The Indie Author Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror New Release List: May 2025
A note to email subscribers: Due to the number of new releases this month, the email may be clipped by your email provider. Please look for the “view entire message” link at the bottom of the email to see the full list of titles.
Island of the Dying Goddess by Ronit J: Available May 1, 2025
Standalone Novel
Subgenre(s): Grimdark Fantasy, Horror
On the island of eternal grief
Even the gods have died a thousand deaths
My name is Anawar, and I am an immortal explorer. A few days ago, I was stranded on Sawarrgh, an island where everything looks twisted and the air smells of mourning. The atmosphere has forced suppressed memories to resurface. I have to consciously keep them at bay, or I won’t be able to survive this island’s horrors.
There’s Ghaph, the mad warmongering god who mutilates his enemies and patches on their dismembered limbs. Then there’s Ndraja, the goddess who can enslave entire kingdoms with just her thoughts. But the worst is the nameless Goddess who created Sawarrgh a millennia ago, caging it in a barrier that reverses time, forcing the island to relive the same year over and over.
Sawarrgh is a nightmare come alive. Here, existence itself is a curse. The living are barely alive. The stranded, condemned.
I need to escape this island, and in doing so free Sawarrgh from its perpetual punishment.
And the only way to do that is to kill the Goddess.
Shadow of the Elders by Will Elm: Available May 1, 2025
Shadow of the Elders, Book 1
Subgenre(s): Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
A plant grows from a single seed. The same is true for power.
When a drought strikes the continent of Bas, family and friends are ripped apart, ancient grudges are revived, and a strange magic is sought that threatens to plunge the world further into chaos.
Savique, a new father, works on an estate shaping stones for the Foreman. After an ill-fated theft, his life begins to unravel and not even the vague prophecies of mystics can stop it. Cast out from his home, without friend or family, Savique will be forced to discover why an old enemy would come to his rescue.
Friends Vaten and Ajeau walk the dying world until a mysterious group of raiders separates them. Vaten is abducted and forced into the life of a prisoner. Taken to a distant land, he must rely on new friends to help him escape. But alliances are never quite what they seem.
From the moment Vaten is taken, Ajeau vows never to give up searching for him. She must journey to the great city of Nouv’eau, the place of her birth, in hopes of discovering a clue to his whereabouts. Little does she know, her return to the city has been expected by a powerful force. One that promises to reunite her with Vaten. And so much more.
There Will be Thousands by Alexander Rob: Available May 2, 2025
Slaves are easy to sell when they are viewed as nothing but product. Its another matter entirely when you’re the one being sold.
Sitter has been a bandit for over a decade. He’s killed, he’s robbed, and he’s burned more homesteads than he can count to the ground with their families inside. For him, it’s simply a lifestyle he’s lived since he was a young boy. The world will always have bandits and he may as well play well his part. When his entire troupe is killed, however, and he’s sold into slavery himself, he finds the people he must work alongside are the same ones he once sold for coin.
It would be easy to let the other slaves kill him and they rightfully deserve to do so. Yet Sitter has a secret, one that necessitates his survival. As he struggles to adapt to his new lifestyle, he finds there may be the faintest hope for redemption. But does someone like him even deserve it?
The Arsonist by Tyler Kirk: Available May 3, 2025
Children of Strife, Book 1
Subgenre(s): Dark Fantasy
In the Realms of Light, a dark rot spreads beneath a veneer of beauty. The Arsonist, masked, elusive, and feared, leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. To some, he is a menace; to others, a shadow of salvation.
As fiends ravage the land and ancient powers stir, the fates of four souls become inextricably bound to his. Rhys, Lylah, Thaniel, and Bregan will each grapple with their own demons, unaware that their paths are destined to cross in the most unexpected of ways.
In this grim world, where nothing is what it seems, survival is uncertain, and the line between ally and enemy is ever-shifting.
Discovery by Louise McLaughlin: Available May 4, 2025
D-Notice, Book 1
Subgenre(s): Urban Fantasy
The gods, witches and politicians all enjoyed the daily tug-of-war for control. In a world of constant scheming and manoeuvring, until their peaceful world of ruining each other’s day was truly disrupted.
