30 Must-Read SFF Books By Black Authors

Walking into the heart of the rebellion isn’t how Touraine expected to return to Qazāl. The Balladairan Empire uprooted her entire life when she was a child — taught her to kill, to serve. Princess Luca, the emperor’s niece, needs to tighten Balladaire’s weakening grip on Qazāl if she has any hopes of taking over his throne. Working as the princess’s escort, Touraine’s loyalties — to the empire, to her homeland, and even to Luca — will be put to the ultimate test.

Charlotte Nicole Davis’s Weird West novel follows a sisterhood of young women forced to flee across a dangerous desert. The so-called Good Luck Girls were trafficked as children. Their brands prevent them from ever truly escaping a life of sexual slavery. When one of them kills a brothel customer on her first night, the Good Luck Girls know their sister’s days are numbered. Legend has it that someone, somewhere can remove their brands, but can they reach her before the powers that be catch up?

A strange event cuts off communication between one Midwestern city and the outside world in Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren. Some signs indicate that Bellona does not even exist on the same plane of reality anymore. Against this unsettling, disorienting backdrop, a mixed-race man named Kidd struggles to remember the details of his former life.

Two years after a violent confrontation caused the alien Ilori to subjugate humanity for their own good, humans aren’t allowed to express their emotions. Artistic endeavors are punishable by death — including 17-year-old Ellie’s secret library of banned books. Ellie has misplaced a book, and it’s only a matter of time before someone turns her in. The Ilori loyalist who finds the missing volume knows it’s his duty to see that justice is carried out. But M0r1S knows a little something about the power of art, and he may be willing to work with Ellie to try to change the world.

Angela Toussaint’s son died by suicide two years ago. She’s finally ready to pick up the pieces of her life, but first she needs to know the truth about Corey’s suicide. Angela’s investigation takes her back to the scene of the tragedy: the Good House, her ancestral home. She arrives just as a malevolent force is tearing the town apart. It could be the spirit that Angela’s grandmother fought against 70 years earlier…but is it also responsible for what happened to Corey?

Akwaeke Emezi’s semi-autobiographical debut follows a Nigerian woman possessed by three spirits. Ada has always been different. Human society explains away evidence of her divine heritage as the symptoms of mental illness. But when an abusive relationship causes one of the ogbanje inside her to take control, Ada’s life veers sharply off-course in a series of events that ultimately push her down the path toward understanding herself.

The eponymous heroine of this 1991 debut is a formerly enslaved lesbian with a bounty on her head. She takes refuge at a brothel owned and operated by vampires, where she renames herself after the brothel’s owner. The novel follows Gilda over her first 200 years as a vampire.

Redwood Phipps and Aidan Wildfire must hide who they are. Her hoodoo talents and his Seminole ancestry could attract racist violence in 1890s Georgia. That’s what killed Redwood’s mother, whose death catalyzes Wildfire to protect his new companion. They make their way to Chicago, developing a vaudeville act along the way, in this James Tiptree Jr. Award (now the Otherwise Award) winner.

The Prophet prohibits miscegenation among his followers. According to his teachings, Immanuelle’s existence is proof of her late mother’s sins, which destroyed their family’s reputation. She does her best to follow the Prophet’s commands and prove that she belongs in Bethel. But when Immanuelle discovers secrets about her mother and the ghosts of the surrounding forest, she embarks down a new path from which there may be no return.

Tan-Tan’s father killed her mother’s lover in a jealous rage. To evade justice, he took his daughter to New Half-Way Tree: a monster-filled world that lies parallel to their home planet of Toussaint. That’s where Tan-Tan has grown up, subjected for years to her father’s abuse. By the time she manages to escape, she’s already pregnant with his child. In the aftermath, Tan-Tan begins a new life as the Midnight Robber: a Robin Hood-esque character from Caribbean folklore.

The Civil War is over, but only because a new threat has emerged: the living dead. There’s still no place in the postbellum South for Jane, the mixed-race daughter of a white Southern belle. She travels to Baltimore to enroll in Miss Preston’s School of Combat. Training there will open her career path as an Attendant: a BIPOC bodyguard paid to protect the wealthy from the dead. But another threat stalks the Baltimore streets, and Jane will soon have to face it.

Drawing comparisons to the work of George R.R. Martin, this series-starter from Man Booker Prize–winner Marlon James follows Tracker, a mercenary hunter hired to crack open a cold case. A mysterious boy disappeared three years ago, and now a slave trader wants Tracker and Leopard, a shape-shifter, to locate him. What begins as a simple case soon proves to be more challenging than either man anticipated, however.

Orogenes, born with the power to control seismic fluctuations, cannot be trusted in the unstable world of the Stillness. Most are killed in infancy. Those who live must agree to serve the Fulcrum, on pain of death. The Fifth Season follows three orogenes: Damaya, a girl whose parents send her to train at the Fulcrum; Syenite, a young woman forced to have sex with another orogene, Alabaster, to produce a powerful child; and Essun, who sets out across a dangerous and ever-changing landscape to avenge her young son, who was murdered by his own father.

