Five SFF books that showcase siblings at their core

Sarah Pinsker is the author of over fifty works of short fiction, including the novelette "Our Lady of the Open Road," winner of the Nebula Award in 2016. Her novelette "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind," was the Sturgeon Award winner in 2014. Her fiction has been published in magazines including Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Uncanny and in numerous anthologies and year's bests. Her stories have been translated into Chinese, Spanish, French, and Italian, among other languages, and have been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, Eugie, and World Fantasy Awards.

Pinsker's first collection, the Philip K Dick Award winning Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories, was published in March 2019, and her first novel, A Song For A New Day, was published in September 2019. Her latest book is We Are Satellites.

[The Page 69 Test: A Song for a New Day]

At Tor.com Pinsker tagged five "adult SFF books built around a rich, gooey, sibling core," including:

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

Three estranged sisters in a historical alternate United States find themselves in the city of New Salem after years apart, drawn together reluctantly by the magical threads that still bind them. They have longstanding and well-founded issues with each other, which have only festered and grown over their years apart. In order to work together, they have to learn to communicate, to understand, to forgive, and to recognize each others’ differences and strengths. These are real sibling relationships, fraught, lived in, drenched in personal history. As one of three sisters (and the daughter of one of three sisters) I finished this book and immediately bought it for my sisters and my mother.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Once and Future Witches is among Heather Walter's five SFF books about wicked women.

--Marshal Zeringue