Horror Shelf

A Dark and Endless Sea

Blaine Daigle

Whitt Rogers has been dreaming. Horrible dreams. Dreams that stretch the very fabric of the real and the unreal as he is pulled by a voice across the country to a small crab fishing ship set to depart into the Bering Sea. At sea, the memories piece themselves together in cracked fragments. But there is something out there.

Something speaking to Whitt in his dreams. A voice from a long-forgotten memory that promises peace at the cost of madness. A voice that leads to a place unimaginable and inescapable.

All the Hearts You Eat

Hailey Piper

A visceral and heartbreaking work of gothic horror about small town mysteries, local folklore and the things we leave behind when we're gone.

What really happened to Cabrina Brite?

Ivory's life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries?

Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina's death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone. Cabrina's closest friends have also seen a similar apparition, and as they toy with occult possibilities, they begin to unravel the truth behind Cabrina's death.

Because Cape Morning isn't a ghost town, but a town filled with ghosts, and Ivory is about to discover just what happens when you let one in.

Comments
Every time you think you see where this is going, you are wrong. And that's one of the best parts of this book. Absolutely amazing. Congrats to Piper for having well honed skills and talent, and whoever is her editor.

All the Prospect Around Us [book 2 of the Black Wells Series]

C. S. Humble

Book Two in the Black Wells series. A mysterious symbol seen on the sign of a homeless panhandler leads two young men down into the darkest secrets of Black Wells, Colorado, and toward a harrowing, supernatural event that will threaten the life of one and the soul of the other.

Comments
A more accurate summary: Two brothers by friendship move to a small town in search of employment and new beginnings after college graduation. One man seeks to establish himself as a minister, the other stumbling across an oddity within an abandoned church. This dark mystery draws them into a disaster that threatens their lives and souls.
Finally some good fucking horror with cohesion, themes, and the skills for good characterization. I didn't realize how much I'd prefer this sort of rotating pov. It lets you get closer to the characters, better understand their motivations than constantly switching out to someone else from 2 chapters ago. And I think the tension holds better as it's not an irritating fake out constantly.
I enjoy the biblical themes of sacrifice and temptation brotherly bonds. And for once it's not some stupid fight over a woman. It doesn't really go into the mythos too much and I'm fine with that. The vagueness is more appealing and it's not the point of the story.

All These Subtle Deceits [book 1 of the Black Wells series]

C. S. Humble

Book One in the Black Wells Series. Lauren Saunders moved to Black Wells, Colorado, to escape a toxic relationship that stole three years of her life. But her hopeful optimism of a fresh start is dashed after a brutal, supernatural attack sends her screaming from a nightclub into the cold, winter night. Her journey toward recovery leads her to the doorstep of William Daniels-a professional spiritual intercessor and occult consultant. Together they will descend into an occult labyrinth of dark forces and oppressive spirits.

Comments
Note: while this is part of a series, they are largely standalones, albeit with some vague references to one another. Also it's set in the same town / locale, but you don't need to read them in order. That said, I thought this was a little weaker than the other in the series, in terms of plot and themes.

Anybody Home?

Michael J. Seidlinger

What came first, the home or the desire to invade?

A seasoned invader with multiple home invasions under their belt recounts their dark victories while offering tutelage to a new generation of ambitious home invaders eager to make their mark on the annals of criminal history. From initial canvasing to home entry, the reader is complicit in every strangling and shattered window. The fear is inescapable.

Examining the sanctuary of the home and one of the horror genre's most frightening tropes, Anybody Home? points the camera lens onto the quiet suburbs and its unsuspecting abodes, any of which are potential stages for an invader ambitious enough to make it the scene of the next big crime sensation. Who knows? Their performance just might make it to the silver screen.

Comments
Is... this slasher? I guess? High concept slasher if I may huff farts for a moment. You are a home invader who has never invaded a home. The purpose of invading this home--under the supervision of a home invader with past experience--is not to steal. It's to make art. Quite unique as far as I've read. It's no tortureporn / traumaporn, though there is plenty of violence and injury.

Bad Cree

Jessica Johns

In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a young Cree woman's dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.

Night after night, Mackenzie's dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina's untimely death: a weekend at the family's lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too--a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina--Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams--and make them more dangerous.

What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina's death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?

Comments
One helluva debut novel. This is an author to watch out for.

Bat Eater

Kylie Lee Baker

Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner. But the bloody messes don't bother her, not when she's already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister being pushed in front of a train.

But the killer was never caught, and Cora is still haunted by his last words: bat eater.

These days, nobody can reach Cora: not her aunt who wants her to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, not her weird colleagues, and especially not the slack-jawed shadow lurking around her doorframe. After all, it can't be real – can it?

After a series of unexplained killings in Chinatown, Cora believes that someone might be targeting East Asian women, and something might be targeting Cora herself.

Soon, she will learn... you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.

Comments
Heart breaking and vindicating. Diaspora people will see themselves in this novel.

Beta Vulgaris

Margie Sarsfield

A young woman's seasonal job working a sugar beet harvest takes a surreal turn in this surprising and vivid debut.

Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, set off for Minnesota, hoping the paycheck from the sugar beet harvest will cover the rent on their Brooklyn apartment. Amidst the grueling work and familiar anxieties about her finances, Elise starts noticing strange things: threatening phone calls, a mysterious rash, and snatches of an ominous voice coming from the beet pile.

When Tom and other coworkers begin to vanish, Elise is left alone to confront the weight of her past, the horrors of her uncertain future, and the menacing but enticing siren song of the beets. Biting, eerie, and confidently told, Beta Vulgaris harnesses a distinct voice and audacious premise to undermine straightforward narratives of class, trauma, consumption, and redemption.

Comments
Slow escalation and ambiguity drive this psychological horror. The slow decline into the surreal climax was fantastic.

Briardark [book 1 of the Briardark series]

S. A. Harian

For Dr. Siena Dupont and her ambitious team, the Alpenglow glacier expedition is a career-defining opportunity. But thirty miles into the desolate Deadswitch Wilderness, they discover a missing hiker dangling from a tree, and their satellite phone fails to call out.

Then the body vanishes without a trace.

The disappearance isn't the only chilling anomaly. Siena's map no longer aligns with the trail. The glacier they were supposed to study has inexplicably melted. Strange foliage overruns the mountainside, and a tunnel within a tree hollow lures Siena to a hidden cabin, and a stranger with a sinister message...

Holden Sharpe's IT job offers little distraction from his wasted potential until he stumbles upon a decommissioned hard drive and an old audio file. Trapped on a mountain, Dr. Siena Dupont recounts an expedition in chaos and the bloody death of a colleague.

Entranced by the mystery, Holden searches for answers to Siena's fate. But he is unprepared for the truth that will draw him to the outskirts of Deadswitch Wilderness--a place teeming with unfathomable nightmares and impossibilities.

Comments
A lot of authors attempt their own spin on things like the Dyatlov Pass incident. And this isn't one of them, though I can see the comparison. No, this is far better than any Dyatlov fanfic or spooky dooky forest mountain horror in that vein. Call it cosmic horror but instead of outer space, it's this forest. This can be read as a standalone but does have a sequel. The author is also doing something online as additional material, hence a password at the end of the novel.

Biogenesis

Tatsuaki Ishiguro

Told in the manner of scientific reports, this collection of science fiction stories explores the allegorical overtones about the precariousness of species. Biogenesis and Other Stories collects five stories by Tatsuaki Ishiguro.

In Biogenesis, two professors research the rare winged mouse and how the genetic makeup of the creatures pointed to their eventual extinction. The discover that upon mating, both the male and female of the species died. The professors try to clone the winged mice without success, so they breed the remaining pair in captivity, noting the procedure, which includes a vibration of the creatures' wings, what appeared to be kissing, and the shedding of tears--composed of the same substance as their blood--until their eventual death.

Comments
I really loved the variety in this. If you don't like a story, skip it to the next one as it'll be quite different. For once I don't have a specific favorite in an anthology because all of them were excellent in their own ways.
There are a few issues I have. There's some anti Ainu sentiment and incest in it. There's also mention of POW abuse / slavery during WW1. Whether one think it was handled well is up to the individual reader.

Bunny

Mona Awad

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

Burn the Negative

Josh Winning

In this incendiary mash-up of horror and suspense, a notorious slasher film is remade...and the curse that haunted it is reawakened.

Arriving in L.A. to visit the set of a new streaming horror series, journalist Laura Warren witnesses a man jumping from a bridge, landing right behind her car. Here we go, she thinks. It's started. Because the series she's reporting on is a remake of a '90s horror flick. A cursed '90s horror flick, which she starred in as a child--and has been running from her whole life.

In The Guesthouse, Laura played the little girl with the terrifying gift to tell people how the Needle Man would kill them. When eight of the cast and crew died in ways that eerily mirrored the movie's on-screen deaths, the film became a cult classic--and ruined her life. Leaving it behind, Laura changed her name and her accent, dyed her hair, and moved across the Atlantic. But some scripts don't want to stay buried.

Now, as the body count rises again, Laura finds herself on the run with her aspiring actress sister and a jaded psychic, hoping to end the curse once and for all--and to stay out of the Needle Man's lethal reach.

Curdle Creek

Yvonne Battle-Felton

Welcome to Curdle Creek. We're dying to make you feel at home.

Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America governed by a tradition of ominous rituals designed to keep the residents safe.

Curdle Creek has one particularly strict policy: one in, one out.

And one day, it is Osira's turn.

Forced into the great unknown. The sinister reality of her birthplace unravels around her. As she comes face-to-face with those she believed were lost, Osira must reckon with all she has ever been told and confront the insidious cruelties of inheritance.

Dark Matter

Michelle Paver

January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely, and desperate to change his life, so when he's offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year, Gruhuken, but the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice: stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return--when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark.

Daughter of the Wormwood Star

Paul Jessup

After surviving a brutal and senseless attack on the grounds of her university, Clara finds herself bonded in an inexplicable way with other survivors. They call themselves the “Knot,” and together they discover some doors should not be opened and some promises should never be made.

Ruthlessly pursued by a group of nihilistic devotees with keyhole tattoos on their palms, Clara and her sisters follow their wide-eyed gothic glamour queen, Angelique, the self-named Daughter of the Wormwood Star. Through a hospital filled with zombie cultists to a lighthouse overflowing with living shadows, they race to find the Jawbone Door, where they will discover the true horror of What Lies Beyond.

A combination of folk horror, cosmic horror, occult horror, with elements of splatter punk and twisted surrealism, this is an antichrist novel unlike any you have read before or since.

Dead Eleven

Jimmy Juliano

On a creepy island where everyone has a strange obsession with the year 1994, a newcomer arrives, hoping to learn the truth about her son's death--but finds herself pulled deeper and deeper into the bizarrely insular community and their complicated rules...

Clifford Island. When Willow Stone finds these words written on the floor of her deceased son's bedroom, she's perplexed. She's never heard of it before, but soon learns it's a tiny island off Wisconsin's Door County peninsula, 200 miles from Willow's home. Why would her son write this on his floor? Determined to find answers, Willow sets out for the island.

After a few days on Clifford, Willow realizes: This place is not normal. Everyone seems to be stuck in a particular day in 1994: They wear outdated clothing, avoid modern technology, and, perhaps most mystifyingly, watch the OJ Simpson car chase every evening. When she asks questions, people are evasive, but she learns one thing: Close your curtains at night.