What if it was all just a distraction, keeping everyone busy until They came back home again?
At the urging of her beloved grandmother, Cassie takes an apparently safe and humdrum job in a government office in Glasgow. However, it turns out the conspiracy theorists are right, and there’s more to the civil service than box-ticking and inscrutable acronyms. When Cassie is drawn into a plot involving alien invaders, unscrupulous billionaires and the highest levels of government, she also discovers that living in her home city are a group of semi-retired gods, witches and supernatural beings, hidden in plain sight. As Cassie’s true power becomes apparent, she becomes a vital ally against the forces that want to rid the world of gods and humans alike.
They have only 10 days to save the human race and themselves.
Shadows & Sorcery by Seán Hill: New Stories Available May 4, 2025
Subgenre(s): Dark Fantasy, Gothic Fantasy, High Fantasy
Shadows & Sorcery is a nearly 700 story archive of standalone chronicles, glimpses, and portraits of magic, mystery, horror, and high adventure in far off realms, where the reader can dive in wherever they like.
Shadows & Sorcery also hosts The Path of Poison, a monthly serial novel about Sepp, a young apothecary whose life is thrown into chaos when civil war reaches his doorstep. The only thing he hasn’t lost is also his biggest problem: Sepp is heir to his master and foster father’s hexes, a poison magic with a dire reputation. Join Sepp, a band of fellow refugees, the grim Dunmarrow warriors, and more in a life on the road in a world of deep faith and strange sorcery, where beastmen, bandits, rogues, and greater perils lurk in the shadows…
First-Degree Magic by J.M. Linkhart: Available May 6, 2025
Subgenre(s): Urban Fantasy
Bernice Chandler is a woman with a sword and a lot of problems it won’t fix. She’s got a ritual murder case on her hands and an angel appearing in her dreams again, a sure sign of disaster just around the corner. To make matters worse, a ghost from her past has returned to haunt her, threatening the peace and stability she’s carefully built for herself in Chicago. To banish it, she strikes a devil’s bargain with a bootlegging gangster, who is only too happy to oblige her-for a price.
Valentino Morandi is a demi-demon with a curse he can’t wait to slip. For eight years he’s been bound to the city by the Order of Joan, but that’s about to end. He only needs one more item to free himself, and when a knight of the Order comes around needing a favor, he can’t wait to make her an offer. But Bernie isn’t the only one whose ghosts have come back calling.
Jack Donovan is a detective with a history he wants to keep buried in the trenches of Europe. One slip and secrets like his have a tendency of getting out, and a secret freed is a secret hard to control. He’s hoping that his new partner Chandler can keep one, and maybe even help him with designs of his own beyond their immediate case. But they must catch a killer first-and survive.
Secrets, lies, and magic bind the three together as they race to solve a series of tarot-style murders. If they fail, the killer could summon forth an evil of the highest degree, upsetting the balance between the infernal and divine and leaving Chicago burning in hellfire.
Iconoclast: or, the Death and Resurrection of Lazarus Keaton by Dave Walsh: Available May 6, 2025
Subgenre(s): Cyberpunk, Techno Thriller
The wealthy took to the stars, leaving the suckers back on Earth paying rent on digital afterlife packages.
Lazarus Keaton was his family’s great disappointment. Instead of marrying a nice girl and taking over the family business, he’s a sexually confused claims adjuster for a company that uploads your consciousness into a digital afterlife. Sent across the globe to oversee the site of a deadly train crash, he’s stopped dead in his tracks by the unlikely afterlife package a hairdresser had: sainthood.
His questions go unanswered when the Vatican dispatches a menacing Inquisitor to take over. In exchange for his silence about the odd case, his bosses offer him a raise, but he’s in too deep to stop. Alongside Silvia, a local detective, they’re thrust into the throngs of a wild conspiracy centered on the world’s richest man, with all roads leading them off-world to his luxurious space station. After Laz’s company declares him dead, there’s no turning back.
He either uncovers the truth, or meets with a grisly end at the hands of the Inquisitor.