Another Weird West title, Sisters of the Wild Sage collects 12 stories set in an alternate version of the American Southwest. Spanning centuries, these tales mix tried-and-true western tropes with magic and mysticism. Nicole Givens Kurtz sets readers up on a stunning thrill ride, one that should not go overlooked.

The first installment in this urban fantasy trilogy follows Jordan, a woman forced to serve the underworld to avoid damnation. Two years after she accidentally killed a Seer, Jordan must now help lost souls wrap up their unfinished business and ferry them to the afterlife. It’s a tough job, and it becomes tougher still when one poltergeist’s inquiry causes Jordan to cross an archdemon with a vengeful streak.

A boy with psychic abilities sees a little more than he bargained for in this YA novel. Clairvoyance isn’t exactly a blessing for Alex. He’s doomed to learn the future of every person and object he touches, no matter how mundane. After a vision reveals that Alex’s girlfriend might end their relationship, he makes a much more chilling discovery: his kid brother, Isaiah, is about to die.

Terra-Two might be humanity’s only chance at survival. The journey there is a one-way trip that lasts 23 years, longer than some of the astronauts on the mission have been alive. Four astronauts who paved the way in the 20th century accompany 12 others — six seasoned spacefarers and six carefully trained teens — to the Goldilocks planet. But 23 years is a long time, and no amount of training can prepare the crew for every possible eventuality.

Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti trilogy follows its eponymous heroine, a girl with a knack for technology, as she becomes the first Himba student at a prestigious, extraterrestrial school. Her family didn’t want her to go, and her new classmates, who know nothing about the Himba people, don’t seem to want her to stay. After the ship taking a new class of students to the college is boarded by a vengeful alien force, however, Binti may be the only passenger capable of making peace before they arrive at Oomza University.

Ordinary Bassai aren’t permitted to know what lies outside the city. It’s illegal for immigrants to speak of the rest of the world in Bassa. Danso, a mixed-race student, should be spending his time studying and preparing for his upcoming marriage. After he sees someone use magic that should not exist, however, Danso finds the call of the unknown too tantalizing to resist.

A family recipe connects a woman and her daughter to the magical land of their forebears in this fabulist tale. Harriet’s gingerbread is famous in Druhástrana, where she grew up. It doesn’t have the same effect on Harriet’s neighbors in London, save for one: her childhood friend, Gretel. But when Harriet’s daughter, Perdita, sets out to track Gretel down, she finds herself re-examining her mother’s life story, in Gingerbread.

Elena sold her soul to the devil ten years ago. Their bargain runs out in three days, at which time the devil will collect what’s due. With the clock ticking down to her untimely death, Elena’s granted an 11th-hour opportunity: catch a serial killer to win back her soul. This job is the only hope she has of growing old with her beloved Edith, but can she solve the case before the devil comes to call?

Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning, a cli-fi novel, takes place in Dinétah, where gods and monsters out of Navajo legend roam once more. When a girl goes missing, Dinétah hunter Maggie sets out to find her. Maggie does what she does best — tracking the monster that kidnapped the child — with the help of a medicine man named Kai. Despite all their skills, the job will force the duo to go toe-to-toe with monsters they may not be equipped to fight.

Set in the aftermath of European colonization, Everfair weaves its way through the lives of citizens living within the eponymous nation: a corner of the Belgian Congo, purchased from Leopold II and established as a pan-African utopia.

Yetu is a historian, and that means pain. Her people have no memory of their traumatic pasts — including the slave traders who threw their pregnant mothers into the sea. Yetu cannot escape their history, which plays over and over again in her mind, even as her fellow mermaids go about their carefree lives. She flees to the surface world to escape the psychological trauma. Yetu’s people need her, more than she herself knows, but will she answer their call for aid?

The first book in Tade Thompson’s Wormwood trilogy, Rosewater centers on Kaaro, a man who developed psychic abilities following his brush with an alien fungus. After Kaaro saves the alien known as Wormwood from Nigerian secret agents, Wormwood retreats into an impenetrable dome. The town of Rosewater, Nigeria grows up around Wormwood’s dome, but humanity gets no closer to answering their questions about the alien entity — leaving Kaaro with no choice but to remain on the case.

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel imagines an alternate antebellum South, one in which abolitionists use a subway system to move enslaved people to freedom. The focus here centers on Cora, a formerly enslaved woman who finds herself ruthlessly hunted after she kills a boy in self-defense. Now, Cora must remain one step ahead of her would-be capturer, Ridgeway, even as she throws herself at the mercy of the railroad, looking for a safe place to call home.

Two powerful men fall into a forbidden love affair in this fantasy novella. It’s Captain’s job to lead the caravan through the established trade route, which has recently become the hunting grounds of a dreadful beast. To do so, he must rely on the sorcerer Demane’s magic. Both men sense a disconnect between themselves and the other members of the caravan. Eventually, they seek solace in one another. But should they mix business with pleasure on their already-dangerous journey?