A Selection of Horror Books Released, 7 to 13 Apr 2024
Themes: Supernatural, psychological, vampire, space, survival, and dark fantasy horror
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Table of Contents
A Better World – Sarah Langan
Psychological horror
A satirical thriller about a family’s odyssey into an exclusive enclave for the wealthy that might not be as ideal as it seems.
You’ll be safe here. That’s what the tour guide tells the Farmer-Bowens when they visit Plymouth Valley, a walled-off company town with clean air, pantries that never empty, and blue-ribbon schools.
On a trial basis, the company offers to hire Linda’s husband, Russell, a numbers genius, and relocate her whole family to this bucolic paradise. Even though Linda will have to sacrifice her medical career back home, the family jumps at the opportunity. They’d be crazy not to take it. With the outside world falling apart, this might be the Farmer-Bowens’ last chance.
But fitting in takes work. The pampered locals distrust outsiders, snubbing Linda, Russell, and their teen twins. And the residents fervently adhere to a group of customs and beliefs called Hollow. But what exactly is Hollow?
Linda brokers acceptance, by volunteering her medical skills to the most influential people in town through their pet charity, ActHollow. In the months afterward, everything seems fine. Sure, Russell starts hyperventilating through a paper bag in the middle of the night, and the kids have become secretive, but living in Plymouth Valley is worth sacrificing their family’s closeness, isn’t it? At least they’ll survive. The trouble is, the locals never say what they think. They seem scared. And Hollow’s ominous culminating event, the Plymouth Valley Winter Festival, is coming.
Linda is warned by her husband and her powerful new friends to stop asking questions. But the more she learns, the more frightened she becomes. Should the Farmer-Bowens be fighting to stay, or fighting to get out?
Bless Your Heart – Lindy Ryan
Vampire horror
Rise and shine. The Evans women have some undead to kill.
It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone.
When the body of the town gossip is brought in for burial, she rises from the dead instead. It’s clear that the Strigoi, the original vampire, are back. And the Evans women are the ones who must fight to protect their town.
As more folks in town turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, the Evans women must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return.
As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes, the dead aren’t the only things you want to keep buried.
Cremated Remains – M Ennenbach
Horror collection
Ten tales curated in the flames of madness, friendship, love, betrayal, and desire.
Ten urns carelessly spilled to stain the parchment in the spectrum of emotional dissonance on the condition of being human.
The cremated remains of creativity.
The Garden – Clare Beams
Psychological horror
The discovery of a secret garden with unknown powers fuels this tale of women yearning to be mothers and the way the female body has been policed and manipulated.
Irene Willard has had five miscarriages trying to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires.
It’s 1948 and Irene, now pregnant again, arrives at an isolated house/hospital in the Berkshires, run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure for her condition. Warily, she enlists herself in the efforts of the Doctors Hall to “rectify the maternal environment,” both physical and psychological.
She discovers a long-forgotten walled garden on the spacious grounds, a place imbued with its own powers and pulls. As the doctors’ plans begin to crumble, Irene and her fellow patients make a desperate bid to harness the power of the garden for themselves, and must face the incalculable risks associated with such incalculable rewards.
A Cold Night for Alligators – Viggy Parr Hampton
Supernatural horror
A determined CDC epidemiologist goes rogue to tackle a mysterious outbreak in Savannah, only to find himself entangled with a pair of urban explorers and a dangerous, tortured soul in an abandoned theme park where dark forces stir.
When a strange and deadly outbreak in Savannah, Georgia, baffles his colleagues at the CDC, epidemiologist Dr. Archibald Gruber sees their failure as his chance to solve the mystery and earn the promotion he craves.
His rogue investigation leads him to Gullywasher’s of Georgia, a long-abandoned amusement park, where he crosses paths with YouTube urban explorers Sid and Zeb Barkov. Unbeknownst to Gruber and the brothers, Gullywasher’s has become the haven for the increasingly dangerous outcast Leona Franks.
Gruber’s quest for heroism quickly becomes a fight for survival as Leona awakens the malevolent, hungry forces that call the park home.
The Gathering – C.J. Tudor
Vampire horror
A detective investigating a grisly crime in rural Alaska finds herself caught up in the dark secrets and superstitions of a small town.