Journey to the Dark Tower by Malory: Available May 6, 2025
Morgan and Merlin’s Excellent Adventures, Book 2
Subgenre(s): Cultivation Fantasy
Nothing ruins your day like a quest with a ransom note.
Especially when you’re a fake wizard with real problems. I was supposed to be dead. Instead, I’m stumbling through medieval Britain with Merlin’s ghost backseat-driving my magical education.
And now? Princess Guinevere’s gone missing, and everyone’s looking at me like I’m supposed to know what to do about it.
Fantastic.
Nothing says “qualified wizard” like leading a rescue party of misfits—a prince with anger issues, a berserker who thinks diplomacy means hitting people slightly less hard, and me, still trying to figure out which end of my sword shoots fire.
Between dodging Saxon war parties, navigating the Enchanted Forest, and searching for a Dark Tower that’s playing hard to get, I’m starting to think death might have been the easier option.
Welcome to the Dark Tower, where the quests are impossible, the magic is unreliable, and historical accuracy is someone else’s problem.
The Squared Circle by William Meikle: Available May 6, 2025
Part of the Sigils and Totems Mythos
Subgenre(s): Time-travel
An experiment in a Victorian laboratory goes horribly wrong and now Davy Baillie and Joe Flynn have lost track of time… or rather, time has lost track of them.
They are adrift, in a post apocalyptic Scottish future that keeps getting ever farther away from where they’re trying to get to. The scientist, Wilkins, the cause of their woes, might be able to help, but he is held hostage by a mad goblin in an impossible place, with puzzles to solve and no time in which to do it.
Is the fate of space and time in the balance? Do the goblin’s ramblings have a hint of sense?
Baillie and Flynn’s futures depends on answers to these questions.
Green Unpleasant Land by Matt Thomas: Available May 8, 2025
Subgenre(s): Cosmic Horror, Gothic Horror, Alternate History
Fog shrouded Victorian London, but not the 1888 we’d recognise. There’s a whiff of revolution in the air, not to mention lycanthropy in the shires. As Mr Eiffel’s tower nears completion in Hyde Park, famed Egyptologist Sir Percy Tiverton returns with his latest find — a nameless book so mysterious not even the Royal College of Alchemists can decipher its runes.
Even less chance Alexander Faversham. England’s foremost champion of derring-do is not known for his brains. Good job he has loyal manservant Bill by his side — a circumspect fellow who might know more about his master’s heroics than either are letting on. When the nameless book is stolen, Bill’s entanglement threatens to bring his boss’s carefully constructed façade crashing down.
There’s something nasty lurking in the shadows and it wants its manuscript back. Who would dare confront the tentacles slithering from the sewers? When the Empire needs a hero, it doesn’t always get the one it expects.
Bloodless by G.J. Terral: Available May 9, 2025
The Binding Tenets Trilogy, Book 3
Subgenre(s): Sword and Sorcery
No less blood is shed when bonds become broken.
Threats come from all sides as Ladrican ships wait off the coast and a mysterious untethered threat becomes impossible to ignore.
Lin is pushed to breaking as he struggles to stall Ladrica’s assault. War is upon Danica, but like an infection allowed to fester, the threat of the untethered can no longer be ignored.
Soldier. Hero. Monster.
Fractured Peace by The Wayward Resonant: Available May 10, 2025
Gilded Iron, Book 1
Subgenre(s): Speculative Fiction, Noir
Brickfield is dying slow—its bones rusted, its heart gutted, and its shadows thick with secrets no one dares name.
When former Guild operative Thomas Valentine is summoned back into the fog-soaked streets of the Republic’s most broken city, he expects bad blood and older debts. What he doesn’t expect is the message: a dead man’s voice, a stolen relic, and a warning that sounds too much like prophecy.
The Eidolon was never supposed to reach the West. A smuggled artifact of impossible origin, it listens, it watches—and it changes whoever carries it. Now, as factions close in and the city’s power grid begins to collapse, Valentine must navigate a landscape of exiles, Syndicate enforcers, and something far older than politics waking in the dark.