High schooler Lily Becker has lived on Clifford her entire life, and she is sick of the island's twisted mythology and adhering to the rules. She's been to the mainland, and everyone is normal there, so why is Clifford so weird? Lily is determined to prove that the islanders' beliefs are a sham. But are they?

Five weeks after Willow arrives on the island, she disappears. Willow's brother, Harper, comes to Clifford searching for his sister, and when he learns the truth--that this island is far more sinister than anyone could have imagined--he is determined to blow the whole thing open.

If he can get out alive....

Comments
In my personal opinion, nothing good has ever come out of reddit. Reddit delenda est. Apparently this is a popular nosleep author. I refuse to admit I'm wrong so I'll chalk it up to a strong editor and the hope that this dude has a healthy offline life. Anyways, pretty decent novel.

Devil's Day

Andrew Michael Hurley

Every autumn, John Pentecost returns to the Lancashire farm where he grew up to help gather the sheep from the moors. Generally, very little changes in the Briardale Valley, but this year things are different. His grandfather--known to everyone as the Gaffer--has died and John's new wife, Katherine, is accompanying him for the first time.

Every year, the Gaffer would redraw the boundary lines of the village, with pen and paper but also through the remembrance of folk tales, family stories and timeless communal rituals which keep the sheep safe from the Devil. This year, though, the determination of some members of the community to defend those boundary lines has strengthened, and John and Katherine must decide where their loyalties lie, and whether they are prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to join the tribe...

Devils Kill Devils

Johnny Compton

When all hell breaks loose, you need a devil on your side

Sarita has been watched over by a guardian angel her entire life. She calls him Angelo, and keeps him a secret. But secrets cant stay buried forever

When Angelo murders someone she loves, Sarita begins to see what's really been lurking in the shadows surrounding her. And she will have to embrace the evil within if she hopes to make it out alive.

Johnny Compton, critically acclaimed author of The Spite House and master of dread, takes you on a terrifying race of one woman against the hordes of hell.

Diavola

Jennifer Thorne

Anna has only two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly, and survive. It isn't easy, when she's the only one in the family who doesn't quite seem to fit. Her twin brother Benny goes with the flow so much he's practically dissolved, and her older sister Nicole is so used to everyone--including her blandly docile husband and two kids--falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who has paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet. The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness–including Benny's demanding new boyfriend (it's Christopher, not Chris). That is, until things start going off the rails–the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and, oh, the dark, violent past of the villa itself. Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology. (Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)

Echo

Thomas Olde Heuvelt

From international bestselling sensation Thomas Olde Heuvelt comes Echo, a thrilling descent into madness and obsession as one man confronts nature--and something even more ancient and evil answers back.

Nature is calling--but they shouldn't have answered.

Travel journalist and mountaineer Nick Grevers awakes from a coma to find that his climbing buddy, Augustin, is missing and presumed dead. Nick's own injuries are as extensive as they are horrifying. His face wrapped in bandages and unable to speak, Nick claims amnesia--but he remembers everything.

He remembers how he and Augustin were mysteriously drawn to the Maudit, a remote and scarcely documented peak in the Swiss Alps.

He remembers how the slopes of Maudit were eerily quiet, and how, when they entered its valley, they got the ominous sense that they were not alone.

He remembers: something was waiting for them...But it isn't just the memory of the accident that haunts Nick. Something has awakened inside of him, something that endangers the lives of everyone around him...It's one thing to lose your life. It's another to lose your soul.

Edenville

Sam Rebelein

After publishing his debut novel, The Shattered Man, to disappointing sales and reviews, Campbell P. Marion is struggling to find inspiration for a follow-up. When Edenville College invites him to join as a writer-in-residence, hes convinced that his bad luck has finally taken a turn. His girlfriend Quinn isnt so sureshe grew up near Edenville and has good reasons for not wanting to move back. Cam disregards her skepticism and accepts the job, with Quinn reluctantly following along.

But theres something wrong in Edenville. Despite the charming old ladies milling about Main Street and picturesque sunflowers dotting the sidewalks, poison lurks beneath the surface. As a series of strange and ominous events escalate among Edenville and its residents, Cam and Quinn find themselves entangled in a dark and disturbing history.

Told with equal parts horror and humor, Edenville explores the urban legends that fuel our nightmares and the ways in which ambition can overshadow our best instincts. Sam Rebelein is an exciting, sharp new voice, sure to terrify readers for years to come.

The mundane horrors of rural and academic living collide with pure cosmic weirdness in Sam Rebeleins Edenville. Not since Jason Pargins John Dies at the End have I been so horrified and grossed out by a book I could say more, but honestly, the less you know about this book, the better. A fantastic debut. Todd Keisling, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Devils Creek and Cold, Black & Infinite

Comments
If you'd like to check out his work but hesitate due to the length of this novel, I do recommend his short story collection which is set in the same universe as this novel. There are no spoilers for the book, but there are some references. The anthology is called 'The Poorly Made and Other Things'.

Experimental Film

Gemma Files

img credit The Watcher by Shaun Tan.

Fired at almost the same time as her son Clark's Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, former film critic turned teacher Lois Cairns is caught in a depressive downward spiral, convinced she's a failure who's spent half her adult life writing about other people's dreams without ever seeing any of her own come true.

One night Lois attends a program of experimental film and emerges convinced she's seen something no one else has--a sampled piece of silver nitrate silent film footage whose existence might prove that an eccentric early 20th-century socialite who disappeared under mysterious circumstances was also one of Canada's first female movie-makers.

Though it raises her spirits and revitalizes her creatively, Lois's headlong quest to discover the truth about Mrs. A. Macalla Whitcomb almost immediately begins to send her much further than she ever wanted to go, revealing increasingly troubling links between her subject's life and her own. Slowly but surely, the malign influence of Mrs Whitcomb's muse begins to creep into every aspect of Lois's life, even placing her son in danger. But how can one increasingly ill and unstable woman possibly hope to defeat a threat that's half long-lost folklore, half cinematically framed hallucination--an existential nightmare made physical, projected off the screen and into real life?
Quick Comments
Autism In Horror: the novel. NO WAIT hear me out. It's not in an ableist way but it does touch upon ableism towards people with autism. A woman journalist delves in the filmography of the first woman director in Canadian history, and discovers the monstrous divine is now haunting her. I loved the unusual folk tale/rural paganism the monster was based in. The themes might be on the nose for those skilled in picking out topics, but oh my god it was a genuine delight to have such a skillful portrayal of neurodivergence. This is one of the books that make me go 'oh yeah, right, THIS is why I read horror.'

Eye of a Little God

A. J. Steiger

The Painted Man is here. I feel him in the darkness. He says, "If you let me in, I'll make the pain stop." God help me, I want to let him.After losing his delivery job – the last thing binding him to an empty life - Eddie Luther, veteran and drifter, drives into the snowy woods with a bottle of sleeping pills. But instead of eternal silence, Eddie hears a whisper inside his damaged ear.

Help me.

He follows the call and finds a cryptic journal filled with loneliness and longing, a journal whose words seem written for him alone. Guided by the clues in its pages, he embarks on a journey into a shadowy world beneath the small town of Devil's Fork, Nebraska – a world where girls become cats, televisions whisper prophecies, and only those cast out of society can see and use magic . . .

Or maybe Eddie's sanity is slipping. All he knows for sure is that he's falling in love with someone he's never seen, someone who may be more than human – and who will change everything he thinks he knows about the world and his place in it.

FantasticLand

Mike Bockoven

Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun is Guaranteed!” But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares.

How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience.

Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People.

If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online.

Comments
Certainly more of a suspense novel than pure horror, but I think this counts because of the apocalyptic tones. Ah, the world gone to shit, and how horrible white people can be to each other. I liked the revolving POV which kept things fresh. It vaguely reminds of me of Matt Wesolowski's character, Scott King, in the Six Stories series. Initially and carefully removed, but there's enough of a personality and empathy in the sort of narrator.

Feeders

Matt Serafini

This darkly satirical supernatural thriller follows a would-be influencer whose dreams of online fame spiral into nightmare territory when she encounters a mysterious and dangerous social media platform--perfect for fans of Grady Hendrix and Joe Hill. When a video depicting the brutal murder of a former classmate leaks online, Kylie Bennington's--whose dreams of becoming a successful influencer remain frustratingly elusive--curiosity gets the better of her, leading to the discovery of an off-the-grid social media app called MonoLife. As it turns out, there are certain cryptic rules in the user agreement that must be adhered to, such as interacting with other users at least twice daily or risk losing it all...and never, ever speaking of MonoLife's existence to non-users or risk dire consequences. For this is a platform that primarily rewards the worst in human behavior, and which begins chipping away at Kylie's sanity across post after post for an ever-increasing audience of immoral fans. Now Kylie's going to find out just how far she's willing to go on her unyielding rise to the top--even if that means coming face-to-face with the frightening and ruthless forces behind MonoLife, who see all from deep within the shadows

Fervor

Toby Lloyd

A chilling and unforgettable story of a close-knit Jewish family in London pushed to the brink when they suspect their daughter is a witch.

Hannah and Eric Rosenthal are devout Jews living in North London with their three children and Eric's father Yosef, a Holocaust survivor. Both intellectually gifted and deeply unconventional, the Rosenthals believe in the literal truth of the Old Testament and in the presence of God (and evil) in daily life. As Hannah prepares to publish a sensationalist account of Yosef's years in war-torn Europe--unearthing a terrible secret from his time in the camps--Elsie, her perfect daughter, starts to come undone. And then, in the wake of Yosef's death, she disappears. When she returns, just as mysteriously as she left, she is altered in disturbing ways.

Witnessing the complete transformation of her daughter, Hannah begins to suspect that Elsie has delved too deep into the labyrinths of Jewish mysticism and gotten lost among shadows. But for Elsie's brother Tovyah, a brilliant but reclusive student struggling to find his place at Oxford, the truth is much simpler: his sister is the product of a dysfunctional family, obsessed with empty rituals, traditions, and unbridled ambition. But who is right? Is religion the cure for the disease or the disease itself? And how can they stop the darkness from engulfing Elsie completely?

Alive with both the bristling energy of a great campus novel and the unsettling, ever-shifting ground of a great horror tale, Fervor is at its heart a family story--where personal allegiances compete with obligations to history and to mysterious forces that offer both consolation and devastation.

Fever House [book 1 of a duology]

Keith Rosson

A small-time criminal. A has-been rock star. A shadowy government agency. And a severed hand whose dark powers threaten to destroy them all.

When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, to collect overdue drug money, a severed hand is the last thing he expects to find stashed in the client's refrigerator. Hutch quickly realizes that the hand induces uncontrollable madness: Anyone in its proximity is overcome with a boundless compulsion for violence. Within hours, catastrophic forces are set into motion: Dark-op government agents who have been desperately hunting for the hand are on Hutch's tail, more of the city's residents fall under its brutal influence, and suddenly all of Portland stands at the precipice of disaster. . . .

But it's all the same for Katherine Moriarty, a singer whose sudden fame and precipitous downfall were followed by the mysterious death of her estranged husband--suicide, allegedly. Her trauma has made her agoraphobic, shackled within the confines of her apartment. Her son, Nick, has moved home to care for her, quietly making his living working for Hutch's boss.

