February may be known as a month about love, but there’s plenty of room for magic, too! The best fantasy books of February 2026 bring us twists on mythology and history, mysterious magical beings, political intrigue, and strange worlds to explore.
February’s releases include both standalone titles and new entries in longer series, so you can pick a story that suits your attention span (and the length of your existing TBR, let’s be honest!). Here are all our recommendations for February’s best fantasy books to check out.
Nightshade and Oak by Molly O’Neill
Release date: February 3
Read it if: You’d like a myth-inspired tale among the best fantasy books of February 2026. A goddess accidentally becomes human and teams up with a warrior on a quest to restore her power.
Publisher’s synopsis: When Malt, the goddess of death, is accidentally turned human by a wayward spell, she finds she’s ill-equipped to deal with the trials of a mortal life. After all, why would a goddess need to know how to gather food or light a fire?
Unable to fend for herself, she teams up with warrior Bellis on a perilous journey to the afterlife to try to restore her powers. Frustrated by her frail human body and beset with blisters, Malt might not make the best travelling companion.
But as animosity slowly turns to attraction, these two very different women must learn to work together if they are to have any hope of surviving their quest.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Apple and the Pearl by Rym Kechacha
Release date: February 3
Read it if: One of your favorite fantasy books is The Night Circus. A mystical traveling ballet company performs for a fae audience, with dangerous stakes.
Publisher’s synopsis: As dawn breaks on All Souls Day, the lingering mists part to unveil an unending vista of serried gravestones. Between them looms a theatre like a haunted house and the sleek iron carapace of a steam train – the Pearl. On board are the cast, orchestra and crew of a travelling ballet company, performing The Apple and the Pearl.
As he stumbles toward the restaurant car the lighting director, Zach, asks the new recruit, Lara, “Have you ever worked in ballet before?
“Have you had any contact with the supernatural?”
Everyone from the principal ballerina to the first violinist, from the wardrobe mistress to the newest members of the corps de ballet, have committed their lives to the perfection of the show. But every night they must also confront the malevolent glamour of their audience of Fae creatures only too eager to snatch them away into the Otherworld.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Strange Animals by Jarod K. Anderson
Release date: February 10
Read it if: You’d like the best fantasy books of February 2026 to include plenty of magical beasties. An ordinary man discovers he can see all kinds of magical creatures.
Publisher’s synopsis: Green trips on the curb, falls flat into the street, and sees the city bus speeding toward him. And then . . . blink. He’s back on the curb, miraculously still alive. A five-foot-tall crow watches him from atop a nearby sign, somehow unseen by the rushing crowd of morning commuters.
Desperate for answers and beset by more visions of impossible creatures, Green finds his way to a remote campsite in the Appalachian Mountains, where he meets a centuries-old teacher and begins an apprenticeship unlike anything he could imagine.
Under his new mentor’s grouchy tutelage, Green studies the time-bending rag moth, the glass fawn, and the menacing horned wolf. He begins to see past hidden nature’s terrors and glimpse its beauty, all while befriending fellow misfits—and finding connection and community.
Along the way come clues about the forces that set him on this path—and, most incredibly, a sense of purpose and fulfillment like nothing he’s felt before.
But Green’s new happiness promises to be short-lived, because alongside these marvels lurks a deadly threat to this place he’s already come to love.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Astral Library by Kate Quinn
Release date: February 17
Read it if: You’ve ever wished to literally live inside your favorite books. A lonely young woman finds her way into a magical library system, just as a new threat emerges.
Publisher’s synopsis: Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives…inside their favorite books.
The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect. Aided by a dashing costume-shop owner, Alix and the Librarian flee through the Regency drawing rooms of Jane Austen to the back alleys of Sherlock Holmes and the champagne-soaked parties of The Great Gatsby as danger draws inexorably closer. But who does their enemy really wish to destroy—Alix, the Librarian, or the Library itself?
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Crown of War and Shadow by J.R. Ward
Release date: February 17
Read it if: You prefer the best fantasy books of February 2026 to run towards the dark romantasy. An outcast makes a deal with a mercenary in hopes of saving a kingdom.
Publisher’s synopsis: In the deep, dark, dead of night, passions rise, and empires fall…
The Fulcrum is failing, and demons are slipping into the mortal world. No one is safe.
Especially not Sorrel. An orphan and an outcast within the walls of her small village because of her mystical abilities. She wants to survive…and find somewhere she can call her true home. But Fate has other plans.
Sorrel has been chosen. Cursed. She must cross the Badlands to return the Queen’s crown and convince the fearsome female to save their world from destruction. Well aware she’s no brave hero, Sorrel makes a dangerous deal with Merc, a brooding, commanding mercenary known only by his unscrupulous profession.
The deal? A night in his bed that she will never forget, in exchange for her safe passage. But Merc has secrets of his own, and even though desire runs hot between them, adventure, danger, and betrayal lurk around every corner.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Gods Beneath the Ice by Alexandra Kennington
Release date: February 17
Read it if: You enjoy reading about heroes who actually struggle with their powers and responsibilities. A new leader must master her magic under a dangerous time crunch in order to end a war.
