Books Indie Press Spotlight Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for January and February 2026 Stories of near-future societies, uncanny filmmakers, and virtual gaming gone wrong… By Tobias Carroll | Published on January 15, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share And here we are, in a new year like it’s going out of style. What we have here is a list of some notable books due out on independent presses in January and February. What you’ll find between their covers is everything from portraits of a near-future society to disquieting stories of ancient beings returning to Earth. Throw in uncanny filmmakers, virtual gaming gone wrong, and collections from longtime favorites and you have an wide-ranging selection of books to explore this winter. File Under: Frames and Mirrors Identity, doubles, and shared experiences can all make for compellingly uncanny fiction, and it’s into that strain of literature that Aoife Josie Clements taps for the novel Persona. It’s about a woman who discovers films of her online that she has no memory of making; things get stranger from there. Publishers Weekly’s review hailed it for its forays into “gut-churning corners of the human experience.” (Little Puss; Jan. 27, 2026) Publisher Feral Dove calls Alexandrine Ogundimu’s novel Temperance “[a] headfirst dive into physical and spiritual transformation.” In a fascinating interview published in January, Ogundimu touched on everything from transhumanism to the role of violence in her work: “I’m not really talking about the body transcending anything. I’m very much about we are flesh and that is it.” (Feral Dove; Jan. 23. 2026) “I define my writing and directing style as gothic whimsy,” Chelsea Sutton said in an interview with VoyageLA last year. That aesthetic seems to be very much on display in Sutton’s new book Krackle’s Last Movie, about a missing documentary filmmaker and the mummies, vampires, and mermaids who featured prominently in their final project.  (Split Lip Press; Feb. 10, 2026) File Under: Fantastical History Morris Collins is reckoning with a lot in his novel The Tavern at the End of History, including generational trauma and the legacy of genocide. That’s before getting into some of the more bizarre flourishes here, including unconventional angels and one character who may or may not be a ghost. Thus far, advance reviews have been promising. (Dzanc; Feb. 10, 2026) There are plenty of reasons why horror that takes cues from religion has been gaining ground lately. That’s included the series Midnight Mass, the horror film The Carpenter’s Son, and now David Scott Hay’s novel The Butcher of Nazareth. Here, Hay riffs on the untold history of the New Testament, and pushes the narrative into surreal and disquieting places. (Headless/Whiskey Tit; Feb. 26, 2026) In a 2023 interview with the Horror Writers Association, Rebecca Rowland explained her penchant for the genre. “I think that’s the attraction of horror for me. It’s darkly beautiful. Scary, sure, and that is part of the fun, but I like writing about the terrible beauty within the horror even more,” she said. Her novel Eminence Frost finds all of the above in this story of a snowstorm awakening an ancient presence. (CLASH; Jan. 20, 2026) File Under: Disquieting Futures Brooks Hansen’s literary work has covered a lot of ground, from historical works to philosophical investigations. His latest transports the reader into a future of haunted technology and ominous power struggles. The story Hansen tells in LucidDream covers everything from machine intelligences to an addictive online game. (Astrophil Press; Feb. 15. 2026) In the near-future Midwest of J. M. Holmes’s novel Me and Mine, the effects of climate change have reshaped the nation, with the Great Lakes becoming the site of both extreme development and political unrest. Holmes’s novel follows three brothers as they seek to make a life for themselves in this ever-changing new world. (Common Notions; February 2026) If you’re familiar with James Sallis’s name, it’s likely that it’s through his crime fiction, including Drive, adapted for the screen by Nicholas Winding Refn. (Sallis also wrote a tremendous work of literary criticism about the genre, Difficult Lives Hitching Rides.) Sallis has long had a foothold in science fiction as well—he was Nebula-nominated in 1970—and returns to the SF world with his latest book. That would be World’s End: A Mosaic Novel, telling the stories of several people living in a fragmented society in the near future. (Soho Press; Feb. 10, 2026) D. Harlan Wilson has also written extensively across genres; his book J.G. Ballard was a 2018 Locus Award finalist. Despite its title, Usurper: Essays on the Death of Reality is a novel—one that tells the story of an attempt to adapt James Joyce’s Ulysses for the screen in a dystopian society. Wilson has a penchant for heady ingredients, and this novel—the sequel to Wilson’s earlier Outré—rarely goes where you’d expect. (Raw Dog Screaming Press; Feb. 2, 2026) File Under: Telling Stories In an interview about her new collection Every Galaxy a Circle, Chloe N. Clark explained her approach to writing science fiction. “Good sci-fi, for me, is always based around the characters more than the plot,” Clark said. “Ideally, it should work even if that Sci-Fi concept is removed.” In this wide-ranging collection, Clark takes the reader through a series of ambitious, thought-provoking futures. (Jackleg Press; Jan. 15, 2026) Nicola Griffith’s writing has covered a lot of ground, both stylistically and thematically. Longtime readers of her work and newcomers to it should both find plenty to enjoy in the new collection She Is Here, which includes a winning survey of Griffith’s work—everything from a new novella to an essay on disability in literature. (PM Press; Feb. 10, 2026) Depending on your age and your inclinations as a young reader, it’s very possible that you were scarred for life by reading Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. (I’m pretty sure Stephen Gammell’s artwork has influenced decades’ worth of my nightmares.) As you might surmise, the new anthology Fucked Up Stories to Read in the Daytime Volume 2 takes its cues from that earlier series; this volume includes stories by Danger Slater, Xavier Garcia, and Charlene Elsby. (Filthy Loot; Jan. 1, 2026) Jeffrey Ford’s fiction spans multiple genres, moving from sinister nostalgia to speculative fiction and back again without missing a beat. (You can read some of his work right here.) His new collection Pandemonium Waltz is an excellent distillation of what makes Ford such a compelling writer—and one impossible to predict. (Lethe Press; February 2026) Bizarre transformations and uncanny doubles are just some of the mysteries readers can uncover within Dana Diehl’s collection The Earth Room. In a recent interview, Diehl mentioned that this book takes things further into the speculative and fantastical than her earlier writing: “I was watching a lot of David Lynch and horror movies while writing these stories, and I think that comes through.” (Black Lawrence Press; Jan. 20, 2026) File Under: Mysterious Destinations In 2023 in these very pages, Alex Brown praised a story by P.A. Cornel for the way it was “overflowing with emotions big and small.” Set in a retro-futuristic Toronto, Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl tells the story of a love between two characters and the beguiling world that they inhabit. (Stars and Sabers, Feb. 3, 2026) Carly Racklin’s short fiction has been discussed in the column Reading the Weird; with Funeral Song, Racklin is making her debut at the novella length. It’s set in a town where the dead have the ability to return to life—and the complexities that that creates for its residents. Throw some murder into the mix and you have a very compelling yarn. (Dead Sky; Jan. 27, 2026) Lisa Slage Robinson nods in the direction of the Midwest’s history with the title of her new collection, Esquire Ball, Stories from the Great Black Swamp. These wide-ranging stories venture into the uncanny and the metaphysical. Kirkus’s review noted that these stories demonstrate how “murky mythologies mix with the letter of the law.”(Black Lawrence Press; Feb. 10, 2026) Kristal Stittle’s novel Kayak tells the story of a young man making his way across a landscape that’s turned treacherous with the addition of violent, powerful entities. The title gives you an idea of how the protagonist makes his way from place to place; the result is a dynamic and unsettling story of a world of constant unrest. (Tenebrous Press; Feb. 17, 2026)[end-mark] The post Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for January and February 2026 appeared first on Reactor.