Told across multiple first-person perspectives—Guild spies, Syndicate assassins, and exiled royalty—Gilded Iron is a slow-burn descent into a world of whispered currencies, broken loyalties, and the things we carry when truth rusts.
This is not a story about heroes.
It’s about survivors.
And some debts refuse to stay buried.
Atacama by Jendia Gammon: Available May 13, 2025
Subgenre(s): Thriller, Science, Academia
A missing research team is found dead in the Atacama Desert under mysterious circumstances. Far away in Eastern Tennessee, Appalachian researcher Fiona Hawthorne reels from the death of her best friend, Alva, among the Atacama team. When Fiona’s university professor, Dr. Bingham, is visited by members of a shadowy corporation, she begins to suspect not everything is as it seems. Enlisting her intense coworker Lafe Lambert, the two dig deep looking for answers in Alva’s death … too deep.
Fiona soon realizes that she not only faces sinister corporate agents, but also a monster hiding in plain sight.
Lazarus, Home from the War by E.H. Lupton: Available May 14, 2025
Wisconsin Gothic, Book 4
Subgenre(s): Urban Fantasy / Queer Historical Romance
It’s Good? to be Home
Lazarus Lenkov has been a civilian for almost two months, and it’s going great. Sure, he’s working at an art gallery instead of flying planes. Sure, his brother is preoccupied with his new husband, his sister is busy with her new baby, and he’s plagued by nightmares and his malfunctioning foresight. But there are good things, too. He’s got a new car. And just today, he got hit over the head with a bottle and then stitched up by a cute neurologist. Who then rejected his advances, but you can’t have everything.
Eli Sobel has never met anyone quite like Laz. He’s smart and handsome in a scruffy way. He’s also a mess. From the first time they meet, it’s clear that Laz needs someone to take care of him, even heal him. And while Eli’s a doctor, he’s not interested in taking on any patients in his personal life. But Laz is funny and generous, and Eli can’t help but get drawn into the investigation surrounding the attack he stitched the man up from.
There’s bad magic afoot, though neither of them quite understands it. From a similar crime at a Minneapolis art gallery to dead bodies in Edina, Minnesota, each step of the inquiry seems to pull the two of them closer together. But when they finally uncover the surprising motives that tie the events together, will they be able to move past their history into an uncertain future together?
The Last Cry of Innocence by N.A. Betts: Available May 14, 2025
The Fates of Aten, Book 2
Subgenre(s): Epic Fantasy
THE DEBT OF FAILURE IS SETTLED IN MADNESS
Two years of war have broken Alira Verbrandt. Cornered in Astera, the last bastion guarding the River Zybril, she fights not only to hold the line, but to keep the pieces of herself together. The relentless Illyrian Expeditionary Army looms ever closer, but her fate–and that of the fractured north–may rest on the shoulders of a man tormented by dreams of things he shouldn’t see.
Desperate for answers, Alira sails west into treacherous waters, forging an uneasy alliance with a daring sea captain whose fiery spirit hides secrets as dark as her enemy. Their path leads to the towering peaks of Idel–where forgotten truths awaken–and into a dark labyrinth buried beneath the world.
What she finds will shake her resolve. The return of their creator draws near, bringing the promise of final judgment. She must unveil the last Fates, those who identities lie hidden from themselves.
But time is running out, and the price of failure is greater than death.
I MADE HER A PROMISE. AND BY MY BLOOD I WILL KEEP IT.
Ambushed by Natasha O’Connor: Available May 15, 2025
Subgenre(s): Dark Fantasy
Damaged wings means she has no choice but to run through the Otways forest, clutching secrets she stole from her enemy. Except there’s a creature chasing her, ready to tear her to shreds.
When she’s caught unawares in a moment of distraction, her captor hits her with shocking truths. He demands information – information she’d rather die than give up. But it seems hopeless. She’s too weak from her injuries – some inflicted by a monster that shouldn’t exist.
If she fails to deliver her secrets, it will seal her kind’s downfall. But time is running out.
Riyati Rivals by Kai Zeal: Available May 15, 2025
Riyati, Book 2
Subgenre(s): Contemporary, Low Fantasy, Dark Fantasy
What would you sacrifice to alter an already guaranteed future?