Publisher’s synopsis: After winning the Bloodshed Trials, Revna has the crown she wanted. What she didn’t want was the newfound Lurae abilities she manifested. Still, she’s determined to bring equality to her people and end the holy war draining her kingdom’s resources. But the godtouched fear her, the godforsaken don’t trust her, and her best friend doesn’t know the truth she’s been hiding. When the war-ending treaty is signed, Revna will reveal her secrets and finally put the Hellbringer behind her.
Except the Kryllian Queen refuses to sign the treaty when she discovers how volatile Revna’s bloodsinging is. Desperate for any alliance, Revna begrudgingly agrees to the queen’s proposal: if Revna can learn to control her magic in three weeks, negotiations will resume. But there’s a catch—the queen’s general will be the one training her.
Revna will work with the Hellbringer once more, though she won’t make it easy. But when the general discovers that the dead are unable to pass on, they realize there’s more at stake than their tangled relationship. Ancient, powerful secrets tie the realm—and Revna and the Hellbringer—together, and their only hope of lasting peace is to unweave them.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Sun and the Starmaker by Rachel Griffin
Release date: February 17
Read it if: You’d like a Beauty and the Beast-meets-folklore feeling in the best fantasy books of February 2026. When a mythic magician senses power in a local girl, he insists she hone her magic with him.
Publisher’s synopsis: Nestled deep in the snowy mountains of the Lost Range, the village of Reverie is a small miracle. Beyond the reach of the Sun, Reverie is dependent upon the magic of the mysterious Starmaker: every morning, he trudges across a vast glacier and pulls in sunlight over the peaks, providing the village with the light it needs to survive.
Aurora Finch grew up on tales of the Starmaker’s magic, never imagining she’d one day meet him. But on the morning of her wedding, a fateful encounter in the frostbitten woods changes everything. The Starmaker senses a powerful magic within her and demands she come study under his guidance. With her newfound abilities tied to the survival of the village, Aurora is swept away to his ice-covered castle and far from everything she’s ever known.
The Starmaker is as cold and distant as the mountain itself, leaving Aurora to explore his enchanted castle alone. Yet the more she discovers about the sorcerer, the stronger their attraction grows, pulling her closer to the secrets he refuses to share. But a deadly frost approaches and Aurora must uncover what the Starmaker is hiding before she is left in an endless winter that even the Sun cannot touch.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Trident and the Pearl by Sarah K.L. Wilson
Release date: February 24
Read it if: You’re looking for gods and seafaring vibes in the best fantasy books of February 2026. A queen makes a deal with the gods to save her people, only to wed a man with surprising secrets.
Publisher’s synopsis: Queen Coralys rules the Kingdom of the Five Isles, but when disaster strikes, killing her husband and destroying half her nation, she pleads with the gods for salvation. And they do save her, turning back the terrible winds and tide and snatching her islands from the brink of destruction.
But the gods have a wicked sense of justice and they demand an exchange for their help: Coralys must marry the first man to set foot on her pier. Coralys expects the fleet of a neighboring country to come to rescue her people, led by its prince, a loyal ally. What she gets instead is a fisherman so sunburnt and stinking that her court can barely keep their breakfast down.
Coralys marries the fisherman just as she promised the gods, and sets out with him in his unkempt dinghy, with nothing but hopes of revenge against the gods to keep her from despair. But what she does not know is that the fisherman is actually the god of the sea. And he stepped on her dock for a reason.
His own kingdom besieged, his body terribly wounded, and his place as a god threatened, the fisherman has plans to turn the tides set against him and finally offer a place of refuge for his people. But working the magic he needs will require the help of the one woman bent on his destruction.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan
Release date: February 24
Read it if: You love when the best fantasy books of February 2026 riff on actual history. Inspired by French history and legend, a retired monster-slayer returns to action when a long-dormant beast begins a new path of destruction.
Publisher’s synopsis: n 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears most: the terrible Beast of Gévaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.
Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel – who takes payment in living hearts – it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.
Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.
But Gévaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastian’s unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastian’s arcane activities – not to mention his demonic counterpart – have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox by Katrina Kwan
Release date: February 24
Read it if: You want twists on mythology in the best fantasy books of February 2024. A demon hunter and the demon he captures must work together to escape the underworld.
Publisher’s synopsis: Yue may be the last of her kind. At night, she stalks the streets of the capital city of Longhao, luring in unsuspecting victims with the mask of a beautiful woman, then consuming them in her true form of the nine-tailed fox.
When she is captured by a powerful demon hunter named Sonam and banished to Hell, she manages one final act of revenge: dragging him—and two of his subordinates—down with her.
Now trapped in an abyss with unimaginable terrors, they’ll need each other’s help to navigate Hell and bypass the gods who preside over each circle, each of whom presents the group with a unique and deadly challenge. Forced to depend on one another as they claw their way out of the underworld, both demon and demon hunter discover that there might be more to the other than meets the eye.
Get it on Amazon or support local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
