New This Week in Sci-Fi & Fantasy: March 9–15, 2026

One Piece Season 2 (Netflix)

The Straw Hat Pirates are back and sailing into the Grand Line at last. Season 2 of Netflix’s live-action adaptation picks up with Luffy and crew tackling the Reverse Mountain, Whiskey Peak, Little Garden, and Drum Island arcs — which means we’re finally meeting Tony Tony Chopper, the tiny reindeer doctor who has been stealing hearts in the manga and anime for over two decades. With Joe Manganiello joining the cast as the menacing Sir Crocodile and all eight episodes dropping at once, this is the binge event of the week.

Bodycam (Shudder)

Two police officers try to cover up an accidental shooting during a domestic dispute call, only to discover that the cameras aren’t the only things watching. When a cult and its otherworldly “lord” enter the picture, this lean, 75-minute found-footage horror spirals into cosmic nightmare territory. Think Paranormal Activity meets something far older and angrier — a perfect Friday the 13th watch.

Scared to Death (Only in theaters)

A young filmmaker pitches a behind-the-scenes documentary of a real séance at a former children’s shelter — one that was shuttered after five mysterious deaths in 1942. Naturally, things go sideways fast. With genre legends Lin Shaye and Bill Moseley leading the cast, this campy supernatural horror-comedy knows exactly what it is and leans all the way in.

Slanted (Only in theaters)

In one of the most talked-about genre films of the year, a Chinese-American high schooler undergoes an experimental “ethnic modification” surgery to appear white in pursuit of being voted Prom Queen — and the body horror consequences are devastating. Winner of the Narrative Grand Jury Prize at SXSW, Slanted uses its sci-fi premise as a scalpel to cut into identity, beauty standards, and belonging. This one is going to stay with you.

Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead (Only in theaters)

Three centuries after a cataclysmic Great Flood reduced Earth to scattered islands, humanity lives in the shadow of a perpetual electrical storm dividing the ocean. Two rebellious islanders race to breach the storm and uncover secrets guarded by immortal rulers in the fortified city-state of Argos. If post-apocalyptic waterworld adventures with mysterious ancient overlords are your thing, grab some popcorn.

Undertone (Only in theaters)

This A24 release and Sundance selection follows a paranormal podcast host who moves home to care for her dying mother and begins investigating recordings from a couple experiencing ghostly noises — recordings that eerily mirror her own life. The film’s most striking creative choice is that only two characters ever appear on screen; everyone else exists solely as disembodied voices. It’s an exercise in atmospheric dread built almost entirely through sound design.

Rooster Fighter Season 1 (Hulu)

You read that correctly. Based on the manga by Shu Sakuratani, Rooster Fighter follows Keiji — a lone rooster who wanders Japan defeating mutant demons with his devastating crow-powered attacks — on a quest to destroy the White Demon that killed his sister. It’s been described as “One-Punch Man, but the hero is a chicken,” and with series composition by Hiroshi Seko (Attack on Titan, Mob Psycho 100), the pedigree behind this absurd premise is no joke. Twelve episodes of pure, unhinged fun.

Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall
Tor Books
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The Boyfriend Material author takes a breathtaking leap into space opera with a queer, trans retelling of Moby Dick set on the storm-lashed skies of Jupiter. Earth is a ruin, humanity survives by harvesting hallucinogenic spermaceti from vast Leviathans, and an obsessive captain steers the hunter-barque Pequod toward a dreaded white beast called the Mobius. Bold, atmospheric, and utterly unlike anything else on shelves this week.

Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Head of Zeus
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The fourth installment in Tchaikovsky’s Tyrant Philosophers series plunges us into the siege of Eres Ffenegh — “the City on the Back of a Crab” — where defenders hold an uneasy alliance against the Palleseen empire’s campaign to impose “Perfection” on an imperfect world. Tchaikovsky continues to build one of fantasy’s richest explorations of colonialism, revolution, and the clash between rigid rationalism and chaotic magic. If you’ve been following this series, you know the stakes just keep climbing.

The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White
Del Rey
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Anneke Van Helsing — yes, that Van Helsing’s daughter — comes home to find her father murdered and a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. What follows is a years-long hunt for an immortal serial killer across Europe, complicated by infuriatingly coy, blood-soaked letters signed “Diavola.” A gothic sapphic cat-and-mouse thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author that reimagines classic vampire lore with fangs bared.

Butterfly Effects by Seanan McGuire
Tor Books
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The InCryptid series hits its fifteenth installment as psychic cuckoo Sarah Zellaby is finally called to answer for reconstructing a man’s mind from the memories of others — and the trial can only take place on Johrlar, the homeworld of her predatory species. Seanan McGuire remains one of SFF’s most reliably entertaining voices, and longtime fans have been waiting for this reckoning.

