The Stabby Award Winners You Should Read

Winner of Best Anthology, Collection, or Periodical.

This is Isabel Yap’s first short story collection, a set of fantasy stories that range from urban legends to the fairy tales of immigrants. And you cannot beat this start:

“Am I dead?” Mebuyen sighs.

She was hoping the girl would not ask.

Winner of Best Novella.

After the inimitable Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it has no choice but to assist station security to determine the identity of the decedent… and that there was, indeed, murder involved. Not Murderbot murder, however. It’s going to require all of Murderbot’s skill and energy to do the worst… speak with humans.

Winner of Best Debut Novel.

In 14th century China, a family of starving peasants in the Central Plains are given two fates–for their eighth-born son, there will be greatness, and for their second-born but highly clever daughter, there will be nothing. But when the son dies after the two children are orphaned in a bandit attack, the daughter sees her chance to change her fate.

Winner of Best Self-Published/Independent Novel.

Epheria is a land divided, north and south, where the High Lords of the latter are only held in check by the Dragonguard who serve the former. Calen Bryer is a young man preparing for the Proving, a test he may not survive, even as he struggles with the recent, tragic loss of his brother. Then three strangers arrive in his town and throw him head first into a centuries-old war.

Winner of Best Novel.

A century after the gods fought war that ended in their extinction, those who want power seek out their bones. But gods will not stay dead forever, and the fate of the realm of Vigrid rests in the hand of a huntress pursuing dangerous quarry, a noblewoman seeking fame in battle, and a former thrall turned mercenary searching for vengeance.