When Hutch calls Nick in distress, looking for someone else to take the hand, Katherine and Nick are plunged into a global struggle that will decimate the walls of the carefully arranged life they've built. Mother and son must evade both crazed, bloodthirsty masses and deceitful government agents while exorcising family secrets that have risen from the dead--secrets, they soon discover, that might hold the very key to humanity's survival.

Comments
If you don't like zombies or apocalypses, READ THIS BOOK. MAKE YOURSELF A KING'S HOUSE AND YOU WILL READ ALL YOU EVER WANTED. Also the sequel is just as amazing.

Gollitok

Andrew Najberg

In a post-nuclear Eastern Europe, Hammel E Varka departs for a remote island to join a survey team cataloguing the abandoned Gollitok prison in the hopes that he will redeem his family's tarnished reputation.

After the passage across the strait leaves a team member injured, Varka quickly realizes that this survey is far from routine and that what he thought he knew about the island was a cover for more horrifying truths. As his team presses deeper into the decaying facility, hidden agendas splinter the team, and they find themselves beset with dangers beyond their worst nightmares.

Grasshands

Kyle Winkler

Everything wrong with the world is wrong with books. When overworked assistant Sylvia Hix finds a strange moss smothering the library books, there's little to worry about. But when patrons start eating it, gaining direct knowledge of the books, then losing their minds--Sylvia has deep problems. Moreover, her supervisor is a glue addict, her best friend Albert is growing into a giant, and Clara Gamelin, the Library Board Director, is shaping her to be the next ball busting head librarian. It is a job she does not want.

Sylvia is haunted by the moss, because it's somehow connected to a horrific creature from her childhood. A creature she once named Grasshands and since forgotten. Stopping Grasshands from decaying the town's mind, the library's books, and the slow rot of time is the only job now available to her, whether she wants it or not. A novel of biblio-horror, body horror, and melancholic friendship, Grasshands is ready for check-out. Get your library card ready.

Comments
extremely cringe to thank nail 'unceasing serial rapist' gaiman for inspiration in the year 2024. Otherwise, fantastic amazing fungi plant horror. Not weird fiction or scifi per se, though it veers into scifi a fair amount. Just a very good weird horror-y book.

Grim Root

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Embark on a darkly humorous journey of reality TV meets the macabre. On the set of The Groom, a group of women must compete for the heart of Midwestern bachelor Tristan by spending a week in a haunted house. Divorcee Linda, resigned to her role as the show's underdog, finds her resolve cracking when she begins to fall for fellow castmate Charity. Meanwhile, Sabrina, groomed by her witchy mother to deliver their family from poverty by marrying a rich man, sees winning the competition as her predestined path.

But after a shocking demise, the game takes a sinister turn. As the remaining contestants grapple with their desires for love and survival, they uncover dark secrets within and without the house's walls. Trapped in a twisted new competition, they must confront their own demons or face elimination.

Comments
yes there are lesbians and YES they FUCK.

Hearts Strange and Dreadful

Tim McGregor

New England, 1821--Hester Stokely, an orphan with unusual abilities, struggles to find her place in the pious town of Wickstead. A house-servant in the employ of her uncle's upright family, Hester is treated as little more than a pariah by the judgmental townsfolk.

When a deadly plague comes to town, Hester becomes indispensable as a healer. Yet as Hester watches the town's residents rapidly fall ill, she realizes that something more dangerous than disease has come to Wickstead.

Soon the buried dead are exhumed on rumor of superstition, and occult fires burn fiercely into the night. As the townspeople turn on each other, a mysterious traveler arrives, furthering the growing paranoia.

Hester must confront the dark forces which have invaded Wickstead, or all who live there may be lost... their souls included.

Hekla's Children

James Brogden

A decade ago, teacher Nathan Brookes saw four of his students walk up a hill and vanish. Only one returned, Olivia, starved, terrified, and with no memory of where she'd been. Questioned by the police but released for lack of evidence, Nathan spent the years trying to forget.

When a body is found in the same ancient woodland where they disappeared, it is first believed to be one of the missing children, but is soon identified as a Bronze Age warrior, nothing more than an archaeological curiosity. Yet Nathan starts to have horrific visions of the students, alive but trapped. Then Olivia reappears, desperate that the warrior's body be returned to the earth. For he is the only thing keeping a terrible evil at bay...

Hemlock Island

Kelley Armstrong

Laney Kilpatrick has been renting her vacation home to strangers. The invasion of privacy gives her panic attacks, but it's the only way she can keep her beloved Hemlock Island, the only thing she owns after a pandemic-fueled divorce. But broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and now, terrified renters who've fled after finding blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet, as though someone tried to claw their way out...and failed.

When Laney shows up to investigate with her teenaged niece in tow, she discovers that her ex, Kit, has also been informed and is there with Jayla, his sister and her former best friend. Then Sadie, another old high school friend, charters over with her brother, who's now a cop.

There are tensions and secrets, whispers in the woods, and before long, the discovery of a hand poking up from the earth. Then the body that goes with it... But by that time, someone has taken off with their one and only means off the island, and they're trapped with someone--or something--that doesn't want them leaving the island alive.

Comments
Maybe it's shameful on my part, but it's not often I read a novel that has a bisexual character who is bisexual and has her sexuality matter to a plot.

Hex

Thomas Olde Heuvelt

The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt--a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

Holy Ghost Road

John Mantooth

Some roads are haunted by the past. Some by ghosts. Some are even haunted by demons. The one Forest must travel is haunted by all three. When she discovers Pastor Nesmith praying to a demonic entity in her family's barn, Forest knows she must run. Enraged at the possibility of having his true allegiance exposed, Nesmith pursues Forest as she flees on foot, hoping to reach the one person who will believe her--her grandmother. Unfortunately, Granny is forty miles away, and Forest has no car, no phone, and no friends. To reach her, Forest will have to learn to see the world true, even as the demonic and the sacred wage war for her soul.

In the Night Wood

Dale Bailey

In this contemporary fantasy, the grieving biographer of a Victorian fantasist finds himself slipping inexorably into the supernatural world that consumed his subject.

Failed father, failed husband, and failed scholar, Charles Hayden hopes to put his life back together with a new project: a biography of Caedmon Hollow, the long-dead author of a legendary Victorian children's book, In the Night Wood, and forebear of his wife, Erin. Deep in mourning from the loss of their young daughter, they pack up their American lives, Erin gives up her legal practice, and the couple settles in Hollow's remote Yorkshire mansion.
In the neighboring village, Charles meets a woman he might have loved, a child who could have been his own daughter, and the ghost of a self he hoped to bury. Erin, paralyzed by her grief, immerses herself in pills and painting images of a horned terror in the woods.
In the primeval forest surrounding Caedmon Hollow's ancestral home, an ancient power is stirring, a long-forgotten king who haunts the Haydens' dreams. And every morning the fringe of darkling trees presses closer.
Soon enough, Charles and Erin will venture into the night wood.
Soon enough, they'll learn that the darkness under the trees is but a shadow of the darkness that waits inside us all.

It Rides a Pale Horse

Andy Marino

From a new star in horror fiction comes a terrifying novel of obsession, greed, and the shocking actions we'll take to protect those we love, all set in a small town filled with dark secrets.

The Larkin siblings are known around the small town of Wofford Falls. Both are artists, but Peter Larkin, Lark to his friends, is the hometown hero. The one who went to the big city and got famous, then came back and settled down. He's the kind of guy who becomes fast friends with almost anyone. His sister Betsy on the other hand is more... eccentric. She keeps to herself.

When Lark goes to deliver one of his latest pieces to a fabulously rich buyer, it seems like a regular transaction. Even being met at the gate of the sprawling, secluded estate by an intimidating security guard seems normal. Until the guard plays him a live feed: Betsy being abducted in real time.

Lark is informed that she's safe for now, but her well‑being is entirely in his hands. He's given a book. Do what the book says, and Betsy will go free.

It seems simple enough. But as Lark begins to read he realizes: the book might be demonic. Its writer may be unhinged. His sister's captors are almost certainly not what they seem. And his town and those within it are... changing.

And the only way out is through.

Kill Creek

Thomas Scott

At the end of a dark prairie road, nearly forgotten in the Kansas countryside, is the Finch House. For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests...

When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country's most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won't be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.

Kill for Love

Laura Picklesimer

The boys on the row are only after one thing, but that bullshit's for pledges. Tiffany's on the hunt for something more.

Kill for Love is a searing satirical thriller about Tiffany, a privileged Los Angeles sorority sister who is struggling to keep her sadistic impulses--and haunting nightmares of fire and destruction--at bay. After a frat party hookup devolves into a bloody, fatal affair, Tiffany realizes something within her has awoken: the insatiable desire to kill attractive young men.

As Tiffany's bloodlust deepens and the bodies pile up, she must contend with mounting legal scrutiny, social media-fueled competing murders, and her growing relationship with Weston, who she thinks could be the perfect boyfriend. A female-driven, modern-day American Psycho, Kill for Love exposes modern toxic plasticity with dark comedy and propulsive plot.

King Nyx

Kirsten Bakis

A haunting mystery about lost girls and the woman driven to find them, from the author of the contemporary classic Lives of the Monster Dogs.

Anna Fort wants to be a supportive wife, even if that means accompanying her husband for the winter of 1918 to a remote, frozen island estate so he can finish his book as the guest of an eccentric millionaire. When she learns three girls are missing from a school run by their host, Anna realizes finding them is up to hereven if that means risking her husbands career, and possibly her life.

Her husbands masterpiece-in-progress features strange meteorological anomalies along with wild speculations about facts he believes scientists hide from the public. Most people think Charles Fort is a crackpot. Thats about to change now that wealthy Claude Arkel is his patron.

Yet Anna is sure somethings not right on Prosper Island, though the alarming return of her troubles makes her question her own sanity. Is the figure in the woods really the ghost of her long-lost friend Mary, or a product of her disturbed imagination? Accompanied reluctantly by a fellow guest, the elegant and troubled Stella Bixby, Anna embarks on a dangerous quest to find the missing girls before Arkel finds heror her own mind unravels.

A contemporary feminist tale with a dreamlike, gothic setting, King Nyx reintroduces readers, twenty-five years after her acclaimed debut, to one of our most astonishingly imaginative storytellers.

Knock Knock, Open Wide

Neil Sharpson

Knock Knock, Open Wide weaves horror and Celtic myth into a terrifying, heartbreaking supernatural tale of fractured family bonds, the secrets we carry, and the veiled forces that guide Irish life.

Driving home late one night, Etain Larkin finds a corpse on a pitch-black country road deep in the Irish countryside. She takes the corpse to a remote farmhouse. So begins a night of unspeakable horror that will take her to the very brink of sanity.

She will never speak of it again.

Two decades later, Betty Fitzpatrick, newly arrived at college in Dublin, has already fallen in love with the drama society, and the beautiful but troubled Ashling Mallen. As their relationship blossoms, Ashling goes to great lengths to keep Betty away from her family, especially her alcoholic mother, Etain.

