New Autumnal Reads From Travis Baldree, Claire North, Victor Manibo and More

November’s new releases span from epic space opera—starring immortal Pilots and bloodthirsty Sovereigns—to intimate speculative tales posing big questions about changing our facial features or merging with a loved one’s consciousness. Then there’s the stories from the in-betweens, like the new novel from the online storytelling wiki SCP. And lest you think it’s all SF this month, we’ve got another cozy fantasy from Travis Baldree’s Legends & Latte ‘verse, and an eerie Filipino Gothic. Plenty to keep you company as you watch the leaves change.

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**Kemi Ashing-Giwa, The King Must Die **(Saga Press, November 4)

The Splinter in the Sky author’s new standalone space opera adventure follows mercenary bodyguard Fen, who finally finds a cause to believe in, but only after tragedy: When her fathers are murdered by the cruel Sovereign of Newearth, Fen joins the underground rebellion in which they were involved. Newearth has long been in decline, originally a planet gifted to humanity by the alien Makers…until terraforming failed. Now Fen must decide whether to align herself with the violent insurrection or if she can trust Alekhai, the Sovereign’s heir, and his dangerous plan to save Newearth.

**qntm, There Is No Antimimetics Division **(Ballantine Books, November 11)

It’s always exciting to discover entire corners of the Internet that you never knew existed. Take the SCP Foundation, which stands for Secure, Contain, Protect—specifically, Anomalies, or instances of inexplicable magic in our world. The collaborative metafictional wiki has been posting the SCP’s bureaucratic accounts for decades, including some that author qntm collected into a(n originally self-published) volume, There Is No Antimimetics Division. This new revised edition delves even more into the concept of antimemes, or “ideas with self-censoring properties”; not only can they not go viral, but they could make you forget they even existed. They could make it so that people forget you exist. This is not the first time you’ve heard this story, but this may be the first time that you make it to the end.

**Grace Walker, The Merge **(Mariner Books, November 11)

This book joins the growing subgenre of recent sci-fi exploring the contours of the mind as an infinite space, and is for fans of The 100’s polarizing (but great) “City of Light” season, or the Black Mirror cookie episodes. Grace Walker’s dystopian drama envisions a future in which two consciousnesses can share one body. Familial pairs choose the experimental merge for a variety of reasons, including a mother with Alzheimer’s linking her mind with her daughter; teenage brothers, one terminally ill; a man and his pregnant fiancée; a father and his addict daughter. But such a permanent undertaking must be too good to be true; and what does it mean to never say goodbye?

**Travis Baldree, Brigands & Breadknives **(Tor Books, November 11)

Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes series has gotten so popular that spinoff characters get room for their own stories. There’s a Redwall vibe to the third installment, as fan-favorite rattkin Fern gets carried away on an impromptu adventure involving a chaos-goblin who holds a bounty tempting enough for all the ne’er-do-wells to try and collect on. All this after Fern just wanted to renovate her boring bookseller life by starting over next to her orc pal Viv’s coffee shop!

**Eshani Surya, Ravishing **(Grove/Roxane Gay Books, November 11)

This incisive novel tackles the racism of the beauty industry, peddling skin-lightening creams to vulnerable customers desperate to fit into narrow beauty standards. Or, like teenager Kashmira, to escape the sight of her abusive and absentee father’s genetics in the mirror every morning. But when NuLook unveils its new product Evolvoir, it’s too tempting to refuse: nanobots will rearrange the literal features on Kashmira’s face. Little does she know that her estranged brother Nikhil, suffering from the same paternal wounds, is behind Evolvoir. But when users, including Kashmira herself, begin to suffer chronic pain as a result of the product, both siblings must confront the root cause behind their life-altering choices.

**Claire North, Slow Gods **(Orbit Books, November 18)

After retelling the life of Odysseus’ wife in the Songs of Penelope books, Claire North adopts a new perspective with a standalone space opera about a man reborn so many times over as to better resemble a monster. Cursed with incredible longevity, Mawukana na-Vdnaze can pilot sentient ships in deep space without going mad; death is an evolution rather than an end. But when a binary star about to go supernova threatens the planet Adjumir, Maw’s beloved Gebre entrusts him with an artifact and the order to leave him behind. Immortality and doomed romance? That’s the kind of story I love to hear over and over again.

**Victor Manibo, The Villa, Once Beloved **(Erewhon Books, November 25)

Like Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, Victor Manibo’s latest breathes new life into familiar genre beats, as the Gothic drama is transplanted to the Philippines. The tragic death of the Sepulveda family patriarch calls his descendants back to Villa Sepulveda, a Spanish colonial manor in a coconut plantation; but a landslide traps the guests inside, transforming the funeral plans into a supernatural reckoning of sins. The mounting horrors are related through three perspectives: Adrian Sepulveda, a wealthy Filipino-American student; Sophie, his college girlfriend and a transracial adoptee, for whom the trip is a chance to discover her Filipino heritage; and housekeeper Remedios, who must know more about the demons and dark secrets embedded in the villa’s very foundations.