No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes
Harper
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The Sunday Times bestselling classicist behind Stone Blind and Pandora’s Jar turns her attention to Medea — priestess, witch, and woman who sacrificed everything for a man who would erase her from his own legend. Haynes brings her trademark blend of scholarly depth and propulsive storytelling to one of mythology’s most complex and devastating figures.

Silvercloak by L.K. Steven
Del Rey
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Saffron Killoran lies her way into Silvercloak Academy — training ground for her city’s elite detective order — with a single goal: destroy the Bloodmoons who murdered her parents. When her deception is exposed, she’s sent undercover into the criminal underworld instead, where pleasure and pain are currency and the kingpin’s son comes with a prophecy foretelling his death at her hand. A dark, propulsive debut launching a new fantasy series.

The First Step by Tao Wong
Ace
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One of the most celebrated cultivation fantasy series gets the big-publisher treatment as Ace brings Tao Wong’s A Thousand Li to hardcover for the first time. Young farmer Long Wu Ying is conscripted into the army, but his quick thinking earns him an invitation to the prestigious Verdant Green Waters sect, where his journey from nobody to cultivator begins. If you’ve been curious about progression fantasy, this is your on-ramp.

Voidverse by Damien Ober
Saga Press
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Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Book Riot and pitched as “Dune meets Wool,” this epic sci-fi debut from the writer of Netflix’s The OA imagines a seemingly infinite void where people live on floating, stacked landmasses scattered through nothingness — some magnetic, some burning, some defying physics entirely. When the Sinker learns that the Construct, the machine that destroyed her home, is near again, she sets out with unlikely allies to end its tyranny.

Sing the Night by Megan Jauregui Eccles
Grand Central Publishing
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Inspired by The Phantom of the Opera, this debut fantasy follows Selene as she competes for the title of King’s Mage in a world where magic is sung into existence. When a competitor steals her song, Selene discovers a mysterious, beautiful man trapped inside a mirror in the depths of the opera house — one who offers both the music she craves and a darker sorcery of shadow and blood. Lush, romantic, and impossible to resist.

Entwined by H.M. Long
Titan Books
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The author of Hall of Smoke and Dark Water Daughter pivots to a Gilded Age fantasy where three estranged sisters collide in a hunt for a stolen magical artifact. Ottilie hides from the Sorcerer’s Guild as a secretary to a washed-up detective, but when her sisters — a sorceress-thief and a Guild loyalist — each offer her an unwelcome choice, she must navigate a city torn by prejudice while deciding who she truly is.

Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo
Tordotcom
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In an alternate Brazil, vampiric Guls stalk the night streets and manipulate the government from their glittering cabaret. Ariadne — who lost half her body to their appetites — runs a clinic for the creatures until a charming, tattooed Gul arrives claiming to be the oldest friend of her vanished mentor. This slim, scorching novella blends neo-noir and gothic horror with a missing-persons hunt through Rio’s most dangerous underworld.

Bitterbloom by Teagan Olivia King
Keylight Books
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In the haunted village of Rixton, the vicar’s daughter Adelaide is kept locked away — the townspeople believe her chronic illness and terrifying visions mark her as touched by the Devil. When she discovers a peculiar bell in a riverbed, she realizes her visions are the village’s restless dead crying out for help, and the real monster may not be her at all. Atmospheric gothic fantasy steeped in grief, ghost stories, and dark romance.

Ruinous Creatures by Jessi Cole Jackson
Simon & Schuster
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In a hidden sanctuary for magical creatures, magic is born from extraordinary bones — and a privileged few wield power by wearing the skulls of these creatures. When Adela awakens two phoenix skulls she was warned never to touch, she unleashes chaos across the valley and binds her fate to a vengeful stranger. A romantasy debut with a bone-magic system that’s as beautiful as it is unsettling.

This Vicious Hunger by Francesca May
Redhook
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After her husband’s death leaves her destitute, Thora Grieve accepts a chance to study botany at a university, where she becomes entranced by Olea — a mysterious woman who tends a private garden only at night. As Thora sinks deeper into their relationship and the garden’s secrets, she discovers a world of beauty, poison, and obsession. Dark, gothic, sapphic, and intoxicating.

Luminous by Silvia Park
Simon & Schuster
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In a reunified near-future Korea, two human siblings and their missing robot brother are thrust back together by a murder investigation. This debut literary sci-fi novel builds a richly textured world where people keep robots as companions, lovers, and children — and asks piercing questions about family, memory, and what it means to be real.

Old Guns by J.N. Chaney & Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Variant Publications
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When an ancient alien threat called the Hollow returns, the military drags two retired Marines out of their respective whiskey bottles and gardens and back into outdated power armor. Frank Cage and Martin Kelvin are grizzled, broken, and absolutely the wrong people for this job — which makes them exactly right. A new military sci-fi series from two bestselling authors, perfect for fans of Hell Divers and Expeditionary Force.

