The Indie Author Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror New Release List: August 2026
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Seven Years’ Love by Ellie Lieberman: Available August 1, 2026
Subgenre(s): Sapphic Romance, Historical Fantasy, Pirates, Witches, Sea Adventure
A pair of aquamarine earrings.
The only thing in the world Taryn owns and might actually care about.
The last ingredient Cordelia needs to reverse a curse she accidentally cast.
Stowing away on the infamous pirate-witch’s ghost ship to steal them back, Taryn now finds herself at Cordelia’s mercy as the dread pirate-witch races the clock to set right all her wrongs that her love, Esmé, unfairly pays the price for.
Combining the timeless “forever together, eternally apart” cursed romance of Ladyhawke with the blending of historical fantasy in a high seas pirate adventure of Pirates of the Caribbean!
Tales of Dreams by Brianna R. Shaffery: Available August 6, 2026
A Short Story Collection of Hope, Resilience, Humanity, & Magic
A zombie apocalypse.
The lost memories of a shapeshifter from another world.
One small act in the middle of a war.
A dream held deep inside one’s heart.
Tales of Dreams: Stories of Hope, Resilience, Humanity, & Magic is a collection of four short stories that celebrate what it means to be human, to have dreams, and the hard—sometimes bitter—fight to hold onto hope no matter the circumstance. From a zombie apocalypse to the hopes of a young boy seeking escape, dreams are a powerful force that feed hope and steel resilience.
Erosion by M.C. Burnell: Available August 7, 2026
Extinction, Book 1
Subgenre(s): Urban Fantasy
When magic is just another extraction industry, an average joe with student loans can’t afford to have principles.
Pherul Baker is a standard-issue lab technician at a corporation that harvests mana. The fact that he works with faerie-people is a secret from the public, but he’s had years to grow accustomed to them. When one turns up dead, it throws life at the isolated dig site into disarray: the humans didn’t know these beings were mortal, and it might have been foul play. Faeries unknown appear on the scene, determined to find answers, and the company saddles Pherul with a menacing new roommate: a corporate spy who doesn’t care that the scientist he now lives with doesn’t want to be involved. It’s hard to judge what’s more likely to get him killed, the suspicious natively-magical people or his (boss’s boss’s boss’s) boss. She’s seen his face now and heard his name, both of which he would so much rather never happened.
This drone is about to learn the world is bigger and stranger than he guessed. There may even be parts of it that are worth taking risks.
Escape from Titan by Wil Chan: Available August 7, 2026
An Elysia Dayne: Dragon Slayer Novel
Subgenre(s): Action Fantasy, Sapphic
No good deed goes unpunished.
When a young, carefree Elysia Dayne first strode into Titan City, she never expected her goodwill would cost her everything. In a split second, she loosed a single arrow to save a peasant father and his young daughter by driving it through the throat of a murderous nobleman. It turned out the man she killed was the leader of the Black Guard, the most feared criminal syndicate in the region. Luckily, she escaped with her tail between her legs.
Eighteen months later, after slaying a dragon in nearby Redwood Village, the now widely celebrated Azurian is invited back to Titan City by her spymaster friend, Kailin, to buy her a much-needed horse. Elysia is reticent, but Kailin assures her that the new ruler of the fiefdom, Lord Statham, has crushed the Black Guard and personally decrees her innocence.
So, return to Titan she does. Unknown to her, a cunning and obsessive enemy has waited patiently in the shadows, hungry to destroy the Azurian once and for all. And this time, no amount of pardons will save her. Old blood debts are about to be paid in full.
An explosive, standalone Elysia Dayne novel.
Mercy’s Gate by Nick Snape: Available August 11, 2026
The Heartseed Chronicle, Book 1
Subgenre(s): Military Sci-fi
This is Futurum, Death’s Hollow, and where Jacks is going, there is no mercy.
Jacks, a corporate-owned mercenary, leads a skilled extraction squad. His goal is to buy out his lifetime contract by collecting whatever industrial secrets, agents, or turncoat executives AstEx Corp wants removed from under the noses of their main competitors.
That is until the mission of a lifetime falls into his team’s lap, promising more money than they could possibly imagine.
The target? An organic object known as the heartseed, prized by an alien race, that grows on a hostile planet.
The remit? Four corporate squads all competing for the same target, and to the winners, exclusive access to alien technology.
The catch? Six months, one hundred and fourteen teams of lost souls, ninety-three dropships, and the highest echelon of military technology, yet no one has ever come back from Futurum alive.
Time is running out, and where they’re going, everything wants to kill, eat, or lay its eggs inside them. Possibly all three.
But Jacks’ greatest enemy just might be his own mind as the creeping malevolence of the planet worms its way in. As his reality fractures, he begins to question what the aliens really want, and whether this world will ever let it go.
Riyati Recollection by Kai Zeal: Available August 14, 2026
Riyati, Book 4
Subgenre(s): Dark Fantasy, Low Fantasy, Contemporary
When the night is at its darkest, the sparks of life shine brightest.
Kylie thought the danger was over: the last of Asuza’s followers now dead, she was free to live life as a normal teenager — a freshman in college, the events of her high school years behind her.
But what should’ve been a fun vacation to Savannah takes a dark turn as an undead Riyatian attacks Maya and leaves Kylie with a cryptic message: her existence damned every other mage and she should not have survived that fateful day in June.
Kylie is left with only questions; but the most difficult one of all is if she is even worth saving, even if it’s just to make amends. But time is of the essence and she can’t afford to wallow.
She must now decipher the truth of the warning and figure out how to save the other mages before it’s too late.
Shard Hero by Chad Retterath: Available August 20, 2026
Legend of the Awakened Goblin, Book 4
Subgenre(s): LitRPG, Epic Fantasy
The Ocean Dungeon has been a watery grave for most who descend to its dark, horrific depths.
After the explosive fifth floor, Owin and Shade move deeper into the Ocean Dungeon with a single goal in mind: Get the first shard.
Outside the dungeons, conflicts continue to arise as rival hero companies take notice of Owin and the Nimble Hogs.
Don’t Let It Out by N. A. Betts: Available August 25, 2026
Subgenre(s): Psychological Horror, Eco-Horror
The assignment was simple: contain the forest. Don’t let anything out.
FBI Agent Daniela Rojas arrives with a secret mission of her own. To uncover the truth behind Project Greenfall, a classified experiment buried by the Canopy Collective. RCMP Corporal Cade Mercer is there for a different reason. Two years ago, his wife vanished inside these woods. No body. No answers. Only the quiet certainty that something took her.
Now they stand watch at the edge of a quarantined wilderness that shouldn’t exist. The forest is changing. Spreading. Breathing. Time slips. Reality bends. And beyond the fence they are ordered never to cross, someone is calling to them. A woman tied to both of their pasts—a woman who should be dead.
As the pull of the forest tightens, so does the infection taking root beneath the trees. What waits inside isn’t just survival horror, it’s something far more intimate.
Because this forest doesn’t just infect the body. It gets inside you. Learns you. Remakes you.
And by the time Daniela and Cade understand what’s happening to them…it may already be too late to escape it.
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