Cats Luv Coffee Book Reviews

Feature Fiction || The Whisper of Death by Kevin Koelbl

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 22:49:13 +0000

Published September 1, 2026

Some doors are locked to keep you in. This one was sealed to keep the end of the world out.

Harvey Covington wakes with tubes in his arms, no memory of his name, and four strangers who know as little as he does.

They call their captor The Host. He restocks their food without ever being seen and leaves nothing behind but a note claiming they chose this life underground. None of them believe it.

As starvation sets in and the group turns on itself, Harvey discovers something waking inside him — abilities that shouldn't be possible, and a truth far worse than any prison. The memories they lost weren't taken to protect them.

They were taken to hide what he did.

Beyond that vault door lies a dead and gray world. Cities emptied. The infected roaming in place of the people they used to be, hollowed out like zombies by something ancient that Harvey set loose with his own hand.

It has a name. And it remembers his.

The Whisper of Death is coming for the last thing standing between it and eternal life — and Harvey is the only one who can stop what he started.

Kevin Koelbl is a fiction author and storyteller who spent eight years serving in the National Guard before trading the uniform for the page. His writing spans dark fantasy, sci-fantasy, and beyond — genre-bending stories built around morally complex characters, high stakes, and worlds that don't play by the rules. Kevin believes the best fiction doesn't stay inside the lines, and he brings that same restless spirit to every story he tells. When he's not writing, he's chasing new experiences across the globe, convinced that the best stories live somewhere between the places you've been and the ones you haven't found yet. The Whisper of Death is his debut novel.

Review || The House Built on Alligator Bones by Sophia Huneycutt

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 23:38:29 +0000

Published October 6, 2026 by Dutton

The Greers built their fortune on alligator bones.

Dartrine Beaumont believes her mother’s sudden death has left her alone in the world—until she learns of long-lost wealthy relatives living in Florida. Confused but delighted by the possibility of extended family, Dart travels to her grandmother’s stately Gilded Age mansion on Amelia Island for answers, just in time to stake a claim on an unusual inheritance: an alligator farming empire.

Her arrival at Greer House isn’t everything she hoped. Without warning, Dart finds herself in fierce competition with her grandmother’s arrogant heir-apparent, and tensions rise as threatening acts of vandalism escalate on one of the farms. More unsettling is her hostile grandmother’s fanatical belief that the danger stems from a curse; according to legend, a larger-than-life alligator hunted down by a bloodthirsty ancestor still haunts the family. Yet Dart can’t deny that the farm’s placid alligators hiss only at Greers, or that a shadowy figure creeps through the mansion’s halls, plaguing her with suspicions that the mythical alligator and monstrous, long-dead matriarch may have unfinished business.

As Dart uncovers the truth about her violent birthright, she faces a terrible accept her place in her family’s grim legacy or forge a new path by slaying a different beast entirely.

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The premise of this one had me completely sold. Florida Gothic? A crumbling mansion? An alligator farming empire haunted by a vengeful spirit? The bones (ha!) of something genuinely great are here, and I really wanted this book to deliver. It didn't quite get there for me, and I've been chewing on why.

The MC: Let's start with Dart. I wanted to root for her: she's grieving, she's an outsider, she's walking into a family that doesn't want her there. But her desperation to fit in with the Greers drove me absolutely crazy! These people are hostile to her from page one, and she just keeps trying to ingratiate herself with them anyway. I get that she is starved for family and connection, I do, but at some point it tips over from sympathy into frustration, and I lost patience with her faster than I expected to.

The Horror: The central threat, Ironheart, the alligator spirit haunting the family, sounds like a wild, creepy concept. And there are flashes of atmosphere where the swamp and the mansion genuinely drip with unease. But the tension never really builds into anything. Every time the story starts to feel genuinely unsettling, it pulls back. The family curse storyline resolves in a way that felt tidy rather than terrifying, and I finished the book feeling like I'd been promised something that never fully arrived.

The Setting: The muggy ambiance is doing heavy lifting here, and it does it well! Huneycutt clearly loves Florida's particular brand of gorgeous, rotting strangeness, and Amelia Island is rendered with care and detail.

One thing I do want to flag loudly: there is a significant amount of animal harm in this book. Given that the story centers on an alligator farm, this isn't exactly surprising, but it's woven throughout and unavoidable. If that's a hard trigger for you, please go in prepared or sit this one out.

If you're a die-hard for Southern Gothic and you can vibe with a slow, more character-driven read, there's something here for you. But if you need the horror to solidify, you might walk away a little underwhelmed.

Review || Milkteeth by Caitlin Starling

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 20:56:38 +0000

Published October 20, 2026, by St. Martin's Press

From the bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence comes a new, genre-bending supernatural horror about a vampire broodmother fighting against her own monstrous descent.

Beatrice is a broodmother: a vampire responsible for nursing newly made fledglings through the first years of their unlife. She nests in an abandoned, isolated warren of office space beneath her patron's skyscraper, raising two fractious fledglings: Gorgeous—once a heartthrob, now to all appearances a living corpse—who longs for the return of the lover who made him immortal with all the fervor of a rebellious teen, and Fortunata, the scion of Beatrice's mistress, alien and ambitious in her desires.

But when Beatrice decides to take on a third fledgling, the product of an attempted siring gone wrong, teetering between vampiric purity and ghoulish depravity, Beatrice finds herself strained to breaking between the societal and physical demands of her position, her own ravenous hunger, and an obsessive need to discover what’s happening to her—because her body is changing too, transforming her into something even more monstrous. She begins to crave the taste of flesh, something anathema to all vampires, and to swing between desperate hunger and vicious power.

Desperate to master herself once more, Beatrice courts a mortal OBGYN who might be able to unravel the secrets of her unnatural anatomy. But soon their connection threatens the secrecy of her vampiric coven as well as the safety and development of her dependent nurslings… and the humans they stand to slaughter if left to their own devices.

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Motherhood in horror seems to be all the rage these days, but Milkteeth takes it in a brand new direction. Who knew vampires need mommy too?

Most vampire stories are focused on the change to vampire. Someone gets bitten by a vampire, dies, wakes up again, and bam, new vampire. Milkteeth takes it a different direction and questions what happens in between life and undeath and life again. What steps have to be taken for a newly turned vampire to become a productive member of vampire society? What does feeding look like as a hungry newly undead? How does a fledgling learn to control its hunger so the world isn't littered with dead bodies?

As a broodmother, Beatrice does all that and more for newly turned vampires or "fledgings". However, while she's trying to keep her fledglings fed, teach them to control their hunger, and generally trying to keep them from becoming a menance, strange things start happening to her too. The changes become more and more concerning and her hunger is getting worse, her body is changing, and none of it makes sense. Beatrice turns to a mortal doctor for help, which brings a whole other set of problems.

Instead of treating the fledgling as a finished vampire the second they rise from the transformation, Starling gives us the messy, prolonged, very physical process of becoming one. It made me look at the vampire as an entirely different creature instead of just a human with fangs. The broodmother angle brought something new and different too, but I think what I liked most about Milkteeth is that it made vampires feel weird again. Not sexy and brooding. Not tragic and moody. Just weird and very unhuman. I guess what I'm saying is that mothering made vampires less human instead of more. See? Weird.

Feature Fiction || Tide of Ebon Hollow by David Baldus

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:59:00 +0000

Published September 2, 2026

Ebon Hollow has always kept its secrets close.

When Jeni Michaelson returns to the rituals her family taught her as a child, the old rules no longer feel like superstition. Hold the threshold. Count the beats. Never answer what calls from the other side.

Then the house begins answering back.

As an unnatural tide approaches the isolated coastal town, Jeni and those closest to her uncover generations of hidden journals, forbidden rituals, and a secret buried beneath Ebon Hollow long before any of them were born. Something imprisoned beneath the island is waking—and it has spent centuries learning the voices of the people who keep it contained.

Every answer draws them deeper into a legacy built on sacrifice. Every discovery makes it harder to know whom they can trust.

David Baldus is a Marine Corps veteran and the author of Tides of Ebon Hollow, his debut novel.

After more than sixteen years of service in the United States Marine Corps, David traded military life for a career in recruiting—but never lost his fascination with dark stories, unexplained things, and the question of what ordinary people will do when faced with something they cannot explain or escape.

His fiction blends slow-burn gothic horror, supernatural mystery, family bonds, and atmospheric settings, with an emphasis on characters who feel human even when the world around them becomes anything but.

David lives in Oklahoma with his wife and family. Tides of Ebon Hollow is his first published novel.

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming September 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:36:00 +0000

Looking for the best new horror books releasing this month?

September has arrived, which means fall is right around the bend and the horror shelves are getting ready for their busiest season of the year.

And apparently publishers decided that September needed everything.

We've got haunted houses, witches, demons, vampires, cursed forests, murderous weddings, folk horror, cosmic horror, gothic horror, body horror, haunted hotels, evil trees, terrifying children, terrifying adults, and at least one book where the title alone compels me to read it in a dark room.

So grab your TBR list, clear some space on the nightstand, and let's see what horror books are coming your way this month.

Want to see what's coming for the rest of the year? Check out my This Year in Horror 2026 for the full list of upcoming horror releases.

September 1
Scratch Moss by David Barnett
Five different time periods. One mining community. And something horrible buried beneath Scratch Moss Hall.

Spanning 1865 to 2025, this folk horror follows generations of people connected to a Yorkshire mining town where coal isn't the only thing lurking underground. As the community changes, the stories of Red Clogs refuse to disappear.

Night of the Blood Moon by J.W. Holmes
A mysterious drifter is arrested by the sheriff of a small town on the night of a full moon. His warning is simple: if he's still in custody when the moon comes out, everyone is going to die.
A full moon, a monster storm, and a stranger who says everyone is going to die.

Light Come, Light Go by N.L. CASTLE
In 1999, William Delaney arrives on Portland Island with his two daughters, hoping its six hundred years of secrets will inspire his next book. But the island has other plans.

Seven centuries earlier, the Black Death arrives with sailor Galfridus, followed by something much older and stranger. Now two families are being drawn toward the same stone, the same crack in the earth, and the same white-haired girl who refuses to stay dead.

Six hundred years of secrets and one very dead girl who refuses to stay that way.

The Nudge by Joseph Fink
From the co-creator of Welcome to Night Vale comes a strange new illustrated novella that proves sometimes the smallest little push can send your life somewhere very dark.
Sometimes you don't need a shove. A nudge is enough.

An immaculate deception by Isabella Livino
It's 1870s Brazil, and a pregnant young woman finds herself trapped in her lover's isolated family home.

Unfortunately, the family has made a deal with the devil, and their version of hospitality is about to become considerably less welcoming.

goodnight monsters by suzanne junered
Lia is pregnant, but she's not sure she wants to be a mother. Obsessed with death, she blackmails her way into a job at a forensic anthropology center known as The Body Farm, where her fascination with murder begins turning into something darker. Then someone she’s fantasized about killing turns up dead at the Farm, and as more people around her die, Lia can no longer tell where her murderous fantasies end and reality begins.

blacktail by scott hawkins
A wolf loses his mate to humans, and grief turns into a bloody quest for revenge.
But when Blacktail's fury catches the attention of an ancient feline witch, revenge becomes something much bigger. He may have the chance to awaken an ancient Forest God and help bring about the downfall of humanity.

Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison
It's the perfect destination wedding. Beautiful venue. Gorgeous weather. Love is in the air.
Unfortunately, Willa's ex-fiancé is there with someone else, and then the weekend starts repeating itself.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something bloody, something that keeps happening over and over again.

we are for the dark by gretchen mcneil
A missing-person investigation takes an FBI agent-turned-Catholic-priest and a young constable to a remote island off Newfoundland.

The two don't trust each other, but they're going to have to work together because something ancient, hungry, and very evil lives beneath the island.

assisted living by gianaclis caldwell
Margie Thermopolis just wants to survive her government job, retire with her four cats, and spend her days watching roller derby.

Instead, she's sent to inspect a fancy new assisted living facility built on the site where her little brother died fifty years earlier. Then an early blizzard traps everyone inside, and an ancient forest spirit decides it's time to settle some old scores.

September 3
suicide demon by c.w. anderson
The title pretty much tells you this one isn't here to play nice.

A supernatural horror story involving demons, death, and the sort of entity you really don't want answering when you call for help.

as the snow gathers by mere joyce
Aplin Shade is a remote Canadian town built on the bones of a settlement that vanished without a trace.

Dominic wants nothing more than to escape with Lex, the logger he secretly loves. But the forest is home to the Fanteur, shadowy beings who drain blood from the dead and return their bodies for burial. They've never attacked the living.

Until now.

September 8

Pictures of You by Josh Malerman
Emily wakes up in a beautiful room with no memory of how she got there.

A mysterious artist is watching. There's an empty picture frame waiting nearby. And Emily soon realizes she's become part of something she never agreed to.

All Hallows Eve
Nineteen original horror stories from some seriously impressive names in the genre, all centered around the traditions, history, and horrors of Halloween.

With stories from writers including Josh Malerman, Stephen Graham Jones, Garth Nix, John Langan, Nathan Ballingrud, and more, this is basically an entire haunted house full of nightmares in anthology form.

the raven by susan mccauley
A gothic horror steeped in mystery, darkness, and the lingering presence of the past.

McCauley's newest novel brings a supernatural edge to a story that promises secrets, danger, and the kind of atmosphere where you should probably avoid wandering around alone at night.

the exorcism of faeries by j. l. vampa
Faeries aren't always tiny winged creatures handing out flowers.

Sometimes they're ancient, dangerous, and very much in need of an exorcism.

This dark supernatural horror takes the familiar idea of faeries and gives it a much nastier twist.

our dark unraveling by margot mcgovern
Two roommates are devastated when their classmate and ex-boyfriend dies in a freak accident.

Then his ghost appears on campus.

As the haunting unfolds, the two women are forced to confront unfinished business, toxic relationships, and the things the dead aren't quite ready to leave behind.

the quiet resurrection of sister evelida livingston by nick wallin
Witchcraft was supposed to be a game.

Then teenagers start turning up dead.

When two teens are burned alive in a corn maze and ritualistic murders begin piling up, Sister Eve is called in. She can see echoes of the dead and glimpses of the future, which is probably not a particularly relaxing superpower.

darling by mercedes m. yardley
A dark Southern Gothic story filled with secrets, strange people, and the kind of beautiful darkness Yardley does so well.

This is one for readers who like their horror atmospheric, emotionally messy, and just a little bit wicked.

feed the tree by wendy dalrymple
In 1889 Florida, a young woman desperate to save her dying father turns to a swamp witch for help.

The witch can grant her wish, but there's one condition: she must lure unsuspecting men into the swamp and feed the tree.

Because apparently even magic comes with a payment plan

September 15
Rooted by Leopoldo Goût

Aurora returns to Mexico City to celebrate the return of stolen artifacts, including a mysterious statue of an Aztec god known as the Flayed One.
Then her memories start coming apart, reality begins to warp, and the god she thought was safely buried starts making its presence known.

Something of a Calling by Zoje Stage

Zoje Stage heads into ecohorror with a story that brings the natural world uncomfortably close to home.
When the investigation into a mysterious death pulls people into a world where nature isn't simply something to admire, the line between predator and prey starts getting very blurry.
Nature absolutely does not want you here.

A Thousand Monstrous Forms by Saratoga Schaefer

It's Bluebeard, but sapphic, gothic, romantic, and considerably more horrifying.
Artist Poppy Reed falls for wealthy art dealer Celia Marie Fox and moves into her lonely mansion, where the beautiful surroundings hide a very dark secret.
If your new wife has a creepy mansion and a mysterious locked room, maybe don't unpack your suitcase.

I Am the Monster Under the Bed by Emily Zinnikas

Something lives under Willa's bed.
As a child, that invisible creature taught her how to read. As an adult, Willa is a successful but reclusive painter and the controversial sole survivor of a massacre that killed six teenagers.
When she returns to her hometown, she finds the possessed forest that took her friends waiting for her.
September 22

our cut of salt by deena helm

Three generations of Palestinian women are drawn back to an ancestral home in Haifa haunted by secrets, ghosts, and a history that refuses to stay buried.
Marina returns to the house her grandmother was forced to leave, only to discover that the house remembers everything.
Some haunted houses are haunted by ghosts. Others are haunted by history.