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran
Doubleday
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It’s 1928 at the isolated Briarley School for Girls when the school’s brightest star falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday. The students turn to spiritualism to contact her — and her ghost warns them that the danger has only just begun. A queer boarding school gothic that blends locked-room mystery with escalating supernatural horror, this debut has been called “the most intriguing gothic of the year.”

Nobody’s Baby by Olivia Waite
Tordotcom
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An infant has been abandoned on a doorstep aboard an interstellar passenger liner — which should be impossible, since fertility is suspended during the voyage. Ship’s detective Dorothy Gentleman must solve the mystery before her rival classifies the baby as luggage. A delightful cozy mystery in space for fans of Dorothy Sayers and Ann Leckie.

Forged for Royalty by Andrew Knighton
Orbit Works
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The Forged for Destiny trilogy reaches its finale as Raul faces the question at the heart of this chosen-one subversion: claim the throne he was engineered to seize, or reject the manufactured destiny entirely? Knighton wraps up one of fantasy’s sharpest interrogations of the prophecy trope with themes of imperialism and self-determination.

Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett
Ace
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A magical hotel that travels between worlds runs out of fuel and parks itself on the most unmagical world possible: Earth. Its manager — a century-old monster hunter named Pax — rents a room to a struggling single mom, hoping she’ll reignite the hotel’s magic without ever learning its true nature. A warm, humorous fantasy romance from the USA Today bestselling author of the Secret Scientists of London series.

Nonesuch by Francis Spufford
Scribner
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London, 1939. A financial secretary’s one-night affair with a television engineer draws her into a nightmare involving the British Fascists, imprisoned angels, and a magical middle ground from which history itself can be rewritten. From the Costa Award-winning author of Golden Hill, this historical fantasy pits an unlikely heroine against a fanatic trying to reshape the world on the eve of the Blitz.

Red Empire by Jonathan Maberry
St. Martin’s Griffin
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Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International race to stop a bioengineered Black Death from devastating London, but the real bombshell is what this mission reveals about the mysterious Mr. Church — secrets that reach back to the Crusades and make even his closest allies question what he truly is. The fifth Rogue Team novel digs deep into the series mythology that longtime fans have been craving.

Intergalactic Feast by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
Rebellion
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The sequel to Interstellar MegaChef reunites Saras and Ko three months after their reality-TV food-sim triumph, but fame has brought smear campaigns, corporate sabotage, and unresolved romantic tension that a shared kiss made infinitely worse. Award-winning Indian author Lavanya Lakshminarayan continues one of sci-fi’s most uniquely delicious series — competitive cooking meets space opera.

Imagine a Friend by David Quantick
Stars and Sabers Publishing
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Emmy-winning Veep writer David Quantick delivers a slim, soulful fantasy novella about two childhood friends separated by an impossible truth — one of them has become literally invisible to the other. A quiet heartbreaker about the depths of friendship, pain, and the hope that comes with being truly seen.

You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom by Vincent Tirado
William Morrow
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After the family patriarch dies, his will delivers one final message: “One of you is el baca — the demon I made a deal with.” Trapped by a storm with a 3:00 AM deadline ticking down, the family must figure out who among them isn’t human. Drawing on Dominican folklore and structured as a locked-room thriller, this supernatural horror is Knives Out with actual teeth.

The Witch Without Memory by Maithree Wijesekara
HarperVoyager
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The second book in the Obsidian Throne trilogy finds Prince Ashoka’s sister seizing power as empress while the witch Shakti wakes in captivity with devastating gaps in her memory and a curse she doesn’t remember casting. Inspired by the historical Emperor Ashoka and Indian mythology, this is epic fantasy with the kind of political intrigue and moral complexity that keeps you turning pages past midnight.

The Wings That Bind by Briar Boleyn
Mira Books
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The Bloodwing Academy series reaches its explosive third installment as a second dragon awakens with a tainted heart and two ruthless highbloods commandeer its power. If you’ve been devouring this dark academia vampire-and-dragon saga, the stakes have never been higher — and the New York Times bestselling author isn’t pulling any punches.

These Shattered Spires by Cassidy Ellis Salter
Bloomsbury YA
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Welcome to Fourspires Castle, where arcanists practice bone, blood, botany, and stone magic — and where the king’s assassination has triggered “the Slaughter,” a deadly competition where the only way out is death. Four misfit protagonists forge an uneasy alliance to survive in this gothic YA debut that’s equal parts gruesome worldbuilding, snarky banter, and fraught queer romance.

Witch of the Shadow Wood by Tori Anne Martin
Alcove Press
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What if the witch from Hansel and Gretel wasn’t the villain — and what if Gretel never wanted to leave? This sapphic fairy tale retelling follows Miria, who was bartered to the old witch by her father as a child but grew to love her life in the woods. When the woman she rescued and fell for turns up engaged to a man complicit in Miria’s original abandonment, the story takes a sharp turn into revenge and reclamation.