As their relationship blossoms, Betty learns her lover's terrifying family history, and Ashling's secret obsession. Ashling has become convinced that the horrors inflicted on her family are connected to a seemingly innocent children's TV show. Everyone in Ireland watched this show in their youth, but Ash soon discovers that no one remembers it quite the same way. And only Ashling seems to remember its star: a small black goat puppet who lives in a box and only comes out if you don't behave. They say he's never come out.

Almost never.

When the door between the known and unknown opens, it can never close again.

Comments
Hey you remember that Candle Cove creepypasta? This isn't a copy but it's in the same sub-sub-sub genre and goddamn it's amazing.

Land Shark

Alex Gonzalez

Something horrific is happening on Marisol Island. A deranged man is attacking innocent beach goers. Massive, prehistoric sharks have started appearing in the water. The stars in the sky have started to dim.

When two brothers, P.J. and Dennis, come face to face with a cosmic evil, they're forced to make a decision: stay and fight or flee to the mainland. Quickly, the line between bravery and foolishness starts to blur. The history between the two starts to boil. Throw in Max, a journalist linked to two of the victims, and the whole nightmare seems to get more tangled.

Between the quarter life crisis of being in your twenties and the real terror of a man feeding you to sharks, Land Shark compounds tangible blood and guts with existential dread. There's something in the water, and it's been there for aeons.

Comments
The most intelligent slasher genre novel I've read so far. God, it's stunning. Everything this author is gold.

Last Days

Adam Nevill

Last Days (winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel of the Year) by Adam Nevill is a Blair Witch style novel in which a documentary film-maker undertakes the investigation of a dangerous cult--with creepy consequences

When guerrilla documentary maker, Kyle Freeman, is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been answered.

The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle's brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organization that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage, and occult rituals.

The shoot's locations take him to the cult's first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France, and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where The Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven't broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots.

Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artifacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him?

Comments
I just wanted to mention real quick that the MC [and perhaps author] is not good at using the correct pronouns which rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not sure if it was intentionally transphobic or transmisogynistic, but it bothered me.

Leech

Hiron Ennes

A surreal and horrifying debut, Hiron Ennes's Leech defies our understanding of identity, heredity, and bodily autonomy.

MEET THE CURE FOR THE HUMAN DISEASE

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron's doctor has died. The doctor's replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.

Comments
hey by the way there's grooming and rape in this plot. There's some explicit scene(s) but it's not for the chock value and it does have a point to the story. Just fyi.

Let Him In

William Friend

“Daddy, there's a man in our room...”

Alfie wakes one night to find his twin daughters at the foot of his bed, claiming there's a shadowy figure in their bedroom. When no such thing can be found, he assumes the girls had a nightmare.

He isn't surprised that they're troubled. Grief has made its home at Hart House: nine months ago, the twins' mother Pippa died unexpectedly, leaving Alfie to raise them alone. And now, when the girls mention a new imaginary friend, it seems like a harmless coping mechanism. But the situation quickly develops into something more insidious. The girls set an extra place for him at the table. They whisper to him. They say he's going to take them away...

Alfie calls upon Julia--Pippa's sister and a psychiatrist--to oust the malignant tenant from their lives. But as Alfie himself is haunted by visions and someone watches him at night, he begins to question the true character of the force that has poisoned his daughters' minds, with dark and violent consequences.

Whatever this “friend” is, he doesn't want to leave. Alfie will have to confront his own shameful secrets, the dark past of Hart House, and even the bounds of reality--or risk taking part in an unspeakable tragedy.

Malice House

Megan Shepherd

Of all the things aspiring artist Haven Marbury expected to find while clearing out her late father's remote seaside house, Bedtime Stories for Monsters was not on the list. This secret handwritten manuscript is disturbingly different from his Pulitzer-winning works: its interweaving short stories crawl with horrific monsters and enigmatic humans that exist somewhere between this world and the next. The stories unsettle but also entice Haven, practically compelling her to illustrate them while she stays in the house that her father warned her was haunted. Clearly just dementia whispering in his ear . . . right?

Reeling from a failed marriage, Haven hopes an illustrated Bedtime Stories can be the lucrative posthumous father-daughter collaboration she desperately needs to jump-start her art career. However, everyone in the nearby vacation town wants a piece of the manuscript: her father's obsessive literary salon members, the Ink Drinkers; her mysterious yet charming neighbor, who has a tendency toward three a.m. bonfires; a young barista with a literary forgery business; and of course, whoever keeps trying to break into her house. But when a monstrous creature appears under Haven's bed right as grisly deaths are reported in the nearby woods, she must race to uncover dark, otherworldly family secrets--completely rewriting everything she ever knew about herself in the process.

Marginal

Tom Carlisle

When Rob receives a call in the middle of the night, he knows it must be bad news. But he isn't prepared for what he hears; his brother Marcus has died in Scotland, at the Systematics compound where they spent their childhood. The place Rob managed to escape with his sanity barely intact, the place that hollowed out his family.

Rob is determined to go north to the compound to see Marcus laid to rest, and more importantly, to get to the bottom of what killed him. Because Rob has been waiting for the Systematics to make a mistake. Waiting for their charismatic leader Bjorn Thrissell to show his true colours, so that Rob can make their crimes public.

But when Rob arrives at the compound with an eager podcaster, Lucy, in tow, they discover a group of people coming apart at the seams and paranoia seeping through the community. Mutiny is in the air and worse... there is something lurking under the surface, something monstrous and murderous, something that has been biding its time in the margins...

Trapped and isolated, Rob and Lucy are going to have to put their trust in the community they have come to ruin if any of them are going to have any hope of survival.

Mean Spirited

Nick Roberts

An alcoholic teacher and father's world spirals out of control when a former student is killed and he is left with her dog and the dark presence that follows it.

Matt Matheny teaches during the day, drinks at night, and barely hides his functioning alcoholism from his veterinarian ex-wife, Lucy, and his six-year-old son, Mikey. His world spirals out of control when a former student is killed, and he's left with her dog, Conehead. But something isn't right with Conehead. A dark presence follows him, and very soon, people around him die. Matt realizes the only way to protect his son is to sober up and work with Lucy to expose the dog's mysterious past and face a secret so shocking--an evil so relentless--that it threatens to unleash hell on an entire town.

This horror novel pays homage to Stephen King's Cujo, and films like It Follows and The Strangers. It is a haunting and suspenseful exploration of the unseen and the supernatural, set against the seemingly tranquil backdrop of rural West Virginia. Nick Roberts masterfully builds tension and atmosphere, creating a sense of impending doom with meticulous detailing and vivid imagery. The psychological exploration elevates the narrative, making Mean Spirited a compelling read for those who seek a blend of horror, mystery, and emotional depth.

Whether you are a seasoned fan of the genre or a curious newcomer, Mean Spirited promises a gripping and thought-provoking journey into the realms of the supernatural.

Comments
I appreciate that addiction, specifically alcoholism in this case, was treated with some tact. Not entirely realistically, but with more compassion put into it than I usually see. Also the dog thing is fucking terrifying like what the fuck. The dog from The Thing movie has nothing on this.

Meet Me at the Surface

Jodie Matthews

Everything that comes from the ground has to go back down... eventually

Merryn grew up on the wilds of Bodmin moor, raised by her mother and her aunt in an old farmhouse. Here, the locals never leave the village, fear for the future of their farms and cling desperately to the folkloric tales that are woven into their history. Except Merryn, who has escaped to Manchester for university, briefly untethering herself from her past.

When Merryn returns home for the memorial service of her ex-girlfriend Claud, she finds her childhood home stranger and more secretive than ever. She's sure that her mother is hiding something. The villagers are hunting on the moors at night, but for what? And then there's a notebook, found in an old chest of drawers, full of long-forgotten folklore that seems to be linked somehow to Claud.

Mothtown

Caroline Hardaker

Including illustrations from bestselling illustrator and political cartoonist, Chris Riddell, Mothtown is the unsettling and eerie new novel by Caroline Hardaker, perfect for fans of Midsommar and Rivers Solomon's Sorrowland.

As a child, David could tell something was wrong.

The kids in school spread rumours of missing people, nests of bones and bodies appearing in the mountains. His sister refused to share what she knew, and his parents turned off the TV whenever he entered the room. Protecting him, they said.

Worse, the only person who shared anything at all with him, his beloved grandpa, disappeared without a goodbye. Mum and Dad said he was dead. But what about the exciting discovery Grandpa had been working on for his whole life?

Now 26, David lives alone and takes each day as it comes. When a strange package arrives on his doorstep, one with instructions not to leave the Earth, a new world is unfurled before David, one he's been trying to suppress for years.

Blending horror and literary fiction, Mothtown is the strange new novel from celebrated author Caroline Hardaker.

Natural Beauty

Ling Ling Huang

Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.

Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents--also talented musicians--who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.

Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures--from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk--and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and gives her a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik's charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.

A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity--and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.

Nestlings

Nat Cassidy

Ana and Reid needed a lucky break.

The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling: with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. That's about to change with the words any New Yorker would love to hear--affordable housing lottery.

They've won an apartment in the Deptford, one of Manhattan's most revered buildings with beautiful vistas of Central Park and stunning architecture.

Reid dismisses disturbing events and Ana's deep unease and paranoia as the price of living in New York--people are odd--but he can't explain the needle-like bite marks on the baby.

Night Film

Marisha Pessl

Night Film tells the haunting story of a journalist who becomes obsessed with the mysterious death of a troubled prodigy--the daughter of an iconic, reclusive filmmaker.
On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley's life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova--a man who hasn't been seen in public for more than thirty years.
For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova's dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.
Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova's eerie, hypnotic world.The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more.

Quick Comments

I'll be honest here. There's a lot of transmisogyny that should never have been included, and I think does not add anything to the book. It's about the club scene. keep that in mind if you go into it. Loved the presentation, the depth of the world built up.

No Gods For Drowning

Hailey Piper

IN THE BEGINNING, MAN WAS PREY. WITHOUT THE GODS, THEY'LL BE PREY AGAIN

The old gods have fled, and the monsters they had kept at bay for centuries now threaten to drown the city of Valentine, hunting mankind as in ancient times. In the midst of the chaos, a serial killer has begun ritually sacrificing victims, their bodies strewn throughout the city.
Lilac Antonis wants to stop the impending destruction of her city by summoning her mother, a blood god--even if she has to slit a few throats to do it. But evading her lover Arcadia and her friends means sneaking, lying, and even spilling the blood of people she loves.
Alex and Cecil of Ace Investigations have been tasked with hunting down the killer, but as they close in--not knowing they're hunting their close friend Lilac--the detectives realize the gods may not have left willingly.
As flooding drags this city of cars and neon screaming into the jaws of sea demons and Arcadia struggles to save the people as captain of the evacuation team, Lilac's ritual killings at last bear fruit, only to reveal her as a small piece in a larger plan. The gods' protection costs far more than anyone has ever known, and Alex and Cecil are running out of time to discover the true culprit behind the gods' disappearance before an ancient divine murder plot destroys them all.
Set in an alternate reality which updates mythology to near-modern day, No Gods For Drowning is part dark fantasy, part noir detective story, and unlike anything you've read before, from an author whose imagination knows no boundaries.