Incarnate by Alma Katsu

Dorothy has spent her life wanting to be seen, so working for a company developing cutting-edge deepfake technology seems like a perfect opportunity.
Then she discovers that the company's technology can offer something far more dangerous than internet fame.
Think The Picture of Dorian Gray for the age of AI, with body horror and a Faustian bargain thrown in.
Be careful what you wish for, especially when the algorithm is listening.

kill your darlings by yuvashri Harish

Thulasi is babysitting on Halloween when a simple playdate accidentally summons a horde of monsters from a book of horror stories.
Even worse, the town's famous author, Addison Greer, has been summoned too, and she's got a revenge plan.
Now Thulasi and another unlucky teenager have until midnight to stop her.
in the woods they wait by carrie lee south

Fifteen years ago, Audrey's little brother disappeared in Devil's Den State Park.
Now she's a park ranger with expertise in wilderness search and rescue, and another child has vanished in those same woods.
The woods are lovely, dark, and apparently full of things that eat children.

Mazywood by Tananarive Due

In the 1920s, Mazelle Washington makes a wish for a friend and finds Scout, an extraordinarily intelligent dog who helps transform her into a Hollywood star.
Decades later, Mazelle's grandson Johnny takes his family to her remote California retreat, where the family discovers that fame, fortune, and wishes all came with a price.
Every family has secrets. Some families inherit monsters.

call off the dark by halliE shepherd

After her husband is murdered, Helen impulsively marries a near stranger and moves with him to an off-grid farmhouse in rural Washington.
She isn't exactly thriving in her new life, but then a mysterious stranger appears and starts disturbing the carefully constructed world she's built around herself.

crone by keith rosson

A father searching for his missing daughter finds himself pulled into a world of darkness that is both disturbingly human and something much worse.
When you're looking for someone you love, you don't always get to choose what you find.

insatiable by erica ridley

Catriona Cameron gets a scholarship to an elite boarding school on the Isle of Skye, where she's one of only six girls.
Then she's cursed with supernatural beauty, unpredictable powers, and an insatiable hunger for men who prey on women.
The more she feeds, the more powerful she becomes. Unfortunately, she's starting to wonder what she's becoming herself.

demonology for overachievers by lily anderson

Apparently summoning a demon isn't nearly as difficult as it should be.
All you need is a drop of blood, a birthday candle, and a name.
Which sounds like a perfectly reasonable extracurricular activity until the demon actually answers.

#vandeath by brian asman

A road trip, a van, and a hashtag that should probably have stayed offline.
This horror novel takes the increasingly questionable idea of documenting everything online and gives it a deadly turn.
sometimes i scare myself by jeneva rose

Three horror stories. A dinner party. A quiet house. A roadside stop.
In one story, a séance goes horribly wrong. In another, a family discovers their dream home has a terrifying history. And in the third, a roadside stop leads to something much darker than anyone expected.

hail mary by elizabeth urso

A horror story that takes a familiar phrase and sends it somewhere much darker.
Expect religious imagery, supernatural trouble, and the kind of situation where praying for help may not be enough.
roots & wrath by e.j. wenstrom

Once there were six witches.
Then they performed a secret ritual in the dark woods, and only five came back.
Eighteen years later, the death of their mentor forces the remaining witches together again, and they're bound to continue her work until their magical bond is broken by death.
Nothing brings old friends together like a dead mentor, unresolved trauma, and a magical curse.

September 26

it pierces by jack finn

Four Marine veterans. One hunting trip. One very pissed-off ancient evil.
When the men disturb something lurking in the Adirondacks, their weekend getaway becomes a fight for survival. Haunted by their violent past and hunted by a supernatural force, they quickly discover the woods remember what they did.

September 29

The Sisters of Crimson House by Melissa Anderson Sweazy

Charley Bryde comes from a long line of psychics, but she's the one woman in her family who didn't inherit the gift.
When tragedy leaves her responsible for Crimson House, she turns the family mansion into a haunted attraction and starts faking psychic readings to keep the family business alive.
Then something buried inside the house wakes up.

Nightjars by Michael Wehunt

A serial killer, vampire fiction, an unreliable narrator, and a man forced to confront the truth about his own life.
Wehunt's follow-up to The October Film Haunt promises something lean, nasty, and deeply unsettling.
Nothing says “I need to reevaluate my life” like realizing the monster might actually be you.

Something Followed Us Home by Cynthia Pelayo

This anthology of Latiné horror brings together stories inspired by folklore, superstition, legends, myth, fairy tales, and the things families whisper about when they think you're not listening.
Featuring writers from across the Latiné horror community, it's a collection about the stories that follow us, sometimes literally.
The Ship of Death by Kyle Winkler

Cole and Lorraine playtest board games for extra money, so when a mysterious tabletop game called The Ship of Death arrives on their doorstep, they figure it's just another job.
Then the game starts taking over their house, their minds, and eventually reality itself.
Told entirely through game reports, emails, journals, forum posts, and police reports, this is cosmic horror for anyone who's ever thought, “It's just a game.”

Jenny Will Eat You Now by Gillian Daniels

The title is a warning.
Jenny will, in fact, eat you now.
Beyond that, you're probably going to want to approach this one with an empty stomach and absolutely no assumptions about where the story is headed.
Trad Wife by Sarah Langan

The perfect domestic life can hide some very ugly things.
Langan takes the fantasy of the picture-perfect traditional household and turns it into something darker, sharper, and considerably more horrifying.
Nothing says “traditional family values” like screaming internally while pretending everything is fine.

Hollow Folk by Andrew K. Clark

Ethan takes a job as the night auditor at the aging Holloway Mountain Resort, expecting paperwork and a quiet paycheck.
Instead, mysterious lights appear over the Appalachian mountains, owl gargoyles come alive, every clock stops at 3 a.m., and Ethan realizes the hotel is actually a boundary holding something ancient in place.
Hotel California had nothing on this place. You can check in. Getting out is another matter.

the house of gardenias by Isabel Cañas

A gothic YA horror novel from the author of The Hacienda and The Possession of Alba Díaz.
A young woman returns to a house filled with family secrets, supernatural danger, and the sort of history that makes you wonder why anyone ever thought buying a creepy old mansion was a good idea.

And there you have it: a fantastic lineup of new horror books coming your way this September and we haven't even talked about October!

Which means there is absolutely no excuse for running out of things to read as we head into spooky season.

Whether you're craving gothic mansions, witches, monsters, haunted houses, folk horror, cosmic weirdness, slashers, or something that is going to make you stare suspiciously at your own basement, September has you covered.

Happy reading, and remember: if something in the basement calls your name, don't answer.

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Feature Fiction || The Bookmark by Eugene A. Stripe

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 23:08:00 +0000

Published August 16, 2026

What happens when a story refuses to end with the final page?

When a series of mysterious deaths draws Chicago detectives Andrew Hudginson and Ben Turner into an increasingly disturbing investigation, one object keeps appearing: a strange bookmark that looks different to everyone who sees it.

It reveals the reader’s deepest desire and seems to make it real. But every wish comes with a price.

As the investigation leads from present-day Chicago to the secrets of a British family and Damascus in 1330, Andy and Ben uncover the history of an object that has survived for centuries, waiting for its next reader.

Some books are meant to be read. Others are meant to find you.

Eugene A. Stripe writes psychological and supernatural thrillers where history is never merely background, the supernatural is never an escape, and every choice has consequences.

Review || The Flesh King by Richard Kadrey

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 01:32:49 +0000

Published October 7, 2025 by Titan Books

Tilda, Ford and Neuland hit NYC to hunt a flesh-eating monster in this bloody, macabre and witty supernatural noir packed twists, turns, betrayals and showdowns. Perfect for fans of Cassandra Khaw, Nat Cassidy and Chuck Tingle.

Ford, Neuland and Tilda return home after the events of The Pale House Devil to try and make peace with the NYC crime syndicates. Then they’ll only be welcomed back if they take on a job for free – hunting down, and killing, The Flesh King, a gruesome killer who is stalking the city, leaving a macabre and bloody trail wherever he goes. Caught up in a twisted set of conspiracies and bloodletting, the monster hunters step up to do what they do best once more – take down the unstoppable evil.

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Richard Kadrey has never been an author I would describe as predictable. His books tend to involve strange people doing questionable tthings, an unhealthy amount of violence, and at least a few moments where I find myself thinking, What the hell did I just read? And that's exactly what I got with The Flesh King.

This is the second book in the Discreet Eliminators series, following The Pale House Devil, and Ford, Neuland, and Tilda are back. This time, they're hunting a killer who has been leaving a particularly nasty trail of mutilated bodies behind him.

I really like these three characters. They're such an odd group, and I enjoy the way Kadrey throws them together and lets their personalities bounce off each other. They're dangerous in their own ways, but they also have a weird sort of loyalty to one another that makes them fun to follow.

The investigation gets increasingly bizarre as the story goes along. Kadrey is good at taking something that starts out looking like a fairly straightforward murder investigation and turning it into something much stranger. There is plenty of blood and gore, naturally, but it's the strangeness that kept me interested.

My only real complaint is the length. This novella is tiny! The fast pace works for the story, but I would have liked more. More character development, more of the mythology, more time to explore the weirdness that Kadrey has created. I basically finished it and thought, Wait. That's it?

If you liked The Pale House Devil, you'll want to keep going with this series. It's dark, strange, bloody, and has the kind of twisted sense of humor I've come to expect from Kadrey. His books can be violent and bizarre without taking themselves too seriously, and The Flesh King is no exception.

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming August 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Looking for the best new horror books releasing this month?

From gruesome creature features and terrifying haunted houses to gothic horror, vampire novels, supernatural thrillers, historical horror, and unsettling dark fantasy, this month's new horror releases offer plenty of ways to scare yourself silly.

So grab your reading list, lock the doors, and take a look at the horror books coming this month.

august 4

Meat Bees by Dane Erbach

Scarlett Sutton heads to the Smoky Mountains for a summer of family drama and a new job, but instead finds herself caught up in a true-crime mystery involving skeletonized corpses, missing coworkers, and a swarm of yellow jackets with a serious taste for human flesh. As Scarlett and her coworkers investigate a string of gruesome deaths, they discover that the mountain's biggest threat may be small, loud, and very, very angry.

the killing rules by bree despain

Harper Westbrook spends her summers like any normal teenager: cheering, falling for a boy, and killing terrible men with a throwing axe. As one of the Blood Bound, Harper has spent three years hiding a curse that gives her an irresistible bloodlust, but keeping her secret becomes much harder when the boy she loves starts investigating the mysterious death of his father, whom Harper killed in self-defense. As Grayson follows the clues into a hidden world of mythical beasts and monster-hunting men, Harper must stop him before he uncovers the truth and puts her family in danger.

august 11

Them by W.H. Chizmar

A government experiment designed to transport matter across the universe succeeds in bringing something back, but unfortunately, “something alive” turns out to be a very bad sign. When a mysterious shipping container crashes in New England, the alien creatures inside quickly turn humanity from the top of the food chain into a distant memory. Years later, a lone survivor travels through the ruins of the East Coast, searching for other humans while navigating a terrifying new world filled with monsters, isolation, and the ever-present question of whether there’s enough humanity left in anyone to save.

She Haunts Me Still by De Elizabeth

Mallory Webb heads to a former sanitarium turned college campus hoping for a fresh start, but instead finds herself cast as Juliet, haunted by the same blood-soaked wraith that killed her mother, and drawn into a mystery involving cryptic symbols, buried secrets, and a centuries-old bargain made during the New England vampire panic. As Mallory, her enigmatic director Ezra, and an understudy with an eerily similar past begin to uncover how their histories are connected, they find themselves caught in a tragic supernatural love story where Shakespeare's warning about violent delights may be less metaphor and more survival advice.

Saint Delilah by Isabelle Spotts

Delilah is dead, but she has one last thing to do before she can move on: find the man who murdered her and make sure he pays. Trapped between life and death, with terrifying creatures feeding on her suffering and her soul slowly slipping away, Delilah turns to Magda, a spirit medium, and a mysterious stranger who can see and feel her. Together, they must solve Delilah's murder before Halloween, when the veil between the living and the dead drops and she gets one final chance to walk among the living.

a plagued sea by kim bo young

When Mu-young boards a train toward an isolated seaside village during a massive earthquake, she thinks she is choosing the lesser of two evils. Three years later, that decision has left her trapped in a quarantined nightmare where an ancient plague has transformed villagers into fishy monsters, her niece is dead, and Mu-young hunts anyone who breaks isolation. But when a bureaucrat from Seoul arrives and starts stirring up trouble, the village's horrors begin to surface, forcing Mu-young to confront not only the monsters around her, but the question of whether she deserves to survive.

thorns by gregory bastianelli

When Dr. Monica Cucinotta is infected by a deadly contagion that causes thorns to erupt from the body, she is forced to leave the hospital where she has been fighting the pandemic on the front lines. As she crosses a darkened, devastated Italy in search of her loved ones, Monica encounters both the best and worst of humanity, forcing her to question everything she believes about science, faith, and survival.

august 18

Lights! Camera! Frendo! by Adam Cesare

Sabrina Alvarez goes from nobody to the star of a blockbuster movie about the Kettle Springs Massacre, stepping into the role of Quinn Maybrook, the ultimate Final Girl. But when she arrives in Kettle Springs, the town's violent history starts feeling less like movie material and more like a warning. With mysterious deaths piling up, an unhinged director calling the shots, and a community still fractured by tragedy and rage, Sabrina discovers that filming a horror movie in the town where the real horror happened might be a terrible idea.

Scary Movie Night by Miranda Smith

Tippi is ready for a fresh start after escaping her controlling ex, so what better way to celebrate her thirty-fifth birthday than with a lavish horror-movie-themed party in a secluded mansion? But when terrifying messages from her supposedly cross-country ex begin appearing and party guests start disappearing, Tippi realizes someone knows the secret she was determined to take to the grave. With deception closing in from every direction and the killer possibly hiding among her closest friends, Tippi must figure out who she can trust before the night ends.

The House That Eats the Dead by Max Doty

Claire thinks her family's new suburban home is the perfect fresh start, but the house has other plans. Flowers wilt, eggs are found hollow, toys disappear, and Claire soon realizes the impossible truth: the house is hungry, and it feeds on anything that was once alive. When she discovers she can use the house's power, Claire forms a dangerous bond with it, but as its appetite grows, so does the threat to everyone around her.

The Halls of the Dead by S. M. Hallow

In Victorian London, necromancer Irene Shallcross Haley has spent her life protecting forbidden magical knowledge alongside her undead husband, St. John. But when the woman she loves is hanged for witchcraft, Irene refuses to accept death as the end of their story and attempts the impossible: resurrecting Agnes. Unfortunately, Agnes returns with an appetite for raw flesh and a malignant ghost attached to her soul, leaving Irene to restore her lover's humanity while navigating complicated feelings, avoiding the man responsible for Agnes's death, and trying not to attract the attention of the authorities.

And the Sea Gave Up the Dead by William Friend

When Morwenna takes her family to visit her ailing aunt at a crumbling seaside chateau in France, she expects an uncomfortable week surrounded by grief, old family secrets, and a village convinced her aunt had something to do with her husband's disappearance. Instead, she discovers that the house is steeped in ancient magic, the land remembers what happened there centuries ago, and something that once died may be waiting to return. As the chateau begins to change her family, Morwenna must uncover the truth about her uncle's disappearance before the dark history of the house repeats itself.

sleeping sisters by jennifer givhan

Fortuna Miércoles has moved her family across the Rio Grande in hopes of escaping a generations-old curse, but the past is not so easily left behind. When a body turns up in her backyard and a killer known as the Reaper appears to be hunting women once again beneath the ominous Sleeping Sisters, Fortuna finds herself drawn into a deadly mystery alongside Detective Jeanette Palacio, who has spent decades pursuing the ghosts of the women she couldn't save.

these walls remember by del sandeen

When estranged sisters Mickie and Delilah inherit a house in Savannah, they plan to sell it, split the money, and go their separate ways. Unfortunately, the house has other plans, especially after the sisters ignore the ominous warning not to go into the attic. As the home's dark history begins bleeding into the present and Delilah's behavior grows increasingly disturbing, Mickie realizes selling the property is no longer an option. She must uncover what lurks inside 724 Hartford Street and save her sister before the house's hunger consumes them both.

tapeworm by a.p. thayer

When Victor heads to the isolated California desert town of Superstition for his friends' annual getaway, he hopes the trip will help him reconnect with the group and figure out who he is after separating from his wife. Instead, the friends stumble into a strange and seductive vampire infestation that feeds on their desires and threatens to turn their weekend of bonding into something much more sinister. As the town's mysterious Welcoming Committee draws Victor deeper into its orbit, he and his friends discover that Superstition's hospitality comes with a horrifying price.

a (dead) thing like me by e.g. young

Hot Dog is an invisible teenage ghost with a stitched-up mouth, a love of hot dogs with banana peppers, and a desperate desire to be seen as a real girl. When a Ouija board accidentally summons her to a Florida house party, she meets Logan, a grieving artist who can see her and wants to be her friend. But something sinister lurking inside Logan's house knows Hot Dog doesn't belong among the living and is determined to drag her back into the darkness.

back for blood: never whistle at night part ii

The team behind Never Whistle at Night is back with twenty-one brand-new stories from both established and emerging Indigenous writers, proving once again that horror is very much alive and ready to bite. From psychological terror and supernatural nightmares to gruesome monster hunts, Never Whistle at Night, Part Back for Blood explores both the horrors of the unknown and the everyday horror of living under colonialism.

