746 Books and Bookish Beck are celebrating the art of the short book by co-hosting Novellas in November, a month-long celebration that you can join by reading novellas. The event is kick-started by looking back at My Year in Novellas where we look back on any novellas we have read since the end of last year’s challenge.
I read 16 novellas this year, probably the most I’ve read in a single year, and this is because of my reading of The 15 Novellas Nominated for 2026 Locus, Nebula and Hugo Awards plus the latest release of a novella in the Wayward Children series, Through Gates of Garnet and Gold, Seanan McGuire (#11).
5 Star Favorites
Cinder House, Freya Marske
Genre: Gothic Fairy Tale Romance | Pages: 144
You think you know Cinderella. You’re halfway right and all-the-way wrong. Murdered at sixteen, Ella’s ghost is furiously trapped in her father’s house – invisible to everyone except the stepmother and stepsisters who killed her. The author delivers on bringing to us a unique spin on this well known tale. It’s dark with beautiful World building, beautiful prose and what an ending! I loved every minute of it, and especially loved the unique details the author brought to the story.
The Summer War, Naomi Novik
Genre: Fantasy / Fairy Tale | Pages: 144
When twelve-year-old Celia watches her beloved older brother Argent leave for war, her angry, desperate words unexpectedly carry the weight of prophecy cursing him to a life stripped of love. This novella has a fairytale quality and it was done so well, offering a complete story with me fully invested in the characters and the plot. There’s a lot of family dynamics, family drama and power dynamics at play.
Psychopomp & Circumstance, Eden Royce
Genre: Southern Gothic Historical Fantasy | Pages: 163
Phee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction era born to a family of free Black business owners in an alternate, magic-infused New Charleston, South Carolina. Sheltered to the point of stifling by a mother determined to see her marry well, Phee yearns for the chance to prove herself capable of more. When word arrives that her estranged Aunt Cleo has died, Phee seizes the opportunity to become the “pomp”, the honored role of planning the funeral service, and finds herself stepping into a legacy of family secrets, magic, and unfinished business far bigger than she imagined.
I loved the main character who we learned so much about, and where the author took the story ultimately … I didn’t see it coming. This novella is unique and written so thoughtfully. I enjoyed seeing Phee’s relationships develop as well but would have loved to learn more about the town and how it worked.
Award Winners
Psychopomp & Circumstance (above) won a 2026 World Fantasy Award for Long Fiction and 1 novella won all 3 awards – Hugo, Nebula and Locus (below).
The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar
🚀 Hugo ✨ Nebula 📖 Locus
Genre: Fairy Tale / Folk Fantasy | Pages: 133
The Hawthorn family tends enchanted willow trees and honors an ancient compact through song. Sisters Esther and Ysabel share an unbreakable bond, until Esther’s secret love for a fairy named Rin, and the jealous violence of a rejected suitor, sets off a chain of events that transforms both sisters forever.
I really enjoyed this book and listen to the audiobook for this one if you can. It’s narrated superbly by Gem Carmella. The sisters singing to the magical Willow trees daily is their duty – and the audiobook captures this and more musical elements of the story beautifully – featuring music performed by the author and her sister, Dounya El-Mohtar with Amal and Dounya on harp, flute, and vocals; and songs sung by the narrator, Gem Carmella.
The story itself is full and focuses a lot on the bond of the sisters, their duty to the Willows and each other. This may have been to the detriment of other elements that had the potential to be fantastical – like more about how grammar is Magic please! But this is a novella – short and sweet. The plot flowed really well, the details and imagery of the lands were vivid and detailed. I did think there was a contradiction in the ending … I had to re-read this part several times, but overall, this captured my imagination and I loved it.
Other Favorites
Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz
Genre: Cozy Sci-Fi | Pages: 163
In a near-future San Francisco still rebuilding from a devastating war of independence from the rest of the United States, a group of deactivated food-service robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen. With no human oversight and a debt they must pay to stay free, they make a bold decision: open their own restaurant, serving the city’s most exceptional hand-pulled noodles. When a targeted wave of one-star fake reviews threatens to tank their business, the bots must investigate the sabotage and call on their community to survive in a world that wasn’t built for them
But Not Too Bold, Hache Pueyo
Genre: Gothic Monster Romance | Pages: 115
The old keeper of the keys is dead, consumed by the volatile Lady of the Capricious House, Anatema, an enormous humanoid spider with a taste for laudanum and human brides. Dália, the late keeper’s protégée, takes up the duties of locking and unlocking the drawers in which Anatema stores her memories. If Dália can unravel the crime that led to her predecessor’s end, she might survive long enough to grow into her role. There is, however, a gaping hole in her plan: Anatema cannot resist a beautiful woman, and she devours every single bride who crosses her path.
Disgraced Return of the Kap’s Needle, Renan Bernardo
Genre: Speculative Fiction | Pages: 128
This novella follows a disgraced figure navigating the weight of a past they cannot escape and a homecoming that refuses to be simple. The plot was engaging from the beginning. A spaceship sent to a World that should have been habitable for humans, but turns out that it wasn’t. The ship heads back home, but there’s not enough oxygen for everyone and decisions are being made that don’t sit right with everyone. There are some twists that make the story interesting, but because this is such a short novella, some of the action and plot points were just too quick. Still, the ending was also beautifully done and overall a solid story.