Of Flesh and Blood

N. L. Lavin & Hunter Burke

A forensic psychiatrist's investigation into an infamous Louisiana serial killer leads him down a dangerous path of obsession as he discovers they share the same cursed blood. This chilling debut horror novel will captivate readers of Chasing the Boogeyman and What Moves the Dead and fans of True Detective. In 2008, a serial killer known as the Cajun Cannibal brutally murders and consumes the flesh of eight people in a small Louisiana parish. With law enforcement closing in on him, he takes his own life before he can face the inside of a courtroom. Ten years later, when forensic psychiatrist Dr. Vincent Blackburn discovers he and the Cajun Cannibal are more closely connected than he realized, he begins a case study into the sociopathy behind the killer's grisly deeds, only to find a torrent of small town politics, interracial family dynamics, and whispers of the supernatural muddying once clear waters. When copycat killings start anew, Vincent is thrust into the center of it all, putting his life, his family, and his own sanity at risk. As monsters--both figurative and literal--begin to manifest, Vincent discovers that untangling the truth from the lies is only the beginning of his nightmare. Told through the pages of Dr. Vincent Blackburn's case study memoir, and certain to appeal to readers of A Flicker in the Dark, this macabre psychological horror will leave your heart racing.

Comments
the authors are most tactful about racism, but still choose to use the w*nd*go reference in a single chapter. Fair warning.

Old Soul

Susan Barker

The Historian meets Under the Skin in this searingly provocative literary horror novel about one woman's determination to stay alive at any terrifying cost.
In Osaka, two strangers, Jake and Mariko, miss a flight, and over dinner, discover they've both brutally lost loved ones whose paths crossed with the same beguiling woman no one has seen since.
Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades--a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone--and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.

Part horror, part western, part thriller, Old Soul is a fearlessly bold and genre-defying tale about predation, morality and free will, and one man's quest to bring a centuries-long chain of human devastation to an end.

Comments
A dreamy slow burn that, nonetheless, made me feel like smoking crack and weed at the same time.

Posthaste Manor

Jolie Toomajan & Carson Winter

NEVER TRUST A HOUSE WITH A NAME

Everyone has a story about Posthaste Manor.

None of the stories end well, but that doesn't stop the hopeful from hoping and the desperate from trying.

This composite novel stands as both history and eulogy of one very haunted house, as recounted by artists, real estate agents, and beloved family pets; by the debauched, the dead and the dying, and anyone looking for one last chance.

Raise a glass in celebration. Just don't linger within its walls for long.

Cover art by Trevor Henderson. Interior illustrations by Alex Woodroe.

Comments
I've never met such a haunted house that hated so much.

Queen of Teeth

Hailey Piper

Within forty-eight hours, Yaya Betancourt will go from discovering teeth between her thighs to being hunted by one of the most powerful corporations in America.

She assumes the vagina dentata is a side effect of a rare genetic condition caused by AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical, decades ago, when she and several thousand others were still in the womb.

But, when ABP corporate goons upend her life, she realizes her secondary teeth might be evidence of a new experiment for which she's the most advanced test tube . . . a situation worsened when Yaya's condition sprouts horns, tentacles, and a mind of its own.

On the run and transforming, Yaya may be either ABP's greatest success, or the deadliest failure science has ever created.

Revelator

Daryl Gregory

The dark, gripping tale of a 1930's family in the remote hills of the Smoky Mountains, their secret religion, and the daughter who turns her back on their mysterious god--from the acclaimed author of Spoonbenders.

In 1933, nine-year-old Stella is left in the care of her grandmother, Motty, in the backwoods of Tennessee. The mountains are home to dangerous secrets, and soon after she arrives, Stella wanders into a dark cavern where she encounters the family's personal god, an entity known as the Ghostdaddy. Years later, after a tragic incident that caused her to flee, Stella--now a professional bootlegger--returns for Motty's funeral, and to check on the mysterious ten-year-old girl named Sunny that Motty adopted.

Sunny appears innocent enough, but she is more powerful than Stella could imagine--and she's a direct link to Stella's buried past and her family's destructive faith.

Haunting and wholly engrossing, summoning mesmerizing voices and giving shape to the dark, Revelator is a southern gothic tale for the ages.

Comments
Fair warning. Due to the location and time period, Black characters are not treated well, canonically.

Rules for Vanishing

Kate Alice Marshall

In the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project comes the campfire story of a missing girl, a vengeful ghost, and the girl who is determined to find her sister--at all costs.
Once a year, the path appears in the forest and Lucy Gallows beckons. Who is brave enough to find her--and who won't make it out of the woods?
It's been exactly one year since Sara's sister, Becca, disappeared, and high school life has far from settled back to normal. With her sister gone, Sara doesn't know whether her former friends no longer like her...or are scared of her, and the days of eating alone at lunch have started to blend together. When a mysterious text message invites Sara and her estranged friends to "play the game" and find local ghost legend Lucy Gallows, Sara is sure this is the only way to find Becca--before she's lost forever. And even though she's hardly spoken with them for a year, Sara finds herself deep in the darkness of the forest, her friends--and their cameras--following her down the path. Together, they will have to draw on all of their strengths to survive. The road is rarely forgiving, and no one will be the same on the other side.
Quick Comments
Do you like marble hornets, ARGs, uncommon creepypastas, found footage esque movies? How about books that utilize a variety of media like podcast interviews, video transcripts, rotating POVs? This book is for you. There is some lgbt characters. I thought the adopted sibling relationship was cute and endearing.

Sanctuary

Valentina Cano Repetto

In 1930s Italy, a woman must battle the sinister forces threatening her life and sanity in the run-down, isolated watermill she calls home, a place last inhabited centuries ago.

Grief leaves a stain.

Sibilla Fenoglio wants nothing more than to live with her husband in this run-down, derelict watermill. Uninhabited since the Renaissance after a mysterious disaster befell the previous owners, the mill requires extensive repairs. But there is something frightening about the mill. Repairs are violently undone, half-seen figures begin stalking Sibilla through the grounds, and haunting echoes of the previous owners' lives infiltrate the present. As the disturbances grow more vicious and her husband more secretive, she realizes that she and her child are in danger.

Scuttler's Cove

David Barnett

The sea never forgets. The sea never forgives...

Scuttler's Cove is a working village, nestling in dramatic coastal scenery in Cornwall, where life has gone on uninterrupted for centuries... until this seaside idyll was discovered by the rich.

Now the quaint harbour-front cottages have been snapped up by second-homers and rental companies, and the locals can barely afford to live in their own town.

It is a very different place for Merrin Moon, who left for university at the age of eighteen and never looked back. Now in her thirties, she returns to the Cove for the first time since, after the death of her mother.

She soon discovers that there are forces at play in the village that she could never have imagined. Is someone trying to drive out the second homers? And has their arrival started a chain of events none of them will be able to stop?

For something old and terrible is awakening beneath the town's hallowed ground. And with it comes a horror that the residents have fought for generations to keep a secret.

A dark and mysterious folk horror of the sea, and a timely exploration of the displacement of our modern moment, with a twist that will leave you reeling.

Sign Here

Claudia Lux

A darkly humorous, surprisingly poignant, and utterly gripping debut novel about a guy who works in Hell (literally) and is on the cusp of a big promotion if only he can get one more member of the wealthy Harrison family to sell their soul.

Peyote Trip has a pretty good gig in the deals department on the fifth floor of Hell. Sure, none of the pens work, the coffee machine has been out of order for a century, and the only drink on offer is Jägermeister, but Pey has a plan--and all he needs is one last member of the Harrison family to sell their soul.

When the Harrisons retreat to the family lake house for the summer, with their daughter Mickey's precocious new friend, Ruth, in tow, the opportunity Pey has waited a millennium for might finally be in his grasp. And with the help of his charismatic coworker Calamity, he sets a plan in motion.

But things aren't always as they seem, on Earth or in Hell. And as old secrets and new dangers scrape away at the Harrisons' shiny surface, revealing the darkness beneath, everyone must face the consequences of their choices.

Something I Keep Upstairs

J. D. Barker

For a haunted house to be born, somebody has to die.

In the sleepy coastal town of New Castle, New Hampshire, seventeen-year-old Billy Hasler's life is about to take a terrifying turn. When his best friend David Spivey inherits a mysterious house on a nearby island, it seems like the perfect place to spend their final summer before heading off to college. No parents. No police. No responsibilities.

As they dig into the island's dark past, they awaken an ancient evil that has influenced generations. What begins as an innocent summer adventure quickly descends into a nightmare.

"Something I Keep Upstairs" is a haunting exploration of friendship, sacrifice, and the darkness lurking just beyond our understanding. It will keep you on edge until the final, chilling page.

Starve Acre

Andrew Michael Hurley

An atmospheric and unsettling story of the depths of grief found in an ancient farm in northern England.

The worst thing possible has happened. Richard and Juliette Willoughby's son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place. Convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, Juliette seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree. But as they delve further into their grief, both uncover more than they set out to.

Starve Acre is a devastating new novel by the author of the prize-winning bestseller The Loney. It is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily unearth horror.

Stranded

Bracken MacLeod

Badly battered by an apocalyptic storm, the crew of the Arctic Promise find themselves in increasingly dire circumstances as they sail blindly into unfamiliar waters and an ominously thickening fog. Without functioning navigation or communication equipment, they are lost and completely alone. One by one, the men fall prey to a mysterious illness. Deckhand Noah Cabot is the only person unaffected by the strange force plaguing the ship and her crew, which does little to ease their growing distrust of him.

Dismissing Noah's warnings of worsening conditions, the captain of the ship presses on until the sea freezes into ice and they can go no farther. When the men are ordered overboard in an attempt to break the ship free by hand, the fog clears, revealing a faint shape in the distance that may or may not be their destination. Noah leads the last of the able-bodied crew on a journey across the ice and into an uncertain future where they must fight for their lives against the elements, the ghosts of the past and, ultimately, themselves.

Sundial

Catriona Ward

You can't escape what's in your blood... All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice. Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive...The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.

Comments
This book felt like a bad trip, in a good way. Shit just kept happening and then dogs were introduced and then oh my god what is that man doing, is this even legal, what do you mean you got the wrong person? I do hate the later / final half of the plot. I felt it weakened the story and was rather ableist. Absolutely check for content warnings, this story touches on some fucked up shit.

The Apparition Phase

Will Maclean

Twins Tim and Abi have always been different from their peers, spending their evenings in the attic of their parents' suburban house, poring over reports of the unexplained. Obsessed with photographs of ghostly apparitions, they decide to fake their own, and use it to frighten a girl at school.

But what was only supposed to be a harmless prank sets in motion a deadly and terrifying chain of events that neither of them could have predicted.

The Bonus Room

Ben H. Winters

From New York Times best-selling and Edgar Award-winning author Ben H. Winters, this supernatural page-turner about a real-estate nightmare will make you think twice about your dream home

Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment in a gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone.

Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. And the elderly handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the basement. But the rent is so low, it's too good to pass up.

Big mistake. Susan awakens every morning with fresh bug bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter, Emma, has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she's going mad--until she makes a chilling discovery in the bonus room.

Filled with Hitchcockian suspense, The Bonus Room is a horrifying tale of a dream home that becomes a nightmare.

The Breach

M. T. Hill

Freya Medlock, a reporter at her local paper, is down on her luck and chasing a break. When she's assigned to cover the death of a young climber named Stephen, she might just have the story she needs. Digging into Stephen's life, Freya uncovers a strange photo uploaded to an urban exploration forum not long before he died. It seems to show a weird nest, yet the caption below suggests there's more to it.

