A month made for escaping

October's fantasy releases run from ancient gods to murderous books, enchanted kingdoms, deadly tournaments and a trip back to Wonderland. Nine of them deserve your fall evenings.

The big names lead

Stephen King finishes a trilogy he started with the late Peter Straub over 40 years ago. V.E. Schwab ends her Villains series. Sarah J. Maas opens a new arc in Prythian.

King and Straub's finale

Other Worlds Than These arrives October 6 from Scribner, closing out Jack Sawyer, who was 12 when he first crossed America into the Territories to save his dying mother.

Jack, older and tethered

Jack now lives in Mid-World and can only visit our world briefly before he sickens. Infected teenagers are rampaging across America, and something called the Gullet waits at Mid-World's edge.

A cliffhanger 40 years old

King wanted to return to Mid-World, which he says was always the Territories under another name. Jack's ka-tet is fracturing just as the stakes widen to every world at once.

“That the Talisman trilogy needed a final volume was a foregone conclusion, because Black House ends with a cliffhanger.”

Schwab ends the Villains

Victorious, out October 6 from Tor, closes the story of Victor Vale and Eli Ever, college friends who survived near-death experiences and came back with powers that made them enemies.

Victor versus Eli, finally

EON, the outfit built to hunt people like them, has a dangerous new director. That forces Victor, Sydney and Mitch out of hiding and toward a reckoning building since Vicious.

A book about control

Schwab says the opening chapters live in aftermath, with everyone adrift and purposeless, still in hiding, still in purgatory, before the countdown to the end begins.

“It's about control, it's about the illusion of control and it's about our own perception of our own reality.”

Alice, aged 18

Heather Fawcett's Wondrous lands October 6, timed to the 75th anniversary of Disney's animated film. This Alice is a good deal happier in Wonderland than she is at home.

Too many Alices

Dozens of teenage girls named Alice keep turning up. Prophecy says one will slay three mock dragons and be crowned the Alice, and the rest are exiled from Wonderland forever.

Darker, still cozy

Fawcett calls it a slightly darker but thoroughly cozy follow-up to the film. Alice heads out with an enchanted tea set and a reluctant ally tied to the Jabberwock.

“I've always been drawn to the whimsy and weirdness of Alice.”

A book that wants him dead

The Thrice-Bound Fool, October 13 from Tor, saddles wisecracking thief Kinch Na Shannack with a stolen sentient book that keeps trying to kill him, even when he isn't reading it.

The murderous tome matters

That same book may hold the secret to stopping the forces closing in on the queen. Kinch and the warrior Galva flee the Takers Guild past the borders of the known world.

More Halloween than Christmas

Buehlman says he is pulled toward dark places, from the spaces under New York subways to a world where goblins have killed all the horses and most of the men.

“I don't know why, but I've always been more Halloween than Christmas.”

Flamel turns up dead

Mothsblood, October 13 from Bloomsbury, sends ambitious alchemist Lark to a Paris university run by the very much alive Nicholas Flamel. Then the immortal is murdered.

Prestige on trial

Investigator Violaine ties the killing to the Promethean Genesis, a cult Lark knows better than she admits. Author Lynn D. Jung built the book around who elite schools are designed to keep out.

“I also wanted to take a hard look at academia, particularly 'prestige' institutions.”

Hunted by dragonriders

Annabel Campbell's The Void Dragon, October 13 from Orbit, has Naila on the run after Amoria falls, racing for the library of Awasef to learn what the power growing inside her is.

Champion of the Moon

Katee Robert's The Tarot Trials, October 20, drops Kestrel into a lethal tournament for a seat among the ruling Cinque. Her mother won it, then was executed for treason.

Maas opens the Valkyrie Cycle

A Court of Splintered Harmony arrives October 27, the sixth ACOTAR book. Koschei the Deathless stirs after millennia chained at a mountain lake, and the Night Court is badly divided.

“Part one was this huge, huge thing, and I eventually realized I was writing a book told in four parts.”

The healer and the Death God

Ann Liang's To Dream in Darkness, out October 27, follows Rujia, god of healing, who is fated to die by the Death God's hand. She buys one more month by offering to break his curse.