Marla by Jonathan Janz

Every small town has a ghost story, but King's Branch has Marla Gorman. The reclusive young woman living in a creepy Gothic house is rumored to be a prisoner, a witch, or something even stranger. When two men are murdered and Detective Carl Lancaster spots Marla at the exact moment of each death, he becomes convinced she's connected to the killings. Meanwhile, a social worker with a mysterious connection to Marla and a lonely college student are drawn into her orbit, unaware of the terrifying truth about the woman at the center of the town's legends.

ghosts of chanterlands by catherine cavendish

In 1940, Pamela Courtney is evacuated to Chanterlands, the home of her Jilly and Bunny, expecting a summer away from the dangers of war. Instead, she finds a lonely ghost haunting the room where she sleeps and a sinister secret hidden in the neglected attic of the once-grand house. But as the summer unfolds, Pamela discovers that the greatest danger at Chanterlands may not be the war raging beyond its walls, but the dark history lurking inside them.

august 21

Candlelight by d. l. Tolin

In 1986, children across Beaumont, Texas, begin disappearing without a trace, lured away by the mysterious light of candles only they can see. When fifteen-year-old Matthew Dean accidentally tears open a gateway to the world of the fae, he brings something ancient and hungry back with him, forcing his secretive witch mother to confront the history she's spent centuries hiding. As a skeptical detective investigates the growing number of missing children, reality itself begins to unravel around him.

august 25

Blood Rising by Markus Redmond

Kwadzo Okoro has helped build a new Ramanga tribe and establish the Crimson Plantation as a haven for formerly enslaved Africans and their Native allies, but freedom is anything but secure. As powerful slaveholders rally the surrounding community against them, a sun-walking vampire builds an army of her own, and Kwadzo's own blood father turns against him, the fragile rebellion is pushed toward an all-out war.

The Burn Line by Jonathan Sims

London is sweltering, the Underground is unbearable, and five strangers on one unlucky Tube carriage are about to have a very bad day. When a horrific event leaves them with fractured memories and a shared connection they can't explain, a weary driver, disillusioned civil servant, ambitious trader, overwhelmed hotel worker, and unhoused young man must put aside their differences to figure out what happened before the heat, the city, and whatever is coming for them become impossible to survive.

The Unheld by Luke Larkin

Twelve-year-old Charlie is used to a lonely life in the woods, spending her days helping her unpredictable father skin the strange animals he hunts. But when the forest's already bizarre creatures begin growing even stranger and a nightmarish beast drags her father into the wilderness, Charlie sets out to find him with the help of an occult-connected Englishman and a disgraced Northern Cheyenne policeman. As the unlikely trio prepares to face the monster, Charlie must decide whether the father who has always kept her at arm's length is worth saving.

the woods by jessica hamilton

After the devastating death of her teenage daughter, Alice moves her family from the city to a secluded bungalow beside ancient woods, hoping a fresh start will help them heal. But the house comes with a horrifying history: years earlier, a woman murdered her family after claiming they had been replaced by imposters and that her real family had been taken by the woods. As Alice's family begins to fracture and strange figures appear outside, her husband disappears into the forest and returns hours later wearing different clothes with no memory of what happened. Soon, Alice must figure out whether grief and stress are playing tricks on her or whether something ancient and malevolent is reaching out from the trees.

The Devil Knows Her Name by C.N. Vair

In the isolated Appalachian town of Burrsville, Tess Wynne has spent a century protecting her wildlife sanctuary and the delicate balance between nature and humanity after making a deal with the devil to remain in the only home she's ever known. Every autumn, the devil returns with an offer of more power, and every autumn, Tess refuses. But when a new pastor arrives and begins turning the townspeople against her while setting his sights on her sanctuary, Tess is forced to push her ancient magic toward its darkest limits.

The I Scream Truck by I.M. Eerie

John knows curiosity can be dangerous, but that has never stopped him from poking his nose where it doesn't belong. So when the neighborhood ice cream truck suddenly changes from the cheerful Mr. Dandy's to the sinister Mr. Twisty's horror-themed vehicle, John can't help but investigate. Why did Mr. Dandy supposedly retire to Florida? Why is Mr. Twisty making mysterious deliveries to the neighbors at two in the morning? The deeper John digs, the more he realizes that this new ice cream man may be serving up something much more disturbing than dessert.

netherwood by jake arnott

After moving from London to Hastings in hopes of saving their strained marriage, Justine and Adam discover a bolted door in the basement that leads to a mysterious cave containing a witch bottle. Their curiosity draws them into the dark history of the house's previous owner, a chaos-magic-obsessed musician with alleged ties to blood magic and the occult. Despite warnings to leave ancient rituals alone, Adam opens the bottle, unleashing a sinister chain of events that sends his artistic obsession spiraling into something unnatural while Justine is haunted by screams from beneath the house. As she becomes pregnant and people in town begin disappearing or turning up dead, Justine must untangle the truth from the supernatural before the ghosts of the past, and a dark sacrificial ritual, claim them both.

the night pool by lauren lee smith

In the Gold Rush town of Coloma, California, three women from very different worlds are drawn together after witnessing something terrible lurking in the Night Pool. As mining men are brutally murdered one by one and violence threatens to consume the town, Clara, Mei, and Haloke must set aside their differences and join forces against the monsters and men endangering their lives.

The sunken, the adored by Donyae Coles

When Mercy arrives in 1700 Venice as the sole survivor of a slave ship, she carries little more than a letter, a mysterious camera, and a desperate need to build a new life. Her path leads her to an anatomist, a decadent aristocratic household, and an unexpected career photographing the dead, giving her a taste of freedom and a new circle of friends. But something dark and hungry has followed her across the sea and now stalks the canals of Venice, threatening everyone Mercy has come to care about.

So, which of these new horror releases will be joining your TBR?

Whatever you choose, I hope you find something perfectly horrifying to read this month. Just remember: if your new book starts whispering or asking you to open a mysterious door, maybe that's enough reading for the night.

Happy reading, and stay spooky!

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13 Body Horror Books To Make Your Skin Crawl | Scaredy Cat Reading Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:46:00 +0000

Few things are as terrifying as changing from the inside out.

Body horror is one of the most unsettling corners of the horror genre because it takes something familiar, our own bodies, and turns it into something frightening. These stories explore transformation, infection, mutation, obsession, and the terrifying possibility that the thing we trust most can become something we no longer recognize.

From grotesque physical changes to unsettling questions about identity and humanity, these thirteen books deliver nightmares that linger long after the final page.

Welcome to "Under the Skin" books for the Body Horror prompt in the Scaredy Cat Reading Challenge: a year-round horror reading challenge designed to help readers discover every corner of the horror genre.

Looking for the best body horror books? Check out 13 disturbing horror novels featuring mutations, parasites, transformations, and terrifying changes to the human body.

This post is part of the Scaredy Cat Reading Challenge, a year-round horror reading event featuring prompts inspired by monsters, subgenres, and spooky settings. Browse all of the prompts to discover your next terrifying read.

New to the Scaredy Cat Reading Challenge? You can join in at any time and complete the prompts at your own pace.

What Is Body Horror?

Body horror is a subgenre of horror that explores the fear of the human body changing, breaking down, or transforming in disturbing ways.

These stories often feature:

Mutations and physical transformations
Parasites and infestations
Deadly viruses and infections
Medical experiments gone wrong
Disease and decay
Monstrous anatomy

13 BODY Horror Books for the Scaredy Cat Reading Challenge

Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas

A miracle weight-loss drug promises a new body—because what could possibly go wrong?

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

A grave robber finds out that sometimes dead celebrities really do make comebacks.

youthjuice by E.K. Sathue

The secret to eternal youth is probably disgusting. This book confirms it.

wolfworm by t. kingfisher

The story blends classic Southern Gothic vibes with historical fiction and elements of folklore, oh, and botflies.

Afterbirth by Emma Cleary

Pregnancy is already body horror. This book asks: what if it got worse?

you weren't meant to be human by andrew joseph white

A deeply unsettling exploration of identity, transformation, and the possibility that “human” was never the right label to begin with.

Wife Shaped Bodies By Laura Cranehill

Fungal growths, forced conformity, and the horrifying realization that being a “good wife” may involve considerably more body horror than advertised.

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

One exhausted mom discovers that motherhood may be turning her into an actual animal.

Hazelthorn C.G. Drews

Gothic horror, unsettling transformations, and the creeping suspicion that everything is about to get significantly worse.

Itch! by Gemma Amor

It starts with an itch. Unfortunately, it does not end with simply scratching it.

Queen of Teeth by hailey piper

A woman grows teeth in places where teeth absolutely do not belong. Dentistry has officially entered its villain era.

Chlorine by Jade Song

Competitive swimming, mermaid obsession, and the desire to become something other than human.

Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison

A woman gets attacked by a mysterious creature and discovers that anger issues can be very literal.

Continue the Scaredy Cat Reading Challenge

Finished your body horror read?

Keep the scares coming by exploring more prompts from the Scaredy Cat Reading Challenge. From haunted houses and witches to ecohorror, gothic fiction, and creature features, the challenge is designed to help horror fans discover new books throughout the year.

Every prompt is another excuse to add terrifying books to your TBR—and another chance to find your next favorite horror novel.

You might also enjoy:

🧙 The Witching Hour — Witch horror featuring curses, covens, and dark magic.
🏰 Crumbling Castle — Gothic horror where haunted places hold terrifying secrets.
🌲 Grimm Dark — Fairy tale retellings that embrace the horror hidden in classic stories.
🌕 Howl at the Moon — Werewolf horror exploring the monster within.

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming July 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 16:30:00 +0000

July is here, which means longer days, warmer nights, and a whole new crop of horror books ready to ruin your sleep schedule. Whether you want ghosts, monsters, dark fantasy, weird fiction, folk horror, or a little bloodbath with your summer reading, there’s plenty to keep your TBR pile growing.

So grab your sunscreen, lock your doors, and let's take a look at the horror books coming your way in July.

July 7
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

When fashion influencer and grave robber Poppy Stringer is tasked with retrieving the body of flamboyant rockstar and queer icon Eddie Michaels from the medical examiner’s office, things take a decidedly unexpected turn when the corpse wakes up.

From there? A blood-soaked trip through Palm Springs, supernatural chaos, and a whole lot of fabulousness.

Brokeula by Michael J. Seidlinger

James Sugre has lived for centuries, but he’s never been this broke. After bad investments, missed crypto trends, and spending most of his time in his coffin because he can’t afford to go out, this vampire is ready to try anything to escape capitalism. So naturally, he starts a business turning humans into vampires for cash. Immortality is forever. Unfortunately, so are the bills.

The Brides by Charlotte Cross

Before Dracula, there were the Brides. Told across two timelines through letters, diaries, and psychiatric reports, this gothic retelling puts the women at the center of literature’s most famous vampire story. As love, illness, nightmares, and a mysterious man in black draw four women toward Transylvania, one question hangs in the air: There were meant to be four.

The Red Sacrament by Sara Hinkley

Paris, 1869. A coven of vampires runs a theater, follows a strict no-killing-too-many-people policy, and has somehow managed to keep the immortal drama onstage. But with a witch, rival vampires, forbidden attraction, ominous visions, and revolution brewing in the streets, their carefully managed eternity is about to get very messy.

Caught in the In-Between by Alyson Hasson

Two friends. One Ouija board. One massive secret that threatens to tear everything apart.

Honestly, this is exactly why we should stop playing with Ouija boards. Yet somehow, we never learn, do we?

Fun Times at the Bloodbath by Jeff Strand

The most addictive video game ever made—and the only way to stop playing is to die. When Margo’s brother becomes one of the game’s victims, she sets out to expose the people behind it before the game launches nationwide. Unfortunately, Fun Times at the Bloodbath has other plans, and soon the entire country is playing. Game over? More like game over for everyone.

All Her Ghosts by Cynthia Prith

Persephone Green doesn’t have a heartbeat—but she does have something ancient and inhuman stirring where her heart should be. When she meets the equally strange Sebastian, ghosts begin swarming around them, flowers bloom from the dead, and the two are pulled into a cross-country conspiracy involving a deserted facility, government agents, and Persephone’s deeply inconvenient mother. A supernatural road trip, a love story, and a battle over the fate of the living and the dead? No heartbeat, no problem.

July 14

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die by Mallory Arnold

Three women. One cheating boyfriend. One remote, snow-covered cabin. When their revenge plan ends with their shared ex dead, the getaway turns into a locked-room murder mystery—with the killer trapped inside. As suspicion, secrets, and the freezing wilderness close in, the women must figure out whether one of them is a murderer… or if something much worse is waiting outside. Couples' retreat? More like a killer retreat.

Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist

After a violent incident at work, Tamsin escapes to a remote cottage for a fresh start. Unfortunately, her new home is actually semi-detached, and the unsettling woman on the other side of the wall seems to be hiding something. As strange disturbances begin in Tamsin’s house and locals share disturbing stories about the property, her paranoia starts to spiral. The perfect cottage getaway is just one thin wall away from becoming a nightmare.

Scary Movie Night by Miranda Smith

A horror-movie-themed birthday party at a secluded mansion? What could possibly go wrong? When Tippi starts receiving threatening messages from her supposedly cross-country ex and her guests begin disappearing one by one, she realizes the killer may be closer than she thinks—and the secret she buried may be the reason everyone is in danger. The call is coming from inside the house.

The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager

A group of academics descends into sea caves to study an ancient Cult of the Leviathan. Then the entrance collapses, trapping them underground with strange artifacts, scattered bones, and an ancient trial they never agreed to take. One by one, they’ll be forced to confront their greatest sins. Atone or die.

White Rabbit by Abigail Rose-Marie

Eleven-year-old Penelope is already haunted by her father’s disappearance and her mother’s grief when she moves into a yellow house once owned by Sylvia Plath. Then Plath’s ghost begins to appear. As poetry, memory, and reality start to blur, Penelope must figure out whether she’s being haunted by a ghost—or by grief itself. Sometimes the house isn’t the only thing falling apart.

Fear Files: Hide and Seek by Christopher Edge

Nobody knows who created the Darkive—a mysterious database of firsthand accounts documenting ghosts, paranormal entities, and unexplained anomalies. When Adam and his best friend, Sol, stumble into a strange abandoned town during a disastrous camping trip, they’re forced to play a game of hide-and-seek. The rules are confusing, the town is empty, and something is definitely hiding with them. Ready or not, here it comes.

July 15

My Monsters Ain't like yours by r.j. Joseph

Monsters are personal—but they’re also universal. This collection explores the ways horror helps us examine monstrosity, from who gets labeled a monster to what those labels reveal about ourselves. Because while our monsters may look different, our nightmares have more in common than we think. My monsters aren’t like yours. They’re worse.

July 21

Carry Me to My Grave by Christopher Golden

When Malcolm’s dying mother makes him promise to carry her body back to her birthplace in Maine, he expects a difficult journey—not a supernatural road trip through a world waking up to collect an old debt. As violence erupts aboard the train and ancient evils emerge from their hiding places, Malcolm and Violet must get Maggie home before everything buried comes looking for her.

Unnamed Bones by Lora Senf

Sixteen-year-old Harrow Lane travels to an island that shouldn’t exist to uncover the truth about her father’s death—and the curse he accidentally gave her at birth. Then the boat sinks, something in the darkness starts laughing, and Harrow discovers that the island has rules she doesn’t understand, creatures that don’t want her there, and absolutely no way to call for help. Add in emotions with human faces, a monster made of pure terror, and the possible end of the world, and you’ve got Inside Out in hell—with significantly worse coping mechanisms.

We Sent Them Down Singing by Libby Edwardson

Thirteen years after her mother vanished, Phinnie “Skinny” Caldwell is still haunted by nightmares of the last time she saw her alive. When the man responsible, Zell Dorsey, returns to their small West Virginia coal camp, Skinny is determined to uncover the truth. But behind Zell’s charming smile lurks something far older—and far more monstrous than the devil himself. Appalachian grief, dark secrets, and oil-slicked monsters? Pass the sweet tea.

The Winter Folk by Jen Julian

Moth knows the Winter Folk are dangerous. Her mother warned her. But when she’s broke, desperate, and offered a housekeeper’s contract at Deerhaven—a secret Appalachian lodge where every winter guest is something other than human—she signs anyway. Decades later, Moth returns to the place that banished her, haunted by memories of the antlered Mr. Oslin, the friends she left behind, and the obsession that may have cost her everything.

