Summer is coming. And so is Nuketown’s summer reading list.
The 19th edition of Nuketown’s annual sci-fi and fantasy summer reading list features 14 books (12 novels, 2 non-fiction books), 1 novella, and 2 graphic novels.
- Print is for books in paper or e-book format.
- Audio is for the novels I’ll listen to in audiobook format, rather than read the traditional way.
- Island is for books that I intend to read during my family’s annual summer vacation at Lake Champlain.
- Pulled Forward are books I wanted to read in 2025, but didn’t get to.
- ✓ is for the books I finished reading.
Horror
Veil by Jonathan Janz – Amazon – Print, Island – People are vanishing from reality, dragged off by unseen monsters. A high school teacher investigates the disappearance after his family is abducted. I picked this one up on a whim at Sorcery and Scripts, a new fantasy-themed book store located in Bethlehem, Pa. It’s a cool store offering a good selection of speculative fiction books, and assortment of board games and RPGs, and in-store book clubs and game nights.
The King in Yellow: Annotated Edition by Robert W. Chambers, annotated by Kenneth Hite – Amazon – Print – A collection of short stories written by Chambers, which went on to inspire all manner of weirdness in the Cthulhu Mythos. First published in 1895 (yes, 1895), the book is very much a product of its time, with the racial and ethnic biases you’d expect. What makes the book a real treasure is Ken Hite’s annotations, which provide much-needed historical context for Chamber’s work.
Absolution (Southern Reach, Book 4) by Jeff VanderMeer – Amazon – Print – A prequel to the Southern Reach series, this book returns readers to mysterious Area X. The region is a desolate, haunted, and all together strange coastal area of an unnamed country (though in my brain, it’s always been some stretch of the North Carolina coast in the U.S.). I picked this up while on vacation in Hawaii back in January 2026 as I was looking for something with a LOST-ish vibe and discovered VanderMeer had released this book. I got a quarter of the way into it before setting it aside for this year’s summer reading list.
Erebus-13 (Red Space, Book 3) by David Wellington – Amazon – Print – An ancient horror infected an alien solar system. In the previous two books, the protagonists investigated that system and its lone habitable planet and discovered the cosmic threat. Now that threat is headed to Earth, and the survivors need to stop it.
Nautical
The Cruel Sea by Nicolas Monsarrat – Amazon – Print – I’m a big fan of nautical fiction, particularly the Master & Commander series by Patrick O’Brian. After I read The Horror as part of last summer’s reading list, a friend recommended I read this book. It takes place during the Battle of the North Atlantic during World War II, which is not an era I typically read about. That said, the combination of naval battles, WWII, and the unforgiving Atlantic have me intrigued.
Science Fiction
Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time, Book 4) – Amazon – Print – This novel is the latest book in Tchaikovsky’s in Children of Time universe, where humanity discovers a series of uplifted species like spiders, crows, and squids after an intelligence virus is unleashed on the galaxy.
Destiny’s Way (Doomed Earth, Book 2) by Jack Campbell – Amazon – Audio, Pulled Forward – I read the first part of Jack Campbell’s Doomed Earth duology last year, in which a woman is thrown backwards through time by the destruction of Terra, and then works to prevent the tragedy.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman – Amazon – Audio – A sci-fi / fantasy mashup about a guy who gets sucked into a real-world dungeon crawl to entertain alien audiences. It feels like the whole geeky world is reading this series, so I figured it was time I picked it up.
God Emperor of Dune (Dune, Book 4) by Frank Herbert – Amazon – Print – Ok, let’s be clear: things are about to get really, really weird on Arrakis. Leto II, son of Paul Atreides, rules the empire created by his father. Obsessed with guiding humanity down the Golden Path to survival and growth, he merged with sandworm spawn to transform himself into a human/sandworm hybrid. In this form, he plans to rule for thousands of years in order to guide humanity to the destiny he’s foreseen. Oh, and Duncan Idaho is back … and dies. A lot. I read this book back in high school, and haven’t returned to it since. The release of the recent Dune movies (and my son reading the books for the first time) inspired me to go back to the books.
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler – Amazon – Print, Pulled Forward – A near-future novel about first-contact with intelligent octopi on Earth. You had me at “intelligent octopi”.
The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi (Old Man’s War, Book 7) – Amazon – Print, Island – I didn’t expect to see another Old Man’s War novel. It takes place in Scalzi’s long-lived sci-fi universe, where an uneasy peace between humans and an alien alliance has existed for a decade. Now a new alien faction is gearing up for an internal war, and that peace is threatened.
The Faith of Beasts (The Captive’s War, Book 2) by James S. A. Corey – Amazon – Print – The Carryx are an alien horde who have conquered and enslaved countless civilizations … and in Book 1 a human world is conquered. The survivors are integrated into their war machine, and have to figure out how to resist their alien oppressors. Book 1 was brutal; in Book 2, the survivors appear to be cooperating with their alien overlords … but there are secret plans to undermine the undefeatable empire.
Non-Fiction
The Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes by Teos Abadiá, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, Mike Shea – Amazon – Audio – A book of advice on how to “build, customize, and run monsters”. I enjoyed Mike Shea’s Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and decided to pick up the audio book version.
The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon – Amazon – Print, Island – I grew up reading Clive Cussler’s tales of real and fictional shipwrecks (see Raise the Titanic). This is a non-fiction account of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a freighter that went down on Lake Superior during a bad November storm in 1975.
Novellas
Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, Book 4) by Martha Wells – Amazon – Print, Island – I fell off the Murderbot wagon during last year’s reading list, but I’m climbing back on this year. This time around, everyone’s favorite antisocial killing machine is looking to take down the nefarious GrayCris corporation.
Graphic Novels
Hellboy in Love – Amazon – Island – A romantic Hellboy collection? Sure … why not? This pulls together stories featuring the romance of Hellboy and archaeologist Anastasia Bransfield as they deal with various mystical threats around the world.
Hellboy Universe: The Secret Histories Volume 2 – Amazon – Island – This hefty tome contains three Hellboy stories: Rise of the Black Flame,The House of Lost Horizons, British Paranormal Society: Time Out of Mind, and Hellboy: The Silver Lantern Club. I’ve read The Rise previously, but I don’t own a copy of it; the rest of the stories are new to me. At $40, this is the most expensive book on my 2026 list, but it looks to be worth it.
Previous Sci-fi and Fantasy Summer Reading Lists
- 2025: 16 books, 1 novella, and 2 graphic novels.
- 2024: 19 books, 3 novellas, 5 graphic novels
- 2023: 13 books, 2 novellas, 1 graphic novels
- 2022: 17 books, 5 novellas, 5 graphic novels
- 2021: 14 books, 2 novellas, 8 graphic novels
- 2020: 10 books, 1 novella, 5 graphic novels
- 2019: 19 books, 5 graphic novels
- 2018: 15 books, 7 graphic novels
- 2017: 17 books, 1 novella, 8 graphic novels
- 2016: 16 books, 1 novella, 8 graphic novels
- 2015: 15 books, 9 graphic novels
- 2014: 13 books, 5 graphic novels
- 2013: 11 books, 5 graphic novels
- 2012: 11 books, 1 graphic novels
- 2011: 11 books, 0 graphic novels
- 2010: 7 books, 0 graphic novels
- 2009: 9 books, 0 graphic novels
- 2008: 8 books, 8 graphic novels
- …
- 1993: 26 books