Freya believes this nest - discovering what it really is and where it's hidden - could be the key to understanding the mysteries surrounding Stephen's death.

Soon she meets Shep, a trainee steeplejack with his own secret life. When Shep's not working up chimneys, he's also into urban exploration - undertaking dangerous 'missions' into abandoned and restricted sites. As Shep draws Freya deeper into the urbex scene, the circumstances of Stephen's death become increasingly unsettling - and Freya finds herself risking more and more to get the answers she wants.

But neither Freya nor Shep realise that some dark corners are better left unlit.

Comments
Granted, this is the barest hint of horror, but the idea of parasite horror is incredibly fascinating and I wish it was explored more. Or that I've read more on it. Fair warning there's some sexual harassment scenes, do check the content warnings.

The Country Under Heaven

Frederic S. Durbin

Louis L'Amour meets H.P. Lovecraft in this thrilling western epic about a former Civil War soldier wracked by enigmatic visions. Set in the 1880s, the story follows Ovid Vesper, a former Union soldier who has been having enigmatic visions after surviving one of the Civil War's most gruesome battles, the Battle of Antietam. As he travels across the country following those visions, he finds himself in stranger and increasingly more dangerous encounters with other worlds hidden in the spaces of his own mind, not to mention the dangers of the Wild West. Ovid brings his steady calm and compassion as he helps the people of a broken country, rapidly changing but, like himself, still reeling and wounded from the war. He assists with matters of all sorts, from odd jobs around the house, to guiding children back to their own universe, to hunting down unnatural creatures that stalk the night -- all the while seeking his own personal resolution and peace from his visions. Ovid's epic journey across the American West with a surprising cast of characters blends elements of the classic Western with historical fantasy in a way like no other.

Comments
Fair warning there's some period accurate antiblack racism. Specifically black slavery, which is used as a off screen plot point for one story.

The Dreamer's Canvas

Caleb R. Marsh

PERCEPTION IS REALITY.

Art is all that Charlie Halloran has left.

The lone survivor of a bizarre doomsday cult that left his mind broken and his life in tatters, Charlie now ekes out a living as a struggling artist, painting forgeries for a local crime boss.

Until the nightmares begin again.

As his fragile sanity begins to crumble, Charlie is thrust back into a world he thought he had escaped--a world where reality itself is nothing more than an unfinished painting to be remade... or destroyed.

Charlie realizes that he alone possesses the power to stop the resurgent cult from enacting their catastrophic plans. But the cost of his redemption may be more than his mind can bear.

Embark on a mind-bending journey where Lovecraftian horror intertwines with urban fantasy. Can Charlie paint a new reality, or will he succumb to the madness that lurks within his soul?

The Drowning House

Cherie Priest

Houses fall into the Pacific Ocean all the time.

Not one has ever come back. Until today.

A violent storm washes a mysterious house onto a rural Pacific Northwest beach, stopping the heart of the only woman who knows what it means. Her grandson, Simon Culpepper, vanishes in the aftermath, leaving two of his childhood friends to comb the small, isolated island for answersbut decades have passed since Melissa and Leo were close, if they were ever close at all.

Now they'll have to put aside old rivalries and grudges if they want to find or save the man who brought them together in the first placeand on the way they'll learn a great deal about the sinister house on the beach, the man who built it, and the evil he's bringing back to Marrowstone Island.

From award-winning author Cherie Priest comes a deeply haunting and atmospheric horror-thriller that explores the lengths we'll go to protect those we love.

Comments
The ending was rather weak for me.

The Eyes Are the Best Part

Monika Kim

Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won's life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa's extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying... yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George's, who is Umma's obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family's claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma's fawning adoration. No, George doesn't deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won's hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim's The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.

The Fisherman

John Langan

In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story.

Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.

Comments
Folk Horror meets Cosmic Horror meets Otherworld / Location Horror! With a hint of Religious Horror. Every once in a while I'll read an adult genre horror novel that makes me remember just why I like horror so much. It's nice to read a well written novel that hits all the spots.

The Girl from Rawblood

Catriona Ward

What if it's not your house that's haunted--it's you? For generations, the Villarcas have died young, under mysterious circumstances. Now Iris and her father will finally find out why... Young Iris Villarca is the last of her family's line. They are haunted by "her," a curse passed down through the generations that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak and death. But Iris dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began, and where it must all end...
Quick Comments
This is the first book I read from this author and it's so good it made me read other works despite them being pretty... underwhelming. And kinda ableist. Like the author certainly tried but it missed several marks. But anyways. I loved the concept of hauntings and intergenerational ghosts. I thought the writing was fantastic and I loved the atmosphere. Definitely check the content warnings, this book does touch upon traumatic themes.

The Good Demon

Jimmy Cajoleas

Clare has been miserable since her exorcism. The preacher that rid her of evil didn't understand that her demon--simply known as Her--was like a sister to Clare. Now, Clare will do almost anything to get Her back. After a chance encounter with the son of the preacher who exorcised her, Clare goes on an adventure through the dark underbelly of her small Southern town, discovering its deep-seated occult roots. As she searches for Her, she must question the fine lines between good and evil, love and hate, and religion and free will. Vivid and sharp, The Good Demon tells the unusual story of friendship amid dark Gothic horror.
Quick Comments
I'm an adult. I'm not a fan of reading stories from a teenage POV. This is absolutely a teenaged POV but the plot was interesting enough that I could tolerate it. I liked the demonic perspective and the take on demonic possession. An interesting twist on the typical demonic possession plot, set in a town where demonic friends is easier than friends with the local yokels. Except it's never that simple. Neat variation of basic christian demons, too.

The Grip of It

Jac Jemc

Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move--prompted by James's penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check--is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between ocean and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to settle into their home and their relationship, the house and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The architecture--claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms--becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall--contracting, expanding--and map themselves onto Julie's body in the form of bruises; mold spores taint the water that James pours from the sink. Together the couple embark on a panicked search for the source of their mutual torment, a journey that mires them in the history of their peculiar neighbors and the mysterious residents who lived in the house before Julia and James.

The Haunting of Room 904

Erika T. Wurth

A terrifying and resonant novel about a woman who uses her unique gift to learn the truth about her sister's death.

Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can't stop seeing and hearing from spirits.

A few years later, she's the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She's good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That's when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel. The owner can't explain it, but every few years, a girl is found dead in room 904, no matter what room she checked into the night before. As Olivia tries to understand these disturbing deaths, the past and the present collide as Olivia's investigation forces her to confront a mysterious and possibly dangerous cult, a vindictive journalist, betrayal by her friends, and shocking revelations about her sister's secret life.

The Haunting of Velkwood

Gwendolyn Kiste

From Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a chilling novel about three childhood friends who miraculously survive the night everyone in their suburban neighborhood turned into ghosts.

The Velkwood Vicinity was the topic of occult theorists, tabloid one-hour documentaries, and even some pseudo-scientific investigations as the block of homes disappeared behind a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter--and only one has in the past twenty years, until now.

Talitha Velkwood has avoided anything to do with the tragedy that took her mother and eight-year-old sister, drifting from one job to another, never settling anywhere or with anyone, feeling as trapped by her past as if she was still there in the small town she so desperately wanted to escape from. When a new researcher tracks her down and offers to pay her to come back to enter the vicinity, Talitha claims she's just doing it for the money. Of all the crackpot theories over the years, no one has discovered what happened the night Talitha, her estranged, former best friend Brett, and Grace, escaped their homes twenty years ago. Will she finally get the answers she's been looking for all these years, or is this just another dead end?

Award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste has created a suburban ghost story about a small town that trapped three young women who must confront the past if they're going to have a future.

The Immaculate Void

Brian Hodge

When she was six, Daphne was taken into a neighbor's toolshed, and came within seconds of never coming out alive. Most of the scars healed. Except for the one that went all the way through.

Two decades later, when Daphne goes missing again, it's nothing new. As her exes might agree, running is what she does best ... so her brother Tanner sets out one more time to find her. Whether in the mountains, or in his own family, search-and-rescue is what he does best.

Down two different paths, along two different timelines, Daphne and Tanner both find themselves trapped in a savage hunt for the rarest people on earth, by those who would slaughter them on behalf of ravenous entities that lurk outside of time.

But in ominous signs that have traveled light-years to be seen by human eyes, and that plummet from the sky, the ultimate truth is revealed:

There are some things in the cosmos that terrify even the gods.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks

Jason Arnopp

Jack Sparks died while writing this book.

It was no secret that journalist Jack Sparks had been researching the occult for his new book. No stranger to controversy, he'd already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed.

Then there was that video: forty seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.

Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed - until now.

Comments
Oooh oh boy. Talk about unlikeable characters. Yeah you'll hate this guy and you'll pity his destiny,in some small way. Religious [catholic] horror! Fantastic!!

The Least of My Scars

Stephen Graham Jones

When a serial killer hits the top of his game, where does he go from there? William Colton Hughes finds out. Not interested in notoriety, Hughes just wants to do what he's good at: torture and murder. It never occurs to him that he could make a living at it . . . until the yoga instructor.

She happens to be the girlfriend of a powerful and cunning crime boss who catches Hughes literally red-handed. In a twist even Hughes never sees coming, he's not immediately put down. Instead, he's set up in a warren of apartments. Hughes's own private high-rise sanctuary, where his new benefactor feeds victims to him. He couldn't ask for more. But when his supplies stop coming, Hughes begins to lose his already tenuous grip on reality--and learns that even monsters have their own boogeymen to deal with.

Molly Southbourne trilogy

Tade Thompson

The Murders of Molly Southbourne [book one of a completed trilogy]
The rule is simple: don't bleed. For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

The Survival of Molly Southbourne [book two]
Who was Molly Southbourne? What did she leave behind? A burnt-out basement. A name stained in blood. Bodies that remember murder, one of them left alive. A set of rules that no longer apply. Molly Southbourne is alive. If she wants to survive, she'll need to run, hide, and be ready to fight. There are people who remember her, who know what she is and what she's done. Some want her alive, some want her dead, and all hold a piece to the puzzles in her head. Can Molly escape them, or will she confront the bloody history that made her?

From Arthur C. Clarke Award-winner Tade Thompson, The Legacy of Molly Southbourne continues his chilling series.

Whenever Molly Southbourne bled, a murderer was born. Deadly copies, drawn to destroy their creator, bound by a legacy of death. With the original Molly Southbourne gone, her remnants drew together, seeking safety and a chance for peace. The last Molly and her sisters built a home together, and thought they could escape the murder that marked their past.

But secrets squirm in Molly Southbourne's blood--secrets born in a Soviet lab and carried back across the Iron Curtain to infiltrate the West. What remains of the Cold War spy machine wants those secrets back, and to get them they're willing to unearth the dead and destroy the fragile peace surrounding the last copies of Molly Southbourne.

The Legacy of Molly Southbourne brings the story to a bloody end.

Comments
Changeling Horror. Doppelganger Horror. At the same time, generational abuse horror, dressed up in a dystopia setting that does not feel dystopian, merely every day society that got to that point like a frog in boiling water. The way the author describes the doppelganger scared the shit out of me.

