In many places the world over, the air has turned crisp and the first leaves have started to fall. And while it's with some reluctance that we kiss our poolside reading goodbye, we'd be lying if we said we didn't delight in the chance to throw on some cozy layers and take our reading fireside, trading in our iced tea for hot tea or toddies... Make no mistake, we are huge fans of fall reading and especially the bounty of releases readers are treated to this season each year.

Want to know what we'll be diving into the next few months? Here are some of the titles we're stoked about this fall! Read on to check 'em out! 

Across the Sand by Hugh Howey

Release Date: October 4, 2022

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.

Read Across the Sand here on Amazon. Also available in hardcover and on audiobook

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Release Date: October 4, 2022

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.

Read The Mountain in the Sea here on Amazon. Also available in hardcover and on audiobook

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

Release Date: October 4, 2022

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….

Get your copy of Station Eternity here on Amazon. Also available in paperback and on audiobook.

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

Read The Spare Man here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook, in hardcover and in paperback.

Poster Girl by Veronica Roth

Release Date: October 18, 2022

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.

 Grab Poster Girl here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook, in hardcover and in paperback.

Apokalypsis by Jasper T. Scott

Release Date: October 21, 2022

With the discovery of the so-called ‘living water’ on Novus, Earth is determined to control the supply. Three different superpowers are fighting over the one small valley where the miracle elixir can be found. From the United States, Major Ethan White is heading up a company of elite Army Rangers charged with organizing the Novians and claiming the valley for America, but internal conflicts among the colonists are threatening to tear the fledgling colony apart.

Layla Bester just wants to keep her baby girl safe, and Tom Zimmers is determined to help her. Having learned who the girl’s father really is, Layla is on the run, but it’s not easy to find refuge in a world that is teeming with deadly creatures. When she accidentally encounters the vitrified remains of Jessica Brady and Neil Forrester, she fears that Novus’s deadliest secret has yet to be revealed.

Meanwhile, something strange is happening in the skies above and deep within the bowels of Novus. Reverend Mark Cole says it’s a portent of a coming judgement for the invaders, and the mayor of Elysia, Preston Baylor, fears that the truth isn’t any less sinister: the architects are about to be revealed.

Apokalypsis is the shocking conclusion to the bestselling series, Architects of the Apocalypse, by Jasper T. Scott. If you liked Under the Dome by Stephen King, or the Maze Runner by James Dashner, then this book is for you.

Get your copy of Apokalypsis here on Amazon. 

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A Time For Freedom (Starship Freedom Book 8)

Release Date: October 25, 2022

The final flight of the Freedom...

The Starship Freedom series concludes with book 8: A Time for Freedom

Coming this fall. Pre-order your copy today.

Dive into A Time for Freedom here on Amazon. 

Coming Dawn by Steven Konkoly

Release Date: October 25, 2022

When CIA officer Helen Gray died, her son, Devin, a countersurveillance expert, inherited her paranoia—and the explosive evidence that gave it weight: a vast, previously undetected Russian sleeper network has operated in the United States since the Cold War.

The cells aren’t just embedded in every level of state and federal government. They’ve penetrated corporations that supply crucial technology to the Department of Defense and various intelligence agencies. With the network’s true scope still unknown, the only way to drive a stake through the heart of the conspiracy is to dispatch a covert crew to Moscow and eliminate the oligarch bankrolling it.

Russia’s endgame: inconceivable. Devin’s challenge: stop the greatest threat to national security and world peace in history. The margin for error: nonexistent.

Dive into Coming Dawn here on Amazon. 

Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell

Release Date: November 1, 2022

Rich socialite, inveterate flirt, and walking disaster Tennalhin Halkana can read minds. Tennal, like all neuromodified “readers,” is a security threat on his own. But when controlled, readers are a rare asset. Not only can they read minds, but they can navigate chaotic space, the maelstroms surrounding the gateway to the wider universe.

Conscripted into the military under dubious circumstances, Tennal is placed into the care of Lieutenant Surit Yeni, a duty-bound soldier, principled leader, and the son of a notorious traitor general. Whereas Tennal can read minds, Surit can influence them. Like all other neuromodified “architects,” he can impose his will onto others, and he’s under orders to control Tennal by merging their minds.

Surit accepted a suspicious promotion-track request out of desperation, but he refuses to go through with his illegal orders to sync and control an unconsenting Tennal. So they lie: They fake a sync bond and plan Tennal's escape.

Their best chance arrives with a salvage-retrieval mission into chaotic space—to the very neuromodifcation lab that Surit's traitor mother destroyed twenty years ago. And among the rubble is a treasure both terrible and unimaginably powerful, one that upends a decades-old power struggle, and begins a war.

Tennal and Surit can no longer abandon their unit or their world. The only way to avoid life under full military control is to complete the very sync they've been faking.

Can two unwilling weapons of war bring about peace?

Get your copy of Ocean's Echo here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

The Stars Undying by Emery Robin

Release Date: November 8, 2022

Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed both the crown of their planet, Szayet, and the Pearl of its prophecy: a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet’s god.

So when the interstellar Empire of Ceiao turns its conquering eye toward Szayet, Gracia sees an opportunity. To regain her planet, Gracia places herself in the hands of the empire and its dangerous commander, Matheus Ceirran.

But winning over Matheus, to say nothing of his mercurial and compelling captain Anita, is no easy feat. And in trying to secure her planet’s sovereignty and future, Gracia will find herself torn between Matheus’s ambitions, Anita’s unpredictable desires, and the demands of the Pearl that whispers in her ear.

For Szayet’s sake and her own, she will need to become more than a princess with a silver tongue. She will have to become a queen as history has never seen before.

Start reading The Stars Undying here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction by Sheree Renée Thomas et al

Release Date: November 15, 2022

From award-winning editorial team Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight comes an anthology of thirty-two original stories showcasing the breadth of fantasy and science fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora.

A group of cabinet ministers query a supercomputer containing the minds of the country’s ancestors. A child robot on a dying planet uncovers signs of fragile new life. A descendent of a rain goddess inherits her grandmother’s ability to change her appearance—and perhaps the world.

Created in the legacy of the seminal, award-winning anthology series Dark Matter, Africa Risen celebrates the vibrancy, diversity, and reach of African and Afro-Diasporic SFF and reaffirms that Africa is not rising—it’s already here.

Grab Africa Risen here on Amazon. Also available in hardcover.

The Hidden Space (The Glass Book Two) by Nathan Hystad

Release Date: November 22, 2022

The Visitors have departed, but why did the Glass appear in the first place

There’s a sense of normalcy for the community in Monterey, California, but their peace doesn’t last long. When they’re pushed to leave, they encounter something they never expected to find.

The Glass remain, but they’ve shifted positions.

Peggy reveals she used to have dreams, but prescription medication kept them at bay. Now she’s off the pills and is determined to visit Spokane with Will.

Alternate Earths, alien ships, and time travel revelations.

Ransom doesn’t know why he ever listened to Cedric. His journey with Joel to the Other Place offers a new perspective on their situation.

Maybe there can be peace in the aftermath…

Drake finds a group in Tucson, and all paths collide as they uncover the truth.

The Hidden Space is the continuation of the epic series, The Glass from Nathan Hystad, the author of Lost Contact, The Event, and Final Days.

Grab The Hidden Space here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Which of these 2022 fall releases will make their way into your (e)bookshelf or into your ears? Which ones are you most excited for? Let us know here in the comments, or over in the Discover Sci-Fi Facebook group! 

*All book-related copy in this post was pulled from Amazon, Goodreads & Wikipedia, unless otherwise credited.