The new school year has begun in the quiet town of Opal Pines, and with it, new problems for Kylie and Jordan: Kylie’s mother barely lets her out of sight, and Jordan’s new friend makes it clear he’s no fan of Kylie. Even their older selves are at odds with each other: Siani refuses to intervene in the events to come; meanwhile, Rotanu is not sure the ends justify the means needed to get there. To make matters even worse, a familiar woman from the June kidnapping is back and wants Kylie’s head. What happens when the past is painful and still seeks vengeance, the present is lonely, and the future uncertain?
Isolated Chamber: Blitzkill by K. Mann: Available May 18, 2025
Isolated, Book 2
Subgenre(s): Action, Thriller
Four months have passed since the events of “Powder Keg.”
XV3 Labs has become a distant memory as its investors, creditors and former employees work through the legal system, while investigations into its rapid demise continue.
But someone else is around. Someone with a twisted agenda of his own. Someone with no inhibitions whatsoever. Someone whose brain is a pile of rotting flesh and is so demented one wonders if he is even human…
The Dark Element by Bryan Wilson: Available May 20, 2025
Power of the Stars, Book 3
Subgenre(s): Science Fantasy
“Pain will become a known brother. Grief, a sister. Hatred will guide the stars like an overbearing parent, and death will be the child spawned from it all.”
Alone and under constant duress, Colton fights to maintain his strength, will, and sanity.
Violet and a group of others struggle through their own hell, battling tyrannical guards, inhumane monsters, and a dangerous new element.
Meanwhile, Ace and the boys are desperate to find Colton. To gain the help they need to accomplish the task, they must travel to the mysterious and, perhaps, unwelcoming sister planets.
Back in the Vintaran System, V-Company does all it can to repel the Flame invaders from Penski. Win or lose: war always costs one’s soul.
If these friends can’t conquer their separate battles and save one another, then darkness will reign, and peace will become a distant memory to the souls of humanity.
Perils of the Past by Kane Williams: Available May 23, 2025
Subgenre(s): High Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
THE PAST LIES AHEAD
Bloodied knuckles. Sword cuts. Aching limbs. With each day of training in a mountain temple, Antarna draws closer to the power she’ll need if an assassin strikes once more. Never again will she be helpless.
When magic ravages the temple, the lives of her friends and the future of the congregation hang by a thread. A rare cure for their grave condition offers hope, and so Antarna braves a return to the city she fled as a child.
The journey ahead is fraught with thieves, traitors and tyrants who covet the cure. Lies are as thick as flies. In a desperate race against time, her past may hold vital clues—or offer only deeper peril.
Butcher’s Folly by Nick Snape: Available May 26, 2025
The Wrecking Squad, Book 2
Subgenre(s): Space Opera, Space Adventure, Galactic Empire
A court conspiracy. A decrepit, gang-ladened space station, and the Bustan Navy on the way. What could possibly go wrong?
Recovering from the events aboard the Scourge, the Wrecking Squad return to Karal and their old job until the Emperor’s Enforcer comes knocking. Forced to travel to the scum-laden Windward System, they are tasked with recovering a shipment of Marine wetware from Benetai, a rundown space station. Finding it filled with the barrel-scrapings of human and Senti origin, they step into a gang war over the missing tech with the hated Bustan Navy on the way. Running out of time, they fall back on their old skills, only to discover infuriating the Bustan Navy has consequences they’re not prepared for.
Join Rebekah and her crew as they navigate conspiracies, in-fighting and battle tech, in their own inimitable style while keeping another deadly secret from the prying eyes of the Emperor’s Court.
Where Nightmares Walk by Phineas Delgado: Available May 27, 2025
Lucifer’s Halo, Book 1
Subgenre(s): Urban Fantasy
A group of friends try to save one of their own from being used by sinister forces from their past. While on the run, they find out that this is all part of a larger scheme by a psychotic madman who would rewrite all of creation in his image. Meanwhile, they are hounded by a cyborg assassin driven by a warped sense of justice.
