I love novellas, and this year they constituted about a third of my reading. I’m still reading almost all of the Tor.com novellas as they come out, and I’ve started paying more attention to other novella-length work, though I still stick to professionally published books rather than delving into the vast world of self-pubbed stuff out there. Consequently, this list is definitely a bit biased towards the Tor.com books, but I did try to check out some different stuff in 2016. If I missed one of your favorites, be sure to leave it in the comments.

Coral Bones by Foz Meadows
2016 was a good year for Foz Meadows, whose most recent novel, An Accident of Stars, is a fun, fresh and feminist take on the portal fantasy genre. However, this short novella–included in Abaddon Books’ Monstrous Little Voices: New Tales from Shakespeare’s Fantasy World–is wonderful. It’s a new perspective on The Tempest‘s Miranda, and Meadows takes a look at what it might really mean for a young person’s identity to be brought up in that kind of isolation. It’s a thoughtful portrait of an outsider figuring out their place in the world, a clever riff on Shakespeare’s own themes, and a playful update to a very old classic.
Buy it here.
Or buy the collection here.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
There were several Lovecraft-inspired novellas published in 2016, but Victor LaValle’s is definitely the best of them. The Ballad of Black Tom is directly in conversation with Lovecraft, being a retelling of sorts of the insidiously racist short story “The Horror at Red Hook,” and LaValle ably weaves together a general critique of Lovecraft’s racism with a fairly straightforward tribute to Lovecraft’s enduring influence on the genre, crafting a smartly written and well-paced homage that perfectly encapsulates the complicated feelings that many people have towards Lovecraft.
Buy it here.
Read “The Horror at Red Hook” here.

Lustlocked and Pride’s Spell by Matt Wallace
Matt Wallace’s Sin du Jour series continued this year with its second and third installments, and they are excellent. Matt Wallace has a gift for telling funny stories that aren’t trying to be too clever, and each volume of this series is better than the one before. Wallace starts with a simple joke and focuses on creating a diverse cast of interesting characters to carry the story, and it works. Every time.
Buy Lustlocked.
Buy Pride’s Spell.
Buy Envy of Angels (the first book in the series).
Pre-order book four, Idle Ingredients.
Read the Sin du Jour short story, “Small Wars.”

Runtime by S.B. Divya
I would never have guessed I would love Runtime as much as I did, as I’m generally not into anything even remotely sports-related, but this story about a young woman entering a cyborg race with the hope of bettering herself and achieving a more secure future for her family is a fantastic fast read.
Buy it here.

Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky
While I haven’t been as into nostalgia in my media as some have this year, I absolutely adored this D&D-ish sword and sorcery adventure from Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s got an unexpected and unique protagonist, some interesting ideas, and an entertaining villain. Tchaikovsky pokes gentle fun at some classic tropes and deftly uses others in a way that shows his deep love for and broad knowledge of the genre.
[Edit: Just learned that Spiderlight is actually 300 pages long, so not actually a novella. I was so delighted by it that I rushed through it in a single sitting and didn’t even notice.]
Buy it here.

A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson
Kai Ashante Wilson’s 2015 novella, Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, marked him as an author to watch, and this 2016 effort, set in the distant past of the same world, establishes Wilson as one of the most original and compelling voices in fantasy right now.
Buy it here.

The Convergence of Fairy Tales by Octavia Cade
The Convergence of Fairy Tales is this year’s Book Smugglers Halloween horror story, and it’s also their very first novella. Hopefully, it’s the first of many, because it’s really, really good. The unifying theme behind many of my favorites of 2016 is rage, and this is a very angry book. Which makes sense, as it’s the story of the princess from some of Western culture’s most beloved–and most monstrously unfair–fairy tales, stitched together here as the story of a singular heroine who learns to channel her pain and fury into action that helps her move on from what has been done to her. It’s a powerful validation of rage as a response to injustice and victimization, and it’s beautifully written to boot.
Buy it here.

Poison or Protect and Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger
I have enjoyed Gail Carriger’s steampunk-ish romance adventure novels in the past, but I’ve never gotten hugely into them, and this year I learned why. They’re all just too long. 2016 found Carriger kicking off not one but two novella series–the first dealing with the now-grown characters from her YA Finishing School books and the second detailing the romances of queer minor characters from the Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocol series–and the first installments of both are delightfully fun and sexy enough to be exactly what I need to fill my occasional desire for light smut.
Buy Poison or Protect.
Buy Romancing the Inventor.

The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)
The Snow Queen reimagined as a queer romance adventure? Yes, please. I do think this book might be over the word count for eligibility as a novella for the Hugo Awards but not by much, and it’s short enough and a fast enough read that it feels more like a novella than even a short novel. Simply magical. If you haven’t read this one yet, it’s the ideal book to curl up with a cup of hot cocoa and a blanket and read on a cold winter’s night.
Buy it here.