harrowing novella, white supremacists summon demonic entities when The Birth of a Nation premiers in 1915. Seven years later in Georgia, three battle-ready Black women armed with a sword, a rifle, and explosives come together at Stone Mountain to stop a demon-infested Ku Klux Klan from bringing about an apocalypse.
45
Dalkey Archive Press The Other City, by Michal Ajvaz
Now 26% Off
Translated into English in 2009, The Other City is a challenging but immensely rewarding novel set in Prague, where an unnamed narrator discovers a purple book written in an indecipherable language; he then realizes that there’s another, surreal version of the city existing in the same space as the familiar one. His midnight travels through this “other city” are rich with Borgesian and Dalíesque imagery, resulting in a reading experience you’ll never forget.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
44
Tordotcom The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, by Kai Ashante Wilson
Now 50% Off
Another strange forest is at the center of The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Kai Ashante Wilson’s 2015 novella about two men descended from dead gods. They lead an expedition through the Wildeeps, where multiple worlds overlap and magical creatures stalk their party. It’s a captivating world, expanded upon even further in 2016 by a followup novella, A Taste of Honey.
43
Liveright Publishing Corporation The Unfinished World, by Amber Sparks
Now 14% Off
Amber Sparks plays with form, genre, and archetypes in this nuanced collection of short stories. An assortment of knights, werewolves, astronauts, librarians, time-travelers, and dinosaurs haunt these pages, but never as tropes—despite their fantastical premises, each story is grounded in emotional realism.
42
Tordotcom Witchmark, by C.L. Polk
Now 22% Off
Winner of the 2019 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, Witchmark is set in a secondary world similar to Edwardian England and ruled by noble families with magical powers. The setup is fantastic and the characters are nuanced, but the book really shines in the latter half, thanks to a series of revelations you’ll never see coming.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
41
Penguin Books Tales of Falling and Flying, by Ben Loory
Now 35% Off
Ben Loory’s very short stories are almost a genre unto themselves, somewhere between fairy tales, fantasy vignettes, and absurdist sketches. They'll make you think, wonder, and laugh out loud. None of these 40 stories ends like you expect it to—not even the one about the Dodo.
40
Harper Perennial What Should Be Wild, by Julia Fine
Now 16% Off
Fine’s debut novel opens with one of the most stunning first lines of all time: “They grew me inside of my mother, which was unusual, because she was dead.” Born with the power to kill and revive living things with a single touch, 16-year-old Maisie Cothay embarks on an adventure through a mysterious forest to find her missing father.
39
Tor Books A Darker Shade of Magic, by V.E. Schwab
Now 10% Off
Schwab’s Shades of Magic series begins with this blockbuster, where a few rare magicians have the power to travel between four versions of London—Red London, full of magic; Grey London, our own world in the Regency era; White London, a dying city; and Black London, destroyed by magic long ago. It’s as fascinating as it sounds.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
38
Vintage The Vorrh, by Brian Catling
Now 37% Off
A dark, polarizing novel filled with passages of exquisite beauty and heartache. Shortly after World War I, an English soldier arrives in the African city of Essenwald—which was transported brick by brick from its original location in Germany—as a base camp for his journey across a vast unmapped forest, armed with a bow made from the bones and sinews of his dead wife. It gets even weirder from there.
37
Berkley Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay
Now 26% Off
In the 1970s, Guy Gavriel Kay helped Christopher Tolkien edit The Silmarillion after the passing of J.R.R. Tolkien. In the decades since, Kay has become one of the most prolific fantasy writers of his generation, often setting his novels in worlds that closely resemble historical places on Earth. His most impressive book, 1990’s Tigana, takes place on a planet with two moons, magic, and a culture inspired by medieval Italy’s warring provinces.
36
Tordotcom The Black Tides of Heaven, by Neon Yang
Now 37% Off
An epic novella in Yang’s Tensorate series, The Black Tides of Heaven was a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards in 2018. The twin children of a brutal empress, Mokoya and Akeha grow up in a monastery where they develop magical powers. After declaring their chosen genders as youths, they fall into opposing sides in the war over their mother’s empire.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
35
Bantam A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin
Now 33% Off
When the first book in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series was published in 1996, no one could have predicted that Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow would become household names two decades later, courtesy of HBO. While the two most recent volumes have lost some of the momentum Martin built in the first three, there’s no denying that the original A Game of Thrones is a landmark event for turning so many well-worn genre tropes upside down.
34
Yearling The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
Now 18% Off
It’s hard to pick the best book in Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The Golden Compass is a fascinating if somewhat arduous introduction to Lyra’s world, full of daemons and airships and armored polar bears, while The Amber Spyglass takes the biggest narrative risks (not all of which pay off). But The Subtle Knife is a fast-paced romp through the multiverse, unburdened by the setup and windup duties that sometimes weighed down the first and third books in the series.
33
Orbit Queen of the Conquered, by Kacen Callender
Now 38% Off
A Black woman with the power to read minds, Sigourney Rose seeks revenge on the colonizers who killed her family in Callendar’s adult debut, set in an island world inspired by the Caribbean. It’s a remarkable story of royal intrigue, manipulation, and corrosive power that won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2020.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
32
Small Beer Press Kalpa Imperial, by Angélica Gorodischer
Now 20% Off
The late Argentine writer Angélica Gorodischer deserves far more attention for this novel-in-stories, translated by none other than Ursula K. Le Guin in 2003. Every chapter in Kalpa Imperial is narrated by a different storyteller and describes the rise and fall (and rise and fall again) of an unnamed empire. It’s a smart, whimsical take on the way power corrupts real and imaginary societies.
31
William Morrow & Company Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
Now 27% Off
Inspired by England’s pre-Tolkien fantasy writers like Lord Dunsany and Hope Mirrlees, Gaiman’s 1999 novel Stardust feels like a timeless classic. A tale of faerie markets, witches, and feuding princes, it’s also a romance between a half-human, half-faerie young man and a fallen star in the shape of a young woman. Bright and breezy, it’s short enough to read in a single sitting.
Watch Next
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pr%2FQrqCrnV6YvK57xKernqqklravucSnq2ian6S4tHvGbHBscGVthHV7wZ6qrWWWlru1rdKyZJunn6DAcA%3D%3D