The Rest
The other 8 novellas I rated 3 or 3.5 stars – so not a bad one in the bunch.
Through Gates of Garnet and Gold (Wayward Children #11), Seanan McGuire
You don’t need to read the others to dive into this one. The characters from other books are heavily referenced and some reappear, but it’s enough to pique your interest in finding out more about their stories – not something you needed to know ahead of reading this.
That said, I enjoyed this a lot! It’s not my favorite in the series – but far from my least favorite as well. It’s a quick read, but we got to know the characters well, and learn more about their relationship to each other. The plot moved fast, almost too fast, because this book felt more like a short story (and a bit formulaic). The quest was over too soon and just a tad too easily won after all the buildup of the ferocity of the ghosts. Still – I enjoyed the tale – and the ending.
Murder by Memory, Olivia Waite
Genre: Cozy Sci-Fi Mystery | Pages: 103
Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, the most luxurious interstellar passenger liner in the galaxy where room and board are included, new bodies are provided upon request, and your mind is safely preserved in glass in the ship’s Library between lifetimes. Ship’s detective Dorothy Gentleman wakes unexpectedly in a body that isn’t hers, just as a murder is discovered. Someone has found a way to make death on the Fairweather permanent and destroying memory books so the dead cannot be revived. Dorothy must solve her most impossible case yet, all while navigating a new body, an intriguing yarn-store owner, and a killer who may have had three hundred years to perfect their scheme.
What Stalks the Deep, T. Kingfisher
Genre: Gothic Horror | Pages: 179
Series: Sworn Soldier #3
Alex Easton does not want to visit America and they particularly don’t want to descend into an abandoned, reputedly haunted coal mine in 1890s West Virginia. But when their old friend Dr. Denton summons them to help find his lost cousin, who vanished while investigating a mysterious red light deep in the shafts of Hollow Elk Mine, a sworn soldier does what a sworn soldier must.
The Orb of Cairado, Katherine Addison
Genre: Fantasy Mystery | Pages: 120
Set in the world of the beloved Goblin Emperor, this companion novella follows Ulcetha Zhorvena, a disgraced historian who was framed for theft five years ago and lost everything. Now writing fake provenances for stolen artifacts to survive, Ulcetha is shocked when his best friend Mara dies in the same airship explosion that kills the emperor, and Mara’s final gift leads him to a puzzle he cannot resist: a trail of clues pointing straight back to the university that destroyed him and possibly to the chance to clear his name at last.
Making History, K.J. Parker
Genre: Dark Fantasy / Political Satire | Pages: 128
History isn’t truth – it’s propaganda. When a newly installed tyrant needs a historically legitimate excuse to go to war with his neighbors, he summons a dozen professors from his kingdom’s university and gives them an impossible command: invent an ancient civilization from scratch, complete with archaeology, language, and artifacts convincing enough to justify conquest. Refusal means death.
Lives of Bitter Rain, Adrian Tchaikovsky
📖 Locus
Genre: Grimdark Fantasy | Pages: 126
Series: Tyrant Philosophers
In the world of the acclaimed Tyrant Philosophers series, the ruthless Palleseen Empire sends armies to “perfect” the world, but before the armies come Outreach: the diplomatic corps who convert enemies into friends and topple imperfect societies from within using only words. This novella is the life story of Angilly, a child of Pal soldiers who grows, through a sequence of accidents and questionable choices, into one of Outreach’s most formidable operators, traveling from Jarrokir to Bracinta to Usmai, learning exactly what price the empire’s success demands from those who carry it forward.
A Mouthful of Dust, Nghi Vo
Genre: Fantasy / Horror | Pages: 112
Series: Singing Hills Cycle #6
Wandering Cleric Chih of Singing Hills and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant travel to the river town of Baolin, drawn by stories of a legendary famine that devastated the region eighteen years past. The town is still haunted by it … literally. Amid tales of dishes served to royalty and desperate survival, Chih discovers the ugly secrets of what the powerful will do to hide their crimes, and finds themselves trapped in the manor of a sinister magistrate as the things in the shadows grow hungrier still.
The Death of Mountains, Jordan Kurella
Genre: Climate Fiction / Fabulism | Pages: 122
When the Death of Mountains arrives for a weary, strip-mined hill in the Appalachians, the mountain doesn’t intend to go gently. In a Scheherazade-esque exchange of stories and questions — the mountain delaying its own end through the telling of tales — this remarkable novella explores what it means to be a mountain, the deep wounds humans have inflicted on the land through centuries of extraction, and what it might look like for nature to resist. A fabulist, hopepunk climate allegory narrated from the perspective of the land itself.
Descent, Wole Talabi
Genre: Science Fantasy | Available FREE online via Clarkesworld Magazine – Print & Audio
A Sauútiverse novella set on a raging planet of storms, exploring traditional African epistemology, the limits of knowledge, and the weight of parental expectations.
Through Gates of Garnet & Gold (Wayward Children #11), Seanan McGuire
Genre: Fantasy
Locus Award winners are revealed May 30, 2026 in Berkeley, CA. Nebula Award winners will be announced June 6, 2026 in Chicago. Hugo winners will be announced August 30, 2026 at LAcon V in Anaheim, California.