The Narrows

Ronald Malfi

The town of Stillwater has a very unwelcome resident.

The town of Stillwater has been dying - the long and painful death of a town ravaged by floods and haunted by the ghosts of all who had lived there. Yet this most recent flood has brought something with it - a creature that nests among the good folks of Stillwater...and feeds off them. The children who haven't disappeared whisper the same word - "vampire." But they're wrong. What has come to Stillwater is something much more horrific.

Comments
Ok listen I know Malfi is a land of contrasts--can suck a lot and doesn't always guarantee horror even though a summary heavily implies horror. But this one is totally definitely horror. VAMPIRES. What the ufkc.

The Only Good Indians

Stephen Graham Jones

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.
Quick Comments
Persistence Hunting. Noun. A type of hunting where the predator uses a combination of running and tracking to pursue the prey to exhaustion. A long time ago they used this type of hunting, following their prey, until exhaustion set in and the person ground to a halt in surrender.

The Queen of the High Fields

Rhiannon A. Grist

Two misfits, Carys Price and Angharad 'Hazard' Evans, strike out from their disenfranchised seaside town to take ownership of the High Fields, a mythical island brimming with world-bending promise.

Objecting to the demands of modern society, they hope to find a place where they can live as they choose, but instead they find an ancient power that tears their friendship apart.

Ten years later, Carys returns to the collapsing world of the High Fields to face the terrifying power of the friend-turned-goddess she left behind.

The Redemption of Morgan Bright

Chris Panatier

A woman checks herself into an asylum to solve the mystery of her sister's murder, only to lose her memory and maybe her mind.

What would guilt make you do?

Hadleigh Keene died on the road leading away from Hollyhock Asylum. The reasons are unknown. Her sister Morgan blames herself. A year later with the case still unsolved, Morgan creates a false identity, that of a troubled housewife named Charlotte Turner, and goes inside.

Morgan quickly discovers that Hollyhock is... not right. She is shaken by the hospital's peculiar routines and is soon beset by strange episodes. All the while, the persona of Charlotte takes on a life of its own, becoming stronger with each passing day. As her identity begins unraveling, Morgan finds herself tracing Hadleigh's footsteps and peering into the places they lead.

The terrifying reality of The Redemption of Morgan Bright unfolds over the course of chapters told from the points of view of both Charlotte and Morgan, police interviews, and text messages.

Comments
girl. this shit made me want to get sectioned again. btw fyi major explicit medical abuse / some sexual abuse warning. Don't get it wrong tho it's bout about sexually abusing the patients that's auxiliary to the plot.

The Route of Ice and Salt

José Luis Zárate

It's an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews. He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests.

He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he's done before, it's routine, a constant, like the tides. Yet there's something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air, something in the night, someone stalking the ship.

The cult vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate is available for the first time in English. Translated by David Bowles.

Comments
he stuck his wee wee WHERE?!?

The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess

Andy Marino

Possession is an addiction.

Sydney's spent years burying her past and building a better life for herself and her young son. A respectable marketing job, a house with reclaimed and sustainable furniture, and a boyfriend who loves her son and accepts her, flaws and all.

But when she opens her front door, and a masked intruder knocks her briefly unconscious, everything begins to unravel.

She wakes in the hospital and tells a harrowing story of escape. Of dashing out a broken window. Of running into her neighbors' yard and calling the police.

The cops tell her a different story. Because the intruder is now lying dead in her guest room--murdered in a way that looks intimately personal.

Sydney can't remember killing the man. No one believes her.

Back home, as horrific memories surface, an unnatural darkness begins whispering in her ear. Urging her back to old addictions and a past she's buried to build a better life for herself and her son.

As Sydney searches for truth among the wreckage of a past that won't stay buried for long, the unquiet darkness begins to grow. To change into something unimaginable.

To reveal terrible cravings of its own.

Comments
TRUST NO MAN.

The Spite House

Johnny Compton

A terrifying Gothic thriller about grief and death and the depths of a father's love, Johnny Compton's The Spite House is a stunning debut by a horror master in the making--The Babadook meets A Head Full of Ghosts in Texas Hill Country.

Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house, his whole life behind in Maryland, he's desperate for money--it's not easy to find steady, safe work when you can't provide references, you can't stay in one place for long, and you're paranoid that your past is creeping back up on you.

When he comes across the strange ad for the Masson House in Degener, Texas, Eric thinks they may have finally caught a lucky break. The Masson property, notorious for being one of the most haunted places in Texas, needs a caretaker of sorts. The owner is looking for proof of paranormal activity. All they need to do is stay in the house and keep a detailed record of everything that happens there. Provided the house's horrors don't drive them all mad, like the caretakers before them.

The job calls to Eric, not just because there's a huge payout if they can make it through, but because he wants to explore the secrets of the spite house. If it is indeed haunted, maybe it'll help him understand the uncanny power that clings to his family, driving them from town to town, making them afraid to stop running.

The Starving Saints

Caitlin Starling

A transfixing fever dream of medieval horror following three women in a besieged castle that descends ravenously into madness under the spell of mysterious, godlike visitors. Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration. Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar's walls. As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness--forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy--these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle's new masters... or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.

Comments
if you think about it abstractly and humorously, this is ye olde mascot horror.

The Twenty Days of Turin

Giorgio De Maria

In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another's personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library's users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the city's occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: what's shared can never be unshared.
An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a fervent cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of "lone-wolf" terrorism fueled by social media, we can find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Maria's vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internet--and the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharing--this bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever.
Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Maria's place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Hauntingly imaginative, with visceral prose that chills to the marrow, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus, long overdue but ever timely.

The Unmothers

Leslie J. Anderson

In this raw and lyrical folk horror novel, a journalist sent to a small town begins to unravel a dark secret that the women of the town have been keeping for generations.
Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor: that a horse has given birth to a healthy, human baby boy.
When Marshall arrives in Raeford, she finds an insular town that is kinder to the horses they are famous for breeding than to their own people. But when two horribly mangled bodies are discovered in a field--one a horse, one a human--she realizes that there might be a real story here.
As she's pulled deeper into the town and its guarded people, her sense of reality is tipped on its head. Is she losing her grip? Or is this impossible story the key to a dark secret that has haunted the women of Raeford for generations?

Unbearably tense and utterly gripping, this atmospheric tale of female rage, bodily autonomy, and generational trauma hails the arrival of a masterful storyteller.

The White Road

Sarah Lotz

A cutting-edge thriller about one man's quest to discover horror lurking at the top of the world.

Desperate to attract subscribers to his fledgling website, 'Journey to the Dark Side', ex-adrenalin junkie and slacker Simon Newman hires someone to guide him through the notorious Cwm Pot caves, so that he can film the journey and put it on the internet. With a tragic history, Cwm Pot has been off-limits for decades, and unfortunately for Simon, the guide he's hired is as unpredictable and dangerous as the watery caverns that lurk beneath the earth. After a brutal struggle for survival, Simon barely escapes with his life, but predictably, the gruesome footage he managed to collect down in the earth's bowels goes viral.

Ignoring the warning signs of mental trauma, and eager to capitalize on his new internet fame, Simon latches onto another escapade that has that magic click-bait mix of danger and death: a trip to Everest. But up above 8000 feet, in the infamous Death Zone, he'll need more than his dubious morals and wits to guide him, especially when he uncovers the truth behind a decade-old tragedy -- a truth that means he might not be coming back alive. A truth that will change him -- and anyone who views the footage he captures -- forever.

The Wild Hunt

Emma Seckel

The islanders have only three rules: don't stick your nose where it's not wanted, don't mention the war, and never let your guard down during October.

Leigh Welles has not set foot on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from life on the Scottish mainland by her father's unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past―her mother's abandonment, her brother's icy distance, the unspeakable tragedy of World War II―and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, an RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war.

But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless. The ominous, birdlike creatures of Celtic legend―whispered to carry the souls of the dead―have haunted the islanders for decades, but in the war's wake, there are more wandering souls and more sluagh. When a young man disappears, Leigh and Iain are thrown together to investigate the truth at the island's dark heart and reveal hidden secrets of their own.

The World Below

David Peak

Witches, LSD psychosis, and the slippery nature of truth. The World Below is about the limitless horror of grief and the unbreakable bonds of blood. It is a story of occultations, of light and dark, and of unfathomable realities that hide in plain sight.

Two families--the Bowles and the Underhills--are cursed by an act of violence that forever echoes through time, and their long-simmering feud reignites when teenager Ornithan Bowles suddenly disappears. Believing the Underhills responsible, several members of Orn's family lay siege to the home of their rivals--only to awaken a restless spirit from its prison between two worlds. Now, several years later, Letitia Underhill, fresh out of prison and looking to begin anew, tells her version of events to the host of a prime-time news program in hopes of putting an end to her family's curse once and for all.

The Worm and His Kings

Hailey Piper

New York City, 1990: When you slip through the cracks, no one is there to catch you. Monique learns that the hard way after her girlfriend Donna vanishes without a trace.
Only after the disappearances of several other impoverished women does Monique hear the rumors. A taloned monster stalks the city's underground and snatches victims into the dark.
Donna isn't missing. She was taken.
To save the woman she loves, Monique must descend deeper than the known underground, into a subterranean world of enigmatic cultists and shadowy creatures. But what she finds looms beyond her wildest fears--a darkness that stretches from the dawn of time and across the stars.

Quick Comments
Eldritch horror ft women mcs, and a trans woman MC. I loved the original mythology and the plot twists were amazing. Generic cishet white men writers can be blamed for populating genres with the most redundant shit about another cishet white guy, usually bougie, getting into x y z troubles in said genre. The cosmic horror genre, especially the lovecraftian horror genre, is absolutely one of these. A cosmic horror story solely about an unhoused trans woman trying to find her signifcant other and stumbling across a cult that's recruiting other unhoused people for nefarious means is a goddamn hurricane of fresh air. The mythology was unique and not another goddamn cthulhu rip off. The location was interesting and the characters, low class outcast unhoused people of society, were genuine humans. They weren't stereotypes steeped in classism and transphobia. If you like cosmic horror, and want something different, this is for you.

This Cursed House

Del Sandeen

A young woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth: they're under a curse.

Louisiana, 1962.

The Duchon family has always been a little different.

Light-skinned enough to pass as white, they've always felt superior to their black peers, ensconced in their palatial but decrepit New Orleans mansion.

Meanwhile in Chicago, Jemma Barker is desperate to escape another winter in the freezing cold – and the spirits she has always been able to see.

When Jemma receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family, she can't say yes soon enough.

But it's not long before Jemma realises she's been lured south under false pretences. The Duchon family are trapped in their home by a curse – and they have reason to believe Jemma is the one who can break it.

What's more, it turns out Jemma didn't manage to leave her ghosts behind in Chicago. And the spirits that haunt the Duchon mansion have a message for her.

As she tries to understand how to break the curse, Jemma unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the Duchons and their damning past.

Secrets that stretch back beyond the grave. Secrets that tie her to the family's fate if she fails.

This Wretched Valley

Jenny Kiefer

Take only pictures. Leave only bones.

This trip is going to be Dylan's big break. Her geologist friend Clay has discovered an untouched cliff face in the Kentucky wilderness, and she is going to be the first person to climb it. Together with Clay, his research assistant Sylvia, and Dylan's boyfriend Luke, Dylan is going to document her achievement on Instagram and finally cement her place as the next rising star in rock climbing.