Funerals Are for the Living by Sami Ellis

After a car crash leaves Junie Daniels with a dead sister, fragmented memories, and a mother too checked-out to plan a funeral, the cheapest grave plot she can find is in a nearby town with a dark history and rumors of even darker magic. When strange things begin happening at the cemetery, Junie and her best friend Omari investigate, only to discover that Williamsville wants both Daniels sisters. And Junie will do anything to protect her sister—even if she’s already dead.

A Fate Worse Than Drowning by Sarah L. Hawthorn

A year ago, Elle made a deal with the devil to save her sister. Now she tends a lighthouse on a desolate island, luring ships to their destruction to pay the price. But when the devil demands more—and a mysterious woman washes ashore—Elle must choose between sacrificing another ship, breaking her sister’s heart, or losing her own soul. Turns out, the devil really does come with hidden fees.

July 28

A Penance for Crows by Shannon Morgan

On a remote Irish island ruled by the church and haunted by old superstitions, eccentric painter Grizela Urquhart has spent forty years as an outsider. Then a young priest is found dead with a diabolical symbol carved into his chest, crows darken the skies, and demonic whispers begin invading Grizela’s mind. As the island descends into hysteria, Grizela must protect the four young girls under her care while confronting the dark secrets lurking beneath Beanna Dubh.

It's Under the Deck by Jacy Morris

Phil discovers something dying under his deck emitting a horrid stench. When he attempts to remove the corpse, strange things begin to happen, and Phil descends into a strange pit of insanity.

The Séance Garden by Juliet Blackwell

The Hook: Professor Harper Grae studies ghosts, witches, and the occult, but she absolutely does not believe in any of them. Then a cheesy ghost tour leads her to a real murder at a nearly two-hundred-year-old mansion, where she sees something she cannot explain. When Harper discovers another woman was murdered beneath the same cypress tree almost two centuries earlier, she begins to wonder if the Perles Mansion is truly haunted. Turns out, the best way to ruin a skeptic’s day is with a murder and a ghost.

Hail Holy Queens by Chris McGinley

It’s 1887, and the nuns of an isolated Berkshire convent have enough prayers, hard work, and homemade Italian amaro to keep them busy. Then a pack of monstrous Gulo descends from the mountains and attacks the convent. After killing one of the beasts, the sisters decide the best defense is a good offense and head into the snowy wilderness to hunt the rest.

Luckily, they have help from the mysterious Long Nun, a warrior-saint from France who claims to have killed werewolves and other vicious creatures. She teaches the sisters to embrace their darker instincts and unleash their inner savages. Nuns with crossbows, monsters in the snow, and a holy war fueled by amaro? Amen.

July 29

Ripped Up the Middle in Two by Viggy Parr Hampton

New mom Sadie is already struggling with the loss of her identity, autonomy, and sleep when a walk with her three-month-old daughter reveals a secret trail in the woods. At the end is a tiny door surrounded by tiny bones. The trail only appears when Sadie is alone, and something is waiting on the other side. Because apparently motherhood needed one more terrifying thing to worry about.

Calliope Street by Josh Hanson

Jack and Avery think they’ve found the perfect fixer-upper. The strange collage of pornographic clippings in the basement is weird, but probably just part of the house’s quirky charm. Then the house wakes up. Now the walls are bleeding, the house is alive, and it demands homage. Nothing says “dream home” like a sentient house with artistic ambitions and a taste for blood.

July 30

The Wetworks Miracle by Caleb Sierra

Humanity escaped a dying world through a mysterious gate, only to end up dependent on the Root, a strange plant that provides the food they need to survive. Then a bloody accident creates a new kind of person, and suddenly the Root has something to say. It wants to give humanity a miracle, even if that miracle means transforming their bodies in ways they never asked for. The Root is listening. The Root is whispering. And apparently, the Root has plans for your body.

The summer of 2026 is bringing a seriously eclectic lineup of horror. We have ghosts, witches, vampires, Ouija boards, haunted homes, folk horror, body horror, sea monsters, mysterious bones, and at least one thing hiding under a deck.

In other words: the horror TBR is thriving.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have several books to add to my list and absolutely no room left on my shelves.

Happy reading—and remember: if something under your deck says your name, you did not hear it.

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Review || I Am The Monster Under Your Bed by Emily Zinnikas

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:34:00 +0000

I Am The Monster Under Your Bed by Emily Zinnikas
Published September 15th 2026 by St. Martins Press

Something lives under Willa’s bed. As an adult, her fondest childhood memories are of the invisible entity under her bed who taught her how to read. Now thirty-two, Willa is a reclusive but successful painter until a bombshell news report exposes her identity as the controversial survivor of the unsolved Rapture Mystery Slayings, a small-town tragedy that splashed across headlines during her senior year of high school. Six teenagers died in the woods while Willa walked free, and everyone thinks she killed them.

When an old classmate calls about a funeral, Willa reluctantly travels to her sleepy hometown, where the possessed forest that stole her friends looms. The trees whistle for her attention, but she knows better than to listen. And the unexplained knocking from the shadows in the basement of her decaying childhood home is honestly the least of her problems.

As her past pulls her back to the place where she swore she’d never return, Willa is drawn toward the monster she left behind—and becoming the villain her hometown has always believed her to be.

Add to Goodreads

I Am the Monster Under the Bed is an ambitious debut that dreams big, and Zinnikas has some nightmares to share.

There is a lot happening here: multiple plot threads, timelines folding in on each other, flashbacks woven throughout, and there are moments where it gets in its own way. I had to have some faith that it would all converge in some mysterious way.

Willa is an unreliable narrator with survivor's guilt. She's impulsive, possibly a little bonkers, and has childhood trauma dragging her down as well. I actually liked her a lot.

The supernatural elements in particular feel underexplaned, and left me wanting more. The rules of the monster-verse felt fuzzy, and I kept wanting Zinnikas to slow down and let the weirdness breathe and really show itself. Maybe that readers must fill in the blanks is why it works in the end.

It is the kind of finale that makes you sit with the book closed for a second because you didn't see it coming, but it lands exactly right. Surprising and satisfying in equal measure, which is honestly harder to pull off than it sounds for a debut.

Despite the chaos of the middle, even the monster under the bed thinks the ending was worth the wait.

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming June 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 22:53:00 +0000

June is bringing us zombies, vampires, serial killers, sinister fairy tales, and weird westerns to keep the TBR pile growing at an irresponsible rate.

Whether you're looking for something bloody and brutal, something really strange, or a book that makes you wonder why you ever thought the woods were a good place to visit, June has you covered.

Here are some of the best new horror books coming your way this month.

June 1

Grief Eater by Emma Osborne

When Kristina rises from her violent death, she's no longer the woman her family abandoned. She's angry, powerful, and very, very hungry. Her undead road trip takes her across Australia's scorched landscape as she searches for vengeance, answers, and perhaps a little closure.

A gory, queer zombie novella about grief, rage, found family, and what happens when the dead decide they're not finished yet.

Try Not to Die: In Slattery Falls by Brennan LaFaro

Welcome to Slattery Falls, home to a haunted house that has been watching, waiting, and feeding for years.
This interactive horror adventure puts you in the driver's seat. Every decision matters, and most of those decisions will probably get you horribly murdered.
There are more than a dozen ways to die, but only one path to survival.

June 2

Backstabbers by Eliza Jabore

When three best friends get lost in the woods, they discover that surviving the wilderness might be easier than surviving each other. Backstabbers puts friendship under the world's most stressful pressure cooker: a slasher movie.
Expect blood, bad decisions, shifting loyalties, and the uncomfortable realization that your best friend knows exactly where to stick the knife.

June 9

The Sourdough Compendium: Dark and Dangerous Fairy Tales by A.G. Slatter

If you've read A.G. Slatter before, you already know her fairy tales aren't exactly the sort you'd want to read to children at bedtime.
This collection gathers stories from the dark gothic world of The Sourdough universe, featuring witches, assassins, pirates, monsters, and all manner of terrible people.
Basically, it's fairy tales for people who prefer their happily-ever-afters with considerably more bloodshed, like all the good fairy tales do.

It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo

Set during World War I, Wendy Darling is now an adult working as a teacher and helping soldiers returning from the Western Front. But when children begin disappearing again, Wendy starts to suspect that the nightmare she thought she'd escaped as a child has returned.

Peter Pan meets It in this dark, bloody reimagining of Neverland.

June 16

Women of the Weird West edited by KC Grifant

Women of the Weird West brings together stories from women and marginalized-gender authors, taking the classic Western and giving it a supernatural makeover. Expect ghosts, monsters, fae, magic, strange worlds, and plenty of women who aren't interested in playing the damsel-in-distress.

June 19

Teeth by Dana Isaly

Poe has moved into her mother's old house in the Appalachian mountains, hoping to sort through her belongings and finally move forward.

Instead, she finds strange journal entries, disturbing photographs, warnings, and the growing feeling that something in the woods is watching her.

And apparently the number one rule of this particular nightmare is: if you hear something, no you don't.

June 23

Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh

Stutley Tillinghast is a quiet minister living in rural Rhode Island.
He's also been killing people and burying them in his cellar for decades.

When a desperately ill nineteen-year-old woman arrives claiming to be related to him, Stutley discovers that she has symptoms eerily similar to his own. Suddenly his carefully isolated existence gets considerably more complicated.

A slow-burning literary vampire story with gothic atmosphere, family secrets, and one very reluctant monster.

The Infested by Renée Lake

The American frontier wasn't won. It was surrendered to the monsters.
In 1900, a cursed stretch of the American frontier is crawling with ghosts, monsters, and ancient things that should have stayed buried. Desdemona's family has survived there for generations behind magical wards.
But after her mother's death, her father's disappearance, and the arrival of a mysterious shadow creature, their safe little sanctuary starts looking considerably less safe.

Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Four edited by Alex Woodroe

The fourth volume of Brave New Weird brings together twenty-three stories showcasing some of the strangest, most inventive horror around. Expect speculative horror, genre mashups, grotesque ideas, experimental storytelling, and plenty of things that don't fit neatly into a little genre box.

June 26

Crater Girl by Polly Schattel

Polly Schattel returns with Crater Girl, a genre-bending novel mixing dark fantasy, noir, and horror with a distinctly Southern flavor.
It's a strange, satirical look at the modern South, and Schattel describes it as a "genre-inclusive" novel.

June 28

The Echo of Monsters by David H. Rankin

The Echo of Monsters promises another dive into the darker corners of horror, making it one to keep an eye on if your preferred reading material involves things that probably shouldn't exist and definitely shouldn't be making noises in the dark.

June 30

Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay

Julia Flang is a former professional gamer who gets hired by a massive tech company to escort a man in a vegetative state across the country. The catch? There's an artificial intelligence implanted in his head.
A near-future technological horror story that gets increasingly more uncomfortable the more you think about it.

The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave

Welcome to Guadalajara in the summer of 1977, where children encounter ghosts, monsters, strange adults, a serpent girl in a carnival glass box, and all the little horrors that hide beneath ordinary life.

June is shaping up to be a seriously weird month for horror.

We've got angry zombies, murderous friends, evil fairy tales, haunted frontiers, vampires pretending not to be vampires, AI nightmares, and enough monsters to populate several small towns.
There's something weird here for everyone.
Happy Reading.

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This Month in Horror: The Best New Horror Books Coming in May 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 02 May 2026 00:28:00 +0000

May is bringing us a respectable amount of bad news in book form.
We've got haunted places, human experimentation, sinister spirits, strange festivals, monstrous transformations, twisted fairy tales, gothic nightmares, and enough questionable life choices performed by unreliable narrators to keep the horror shelves fully stocked.
Here are some of the horror books I'm most excited about coming out this month.

If you want to see everything coming in 2026, check out my This Year in Horror 2026 release calendar.

May 5

She Waits Where Shadows Gather by Michelle Tang

Some places feel wrong before you can explain why. She Waits Where Shadows Gather promises the kind of unsettling horror where the shadows themselves may be the least of your problems.
If atmospheric, creeping dread is your thing, this one belongs on the May TBR.

I Know A Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours by Nat Cassidy

Nat Cassidy is taking us on a road trip and he's not stopping by the World's Biggest Ball of Twine.
This collection brings together Rest Stop and a dozen other dark detours, sending readers through suspicious rest stops, creepy offices, haunted kitchens, bizarre apartments, and other places where you shouldn't be alone after dark.

Accumulation by Aimee Pokwatka

Tennessee Cherish thought moving into her dream house would be a fresh start. Cute house, new town, happy family.
The kids start acting weird. Her husband is never home. And the house has a few quirks, including a faucet that runs on its own, a creepy doll that keeps appearing in different rooms, and, a human tooth in the floorboards.
Then things get really weird. The family starts repeating everyday actions over and over, with each loop becoming more dangerous than the last.
Tenn needs to figure out what the hell is happening in her new home before the house finishes what it started.

May 8

The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman

The Blood Year Daughter is a collection of fairytale horror stories filled with murderous brides, strange transformations, ghosts, witches, snakes, revenge, and women who are absolutely done playing by the rules.
Silverman's debut collection mixes horror, magical realism, and twisted fairy tales into something that sounds like it crawled out of a very dark corner of the Brothers Grimm.

May 12

Muntu by Eugen Bacon

Eugen Bacon brings her particular brand of unsettling speculative fiction to Muntu, a book that promises to be strange, atmospheric, and decidedly not interested in making you comfortable.
This is one for readers who like their horror with a literary edge and plenty of things lurking beneath the surface.

Abyss by Nicholas Binge

Joe always had potential. He just doesn't expect much from himself, so when he lands a low-key admin assistant job at a company he's never heard of, he's hoping it won't expect much from him either.
Then he walks into the offices of Ponos.
Turns out, potential is exactly what they're looking for.

Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda

Two friends head into the Andes for an eight-day music festival at the foot of a volcano. There's mysticism, underground music, altered states, an ancient landscape, and a girl who starts speaking in a voice that isn't her own.
Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun blends psychological horror, supernatural elements, psychedelic imagery, and Indigenous Andean traditions into something wonderfully strange.

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

Celia is lonely, grieving, and desperate to belong, so she heads to the mysterious Kindred Cove for its annual Salt Festival. The community promises healing, transformation, and a life without grief.
Sarah Gailey's latest sounds like the perfect combination of creepy island community, questionable self-improvement, and the horrifying realization that maybe becoming a better version of yourself has a price.

Femme Feral by Sam Beckbessinger

Is it menopause or lycanthropy?
Femme Feral promises a wild, vicious take on womanhood, transformation, and the things lurking just beneath the surface.

May 19

The Dorians by Nick Cutter

Five people are invited to a remote island in the Canadian wilderness with an offer that sounds almost too good to be true: stop aging. Maybe even reverse it.
The secret to restoring their youth comes from an ancient biological agent with one very simple goal: survive.
What could possibly go wrong?
I hope their aren't any turtles. IYKYK.

Decomposition Book by Sara van Os

Savannah retreats to her parents' empty lake house after a disastrous falling-out with her best friend. She's drinking, overthinking, and generally spiraling when she wakes up in the woods beside a dead body. Turns out she's the best friend Savannah could ask for.

The Temptation of Charlotte North by Camilla Bruce

In 1910, Charlotte North lives on a remote island where an ancient tower has been standing guard over something that really should have stayed imprisoned.
Then the tower collapses.
The Temptation of Charlotte North combines gothic horror, dark fantasy, an isolated island, a sinister spirit, and a woman discovering just how dangerous getting what you want can be.

Salomé by Leslie Baird

A dark, strange take on an old story? Yes, please.
Salomé puts a familiar figure into a horror setting and promises to give this particular tale some teeth.

Filth Eaters by Ito Romo

In 1849, vampire Radamés discovers that New World vampires get to live a little more like humans. They marry. They have children. They actually get to build lives. Naturally, he wants that for himself.
His search takes him to Mexico, where he falls for a member of the ancient Filth Eaters and fathers a new kind of vampire. From there, the story jumps across centuries, mixing vampires with empire, greed, climate change, and the very human need to find someone to love.
May 26

House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Anaya Sebeya is a brilliant young writer who disappears after attending a prestigious writing residency at Günter Huis, an eerie colonial mansion on Devil’s Peak.
Years later, her sister Ranewa becomes obsessed with a true-crime podcast claiming to reveal what happened to Anaya. As she listens, she starts piecing together a much stranger and more horrifying story.
Because at Günter Huis, Anaya wasn't just struggling to write. The house was getting inside her head, twisting time and reality and demanding a story that apparently wasn't meant to be told.

