In Kazuo Ishiguro’s contemporary classic, Never Let Me Go, we follow three friends who attend the same school for children set in an alternative United Kingdom. As we learn more about the origins of the school, our perception of the story completely changes. I can’t say much without giving spoilers, but Never Let Me Go has a sci-fi-like twist.

Colson Whitehead loves to stretch readers’ assumptions about what a literary novel can be. In Zone One, Whitehead introduces us to a world overrun by zombies. Mark Spitz is tasked with continuing to sweep through and destroy zombies in Manhattan. The novel takes place over the course of three days of Mark’s life and will keep readers on the edge of their seats as we all wonder who will survive the zombie apocalypse.

When the colonizers land on the Australian continent, the Indigenous peoples flee to the outback to survive. The colonizers take Indigenous children, keeping them in schools to “educate” them on the “proper” way to be civilized. But then a young boy named Jacky escapes into the outback to find his family. A huge twist in the book gives this novel by Noongar writer Claire G. Coleman a more science fiction spin.

In this literary science fiction novel, Peter leaves his wife behind on Earth to go become a missionary to aliens on a distant planet. As he gets to know his new constituents, life on Earth is falling apart, and Peter must decide which is more important to him: his family or his ministry.

Ramona Ausubel’s fantastical stories always push the bounds of genre, containing elements of myth and fabulism. From a cyclops searching for love through online dating to a woman turning into mist, Awayland contains stories with touches of magic that will capture your attention from the first page.

Every story in All the Names They Used for God blends elements of fairy tales and the fantastical. An albino woman living on the frontier in the 1800s finds a cave with mysterious voices calling to her from inside. Two girls abducted and forced to marry their captors discover they can control their husbands just by speaking a command. A man in a factory accident has his lungs turned into glass.

G. Willow Wilson blends historical fiction, fantasy, and myth in this novel that centers around Fatima, a concubine in the court of the last Muslim emirate in Spain. Before the Catholic Spanish leaders can arrive, Fatima and her friend Hassan escape to find the fabled island of the Bird King.

This winner of the 2017 Kirkus Prize blends realism with the fantastical. Each short story is a unique gem unto its own. There are ghosts, alternate futures, and modern day fables all contained in this single collection. In What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah is a masterful short story writer at her best.

Winner of the National Book Award, Sing, Unburied, Sing is an incredible feat of Southern literature. Jesmyn Ward concludes her trilogy of Mississippi novels with this ghost story. Jojo, a 13-year-old boy, lives with his grandparents. But when his mom shows up to take him to pick up his father who is being released from prison, he goes on a road trip that will change his life forever.

A girl with a tail and a hole that spits up letters from the past are just part of everyday life in K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary. Generations of Tawainese American women tell their stories full of wonder and the grotesque. Blending myth and magic, Chang creates a novel that is as harrowing as it is wonderful.

Inspired by the myth of Daphne and Apollo, The Vegetarian follows a Korean woman who decides to quit eating meat. Her family is horrified and tries to convince her to change her mind. Kang combines elements of realist description alongside aspects of myth and the fantastical to create something wholly unique.

In this story set in the earlier years of the founding of Liberia, three young people with mysterious magical gifts find their fates intertwined. Together they must find a home for themselves in this new country. Moore blends elements of historical fiction and the fantastical to create a brilliant story that highlights the tumultuous founding of Liberia and the different groups of people that came to call it home.