A Selection of Horror Books Released, 14 to 20 Jan 2024
Themes: Gothic, cosmic, survival, and coming of age horror
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Table of Contents
Best Horror of the Year, Volume Fifteen – Ellen Datlow (editor)
Horror anthology
For more than four decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave.
With the fifteenth volume of the series, Datlow again brings you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Laird Barron, Mira Grant, and many others.
With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.
Dark Blooms – Ruth Anna Evans (editor)
Girls’ coming-of-age horror anthology
Girls come of age in so many ways. In this book, they come of age by battling monsters, watching their friends die, losing their mothers, and killing for the first time.
In this anthology, you meet sixteen heroines, not all of whom survive adolescence. Not all of whom you would want to survive.
Flesh Bargain – Iain Rob Wright
Supernatural horror – Part of The Cursed Manuscripts
With his eldest daughter fighting cancer and his youngest determined to get herself into all kinds of trouble, Jake Penshaw is a man on the very edges of a breakdown.
A father is supposed to keep his children safe, but no matter what he does, things only ever seem to get worse. He’s sick of being powerless. He’s sick of failing as a man.
It’s time for him to do something drastic, something that will finally fix his problems once and for all.
It’s time to make a deal.
Grasshands – Kyle Winkler
Dark fantasy horror
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 Place for Vanishing – Ann Fraistat
Gothic horror
After Libby’s recent bipolar III diagnosis and the tragedy that preceded it, Libby knows she and her family need to find a new normal.
Libby’s mom said the house was supposed to be a fresh start. But Libby’s new home turns out to be anything but normal. Scores of bugs haunt its winding halls, towering stained-glass windows feature strange, insectile designs, and the garden teems with impossibly blue roses.
And then there are the rumors. The locals, including the mysterious boy next door, tell stories about disappearances tied to the house, stretching back over a century to its first owners. Owners who supposedly hosted legendary masked séances on its grounds.
Libby’s mom refuses to hear anything that could derail their family’s perfect new beginning, but Libby knows better. The house is keeping secrets from her, and something tells her that the key to unlocking them lies in the eerie, bug-shaped masks hidden throughout the property.
This Wretched Valley – Jenny Kiefer
Wilderness horror
Dylan’s geologist friend Clay has discovered an untouched cliff face in the Kentucky wilderness, and Dylan is going to be the first person to climb it.
Together with Clay, his research assistant, and Dylan’s boyfriend, 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.
Published: 20 January 2024
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