Bone of My Bone by Johanna van Veen

It’s 1635, the Thirty Years’ War is tearing through Bavaria, and Ursula, a runaway nun, and Elsebeth, a peasant, are hiding from marauding soldiers in the forest.
Then they find a gilded saint’s skull.
Legend says that reunite the skull with the saint’s body and you get a wish. Unfortunately, they're not the only ones interested in the relic. A necromancer wants it, the saint starts whispering at night, and the magic comes with a price.

Teddy Bears Never Die by Cho Yeeun

A deadly cyanide poisoning kills Hwa-young's mother, but Hwa-young doesn't believe it was an accident. Determined to find the person responsible, she takes whatever work she can get to save enough money to hire a hitman.
Hwa-young is about to become the next victim when a grubby teddy bear starts talking to her.
Now the two team up to uncover the truth, take revenge, and bring the real killer to justice.

Between Nat Cassidy's dark detours, Sarah Gailey's creepy island, Mónica Ojeda's psychedelic festival nightmare, gothic spirits, twisted fairy tales, human experimentation, and several books that appear to have taken the concept of "gross" as a personal challenge, there's plenty here to keep horror readers busy.
Which is great news for us but not so great for our TBR pile.
Happy reading and may your books be creepy, your coffee be strong, and your house remain suspiciously tooth-free.

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Feature Fiction || The Hematophages: Splatterings by Stephen Kozeniewski

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:03:00 +0000

Published March 16th 2026 by French Press Publishing

In a galaxy riven by paranoid greed, profane forces marshal to consume humanity…

- On an abandoned ice moon, broadcasts from a long-dead civilization warp both body and soul.

- On a bizarre medical asteroid, a deranged physician discovers a gruesome “cure” for parasitic infection.

- On a deep space derelict, time becomes utterly meaningless and suffering transcends infinity.

- And on Earth itself, a lake transforms into pure blood and becomes infested with the hate-filled, eel-like aberrations known as…

The Hematophages.

With this quartet of short stories, Splatterpunk Award winner Stephen Kozeniewski is delighted to welcome newcomers to the brutal universe Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviewer calls “the gold standard for the Space Horror subgenre.”

Meanwhile, veteran ink surfers will find a treasure trove of new material to broaden their event horizons, including extensive background information from the author and a never-before-published tale of alien terror.

So, strap on your boom suit, ready your eye spoon, and try to prepare yourself for…

Splatterings.

Stephen Kozeniewski (pronounced "causin' ooze key") is a Splatterpunk Award-winning author and two-time World Horror Grossout Contest champion. His published work has also been nominated for the Voice Arts and Indie Horror Book Awards, among other honors. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and their two cats above a fanciful balloon studio.

Review || Bone of My Bone by Johanna van Veen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:15:00 +0000

Published May 26, 2026 by Poisoned Pen Press

The year is 1635.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying the gilded skull of a saint.

It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost.

At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.

Add to Goodreads

In Bone of My Bone, the Thirty Years' War is never merely a vague historical backdrop. From the opening pages, van Veen establishes the destruction, fear, and complete upending of ordinary life, giving the horror real weight. It's the kind of historical detail that sends you looking things up afterward.

When the horror elements are firing, van Veen absolutely delivers on atmosphere. The necromancy feels eerie and grounded, rooted in the superstitions and religious anxieties of the period, and the gilded skull is its unsettling grinning centerpiece. The Bavarian Forest setting drips with menace, and the threats surrounding it feel treacherous and urgent.

My issues were more with the characters and pacing. The opening pulls you in fast, and the premise is strong, but somewhere in the middle, the momentum just stalls out. It picked back up towards the end, but there were definitely points where I found myself reading more out of commitment than interest. I also wanted more from the characters. Ursula and Elsebeth just didn't click for me the way I wanted them to, so I never felt super invested in what happened to them.

Ultimately, this one hit differently than Blood on Her Tongue. The relationship between Lucy and Sarah was so tightly wound and emotionally raw that the horror felt deeply personal. The dread and the emotional stakes were completely inseparable, so even the quieter moments felt tense. Bone of My Bone has all of van Veen's signature atmosphere and remarkable sense of dread, but without that emotional core at its center, it didn't stick with me quite as much.

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming April 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 22:06:00 +0000

April has arrived with a truly questionable collection of bad decisions.

People are going camping with ancient evils. Moving into haunted houses. Taking creepy Craigslist jobs. Getting followed by men in rowboats.

Here are the new horror books coming this month, for anyone who enjoys watching fictional people make choices we would never make ourselves. Or would we?

April 2

Monumental by Adam Nevill

A weekend of kayaking and camping goes spectacularly wrong when Marcus and his friends realize they've wandered onto private land. Their only way out is blocked until the tide changes, leaving them twelve hours to survive whatever is lurking in the valley. And apparently, an ancient evil hiding beneath some very bad local folklore wasn't on the itinerary.
Who doesn't like relaxing in nature?

April 7

The Boatman by Alex Grecian

The cruise ship Maria Calypso has a problem. A very elegant man in a white suit is following it in a rowboat. No matter how fast the ship goes, he keeps pace. And then the sinister stuff starts happening.

Bodies of Work by Clay McLeod Chapman

Winston Kemper is a lonely janitor with an unusual artistic hobby. He calls it the Butterfly Girls. Other people might call it murder. When the ghosts of his victims start whispering from beyond the grave, Winston's art project takes a very ugly turn.
April14

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own by Gwendolyn Kiste

Sixteen stories filled with haunted houses, ghosts, body horror, strange women, queer antiheroines, and all sorts of supernatural nastiness. Basically, Gwendolyn Kiste looked at the phrase "home sweet home" and decided it needed more ghosts and considerably less sweetness.

Invasive Species by Ellery Adams

Cold Harbor has its share of monsters, but Mrs. Smith might be the worst. She's beautiful, mysterious, and has been feeding nine human sacrifices to herself in exchange for immortality. Meanwhile, Natalie is just trying to sell a house and prove she can have a career outside the home.
And her twelve-year-old daughter and the family's housekeeper are the ones who realize something is very, very wrong.

Morsel by Carter Keane

Lou heads into the rural hills of Ohio for a work assignment, hoping it'll help her escape generational poverty and finally get ahead. Instead, her truck is sabotaged, she's stranded in the Appalachian woods, and something out there wants to eat her.

These Familiar Walls by C.J. Dotson

Amber inherits her childhood home after her parents are murdered, so naturally she moves in with her husband and kids. Then her reflection stops blinking. A voice starts whispering from the shadows. And the house turns out to be hiding some very old family secrets.
Nothing says "fresh start" like moving into the house where your parents were murdered.

Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill

Nicole has spent her entire life being taught that the mushrooms growing over the women's bodies in her village are dangerous and disgusting. After marriage, she's sent to live with her husband in a decaying mansion where controlling her changing body becomes harder and harder.
Then another rebellious wife shows up.
Their connection starts cracking open the secrets buried beneath generations of unhappy brides. And Nicole may finally decide that following the rules isn't worth it.
April 21

The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer

Three days of work. Competitive pay. A house in the Oregon wilderness.
Sure, what could go wrong?
Macy takes a Craigslist caretaking job because rent and groceries aren't going to pay themselves. But the house comes with strange rules, stranger rites, and something inside it that may be a threat to humanity itself.
...at least the job posting was honest about the pay.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

Lee flees New York after killing his college roommate and heads to his father's mysterious house in Japan. The place has a few problems. No animals will go near it. The bedroom window isn't always a window. And a woman with a sword appears outside at night.
Meanwhile, in 1877, Sen is hiding from imperial soldiers in the very same house.
Two people. Two centuries. One haunted house. And one of them is a ghost.

April 28

Hex House by Amy Jane Stewart

Elly is pregnant, wearing a wedding dress, and running from the man she's supposed to marry. Luckily, there's a mysterious house in the woods where lost girls can find refuge.
What starts as a safe haven becomes something much darker, turning wounded women into vessels for revenge.

How to Survive Camping: The Lady in Chains by Bonnie Quinn

The campground rules are back, and this time things are getting even worse. Dormant monsters are waking up, the Lady in Chains has returned, and the harvesters are still busy sacrificing people.

Molka by Monika Kim

Dahye's whirlwind romance turns into a nightmare when a spycam video of her and her boyfriend spreads across the internet. Then she discovers the creepy IT guy at work has been secretly filming women too.
Her humiliation turns to rage, and rage turns to revenge.

April is not messing around. We've got folk horror, haunted houses, supernatural revenge, gothic nightmares, body horror, murderous ghosts, creepy camping trips, and enough questionable life choices to keep horror readers very busy.

So fill up your coffee cup, pull up your TBR, and maybe avoid accepting any suspicious Craigslist jobs.
Happy reading.

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Review || What Stalks The Deep by T. Kingfisher

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:01:00 +0000

Published September 30, 2025 by Tor Nightfire

The next installment in the New York Times bestselling Sworn Soldier series, featuring Alex Easton investigating the dark, mysterious depths of a coal mine in America.

Alex Easton does not want to visit America.

They particularly do not want to visit an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia with a reputation for being haunted.

But when their old friend Dr. Denton summons them to help find his lost cousin—who went missing in that very mine—well, sometimes a sworn soldier has to do what a sworn soldier has to do...

Add to Goodreads

The third installment in T. Kingfisher's Sworn Soldier series sends Alex Easton somewhere they emphatically do not want to go: America. More specifically, an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia with a unsavory reputation. When their old friend Dr. Denton calls in a favor to help locate his missing cousin, who was last seen heading into that very mine, well, a sworn soldier answers the call.

I've loved following Alex Easton through the crumbling Usher estate and the fog-draped forests of Gallacia, so naturally I was eager to see where Kingfisher would take them next. And I have to say, the setting of What Stalks the Deep is its strongest asset. The darkness is absolute, the walls press in from every direction, and the silence of the mine is almost intolerable. Imagine being underground with tons of rocks between you and the surface. Kingfisher leans into the claustrophobia beautifully, and we experience it alongside Easton.

Kingfisher has always excelled at writing characters who feel lived-in and real, and that hasn't changed. Alex's particular brand of practicality bumping up against the inexplicable never gets old, and watching them navigate the landscape of rural West Virginia with acerbic bewilderment is funny. Angus remains a steadfast, grounding presence, and there's something quietly satisfying about the way these three have settled into each other. If you've come to love these characters across the earlier books, revisiting them is still a joy, even if the horror is light.

Where What Stalks the Deep loses a little steam, unfortunately, is in the horror itself. The monster at the center of this story never quite reached the level of wrongness that Kingfisher achieved with her possessed hares in What Moves the Dead — that specific, skin-crawling sensation of something familiar twisted just slightly out of true. Once the monster is revealed, it's almost...cute?

What Stalks the Deep is by no means a bad book. Kingfisher is too skilled a writer for that, and I'll pick up whatever Alex Easton adventure comes next without hesitation. But for me, the Sworn Soldier series has yet to top What Moves The Dead.

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming in March 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:28:00 +0000

March is here, which means spring is technically happening, but horror authors clearly didn't get the memo. This month's releases bring witches, monsters, haunted roads, murderous mothers, parasites, and enough questionable life choices to keep your TBR pile deeply unhealthy.

So grab your coffee, shut the curtains, and let's see what nightmares are hitting shelves this month.

March 10

Cabaret in Flames BY Hache Pueyo

Guls are brutal creatures, and Ariadne knows that better than most. She lost half her body to them, but she's since turned her experience into a career, treating guls at the specialized clinic she inherited from Erik Yurkov, the mentor who rescued her as a child, taught her medicine, built her prostheses, and then mysteriously disappeared.

Enter Quaint, a charming, tattooed gul who claims to be Erik's oldest friend. Convinced that Erik didn't simply vanish, Quaint teams up with Ariadne to track him down, eventually leading them to Cabaré, an infamous Rio de Janeiro club frequented by the gul elite. As they dig deeper into Erik's disappearance, they uncover a conspiracy tangled up with Ariadne's memories, her complicated past, and the increasingly complicated feelings developing between them.

The Midnight Muse BY Jo Kaplan

A year after metal band Queen Carrion's lead singer, Brynn Werner, disappears in an Oregon forest, her bandmates return to the cabin where she vanished. They're hoping to remember their friend and figure out how to move forward. Instead, they find strange messages in the guestbook, a pale figure moving through the woods, people in gas masks, and a suspicious fungus growing in the basement. Then Brynn's voice starts echoing through the forest. And when something that looks exactly like her emerges from the trees, the question becomes whether they've found their missing singer or something that has learned how to wear her face.

Partially Devoured: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World BY Daniel Kraus

If you've ever watched Night of the Living Dead and thought, "I could spend several hundred pages obsessing over every single frame of this," Daniel Kraus has the book for you. His nonfiction debut takes George A. Romero's 1968 zombie classic apart frame by frame, digging into its history, production, cultural impact, and place in horror history. But this isn't just film analysis. Kraus also weaves in his own story, including childhood trauma, rural isolation, and the way the movie helped shape his life and career. Basically, it's a massive love letter to one of horror's most important movies, written by someone who's seen it roughly three hundred times.

Spoiled Milk BY Avery Curran

It's 1928, and Emily Locke's final year at the isolated Briarley School for Girls takes a very unpleasant turn when Violet, the school's dazzling star and the girl Emily would do just about anything for, falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday. Emily and her uptight rival Evelyn agree on one thing: Violet was murdered. They turn to spiritualism for answers, hoping to contact the dead and figure out what really happened. Instead, Violet's ghost appears through Evelyn and delivers a warning. The danger at Briarley is only beginning.

Something is infecting the school. It starts with spoiled food and curdled milk before spreading into something much more sinister, leaving a growing body count in its wake. As Emily fights to survive, she has to question everything she thought she knew about Violet, Evelyn, the school, and herself.

So no, despite the title, this is not a horror novel about an aggressively haunted refrigerator and evil dairy.

You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom BY Vincent Tirado

Papi Ramon, patriarch of the wealthy Abreu family, dies and leaves his relatives one final family bonding exercise from hell. His will claims that one member of the family is el bacà, a demon he made a deal with, and orders the others to get rid of them before they're all damned. Naturally, nobody believes him. Then a storm traps the entire family inside the house, giving everyone plenty of time for secrets, accusations, violence, and murder. Xiomara now has to figure out which family member is possessed while also surviving the much more mundane horror of being trapped with her relatives. Honestly, the demon might be the easiest problem in that house.

March 17

Cold Snap BY Angela Sylvaine

The town of Demise, North Dakota, is still trying to recover from the Meteor Murders, a deadly disaster involving hundreds of deaths, alien worms, and a cover-up blaming everything on a doomsday cult. Nineteen-year-old Realene survived it and saved countless lives, but she'd really rather disappear from the world and grieve the people she couldn't save.

Unfortunately, when another piece of the meteor is discovered across the Canadian border, Realene's best friend Nate is suddenly in danger. So she's heading north to find him, where she'll have to contend with rampant alien worms, a covert military operation, and the coldest weather imaginable. Because apparently surviving one alien-worm apocalypse wasn't enough. Realene has to go back for a sequel.

If you like creature features with a healthy dose of 'oh no, not the worms again,' Cold Snap looks like a gloriously nasty time.

Innamorata BY Ava Reid

Once, an island was ruled by seven noble houses whose power came from the arcane secrets of necromancy. Then a conqueror arrived, burning their libraries, slaughtering their rulers, and wiping out their ancient magic. Now only the House of Teeth remains, with its beautiful heiress, Marozia, and her strange, silent cousin Agnes.

Agnes hasn't spoken a word in seven years, but she's carrying the family's most important secrets. Her mission is to recover the lost death magic, avenge her family's destruction, and arrange Marozia's marriage to the conqueror's heir so she can gain access to his forbidden library. There's just one problem: Agnes finds herself falling for the very prince whose family destroyed hers. Because apparently revenge is much easier when you aren't also developing inconvenient feelings for the enemy.

If you like your gothic fantasy packed with necromancy, forbidden romance, doomed families, and enough beautiful people making terrible decisions to fill a castle, Innamorata should be on your list.

Long Drives & Lonesome Roads BY John Evans

There are more than four million miles of roads in the United States, and apparently a disturbing number of them are trying to kill us. This collection brings together sixteen horror stories featuring ominous hitchhikers, devils, dangerous backroads, other dimensions, and all the other things you really don't want to encounter when you're already miles from home. The stories range from unsettling to macabre to darkly funny, making this one a good choice for readers who like their horror in bite-sized pieces. Just maybe don't read it on your next solo road trip.