Led by a grumpy old professor and his grumpier old dog, the group looks for the lost journal of a long-dead seer who foresaw everything, and whose predictions hold the key to stopping the destruction of all that is. They just have to survive long enough to find it.
Loyalty to the Max by Maya Darjani: Available May 28, 2025
Broken Union, Book 2 – but can work as a standalone
Subgenre(s): Space Opera
Max Dupont stars in his own standalone adventure in the second installment of the Broken Union series, taking place one year after Ancient as the Stars.
Captain Maxime Dupont of the Earth Union is a rogue. A maverick. A clear-headed arbitrator of right and wrong– rules be damned.
But even Max stumbles when he encounters his latest challenge. The Union is collaborating with former enemy Mars to fix the collapse of interstellar travel–but at the cost of vulnerable citizens. Max has to figure out where his loyalties lie–and if treason is a price he’s willing to pay for doing the right thing.
Meanwhile…
Lieutenant Ren Yilmaz has finally found a crew. A home. A rewarding career, on the ESS Knight.
But Ren gets drawn into a web of espionage. Her captain, Max, has shady dealings with anti-Union rebel groups and assigns her shipmates off-the-books tasks. It’s Ren’s duty as an officer to investigate. But snooping can be disastrous. Not only would she be betraying her newfound family, but Ren has secrets too–and if she digs too far, her own past as a spy could get spectacularly exposed.
As tensions mount, the choices Max and Ren make will test their loyalty not only to the Union, but to each other–and the crew they call family.
The Pawns of Havoc by Dave Lawson: Available May 29, 2025
An Envoys of Chaos Novella
No Mercy, No Questions Asked.
Cork has quickly made a name for himself among the Kosellan mercenaries, but now his boss has come to him with an unusual job. Cork’s erstwhile countrymen, the Winn, have hired to him to travel into the barren Frozen Lands and destroy a convoy, leaving only one survivor.
Cork isn’t sure he can trust the Winn. He feels like a pawn in their political game. However, his mother is sick and the Winn have promised to heal her if Cork does the job. And killing is what a Cork does best.
To make matters worse. Cork’s crew has been decided for him: Arabella, an inexperienced and infuriating archer, and Nessa, a gloomy criminal with murder on her mind.
Cork will have to figure out how to complete the job, avoid Winn treachery, and manage conflicts with Arabella and Nessa along the way.
It’s going to be chaos.
Clipped by K.Q. Watson: Available May 31, 2025
Subgenre(s): Dystopia, Speculative Sci-Fi
Heaven was perfect, until they came for his son.
When angel engineer Zak’s infant son is cast down for being born without wings, he faces Heaven’s cruel mandate: forget, or fall. Clipped, Zak plummets to a broken Earth, where false prophets exploit the faithful, drug lords rule dead cities, and every truth comes with a price.
Pursued by ruthless angel hunters through decaying urban wastelands and corrupted mega-churches, Zak uncovers a conspiracy that reaches from Earth’s grimmest gutters to Heaven’s highest chambers. What begins as a father’s desperate search becomes a brutal quest for vengeance that will expose Heaven’s most devastating lies – and make them remember his son’s name.
Eltaris by Marina Gabriela: Available May 31, 2025
Subgenre(s): Epic Fantasy
Ripped from her life on Earth in the dark of night, 20-year-old Amaya Eltanin finds herself entangled in a mysterious mission to restore Eltaris – a red planet where light shines from its core and magic is real. Araphel, the god of night, elected himself as her mentor, but his true motives remain shrouded, leaving Amaya to question why she, of all people, was chosen for the task.
In search of the truth, Eltaris becomes a land of discovery where Amaya must navigate deceit, genuine friendship, and a destiny greater than she could have dreamed.
Strange visions reveal clues to Amaya’s past and deities and demigods become her friends, but a sinister darkness threatens all life on Earth – Amaya can feel it.
She is determined to save them, if it’s the last thing she does.
Come, fellow adventurer. The dragons are calling.
If you have an upcoming title that you’d like to have featured on the new release list, please fill out the form here: Indie SF/F/Horror New Release Feature