Fantasy Books Releasing In December 2026 (Most Anticipated!)

If your ideal December read is a cosy, whimsical fantasy you can wrap around yourself like a blanket, start here. Winslow “Winnie” Green is famous for matching mages with their perfect animal familiars, despite having no magic of her own, until grumpy, grieving mage Bastian Triplehorn walks in seeking a new companion and, impossibly, sparks a familiar bond with Winnie herself. Cue one very confused matchmaker, one very grumpy mage, and a mystery neither of them can explain away.

Forced to help each other until they can unravel their strange connection, the pair end up training for a royal mage competition that could solve all their problems or ruin everything. It’s grumpy-sunshine, opposites-attract cosy romantasy with a lovely Victorian feel, pink cottages, adorable animal companions, and a heroine learning she matters too.

Spice: Sweet | Tropes: Cosy fantasy, grumpy x sunshine, opposites attract, magic competition, familiars, found magic

The second book in Julie Soto’s Evermore Trilogy is here, and if Forget Me Not left you desperate for more of Briony and Toven, prepare yourself. Set in a dark, magical world where power, rebellion, and betrayal are hopelessly entangled, this instalment finds Briony forced into a dangerous position within the ruling elite, feigning loyalty while secretly working to bring them down from the inside.

As she navigates treacherous court politics, shifting alliances, and emotional ties to people she absolutely should not trust, her connection with Toven grows more complicated (and more impossible to resist) with every chapter. It’s a story of survival under oppression, hidden resistance, and a forbidden bond that only burns hotter as the world destabilises around them.

Spice: Warm | Tropes: Romantasy, court intrigue, forbidden bond, rebellion, enemies-to-lovers tension, second-in-series

The second book in Debbie Cassidy’s Veritas Legacy series (sequel to the USA Today bestselling Wicked Onyx) drops you back into Nightsbridge Academy, a deadly magical school with a genuinely dark soul, where failure means death and the trials are anything but survivable. Our cursed heroine has recovered a fragment of her stolen power, but instead of feeling whole, her magic has twisted into something dangerous and unwanted, because she’s no ordinary sorcerer. She’s a Veil Walker.

With the spirit world clawing at her, students disappearing, and a coveted artefact (the Libra Veritas) to hunt down, the last thing she needs is a distraction, which is exactly what she gets when she’s fast-tracked into advanced classes and placed under the supervision of the one man she can’t trust: Sterling Damascus.

Spice: Warm | Tropes: Dark academia, deadly academy, slow-burn romance, forbidden attraction, found family, cursed power, forced proximity

Princess Kenna of Blood House has finally chosen who she’ll back as the next ruler of Mistei, but one wrong move shatters the fragile truce of the Accord and plunges the whole kingdom into civil war. In the chaos, hundreds of faeries lie dead, and Kenna and the two rebel princes are captured.

With crueller, more ambitious tyrants seizing the throne, Kenna is left certain that if the enemy doesn’t kill her first, her own guilt will, yet she refuses to give up, no matter what horrors are inflicted on her, or how far winning pushes her from her own humanity. It’s bloody, visceral, and aching in equal measure, balancing court politics and magical vengeance with a scorching, hard-won romance (Kenna and Kallen fans, this is your moment). A calculating, emotional finale for readers who love their fae fantasy fierce and their heroines feral.

Spice: Spicy | Tropes: Dark fae romantasy, fae court intrigue, civil war, enemies-to-lovers romance, feral heroine, captivity, trilogy finale

Think She’s All That meets The Bachelor, with fangs. Harper Calloway is a down-on-her-luck reality-TV producer who gets herself fired and stumbles onto the answer to all her problems in the vampire next door: Gabriel Hargrave, an exiled vampire prince lying low in a SoCal retirement community.

If Harper can transform the reluctant, awkward, cinnamon-roll Gabriel into the first-ever supernatural lead of a hit dating show, she’ll get her career (and her redemption) back. The only problem is that Gabriel doesn’t fit the dark, dangerous vampire fantasy at all, and the more time they spend together, the more the lines blur. Witty, steamy, and wildly fun, it’s Rosie Danan’s clever, modern love letter to vampire romance.

Spice: Warm | Tropes: Paranormal rom-com, vampire hero, reality TV, opposites attract, forced proximity, fish out of water

The second book in Adrienne Young’s first adult fantasy series, Fallen City, lands mid-December, and it’s a treat for readers who love atmospheric, literary fantasy with a beating heart. Set in the richly imagined city of Isara, the series follows Luca, whose alliances are tested when he takes an apprenticeship with the city’s Philosopher, and Maris Casoeria, who is destined to serve the city but longs for a different life, her fate tangled up with a Priestess who guards the hidden magic of the Old War.

Chosen Son continues their intertwined stories deeper into Isara’s secrets, politics, and buried power. Young (of Fable and A Sea of Unspoken Things fame) writes immersive, emotionally resonant fantasy that lingers long after the final page, so if you love world-building with genuine soul and prose to savour, this sequel belongs on your December list.

Spice: Sweet | Tropes: Adult fantasy, political intrigue, hidden magic, dual POV, immersive world-building, second-in-series

Chloe C. Peñaranda (of the Nytefall Trilogy and An Heir Comes to Rise) launches her brand-new Arcanum Order series with a killer premise: magic takes more than blood, it demands your soul. Under the iron fist of the Arcanum Order, magic belongs only to the elite. Scythe Valethorne scrapes by in the city’s poorest district by day and works as an assassin by night, until one job goes so sideways she gambles everything to steal her way into the Guild, the Order’s brutal stronghold where initiates are tested, broken, and buried.

Then Asher Kyrell, the Guild’s most enigmatic (and dangerous) leader, claims her as his apprentice, pulling her into a lethal game of power and deception. His red gaze pierces her lies, his touch threatens her control, and every lesson draws her deeper into his fire, and his secrets. As Scythe uncovers the sinister fractures beneath the “perfect” Order, she has to decide whether her fate lies in enduring the regime or burning it down.

Spice: Warm | Tropes: Romantasy, mentor x apprentice, morally grey heroine, assassin heroine, enemies to lovers, slow burn, found family,

For the King is the first book in a trilogy from Carissa Weiser (co-host of the hit Myths and Legends podcast), a comprehensive, kaleidoscopic reimagining of the Arthurian legend that breathes fresh life into the classic tale. Logris is a land torn apart by invasions, assassinations, and anarchy, waiting for someone strong enough to pull a sword from a stone, while a being rumoured to be half-demon and half-man, Merlin, braids together the threads of destiny, shaping kingdoms like clay only to crush them.

What sets this apart is its chorus of perspectives, re-centring the women the legend so often pushes to the margins. Morgan is a princess unlike her sisters, fleeing her predictable life to find Merlin’s fabled cave and become his apprentice; Arthur is the boy king racing to prove his worth and bury his past; and beneath them all swirl the currents of Avalon and the Ladies of the Lake.

Spice: Warm | Tropes: Arthurian retelling, epic fantasy, multi-POV, morally grey characters, magic, political intrigue, first-in-trilogy