Mother is Watching BY Karma Brown

Art conservator Mathilde “Tilly” Crewson is used to dealing with old paintings and their secrets, but The Mother is something else entirely. The recently discovered work, believed to be the fourth painting by a female surgeon-turned-artist, was damaged in a fire and seems to have a disturbing history of its own. Then Tilly discovers she's unexpectedly pregnant, and things start getting seriously weird.

Insect swarms appear out of nowhere. Her long-dead mother starts paying visits. And sinister whispers begin invading Tilly's mind. As her obsession with the painting grows, so does the horrifying realization that The Mother may be more than a painting. And if Tilly wants to break whatever bond has formed between them, she may have to destroy it before it destroys her.

Only Spell Deep BY Ava Morgyn

Judeth Cole has always had strange abilities, but after a childhood fire destroys her family, she spends seventeen years trying to outrun her past. Now living in Seattle as Jude Clark, she's barely holding things together when a mysterious invitation draws her into a secret magical circle. Their power comes from an imprisoned entity called the Fathom, but Jude quickly realizes that the group's enigmatic leader, Arla, wants that power for herself and is willing to kill for it. With the Fathom threatening to break free, Jude is forced back toward the seaside house she swore she'd never see again. Witchcraft, family secrets, forbidden power, and a creepy old house? Yeah, this one knows exactly what it's doing.

Crawlspace by Adam Christopher

Mission Lead Olivia O’Connor and her team from the Artemis Corporation are preparing for the first faster-than-light test flight, a mission that could change humanity's future and finally open up the universe. Unfortunately, their trip between dimensions comes with a few unexpected complications. Strange voices echo through the corridors, long-lost faces appear, mysterious symbols are carved into the hull, and something ancient is gathering outside the ship.

Now the crew has to survive the journey long enough to uncover the twisted truth behind the mission.

march 24

Wolf Worm BY T. Kingfisher

In 1899, scientific illustrator Sonia Wilson gets a chance to pursue her work when the mysterious Dr. Halder offers her a position illustrating his collection of insects at his North Carolina manor. Naturally, the isolated house comes with a few complications. Animals are behaving strangely, her predecessor has disappeared, locals are whispering about "blood thieves," and Halder's research is taking a very unpleasant turn. With the help of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia discovers that the doctor's entomological experiments involve parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh.

T. Kingfisher plus a title like Wolf Worm tells us to expect something deeply unpleasant. And probably fascinating.

Wretch BY Eric LaRocca

After the death of his husband, Simeon Link is drowning in grief and desperate for a way to feel close to the person he's lost. Then he discovers the Wretches, a support group offering an unusual and dangerously addictive form of comfort. Their mysterious leader, Porcelain Khaw, claims he can give grieving people one final intimate moment with their dead loved ones. There is, naturally, a price.

Eric LaRocca isn't exactly known for sending readers off to bed feeling warm and fuzzy. Wretch promises another nasty little descent into darkness for readers who like their horror bleak, brutal, and uncomfortable.

Another month of horror, another collection of reasons to keep the lights on at midnight.

Between alien worms, necromancers, haunted paintings, murderous boarding schools, interdimensional space travel, cursed cabins, sinister family secrets, and enough things crawling under the skin to make a person very nervous about leaving the house, March is clearly not interested in letting us have a peaceful spring.

Happy reading. Keep the coffee hot, the lights on, and the basement door very, very closed.

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Review || The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 22:21:00 +0000

Published July 22, 2025 by Tor Nightfire

A deeply dark academia novel from USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw, perfect for fans of A Deadly Education and The Atlas Six who are hungry for something a little more diabolical.

The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.

Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told when she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.

But there’s more to Hellebore than meets the eye. On graduation day, the faculty go on a ravenous rampage, feasting on Alessa’s class. Only Alessa and a group of her classmates escape the carnage. Trapped in the school’s library, they must offer a human sacrifice every night, or else the faculty will break down the door and kill everyone.

Can they band together and survive, or will the faculty eat its fill?

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I've made no secret of the fact that Cassandra Khaw and I have history. They have a permanent spot on my auto-read list, for better or worse. These Deathless Bones was my introduction. The Salt Grows Heavy was vibrantly weird. And then The Dead Take the A Train with Richard Kadrey showed up and proved that Khaw's particular brand of chaos only gets grittier with a collaborator. I think it's worth stating upfront that I came into The Library at Hellebore with some goodwill because I know anything by Khaw requires a certain mood and commitment.

The premise is pure, unhinged fun — a school full of the world's most genuinely dangerous kids who could end the world if left unsupervised. Anti-Christs, Ragnaröks, a boy who reads omens in his own entrails. Ya know, just your average kid. On graduation day, the eldritch faculty decide the student body looks delicious, and the school gets turned into a slaughterhouse. The survivors hole up in the library and try not to die while something ancient and hungry hunts them through the aisles. What follows is part melee, part dark academia fever dream, part Khaw being utterly themselves. It is exactly as chaotic as it sounds.

But the prose! I stand by everything I've ever said about Khaw being a lot. Dense vocabulary, long sentences, writing that demands you gnaw your way through it. Khaw writes like they're conducting a symphony with a chainsaw at a tea party. If you ever wanted to increase your vocab, it's here. Lush and sharp and genuinely strange, with a quality that makes even the most grotesque moments feel almost beautiful. It makes you feel slightly (okay, completely) unhinged for appreciating it.

As far as characters go, Alessa is a solid protagonist. Prickly, damaged, dangerous in ways she's still figuring out. The crew she ends up trapped with is where it gets interesting. This is very much a found family situation, except everyone in the family could unmake reality if sufficiently pissed off. I liked them. I wanted more of them, honestly, which leads me to the complaint. Khaw tells this story in fragments which is...not my fav. I wanted more space with everyone trapped in that library than the fractured timeline allowed. It's the kind of structure that warrants a reread... maybe. On the first pass, it just got in its own way.

If you've never read Khaw before, I'd start with one of the shorter stories to calibrate your palate first and decide if you're a fan. But if you already know, The Library at Hellebore is the kind of book that reminds you exactly why you showed up in the first place. It's bloody, it's weird, it's gorgeous, and it's absolutely convinced of its own feral vision.

Review || The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christina Henry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 20:58:00 +0000

Published November 4, 2025 by Berkley

A woman must confront the evil that's been terrorizing her street since she was a child in this gripping haunted house novel from the national bestselling author of The House That Horror Built and Good Girls Don’t Die.

On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago, there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible things happened. The children who live on this block are told by their parents to stay away from that house. But of course, children don’t listen. Children think it’s fun to be scared, to dare each other to go inside.

Jessie Campanelli did what many older sisters do and dared her little brother Paul. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn’t return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course adults didn’t believe that. Adults never believe what kids say. They thought someone kidnapped Paul, or otherwise hurt him. They thought Paul had disappeared in a way that was ordinary, explainable.

The disappearance of her little brother broke Jessie’s family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie grew up, had a child of her own, kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive—alive and hungry.

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This is horror tucked inside a monster house, with an entire cosmos pulsing just beneath the floorboards. The house is alive in that constant, watching-you way, crowded with impossible voices and layered tragedy. Cosmic horror often feels vast and distant, but here it’s close. It presses in. It’s slow, suffocating, and painfully personal. The universe doesn’t just fail to care. It mocks.

What hit hardest was the found family at the center of it. These characters are bound together by shared damage, survival, and the kind of loyalty that forms after everyone else has already failed you. The house has taken so much from the neighborhood, and they stay behind to bear witness. To keep watch. To carry the guilt that refuses to be outrun.

Bleak, eerie, and still emotionally cutting.

Review || Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 23:19:00 +0000

Published April 9, 2024 by Tor Nightfire

A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.

Space exploration can be lonely and isolating.

Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she's assigned to a small exploration crew, she's eager to make a difference. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.

While Ophelia focuses on her new role, her crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizer's hasty departure than opening up to her.

That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting—a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?

Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by…and the crew isn’t the only one keeping secrets.

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S.A. Barnes catapulted herself onto my must-read list with Dead Silence in 2022. Space horror isn't something I typically pick up, but I adored her take on an abandoned ghost ship in space. Choosing to read Ghost Station was, therefore, a complete no-brainer for me.

Set on a remote research outpost far from Earth, Ghost Station follows a team sent to investigate an abandoned space station with a dark history. Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray is sent along with them to ensure everyone remains in a good mental state while away. Of course, that makes her the outsider. The crew, who have been on previous missions together, is tense, secretive, and clearly hiding something from Ophelia.

Ghost Station delivers Barnes' blend of sci-fi horror stout with atmospheric dread, deep psychological apprehension, and a feeling of aloneness. The tension that Barnes creates in the station and between the characters is prominent. You feel the seclusion, the anxiety, the creeping sense that something is very wrong, even as you still aren't sure what.

Here's where it went wrong for me. There's a lot of telling, not showing, in this book. Granted, there's a lot of backstory to get through, but so much of it is given to us in the form of Ophelia's inner monologue. Ophelia is deeply unreliable with herself while trying to portray herself to her team as a reliable psychologist. She second-guesses every sensation, every memory, every emotional reaction. While I understand the results, it was exhausting to read. I wanted more horror, less emotional vacillation.

While Ghost Station didn’t absolutely blow me away, it definitely kept me interested in some of the mysteries and had some really creepy moments. If you’re into slow-burn sci-fi horror with great atmosphere and unreliable characters, it's worth a read. It just didn't quite make it into the territory of Dead Silence.

26 Horror Books for 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 04:07:00 +0000

Horror never really sleeps. It waits, it watches, and every new year it finds fresh ways to crawl back into our lives.

Horror in 2026 is shaping up to be a feast of unease, monsters both intimate and enormous, and stories that crawl under your skin. These are books that lean into dread, obsession, grief, and the kind of fear that lingers long after the last page. Not just monsters in the dark, but the slow realization that the dark has been there the whole time, waiting.

This list gathers 26 of my most anticipated horror books arriving in 2026 that promise to unsettle and occasionally break your heart. Whether you crave haunted houses, cosmic weirdness, slashers with teeth, or stories that blur the line between fear and heartbreak, 2026 has something waiting to ruin your sleep in the best possible way. Turn the page carefully.

Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher

Something darker than the devil stalks the North Carolina woods in Wolf Worm, a new gothic masterpiece from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher.

The year is 1899 and Sonia Wilson is a scientific illustrator without work, prospects, or hope. When the reclusive Dr. Halder offers her a position illustrating his vast collection of insects, Sonia jumps at the chance to move to his North Carolina manor house and put her talents to use. But soon enough she finds that there are darker things at work than the Carolina woods. What happened to her predecessor, Halder’s wife? Why are animals acting so strangely, and what is behind the peculiar local whispers about “blood thiefs?”

With the aid of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia discovers that Halder’s entomological studies have taken him down a dark road full of parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh, and that his monstrous experiments may grow to encompass his newest illustrator as well.

Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill

Sorrowland meets Manhunt in this literary horror debut in which an isolated newlywed—covered in mushroom growths like all the other wives in her community—strikes a precarious balance between following her husband’s strict rules and pursuing an intense connection with a woman who makes her question everything.

Forbidden from leaving her house from girlhood until marriage, Nicole has only her mother's lessons and what she can see from her bedroom window to draw on in forming her view of the world, and of herself. Taught that the mushrooms which cover the women in her village are repulsive and dangerous, she conforms to a rigid set of rules to protect herself and those around her.

When her wedding day arrives, Nicole moves from one prison to another—an empty mansion on the very outskirts of town belonging to the husband she’s been promised to since birth. As she haunts the edges of Silas's unknowable life and decaying home, maintaining control over her own transforming body becomes increasingly impossible. And when another wife with rebellious tendencies pays Nicole an unexpected visit, something within her cracks open. Their furtive explorations yield confusing answers, unearthing the long-buried secrets of the generations of resentful brides that came before. Unmoored, angry, and at last awakened, Nicole must reckon with who she really is, and perhaps, give in to what she truly wants.

Raw, visceral, and relentless, Wife Shaped Bodies is an exploration of gender, power, and community through the lens of mycological body horror and an ode to the unsettling beauty of the natural world.

Morsel by Carter Keane

The Blair Witch Project meets The Ritual, with a generous helping of The Menu, in Morsel, a delicious folk horror novella perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, Cassandra Khaw, and Paul Tremblay.

Lou did what the children of parents with back-breaking, poor paying jobs are supposed to do; pulled up her bootstraps, went to college, and got an office job with coworkers who won’t stop talking about their multi-level marketing scheme disguised as self-betterment.

Determined to lift her ill mother out of poverty before it's too late, and in the spirit of climbing the corporate ladder, Lou accepts an assignment in the rural hills of Ohio. She quickly finds herself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a sabotaged truck, a dog she’s determined to keep safe, and something stalking her through the ancient Appalachian woods.

If she can’t escape the woods in time, she’ll come face to face with the fact that her job isn’t the only thing that wants to eat her alive.

Morsel is a chilling testament to the burden of generational poverty and the all-consuming nature of capitalism, where the monster and the monstrous, in the end, are not the same.

Dead First by Johnny Compton (February 10, 2026 by G.P. Putnam's Sons)

From the Bram Stoker award-nominated author of The Spite House comes a bone-chilling new novel about a private investigator hired by a mysterious billionaire to discover why he can’t die.

When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of mysterious Texan tycoon Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that—the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.

Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light.

Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers.

Bold, atmospheric, and utterly frightening, Johnny Compton’s Dead First is spine-chilling supernatural horror about the pursuit of power and the undying need for reckoning.

I'll Watch Your Baby by Neena Viel (May 26, 2026 by St. Martin's Griffin)

From the Bram Stoker award-nominated author of The Spite House comes a bone-chilling new novel about a private investigator hired by a mysterious billionaire to discover why he can’t die.

When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of mysterious Texan tycoon Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that—the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.

Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light.

Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers.

Bold, atmospheric, and utterly frightening, Johnny Compton’s Dead First is spine-chilling supernatural horror about the pursuit of power and the undying need for reckoning.

Hex House by Amy Jane Stewart (April 28, 2026 by Titan Books)

A feverishly told, dark and unsettling Scotland-set fairy-tale about a safe haven for women which transforms them into vessels of revenge, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, A. G Slatter and Julia Armfield

ELLY

Elly is running. Pregnant and still in her wedding dress, she flees the cottage that her new husband has rented for their wedding night. Because he’s not what people think he is – and she knows that, one day, he’ll hurt her in a way she can’t fix. Freezing and lost in the dead of night, Elly begins to lose hope.

A woman in the woods alone is never the beginning of the story. It’s usually the end.

So, when a beautiful house appears out of nowhere and a woman beckons her inside, it almost feels too good to be true.

Welcome to Hex a refuge, a home, a sanctuary. A place that can only be found by those who truly need it; a place that promises to teach Elly how to access a power more incredible – and more terrifying – than anything she could have imagined.

SIOBHAN

Four years after Siobhan meets Elly at Hex House, her life is in ruins. Once a promising filmmaker invited to the house to make a documentary with her brother, Theo, she’s given up on her dream after witnessing unspeakable horrors there. Now, she spends her time drinking too much, toying with an older man in increasingly dangerous ways, and trying to get Theo to speak to her again. She ignores the scar on her stomach that never fully heals.

That is, until someone reaches out with news about Hex House that could change everything.

And Siobhan knows, deep down, that she was always destined to return.

Turn Off The Light by Jacquie Walters (March 3, 2026 by Mulholland Books)

Two women living centuries apart are bound by the same dark secret in this haunting horror novel by Jacquie Walters, author of Dearest and “a talent to watch” (Sarah Langan).

The Devil enters through doors left open…

On the isolated Eastern Shore of Virginia, Edith is a healer, a woman of knowledge—and a woman watched. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Whispers creep through the dark. Terrified she has opened her home to the Devil, Edith makes a desperate choice.

Claire doesn’t believe in ghosts—until she returns home to care for her dying father and finds her childhood house… listening. As one sleepless night bleeds into the next, she becomes convinced something is stirring beneath the floorboards. Something that has waited a long time to rise.

Is the house haunted? What compels this lurking darkness? As the danger mounts, Edith and Claire will discover they’ll need each other to survive. But they are separated by four hundred years. And time is running out for them both.

The Seventh Sister by Dawn Kurtagich (April 7, 2026 by Thomas & Mercer)

From the author of The Madness comes a haunting folk horror fable of lost sisters, old gods, and the terrible power of belief left to rot in the woods.

After the tragic death of their parents, the seven Ward sisters are sent to live with their grandmother on the remote forest island of Beltane, a place suspended between time and shadow. What begins as an attempt to mend their fractured lives soon twists into a waking nightmare, where grief bleeds into childhood fantasy and ancient rites awaken a dark and eerie devotion to Daudir, the Forgotten God of the Wood.

