The Most Anticipated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books Releasing in October 2022 According to Goodreads Members

Goodreads has recently revealed the sci-fi and fantasy books that are the most anticipated for the month of October 2022 according to their members. What are you excited to read this month?

• The Atlas Paradox

  • By Olivie Blake

  • Publication Date: October 25

Six magicians were presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

Five are now members of the Society.

Two paths lay before them.

All must pick a side.

Alliances will be tested, hearts will be broken, and The Society of Alexandrians will be revealed for what it is: a secret society with raw, world-changing power, headed by a man whose plans to change life as we know it are already under way.

• Poster Girl

  • By Veronica Roth

  • Publication Date: October 18

WHAT'S RIGHT IS RIGHT.

Sonya Kantor knows this slogan--she lived by it for most of her life. For decades, everyone in the Seattle-Portland megalopolis lived under it, as well as constant surveillance in the form of the Insight, an ocular implant that tracked every word and every action, rewarding or punishing by a rigid moral code set forth by the Delegation.

Then there was a revolution. The Delegation fell. Its most valuable members were locked in the Aperture, a prison on the outskirts of the city. And everyone else, now free from the Insight's monitoring, went on with their lives.

Sonya, former poster girl for the Delegation, has been imprisoned for ten years when an old enemy comes to her with a deal: find a missing girl who was stolen from her parents by the old regime, and earn her freedom. The path Sonya takes to find the child will lead her through an unfamiliar, crooked post-Delegation world where she finds herself digging deeper into the past--and her family's dark secrets--than she ever wanted to.

With razor sharp prose, Poster Girl is a haunting dystopian mystery that explores the expanding role of surveillance on society--an inescapable reality that we welcome all too easily.

• Station Eternity

  • By Mur Lafferty

  • Publication Date: October 4

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board….

• Into the Riverlands

  • By Nghi Vo

  • Publication Date: October 25

Wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills travels to the riverlands to record tales of the notorious near-immortal martial artists who haunt the region. On the road to Betony Docks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home, and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chih runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themselves far more entangled in the history of the riverlands than they ever expected to be.

Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a talking bird with an indelible memory, Chih confronts old legends and new dangers alike as they learn that every story—beautiful, ugly, kind, or cruel—bears more than one face.

• Self-Portrait with Nothing

  • By Aimee Pokwatka

  • Publication Date: October 18

If a picture paints a thousand worlds...

Abandoned as an infant on the local veterinarian’s front porch, Pepper Rafferty was raised by two loving mothers, and now at thirty-six is married to the stable, supportive Ike. She’s never told anyone that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her biological mother.

That’s because her birth mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter famous for the outrageous claims that her portraits summon their subjects’ doppelgangers from parallel universes.

Researching the rumors, Pepper couldn’t help but wonder:

Was there a parallel universe in which she was more confident, more accomplished, better able to accept love?

A universe in which Ula decided she was worth keeping?

A universe in which Ula’s rejection didn’t still hurt too much to share?

Sometimes living our best life means embracing the imperfect one we already have…

• Daughter of Darkness

  • By Terry Brooks

  • Publication Date: October 4

It’s been two years since Auris escaped from the sinister Goblin prison and learned of her heritage as one of the Fae. She is now happily partnered with her Fae lover Harrow and deeply bonded with her new family. All seems to be going perfectly--until, somehow, the Goblin attacks begin again. Someone, it seems, has not forgotten that Auris exists and seems determined to retrieve her...but who? And why?

As Auris begins to dig deeper in the mystery, old friends and new enemies appear, and Auris begins to realize that her still-shrouded past must contain the answers she needs. But even she does not suspect how far down the rabbit hole she is about to go until Harrow is taken and an impossible ransom demand is issued. Then, with two new companions at her side, Auris must attempt to unlock the remaining secrets of her past. For if she cannot, she will never see Harrow alive again.

• Across the Sand

  • By Hugh Howey

  • Publication Date: October 4

The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes, a land of howling wind and infernal sand.

In this barren home, siblings Conner, Rob, Palmer and Violet daily carve out a future. They live in the shadow of their father and oldest sister, Vic, two of the greatest sand divers ever to comb the desert's depths. But these branches of their family tree are long gone, disappeared into the wastes beyond, leaving the younger siblings scratching in the dust, hopeful for a better life.

On the other side of No Man's Land, Anya was born beside the abundant mines knowing her prospects would be to marry, have a family, and work in ore, in service to the Empire of the East. But when an atomic bomb delivered by a stranger destroys most of her town--murdering all her friends and community--she follows her father to a strange land of dunes to bring vengeance to their enemies.

• The Oracle of Marracoor

  • By Gregory Maguire

  • Publication Date: October 11

The Oracle of Maracoor, the second in the trilogy called Another Day, continues the story of Elphaba's green-skinned granddaughter, Rain. That strange land, Maracoor--across the ocean from Oz--is beset by an invading army. In the mayhem, Rain and Cossy, a child felon, break out of prison. Helped by a few flying monkeys, they struggle to escape the city before it falls under siege. Their arresting officer, Lucikles, also retreats with his family to a highland redoubt. But safety eludes them all. Chaos thunders upon them in the form of warriors, refugees, and brigands. The very fabric of reality loosens, liberating creatures of myth and legend--huge blue wolves, harpies, and giants made of the very landscape.

Cued in by secrets known only to the most highly placed members of the royal court, Rain and her companions hunt the fabled Oracle of Maracoor for guidance and soothsaying. Rain has to recover her forgotten past if she is to consider returning home. Cossy, the ten-year-old convicted of murder, must become invisible to avoid being taken into custody again. Meanwhile, the Fist of Mara, an arcane artifact that renders all around it barren, hammers against human lives. If the reclusive Oracle should spin a prophecy, might the desperate wicked years promise another day, one less perilous?

• The Spare Man

  • By Mary Robinette Kowal

  • Publication Date: October 11

Tesla Crane, a brilliant inventor and an heiress, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between the Moon and Mars. She’s traveling incognito and is reveling in her anonymity. Then someone is murdered and the festering chowderheads who run security have the audacity to arrest her spouse. Armed with banter, martinis and her small service dog, Tesla is determined to solve the crime so that the newlyweds can get back to canoodling—and keep the real killer from striking again.

• The Mountain in the Sea

  • By Ray Nayler

  • Publication Date: October

Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future.

Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them.

The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android.

The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses’ advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves.

But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.

A near-future thriller about the nature of consciousness, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea is a dazzling literary debut and a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.