Seven months later, three bodies are discovered in the trees just off the highway. All are in various states of decay: one a stark, white skeleton; the second emptied of its organs; and the third a mutilated corpse with the tongue, eyes, ears, and fingers removed.

But Dylan is still missing--and no trace of her, dead or alive, has been discovered.

Were the climbers murdered? Did they succumb to cannibalism? Or are their impossible bodies the work of an even more sinister force?

This dread-inducing debut builds to a bloodcurdling climax, and will leave you shocked by the final twist.

Violent Faculties

Charlene Elsby

note she wrote thta awful hexis novella A philosophy professor tests the limits of the soul and body by performing dehumanizing experiments on unwilling subjects, after the department is closed due to budget cuts. Violent Faculties follows a philosophy professor influenced by Sade and Bataille. She is ejected by university administrators aiming to impose business strategies in the interest of profit over knowledge. She designs a series of experiments to demonstrate the value of philosophy as a discipline, not because of its potential for financial benefit, but because of its relevance to life and death. The corpses proliferate as her experiments yield theoretical results and ethical conundrums. She questions why it is wrong to kill humans, what is it about them that makes their lives sacred, and then attempts to find it in their bodies, their words, their thoughts, and their souls--seeking foundational truths with a knife in her home office.

Comments
what do you even call this. Splatterpunk, but philosophical? Stunning, is what I'll say it is. Literary Horror at its finest.

Voice Like a Hyacinth

Mallory Pearson

Five young women eager for success rely on the unspeakable to make their dreams come true in a chilling novel about martyrdom, ritual, and obsession by the author of We Ate the Dark.

Art student Jo Kozak and her fellow classmates and best friends, Caroline, Finch, Amrita, and Saz, are one another's muses--so close they have their own language and so devoted to the craft that they'll do anything to keep their inspiration alive. Even if it means naively resorting to the occult to unlock their creativity and to curse their esteemed, if notoriously creepy, professor. They soon learn the horrible price to be paid for such a transgressive ritual.

In its violent aftermath, things are changing. Jo is feeling unnervingly haunted by something inexplicable. Their paintings, once prodigious and full of life, are growing dark and unhealthy. And their journey together--as women, students, and artists--is starting to crumble.

To right the wrong they've done, these five desperate friends will take their obsession a step too far. When that happens, there may be no turning back.

Walk the Darkness Down

John Boden

Some things are older than time. Older than darkness.

Levi is a monstrous man--made of scars and scary as hell, he's glutted on ghosts and evolving to carry out the dark wishes of the ancient whispers in his head. He's building a door and what's on the other side is terrifying.

Jones spent a lot of time living bottle to bottle and trying to erase things. Now he's looking for the man who killed his mother and maybe a little bit of looking or himself as well.

Keaton is on the run from accusations as well as himself, he suffers alone until he meets Jubal, an orphaned boy with his little sisters in a sling.

Every line is not a straight line and everything must converge. A parable writ in dust and blood on warped barn wood. A journey in the classic sense, populated with dried husks of towns... and people both odd and anything but ordinary. Hornets, reverse-werewolves and one of the most vicious villains you'll ever know are all part of it.

Pull on your boots and saddle up, we'll Walk The Darkness Down.

We Will Rise

Tim Waggoner

In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear, manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more recruits to their spectral ranks.

A group of survivors come together after the initial attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they make it out of Echo Hill alive? And if so, will they still be sane? Or will they die and join the ranks of the vengeful dead?

Comments
yes it's splatterpunk, but the variety and originality of the violence is a reprieve from the usual retreads of this subgenre.

What Grows in the Dark

Jaq Evans

In this chilling contemporary horror novel, a phony spiritualist returns to her hometown to assist in an investigation that eerily mirrors her sister's death, forcing her to confront the secrets she's been running from.

Sixteen years ago, Brigit Weylan's older sister, Emma, walked into the woods in their small hometown of Ellis Creek. She never walked out. People said she was troubled--in the months leading up to her death, she was convinced there was a monster in those trees. Marked by the tragedy, Brigit left town and never looked back.

Now Brigit travels around the country investigating paranormal activity (and faking the results) with her cameraman, Ian. But when she receives a call from Ellis Creek, she's thrust into the middle of a search for two missing teenagers. As Brigit and Ian are drawn further into the case, the parallels to Emma's death become undeniable. And worse, Brigit can't explain what's happening to her: trees appearing in her bedroom in the middle of the night, something with a very familiar laugh watching her out in the darkness, and Emma's voice on her phone, reminding Brigit to finish what they started.

More and more, it looks like Emma was right: there is a monster in Ellis Creek, and it's waited a long time for Brigit to come home.

Where They Wait

Scott Carson

A new supernatural novel about a sinister mindfulness app with fatal consequences from the New York Times bestselling author of The Chill.Recently laid-off from his newspaper and desperate for work, war correspondent Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity. It's easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for the first time in years. The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas--relaxing white noise and guided meditations.

But then there are the “Sleep Songs.” A woman's hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing--it's disturbing, and more of a warning than a relaxation--but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows. So do the nightmares. Vivid and chilling, they feature a dead woman who calls Nick by name and whispers guidance--or are they threats? And her voice follows him long after the song is done. As the effects of the nightmares begin to permeate his waking life, Nick makes a terrifying discovery: no one involved with Clarity has any interest in his article. Their interest is in him.

Comments
Ok so this is a very soft on horror and more like scifi flavored thriller. But it does feature some fucked up colonization / genocide and paranormal occurrences and oh yeah, the app? It's haunted. It's not a one note story though, there's a little more depth to it than an updated Twilight Zone / Outer Limits plot of haunted phones.

Whistle

Linwood Barclay

Evil has a one track mind... Celebrated children's author and illustrator Annie Blunt has had a dreadful year. Her husband was killed in a tragic accident, then one of her children's books ignited a major scandal. Desperate for a fresh start, she moves with her young son Charlie to a charming small town in upstate New York where they can begin to heal. But Annie's year is about to get worse. Bored and lonely in their isolated new surroundings, Charlie is thrilled when he finds a forgotten train set in a locked shed in the grounds of their new house. While Annie is pleased to see Charlie happy, there's something unsettling about his new toy. Strange sounds wake Annie in the night – she's sure she can hear a train in the middle of the night, although there isn't an active line for miles. And then bizarre things start happening in the neighbourhood. But even stranger, Annie can't seem to stop drawing a disturbing new character that has no place in a children's book... Grief plays tricks on the mind, but Annie is beginning to think she's walked out of one nightmare straight into another, only this one is far more terrifying.

Comments
the plot twists go off the fucking rail all puns intended. The summary makes it sound far simpler than it is. Plenty of rotating pov, and convoluted mystery to go around.

White Tears

Hari Kunzru

Ghost story, murder mystery, love letter to American music--White Tears is all of this and more, a thrilling investigation of race and appropriation in society today.
Seth is a shy, awkward twenty-something. Carter is more glamorous, the heir to a great American fortune. But they share an obsession with music--especially the blues. One day, Seth discovers that he's accidentally recorded an unknown blues singer in a park.

Carter puts the file online, claiming it's a 1920s recording by a made-up musician named Charlie Shaw. But when a music collector tells them that their recording is genuine--that there really was a singer named Charlie Shaw--the two white boys, along with Carter's sister, find themselves in over their heads, delving deeper and deeper into America's dark, vengeful heart. White Tears is a literary thriller and a meditation on art--who owns it, who can consume it, and who profits from it.

Comments
What the hell do you even call this? Race Horror? That sounds tactless. Horror, definitely, and of the paranormal flavor. I loved the concept here, of a ghost haunting through the sound waves, through time and space. I think it explored fairly well how nonBlack people, specifically white people, appropriate and dress up as Black people until it's no longer fun. I wish an actual Black author had written this or something in this genre. While the author is a person of color, he is nonBlack as far as a internet search reveals. That said, it's a very interesting take on Jim Crow laws and antiblack racism in us history. Just go in knowing that the author isn't speaking from experience and this is another piece of media that's probably exploiting Black people trauma. Also fair warning. Check the Content Warnings. There is explicit torture and antiblack racism.

Wilderness Reform

Matt Query & Harrison Query

A terrifying novel about a wilderness camp for troubled teens that is plagued by mysterious events and disappearances, taking survival and discipline to a frightening extreme.

Thirteen-year-old Ben is sent to a remote reform program for troubled teens by a juvenile court judge. But when he arrives at the camp, located on the edge of the vast wilderness of northwestern Montana, he immediately recognizes that there is something off about the counselors. They're too friendly and upbeat... yet Ben can tell there's an undercurrent of menace.

As he gets to know the boys in his cabin, he soon discovers that they each have far more going for them than whatever crime landed them there. And each has a different critical skill, one that could help them unearth what is really going on in this place--and how to make it out alive. They are inching ever closer to the truth, and the hidden evil beneath the camp's surface will make itself known in order to deter them.

Withered Hill

David Barnett

Inside.

A year ago Sophie Wickham stumbled into the isolated Lancashire village of Withered Hill, naked, alone and with no memory of who she is.

Surrounded by a thick ring of woodland, its inhabitants seem to be of another world, drenched in pagan, folklorish traditions.

As Sophie struggles to regain the memories of her life from before, she quickly realises she is a prisoner after multiple failed escape attempts. But is it the locals who keep her trapped, with smiles on their faces, or something else, lurking in the woods?

Outside

In London, Sophie leads a chaotic life, with too many drunken nights, inappropriate men and boring temp jobs. But things take a turn as she starts to be targeted by strange messages warning her that someone, or something, is coming for her.

With no idea who to trust, or where to turn for help, the messages become more insistent and more intimidating, urging Sophie to make her way to a place called Withered Hill...

An utterly bewitching, dual timeline folk horror novel, with a truly devastating twist you have to read to believe.

You Let Me In

Camilla Bruce

Cassandra Tipp is dead...or is she?After all, the notorious recluse and eccentric bestselling novelist has always been prone to flights of fancy--everyone in town remembers the shocking events leading up to Cassie's infamous trial (she may have been acquitted, but the insanity defense only stretches so far).Cassandra Tipp has left behind no body--just her massive fortune, and one final manuscript.

Then again, there are enough bodies in her past--her husband Tommy Tipp, whose mysterious disembowelment has never been solved, and a few years later, the shocking murder-suicide of her father and brother.Cassandra Tipp will tell you a story--but it will come with a terrible price.

What really happened, out there in the woods--and who has Cassie been protecting all along? Read on, if you dare...

Comments
What the fuck do I call this. Fae horror, obviously. If I were a tasteless jackass I'd call it Incest Horror. Yes, that is what this is explicitly about. No, I'm not one of those freaks into incest and csa/rape as a fetish. While the book is explicit about what is/has happened to a child, it's never graphically shown on screen. If that makes any sense. It's not ambiguous, but it's not trauma porn, portraying the violent betrayal of a child by her father. If I remember right, the most explicit scene is blood in a bed. What made me read and finish this book once I realized ok it's not a metaphor, it's literal incest, was the writing. The metaphor of the Fae and Changelings and how a child's trauma manifested as a literal Other. So far, I had never seen such a theme shown in this light, and would enjoy more.