When another cruel tragedy strikes, the sisters are left to fend for themselves, learning to live with death as a constant, lurking presence. The fragile world they’ve carved splinters beneath the weight of isolation, and the forest around them grows restless…

Years later, a cryptic letter summons the surviving sisters home. Drawn back into the wild embrace of their dangerous faith, they confront a truth more terrible than memory, and the dreadful secret that waits, silent and sentient, in the depths of the all-seeing trees.

This lyrical and haunting folk horror explores how trauma can root itself in the soil of childhood, how love can curdle into obsession, and how gods, especially forgotten ones, never stay buried for long. But at its heart, it’s about how they fracture, survive, return, and reckon with what they’ve made together.

Aubrey Wants to Die by Pip Knight (March 3, 2026 by Hanover Square Press)

Love is hard. Being undead is harder ... Dolly Alderton meets True Blood in this dark, funny hell of a story

Aubrey is not what she seems. She's young, beautiful, romantic, obsessive and ... a vampire. All she wants is to be human again, and failing that, she wants to die. But the problem is, she can't. Not by stake through the heart or holy water or crucifix or garlic or fire. And she'd know, she's tried every method ... Twice.

So she's stuck here on this earth, all alone. Even the vampire who made her this way - an aristocratic douchebag called Oscar - has abandoned her.

But everything changes when one fateful night, she meets Jonathan. He's everything Aubrey's ever dreamed of, and what's more, he's her soulmate. Her Bella-Edward story. For the first time in 150 years, she has a reason to hope - eternal life might be bearable after all. So when Jonathan unexpectedly breaks up with her, she'll do anything to get him back.

But that's the exact moment Oscar swoops back into her life. And he has other plans for her. Soon, she's thrown into a world of glamour, glitter, blood and hedonism, a world that has her questioning everything she knows to be true-about life, but also about herself. A world where nothing is simple ... And no-one is safe, either.

A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young (August 11, 2026 by Tor Nightfire)

First the flood
Next the sickness
Last the change

Visionary Korean author Kim Bo-young unleashes a Lovecraftian nightmare of infection, transformation, and abomination.

“[Kim Bo-young's] fiction is a breathtaking piece of a cinematic art.” ―Bong Joon-ho, Academy Award-winning director of Parasite

While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the eastern coast. Despite the danger, Mu-young boards the train with her she’d rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother’s care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life.

Three years later, Haewon Village is home to horrors. The earthquake unleashed an ancient plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government’s lockdown has cut off any hope for help. Mu-young’s niece is dead, and all that’s left for her is to hunt villagers who break isolation. When an officious bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, he stirs up even deeper trouble. Will Mu-young survive? Does she even deserve to?

Headlights by CJ Leede (June 9, 2026 by Tor Nightfire)

Every instinct tells him to run. Every memory tells him he can’t.

Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it's happening again.

Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they've allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue.

Now Daniel is pulled back into the gruesome cycle, and every clue leads him deeper into the shadows of his own past. He will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along— before he and the people he loves become the next victims.

Perfect for fans of The Shining and Longlegs, bestselling author CJ Leede’s Headlights is a pulse-pounding hunt across the frozen wilderness of Colorado.

The Temptation of Charlotte North by Camilla Bruce (May 19, 2026 by Del Rey)

A rebellious young woman desperate to escape her predetermined life joins forces with an unlikely ally—a sinister spirit—in this dark gothic fantasy from the acclaimed author of At the Bottom of the Garden .

Be careful what you wish for. It might come true....

In 1910, on a small, remote island that boasts more sheep than people, life does not hold a lot of promise for spirited Charlotte North. Her only escape from both this insular community and a family who does not understand her seems to be through marriage—an institution she is not at all eager to join, given the unhappiness of her parents' own union. Plus, eligible suitors are few and far between, which is why Charlotte has fallen hard for one the few outsiders to join their community in recent the handsome—and likewise unhappily married—new priest.

And then an ancient tower once rumored to have imprisoned a witch—or an unfaithful wife—crumbles, and releases . . . something. A restless spirit that knocks inside the walls and sends household objects flying. A spirit that seems to have an affinity for Charlotte herself. Though many on the island are terrified of this new interloper, Charlotte sees in it potential. Power. And perhaps even a way to get everything she has most wanted out of life.

Bed Rot Baby by Wendy Dalrymple (February 10, 2026 by Quill & Crow Publishing House)

Her life is falling apart… like, literally.

Being a sugar baby isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. After a failed art career and a failed relationship, Baby has lost her way. She’s adrift in the post-Y2K, pre-Facebook world and stuck in her Florida hometown, selling stolen goods online and working as a sugar baby. Even though she’s hustling hard, there’s still never enough money to pay the bills, and her long-suffering roommate is ready to put her out on the streets. One night after a bad date with her sugar daddy, Baby is assaulted by a mysterious woman in a parking lot. The attack leaves her disoriented and exhausted, so Baby takes to her bed to lie there and rot, like, for real. With every passing day, Baby’s looks and health decline in strange and horrific ways. Soon, it becomes apparent that the strange woman who assaulted her had something to do with her declining state. Baby needs to find her attacker, reclaim her life and her beauty, and get her shit together once and for all. But at what cost?

Bed Rot Baby is a pink horror meditation of self-discovery through self-destruction, and the real cost of self-image, self-esteem, and beauty.

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer (February 10, 2026 by Crooked Lane Books)

A ‘traditional wife’ influencer allows a demonic creature to impregnate her in this unnerving horror novel, perfect for fans of Nightbitch and Mary, from the author of Serial Killer Support Group.

Every #tradwife needs a baby. She’ll get one at any cost.

When Camille Deming isn’t cooking, cleaning, or homesteading in her picture-perfect country farmhouse, she’s posting about her tradwife lifestyle for her online followers. She takes inspiration from other tradwives on social media, aspiring to be like them, but Camille’s missing a key a baby. And contrary to what she posts online, things with her husband Graham have been strained. Pressured by her eager followers, Camille fears that without a baby, her relationship will suffer and her social media will never grow out of its infancy.

When Camille discovers a mysterious, decrepit well in the wheatfield behind her house, she makes a wish for a baby. Afterwards, she has unsettling experiences that she convinces herself are angelic in nature, and when she’s visited one night by a strange creature, her wish comes true.

Camille’s pregnancy announcement gets more engagement than anything she’s ever posted—so what if Graham’s reaction is lukewarm? Camille’s life is finally falling into place. Never mind that her pregnancy is developing freakishly rapidly and she’s suddenly craving raw meat. Being a traditional wife is worth it.

Rosemary’s Baby for the digital age, this disturbing horror novel is one you’ll want to devour in just one bite.

Body Count by Codie Crowley (May 5, 2026 by Disney-Hyperion)

In this sapphic slasher novel, Sundae Valentine made a deal with a monster in Wildwood, N.J., when she was a child, and barely escaped with her life. Six years later, Sundae’s braving Wildwood again for a killer beach party to celebrate prom with the cheerleaders and the football team. But the monster is back, too, and this time he’ll stop at nothing to make sure she pays her debts.

We Call Them Witches by India-Rose Bower (April 7, 2026 by Poisoned Pen Press)

Most people have been devoured by the eldritch creatures, but Sara and her family have been fighting for survival, armed with their knowledge of folklore and pagan rituals - the only weapon that seems to work against these monsters.

And then a young woman, Parsley, comes out of nowhere into Sara's life. Found in their garden, they have no idea where she is from.

Sara and Parsley begin to fall in love, but disaster strikes when Sara’s brother Noah is taken by the creatures.
They set out to find him, across a landscape of merciless terror, haunted by death.

But can Parsley truly be trusted in a world where humanity is as scarse as humans themselves?

The Unheld by Luke Larken (August 25, 2026 by Hyperion Avenue)

A girl in the Montana territory sets out to find her father after he is carried off by an otherworldly creature in this atmospheric horror Western.

Charlie’s life is a lonely one. While other twelve-year-olds are in school, she spends her days skinning the animals her mercurial father hunts in the wild woods just outside their cabin. And the woods and its twisted creatures—an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills—are becoming stranger by the day.

One night, a nightmarish beast neither animal nor human appears and drags Charlie’s father into the wilderness. To find him, she enlists the aid of two unlikely allies also in search of the beast: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. Yet as she and her allies prepare for a confrontation with the Beast, Charlie must decide if her father, a brusque man who has always withheld his affection, is ultimately worth saving.

The Unheld is an unsettling and soulful horror novel about loneliness, human connection, and how we find each other in a world that seems designed to alienate. With this assured debut, Luke Larkin marks his arrival in the genre and proves the American frontier still harbors untapped stories in its shadows.

She Made Herself a Monster by Anna Kovatcheva (February 10, 2026 by Mariner Books)

A heady, dark-hued Gothic gem of a debut in nineteenth-century Bulgaria, a self-proclaimed vampire slayer—actually, a traveling con artist—joins forces with a teenage girl to create a monster deadly enough to vanquish their own demons.

We make monsters in order to destroy them. For thousands of years, we’ve named witches and burned them, suspected demons and exorcised them. When crops die and children fall ill, who better to blame than a monster?

In nineteenth-century Bulgaria, Yana rides from one desolate town to the next, staging grisly displays while the villagers animal corpses in the public square, eggs filled with blood in the chicken coop. She tells the stricken villagers stories of vampires that stalk the night. Then Yana eliminates the threat, and leaves seeds of hope in her wake.

The village of Koprivici, however, is plagued by exceptional illness and misfortune, its children rarely surviving infancy. There, Yana meets a headstrong orphan who the villagers blame for their curse. As Anka approaches womanhood, the village Captain is grooming her for marriage against her will. Anka is powerless against him—that is, until Yana arrives. Together, the orphan and the vampire slayer hatch a to conjure a monster so vile, it might provide cover for Anka to escape. But their plan quickly takes on a horrifying life of its own...

Inspired by Slavic folklore, She Made Herself a Monster concocts a clever mix of witchery, ghost stories, heresy, and deception to spin a feminist fable about agency and the power of collective action. It is a haunting and astoundingly cathartic tale of two women who will stop at nothing to take control of their fate.

May The Dead Keep You by Jill Baguchinsky (April 21, 2026 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

There’s nowhere Catie East would rather be than the redwood forest that surrounds her family’s unusual historic home, the Heights.

She prefers being alone in the forest. People are…complicated. But when a scientist and his son move into the estate’s cottage, planning to study the woods around them, the boy catches Catie’s eye. And when a dead woodpecker miraculously comes back to life in his precious hands…he captures her heart.

Necromancy isn’t the only strange thing happening in the Heights. There’s an unfamiliar face in the mirror. Blood on the floors. Eyes in the wallpaper. And the men around her—including her once-sweet nature boy—are becoming something else. Something possessive and frightening. Something violent.

As the Heights’s dark history starts to come to light, Catie discovers that the home she loves is imbued with pain. And even though the pain isn’t her own, it will corrupt her and the people around her all the same—unless she can stop it.

A story about breaking cycles of abuse and overcoming generational trauma, May the Dead Keep You is an edge-of-your-seat listen—equally horrifying, heart-wrenching, and hopeful.

I Know a Place by Nat Cassidy (May 5, 2026 by Shortwave)

There are locations in this world where the light doesn’t seem to reach. Where, no matter how illuminated the place might be, shadows creep in too strongly to fight back.

A suspiciously empty gas station rest stop in the middle of the night, littered with googley eyes... A doctor’s office, where a bottle of booze and a tear-stained folder wait on the desk... A tech millionaire’s haunted kitchen... A Bible-quoting ventriloquist’s dingy apartment... A yoga retreat in the middle of the desert, silent except for the screaming...

These supernatural and sinister locations are your destination, and bestselling author Nat Cassidy will be your guide. Featuring the Bram Stoker Award–nominated, critically acclaimed novella Rest Stop (one of Esquire’s Best Horror Books of 2024), along with a number of other original short stories, some which have never been published before, I Know A Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours is a travelogue down twisting side streets and through alleyways where the darkness has eyes...and teeth.

Let’s hope you make it home in one piece—if the ghosts, gory visions, and splatterpunk nightmares don’t get you first.

Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen (May 26, 2026 by Poisoned Pen Press)

The year is 1635.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying the gilded skull of a saint.

It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost.

At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.

The Way It Haunted Him by Laura R. Samotin (June 9, 2026 by Titan Books)

A terrifying and powerful dark academia novel about Jewish folklore, grief, and other things locked in the archives. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, Tori Bovalino and Sunyi Dean.

"It's real. You'll see."

Michael Stein arrives at the Schechter Institute for Judaic Studies battered and broken after the death of his boyfriend seven months prior. Blaming himself for the accident that killed him, Michael has come to the Institute to complete his boyfriend's dissertation as part of his effort at repentance. While Michael's own past leads him to condemn superstition as a way to mask prejudice and old-fashioned beliefs, his boyfriend's research argues that the folktales told in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe were based in truth, and that demons and other creatures walked the earth, wreaking havoc on peoples' lives.

Instead of the Institute's infamous archivist, Michael is met by his grandson, Jacob Schechter, who has taken over the archive after his grandfather's death. A firm believer in the existence of the supernatural, Jacob explains that the archive plays host to a coterie of household demons. Michael insists that he is a skeptic, but strange and frightening occurrences plague his research, causing Michael to question both his sanity and his view of the world.

To cope with his guilt, grief, and the terrifying shadows following him, Michael must reckon with the events leading up to his boyfriend's death—and his role in it—by trusting the enigmatic Jacob to help uncover the truth. As untangling the mysteries of the past bring Jacob and Michael closer together, their respective secrets threaten to tear them apart. Because Michael is not the only one with darkness on his conscience, and if he and Jacob discover the truth of each other, only one of them may survive the fallout.

You Did Nothing Wrong by CG Drews (March 17, 2026 by St. Martin's Press)

A relentless, horror-inducing psychological suspense for fans of The Push and Baby Teeth by New York Times bestselling author CG Drews.

Single mother Elodie’s life has become a fairy tale. She’s met Bren, equal parts golden-retriever devoted and sinfully handsome. He’s whisked her and her autistic son, Jude, to the crumbling family house he’s renovating. She has a new husband, a new house, and a new baby on the way. Everything is perfect.

Then Jude claims he can hear voices in the walls. He says their renovations are “hurting” the house. Even Elodie can’t ignore it–something strange is going on. The question is, is it with the house, or with her son?

Then the one secret Elodie has been hiding is revealed, and no one is safe anymore.

A pulse-pounding, clever take on the haunted house novel, You Did Nothing Wrong examines the complexities of motherhood and the twisted bonds of family as it races to its shocking ending.

The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager (July 14, 2026 by Run For It)

The Descent meets The Ritual in a cult aquatic horror about a group of academics trapped in a sea cave who must reckon with eldritch horrors as they are forced to atone for their greatest sins.

ATONE OR DIE.

Grad student Caro has no idea what she wants to do with her life, but when an opportunity arises to act as a research assistant on an anthropological expedition for her professor and lover, Edward Beck, she doesn't hesitate.

Beck assembles a team of academics and professionals to study the ancient sea-based Cult of the Leviathan, and the expedition descends into the sea caves where the cult are said to have dwelt.

But when the cave entrance collapses, trapping them inside, the expedition will find they are not alone in the darkness. Surrounded by strange artefacts and scattered bones, an ancient trial has been set in motion. One by one, the members of the expedition will be tested and forced to atone for their greatest sin. . . or die.

The Winter Folk by Jen Julian (July 21, 2026 by Run For It)

A woman returns to the mysterious lodge in the woods where she once worked, and to the inscrutable creature that bound her there, in this haunting Appalachian gothic horror from singular voice Jen Julian. Perfect for fans of Alix E. Harrow and T. Kingfisher.

This is the story of Moth, who earned her name working for the Winter Folk.

Every year, the Winter Folk gather at a secret lodge in the Appalachians, a place known as Deerhaven, refuge for the time-worn and weary. As a child, Moth heard warnings from her mother: They are heartless, wild creatures—and they got no concern of us. At twenty-one, Moth is a college dropout, indebted, impoverished, and desperate for better things. She falls instantly for Deerhaven’s beautiful antlered host, the mild-mannered Mr. Oslin. When he offers her a housekeeper’s contract—one wish granted for a winter of service—she signs without question.

But Deerhaven is a dangerous place. Staff must follow strict rules or else face dire consequences, and the guests can be unpredictable and savage. And yet, Moth endures, enticed by a rumor that Mr. Oslin is looking for a protégé. A singular worker who would stay with him forever and be transformed.

Decades later, Moth returns to Appalachia with her husband and teenage daughter. She can't shake the feeling that she needs to return to Deerhaven, which banished her twenty years ago. As she hunts for a way in, her haunting memories and harrowing experiences come roaring back — her friends and rivals, her growing obsession with Mr. Oslin, and her mysterious exile.

