Teen Fiction Fantasy

The best of the year's science fiction and fantasy stories as selected by the multiple award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan. Distant worlds, time travel, epic adventure, unseen wonders, and much more! The best, most original and brightest science fiction and fantasy stories from around the globe from the past 12 months are brought together in one collection by multiple award winning editor Jonathan Strahan.

Emily is a teenage girl pulled from our world into a world of magic and mystery by a necromancer who intends to sacrifice her to the dark gods. Rescued in the nick of time by an enigmatic sorcerer, she discovers that she possesses magical powers and must go to Whitehall School to learn how to master them. There, she learns that the locals believe she is a "Child of Destiny" - someone whose choices might save or damn their world, a title that earns her both friends and enemies.

Soren's beloved mentor, Ezylryb, is finally back at the Great Ga'Hoole Tree. But all is not well. There's a war between good and evil in the owl kingdom. On one side is a group led by Soren's fearsome brother, Kludd, who wears a terrifying metal mask to cover his battle-scarred face. On the other side are the owls of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, who must fight to protect their legendary tree from Kludd's attacks.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery: Humanity has conquered all those things and has even conquered death. Now Scythes are the only ones who can end life - and they are commanded to do so in order to keep the size of the population under control. Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe - a role that neither wants. These teens must master the "art" of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

La prophétie est sans équivoque : l'un doit périr afin que le second vive. Sans quoi tous seront condamnés. J'ai combattu de toutes mes forces pour ne pas succomber à Stoker, mais j'ai lamentablement échoué. Je suis Vénétia Basset, flamme jumelle, sorcière mortelle contaminée par le puits de l'augure. Et je suis celle qui va plonger Obadium dans l'obscurité.

For over 30 years, Dominion of Blades has been the hottest online role-playing game in the world. But the game is too real for some, and after an epidemic of real-life fatalities, public use of the immersion technology has been banned. Jonah wakes to find himself in-game, level one, with no memory of how he arrived and no way to eject. With only two companions, trapped in a world that once hosted millions, Jonah must battle his way across a treacherous landscape, fighting virtual monsters, all too real pain, and a very human enemy.

Twelve-year-old Sophie has never quite fit into her life. She’s skipped multiple grades and doesn’t really connect with the older kids at school, but she’s not comfortable with her family, either. The reason? Sophie’s a Telepath, someone who can read minds. No one knows her secret - at least, that’s what she thinks.... But the day Sophie meets Fitz, a mysterious (and adorable) boy, she learns she’s not alone. He’s a Telepath too, and it turns out the reason she has never felt at home is that, well...she isn’t. Fitz opens Sophie’s eyes to a shocking truth....

When two teenagers stumble upon a frozen corpse deep in the woods, they make the fateful decision to bring it back to town—unaware they’ve just unleashed the apocalypse. In the morgue beneath the hospital, the dead begin to stir, attacking the living and spreading a relentless infection. The once-quiet town quickly descends into chaos as the hospital becomes a battleground, its halls soaked in blood as survivors fight to escape the growing horde.

My twin brother has started to go mad, and my powers are the cause. Nobody knows how to stop it, and all the facts are telling me that unless I can cure him, my brother is very likely going to try and kill me soon. And that's just how this whole mess starts. From there I run face first into a whole stack of problems, including a crazy werewolf girl, a large pack of flesh-eating ghouls, and a trip to the greatest repository of magical knowledge in the world, where someone like me is definitely not welcome.

Time is running out for Grey and his squad. While they consistently rank in the top 20 players stuck in Fortnite Battle Royale, they need to be the top five to escape virtual reality and go home. Grey's team begins to fray apart, and he fears he won't be able to keep them together long enough to get the rank they need. With the season ending in a couple weeks, people are either giving up or fighting harder than ever.

In the first book in the series, against all odds, Chris Alan was able to defeat most of the aliens who had conquered Earth. By enlisting the help of a renegade alien AI and her ship, he was able to kill off most of the Dostivex Masters before they could even land. But a significant number of the predatory monsters was already in the process of eating their way through our species. Then, in that darkest hour, out of nowhere, a new alien fleet arrived in orbit and finished off the remnants of the brutal alien subjugators.

Once upon a time...there was a girl whose father inhabited the body of a beast for a time and whose mother couldn't seem to keep her nose out of a book. Mirabel can't imagine summer without the solstice ball her family throws every year—the music, the roses, everything looking picture perfect, like it came out of one of her mother's books. But when a young man at the ball snubs an enchantress in disguise and chooses Mirabel to dance with instead, the summer begins to look a lot less wonderful.

Our hero Chris Alan has been in some tight situations, to be sure. Hostile alien invasion, daring rescues of his friends, and trials by the insane kidnapper. But now he's marooned alone on the most hostile planet in the galaxy with no food, water, communication equipment, or spaceship. It couldn't look any bleaker. All he has to do is pull off another miracle with absolutely no resources or reasonable hope of survival. Just another day in the life of a teenage boy. Same old, same old, right?

Khalani Kanes has never stood on the surface of the earth. In the underground city of Apollo, faith and dreams are as absent as the sun. She longs to visit Genesis, the infamous Domed City and the final place where humanity lives aboveground. But when Khalani is given a life sentence and thrown into prison for a theft she didn't commit, that wish shatters into oblivion.

Holly Ash is good actor. Just one downside: Most of the people she’s acting with have no idea they’re a part of her fiction. One that has been carefully constructed by the secretive company that Holly works for, known as D.O.P.L. Every assignment is a new role, a new name, a completely new self. Her newest role is “Margot” and her newest target: a boy her age named Will Aldrich.

Hunted by the Bragamahr and distrusted by the Anarwyn, Cam must find his way through a land haunted by a tragic past. The memory of the dead pursues him as he finds himself drawn ever more powerfully to the Bragamahr. The magics would have him choose, but maybe he can’t. The fate of Anwyn rests on his choice. Can he revive the undead king before the magics tear him apart? Must he embrace the evil within to succeed? If he does, what will become of his friends?

I never believed magic was real– until I used it to kill a werewolf. Not long after, a letter arrived from a supernatural school for fae, claiming I was a sorceress. I’m forced into a world where dragons breathe fire, griffins fly, alicorns battle and wolves hunt monsters. At this academy, sorceresses are bound to alpha shifter mates, and pagan rituals are used to connect with the gods.

Anna had never been particularly interested in her mother's past. She certainly hadn't ever given much in the way of credence to her stories about the last Prince of Wales. But when Anna crashes through time into a snowy afternoon in medieval Wales, she suddenly finds herself embarking on a journey that transforms not only her own life, but an entire world ...

Like every other hobbit, Bilbo Baggins likes nothing better than a quiet evening in his snug hole in the ground, dining on a sumptuous dinner in front of a fire. But when a wandering wizard captivates him with tales of the unknown, Bilbo becomes restless. Soon he joins the wizard’s band of homeless dwarves in search of giant spiders, savage wolves, and other dangers. Bilbo quickly tires of the quest for adventure and longs for the security of his familiar home. But before he can return to his life of comfort, he must face the greatest threat of all.

Severely wounded in battle with Armaros, Shinji struggles to shoulder the responsibility of being Earth's savior yet again. Meanwhile, Asuka adjusts to her strange new body, and the clones Trois and Quatre continue their quest for their own identity. But their enemy wields the power of a god, and it's going to take every single one of them working together to prevent a reprise of the Human Instrumentality Project.