A door exists in the dark of the woods. After so long away, what has Deerhaven become?

The Halls of the Dead by S.M. Hallow (August 18, 2026 by Harper Voyager)

A queer, gothic horror romance set in a necromancy-tinged London, sure to entrance fans of The Death of Jane Lawrence and Mexican Gothic.

London, December 1849

Irene Shallcross Haley has dedicated her life to necromancy, a forbidden, reviled art that is passed along through sentient grimoires bound in human skin. With her undead husband St. John—a marriage of kindred spirits and platonic convenience—she has been protecting the knowledge of generations of witches that came before her. Like any magic, it has come at a her reputation, her relationship with her sister, and her soul. But when Irene’s love, Agnes, is hanged for witchcraft, Irene refuses to let Agnes be one more thing that is taken from her.

A true resurrection has not been achieved in two thousand years, but Irene is determined. With the help of St. John, Irene bangs on the doors of the Halls of the Dead, demanding the third part of their triumverate back…or did she? Because the Agnes that awakens comes with both a hunger for raw flesh and a malignant ghost tied to her soul.

Necromancy is the art of saying no—no, I won't let you go; no, I won't let you be destroyed—and Irene’s work is not yet done. She must find a way to bring Agnes back to her true self, she must navigate her feelings for her resurrected lover as well as St. John, and she must do all of this without catching the attention of Sir Silas Underhill, the man who sentenced Agnes to death.

Death is not the end of love. But Irene may realize it can actually be the beginning.

Looking for more? Check out the full list of 2026 releases here.

Review || Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 20:59:00 +0000

Published February 4, 2025 by St. Martin's Griffin

Twenty-five-year-old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.

When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.

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Listen to Your Sister caught me completely off guard. The cover and blurb hint at a haunted house story, maybe a slow-burn spookfest. That’s not what this book is doing. It’s sharper, stranger, and far more emotionally intense than that.

Calla Williams is holding her family together with white-knuckle perseverance. She’s stepped into the adult role by default, trying to parent two brothers who resent her for it, even as they rely on her completely. She’s haunted by nightmares of their deaths, and the pressure of those dreams colliding with real life begins to warp her reality in genuinely horrifying ways.

This book runs on raw emotion. Grief morphs into rage, rage into guilt, guilt into love, and the whole thing barrels forward like a broken roller coaster that never slows down enough for you to catch your breath. Reality and the supernatural blend so seamlessly that you’re never quite sure what’s happening in Calla’s mind and what’s happening in the world, which only deepens the unease.

The sibling dynamics are messy and authentic. Calla is exhausted, grieving, angry, guilty, and stubbornly refusing to let go. She loves her brothers fiercely with all her heart, but they only see it as suffocating. There's grief, rage, love, and guilt—all tightly interlaced. Viel turns that emotional knot into horror, not with cheap scares, but by forcing you to sit inside the mess with her characters. The fear comes from love curdling under stress, from responsibility turning into a trap, from knowing everyone is hurting and no one knows how to stop it.

If you’re not a fan of fever-dream-like books that prioritize emotion over straightforward truths, this might not be your book. But if you enjoy horror that creeps under your skin because it acknowledges how difficult family can be, obligation can be stifling, and that you sometimes can love people too much, Listen to Your Sister is unforgettable.

Review || Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 23:26:00 +0000

Published March 24, 2026 by Tor Nightfire

Something darker than the devil stalks the North Carolina woods in Wolf Worm, a new gothic masterpiece from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher.

The year is 1899 and Sonia Wilson is a scientific illustrator without work, prospects, or hope. When the reclusive Dr. Halder offers her a position illustrating his vast collection of insects, Sonia jumps at the chance to move to his North Carolina manor house and put her talents to use. But soon enough she finds that there are darker things at work than the Carolina woods. What happened to her predecessor, Halder’s wife? Why are animals acting so strangely, and what is behind the peculiar local whispers about “blood thiefs?”

With the aid of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia discovers that Halder’s entomological studies have taken him down a dark road full of parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh, and that his monstrous experiments may grow to encompass his newest illustrator as well.

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Wolf Worm is T. Kingfisher's latest offering: a Gothic horror set amid the dense undergrowth of body horror on the lush, forest floor of Southern charm and weirdness. This time, facing down the absurdity is Sonia Wilson, an illustrator hired to draw insects for the unsociable and ill-mannered Dr. Hader. Kingfisher once again takes an everyday somebody and drops them right into her gruesome biological catastrophe.

Some readers might struggle with the slow-burning, atmospheric build-up of Wolf Worm. It's an insidious, creeping dread as Wilson discovers the wrongness of her environment. The horror doesn't leap out and wail. It encroaches on your awareness with little by little, with phantom sensations of wriggling bodies and tickling wings. This is the perfect hallmark of Gothic fiction, so I wasn't upset at the slow pacing.

No one really does weird like Kingfisher, yet her voice always has this peculiar balance between cozy and unsettling, mingling with the absurd. Her characters are just average Joes, wandering into the nightmareish, and having to totally wing it. They face their fear, yes, but not with superhuman prowess, but in the same way a child clutches a flashlight and faces the proverbial boogeyman under their bed. They just do, because the only way is through. Wilson is a perfect example of this; she's unnerved, but she keeps going anyway.

And who wouldn't be unnerved? Kingfisher has scripted her most cringeworthy horror yet—bugs. This book gets under your skin, literally. A "wolf worm" is the larva of the Cuterebra botfly that burrows under the skin and lives there, growing, until it drops out to start the cycle again. I was previously familiar with "warbles", as they are sometimes called, having worked in vet medicine before. (I once horrified a female client by plucking one out of a lump on her cat with forceps. In hindsight, I probably should have explained first. Oops.) These things have always icked me out, but hearing that they are also called wolf worms was new to me. As if the typical creepy crawlies aren't bad enough, Kingfisher's larvae come with... let's just say, abnormal capabilities.

Reading a story by Kingfisher is like Wilson searching through the bug library drawers. There’s always something peculiar and something enormously endearing awaiting discovery in the next drawer. I can't wait to read whatever she comes up with next.

Review || Ashes of August Manor by Blaine Daigle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 19:02:00 +0000

Published June 10, 2025 by Wicked House Publishing

For fans of "The Haunting of Hill House" and "The Haunting of Bly Manor".

Noelle, a tragedy-ridden hospice worker with a unique connection to death, accepts a job caring for the dying patriarch of the reclusive August family at their lakefront manor just outside the town of Bell River, Oregon. The house does not have electricity, and the eccentric nature of the family is displayed through the grotesque artwork that lines the walls of the manor.

As Noelle wrestles with her own struggles with understanding her connection to death, she is also plunged headfirst into the dark mysteries surrounding the August family. The dying patriarch who she is strangely never able to see. The head of the household incapable of giving a straight answer, and a boy unable to speak but clearly terrified of something.

But above all, she must uncover the answers behind the ashen footprints she finds all over the house at night and the withered figure she sees looming at the tree line across the lake.

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Ashes of August Manor has the moody, unsettling atmosphere Blaine Daigle is known for. Its dark halls, foggy forests, and falling ashes only solidify the ghosts that haunt the manor and Noelle. The slow-burning tension, the creeping dread, and the feeling that something is inherently wrong are all present here, and Daigle’s descriptive style once again shines. August Manor is eerie and intriguing, and the family that inhabits it only lends strangeness to the place.

The mystery itself is solid, and the final reveal is satisfying enough, but the journey there didn’t seize me as his other stories have. There are plenty of supernatural elements at play, some villainy, and a bit of folk horror that I wish had a better seat at the table. There's some truly creepy imagery in Old Crow, the local legend that haunts the woods in its tattered red cloak, taloned hands, and beaked face. Daigle speaks of writing quiet horror, the type of horror that is macabre and melancholic, and he accomplishes that with every turn of the hallway, every squeak of the wood floors, and flash into the psyche of his characters.

Compared to some of Daigle's other titles, this one doesn’t quite reach the same level of emotional weight. While his best books balance emotional depth with encroaching horror, the characters in Ashes of August Manor didn't stick with me the way his others have. A book centered around death and grief should have been emotionally devastating, but instead, due to its inconsistent pacing left me struggling at times, dipping into stretches that felt repetitive.

Overall, Ashes of August Manor is a respectable, gothic read with some classic Daigle elements. If you are looking for a slow-burning gothic horror, this one would sit well on your shelf. However, for long-time readers of Daigle's, it doesn’t quite reach the intensity or emotional profundity of his best work.

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Published September 1, 2026

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Published October 6, 2026 by Dutton

Review || Milkteeth by Caitlin Starling

Published October 20, 2026, by St. Martin's Press

Feature Fiction || Tide of Ebon Hollow by David Baldus

Published September 2, 2026

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming September 2026

Aurora returns to Mexico City to celebrate the return of stolen artifacts, including a mysterious statue of an Aztec god known as the Flayed One.Then her memories start coming apart, reality begins to warp, and the god she thought was safely buried starts making its presence known.

Fifteen years ago, Audrey's little brother disappeared in Devil's Den State Park.Now she's a park ranger with expertise in wilderness search and rescue, and another child has vanished in those same woods.The woods are lovely, dark, and apparently full of things that eat children.

A father searching for his missing daughter finds himself pulled into a world of darkness that is both disturbingly human and something much worse.When you're looking for someone you love, you don't always get to choose what you find.

Apparently summoning a demon isn't nearly as difficult as it should be.All you need is a drop of blood, a birthday candle, and a name.Which sounds like a perfectly reasonable extracurricular activity until the demon actually answers.

A road trip, a van, and a hashtag that should probably have stayed offline.This horror novel takes the increasingly questionable idea of documenting everything online and gives it a deadly turn.sometimes i scare myself by jeneva rose

Three horror stories. A dinner party. A quiet house. A roadside stop.In one story, a séance goes horribly wrong. In another, a family discovers their dream home has a terrifying history. And in the third, a roadside stop leads to something much darker than anyone expected.

A horror story that takes a familiar phrase and sends it somewhere much darker.Expect religious imagery, supernatural trouble, and the kind of situation where praying for help may not be enough.roots & wrath by e.j. wenstrom

September 26it pierces by jack finn

The title is a warning.Jenny will, in fact, eat you now.Beyond that, you're probably going to want to approach this one with an empty stomach and absolutely no assumptions about where the story is headed.Trad Wife by Sarah Langan

A gothic YA horror novel from the author of The Hacienda and The Possession of Alba Díaz.A young woman returns to a house filled with family secrets, supernatural danger, and the sort of history that makes you wonder why anyone ever thought buying a creepy old mansion was a good idea.

Feature Fiction || The Bookmark by Eugene A. Stripe

Published August 16, 2026

Review || The Flesh King by Richard Kadrey

Published October 7, 2025 by Titan Books

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming August 2026

13 Body Horror Books To Make Your Skin Crawl | Scaredy Cat Reading Challenge

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This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming July 2026

Review || I Am The Monster Under Your Bed by Emily Zinnikas

I Am The Monster Under Your Bed by Emily Zinnikas Published September 15th 2026 by St. Martins Press

This Month in Horror || The Best New Horror Books Coming June 2026

June 1

June 2

June 9

Women of the Weird West brings together stories from women and marginalized-gender authors, taking the classic Western and giving it a supernatural makeover. Expect ghosts, monsters, fae, magic, strange worlds, and plenty of women who aren't interested in playing the damsel-in-distress.

June 19

June 23

The fourth volume of Brave New Weird brings together twenty-three stories showcasing some of the strangest, most inventive horror around. Expect speculative horror, genre mashups, grotesque ideas, experimental storytelling, and plenty of things that don't fit neatly into a little genre box.June 26

Polly Schattel returns with Crater Girl, a genre-bending novel mixing dark fantasy, noir, and horror with a distinctly Southern flavor.It's a strange, satirical look at the modern South, and Schattel describes it as a "genre-inclusive" novel.June 28

The Echo of Monsters promises another dive into the darker corners of horror, making it one to keep an eye on if your preferred reading material involves things that probably shouldn't exist and definitely shouldn't be making noises in the dark.June 30

Welcome to Guadalajara in the summer of 1977, where children encounter ghosts, monsters, strange adults, a serpent girl in a carnival glass box, and all the little horrors that hide beneath ordinary life.June is shaping up to be a seriously weird month for horror.

This Month in Horror: The Best New Horror Books Coming in May 2026

May 5

Some places feel wrong before you can explain why. She Waits Where Shadows Gather promises the kind of unsettling horror where the shadows themselves may be the least of your problems.If atmospheric, creeping dread is your thing, this one belongs on the May TBR.

May 8

May 12

Joe always had potential. He just doesn't expect much from himself, so when he lands a low-key admin assistant job at a company he's never heard of, he's hoping it won't expect much from him either.Then he walks into the offices of Ponos.Turns out, potential is exactly what they're looking for.

Is it menopause or lycanthropy?Femme Feral promises a wild, vicious take on womanhood, transformation, and the things lurking just beneath the surface.

May 19

Savannah retreats to her parents' empty lake house after a disastrous falling-out with her best friend. She's drinking, overthinking, and generally spiraling when she wakes up in the woods beside a dead body. Turns out she's the best friend Savannah could ask for.

A dark, strange take on an old story? Yes, please.Salomé puts a familiar figure into a horror setting and promises to give this particular tale some teeth.

Aurora returns to Mexico City to celebrate the return of stolen artifacts, including a mysterious statue of an Aztec god known as the Flayed One.
Then her memories start coming apart, reality begins to warp, and the god she thought was safely buried starts making its presence known.

Fifteen years ago, Audrey's little brother disappeared in Devil's Den State Park.
Now she's a park ranger with expertise in wilderness search and rescue, and another child has vanished in those same woods.
The woods are lovely, dark, and apparently full of things that eat children.

A father searching for his missing daughter finds himself pulled into a world of darkness that is both disturbingly human and something much worse.
When you're looking for someone you love, you don't always get to choose what you find.

Apparently summoning a demon isn't nearly as difficult as it should be.
All you need is a drop of blood, a birthday candle, and a name.
Which sounds like a perfectly reasonable extracurricular activity until the demon actually answers.

A road trip, a van, and a hashtag that should probably have stayed offline.
This horror novel takes the increasingly questionable idea of documenting everything online and gives it a deadly turn.
sometimes i scare myself by jeneva rose

Three horror stories. A dinner party. A quiet house. A roadside stop.
In one story, a séance goes horribly wrong. In another, a family discovers their dream home has a terrifying history. And in the third, a roadside stop leads to something much darker than anyone expected.

A horror story that takes a familiar phrase and sends it somewhere much darker.
Expect religious imagery, supernatural trouble, and the kind of situation where praying for help may not be enough.
roots & wrath by e.j. wenstrom

September 26

it pierces by jack finn

The title is a warning.
Jenny will, in fact, eat you now.
Beyond that, you're probably going to want to approach this one with an empty stomach and absolutely no assumptions about where the story is headed.
Trad Wife by Sarah Langan

A gothic YA horror novel from the author of The Hacienda and The Possession of Alba Díaz.
A young woman returns to a house filled with family secrets, supernatural danger, and the sort of history that makes you wonder why anyone ever thought buying a creepy old mansion was a good idea.

I Am The Monster Under Your Bed by Emily Zinnikas
Published September 15th 2026 by St. Martins Press

Polly Schattel returns with Crater Girl, a genre-bending novel mixing dark fantasy, noir, and horror with a distinctly Southern flavor.
It's a strange, satirical look at the modern South, and Schattel describes it as a "genre-inclusive" novel.

June 28

The Echo of Monsters promises another dive into the darker corners of horror, making it one to keep an eye on if your preferred reading material involves things that probably shouldn't exist and definitely shouldn't be making noises in the dark.

June 30

Welcome to Guadalajara in the summer of 1977, where children encounter ghosts, monsters, strange adults, a serpent girl in a carnival glass box, and all the little horrors that hide beneath ordinary life.

June is shaping up to be a seriously weird month for horror.

Some places feel wrong before you can explain why. She Waits Where Shadows Gather promises the kind of unsettling horror where the shadows themselves may be the least of your problems.
If atmospheric, creeping dread is your thing, this one belongs on the May TBR.

Joe always had potential. He just doesn't expect much from himself, so when he lands a low-key admin assistant job at a company he's never heard of, he's hoping it won't expect much from him either.
Then he walks into the offices of Ponos.
Turns out, potential is exactly what they're looking for.

Is it menopause or lycanthropy?
Femme Feral promises a wild, vicious take on womanhood, transformation, and the things lurking just beneath the surface.

A dark, strange take on an old story? Yes, please.
Salomé puts a familiar figure into a horror setting and promises to give this particular tale some teeth.