In a small Alaska town, a boy is found with his throat ripped out and all the blood drained from his body. The inhabitants of Deadhart haven’t seen a killing like this in twenty-five years. But they know who’s responsible: a member of the Colony, an ostracized community of vampyrs living in an old mine settlement deep in the woods.
Detective Barbara Atkins, a specialist in vampyr killings, is called in to officially determine if this is a Colony killing, and authorize a cull. Old suspicions die hard in a town like Deadhart, but Barbara isn’t so sure. Determined to find the truth, she enlists the help of a former Deadhart sheriff, Jenson Tucker, whose investigation into the previous murder almost cost him his life. Since then, Tucker has become a recluse. But he knows the Colony better than almost anyone.
As the pair dig into the town’s history, they uncover secrets darker than they could have imagined. And then another body is found. While the snow thickens and the nights grow longer, a killer stalks Deadhart, and two disparate communities circle each other for blood.
Time is running out for Atkins and Tucker to find the truth: Are they hunting a bloodthirsty monster, or a twisted psychopath? And which is more dangerous?
Ghost Station – S.A. Barnes
Space horror
An abandoned planet. A hidden past. A deadly danger.
Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of Eckhart-Reiser syndrome (ERS) – the most famous case of which resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. It’s personal to her, and when she’s assigned to a small exploration crew who recently suffered the tragic death of a colleague, she wants to help. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that the crew is hiding something.
Ophelia’s crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizers’ hasty departure than opening up to her.
That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting – a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something even more sinister?
Grey Dog – Elliott Gish
Psychological horror
A subversive literary horror novel that disrupts the tropes of women’s historical fiction with delusions, wild beasts, and the uncontainable power of female rage.
The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd – spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist – accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past, riddled with grief and shame, has never seemed so far away.
But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly phenomena: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something old and beastly – which she calls Grey Dog – is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory loosens, and Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, behaving erratically and pushing her newfound friends away.
She is left with one question: What is the real horror? The Grey Dog, the uncontainable power of female rage, or Ada herself?
The Last Phi Hunter – Salinee Goldenberg
Dark fantasy horror
Ambitious Phi Hunter and perpetual lone wolf, Ex, finds his road to glory interrupted when a heavily pregnant runaway enlists his help to escape through the ghost-infested forest.
Ex, the youngest member of the Phi Hunters Order, has spent his life slaying the ghosts and demons of Suyoram Kingdom. While he takes great pride in his mystical trade, collecting dwindling bounties and peddling butchered spirit organs lacks the glory he craves. He’s determined to hunt down Shar-Ala, a demon of nightmares, of madness, who has eluded even Ex’s masters.
In a provincial village, Arinya, a charming muay-boran champion, manages to save Ex him from a brutal ass-kicking, despite being nine months pregnant. In return, she asks him to escort her through the dangerous, spirit-filled forest, where ghosts salivate over the scent of the unborn.
Feeling responsible for Arinya’s safety, Ex vows to help her return home. But as more of Arinya’s secrets emerge, and the elusive demon nears, Ex must face dangers from both men and monsters, or lose not only the respect and sanctuary of his guild, but also the woman he’s trying not to fall in love with.
Myrrh – Polly Hall
Psychological horror
A woman searching for her birth-parents unlocks the secrets of her horrific past, as she tries to stop the goblin within.
Myrrh has a goblin inside her, a voice in her head that tells her all the things she’s done wrong, that berates her and drags her down. Desperately searching for her birth-parents across dilapidated seaside towns in the South coast of England, she finds herself silenced and cut off at every step. As Myrrh’s frustrations grow, the goblin in her grows louder and louder, threatening to tear apart the few relationships she holds dear and destroy everything around her.
Cayenne is trapped in a loveless marriage, the distance between her and her husband growing further and further each day. Longing for a child, she has visions promising her a baby. When Cayenne finds her husband growing closer to his daughter (Cayenne’s stepdaughter) and pushing her further out of his life, she makes a decision that sends her into a terrible spiral.
The stories of these women will unlock a past filled with dark secrets and strange connections, all leading to an unforgettable, horrific climax.
Queens of Death – Bludgeoned Girls Press
Dark fantasy horror anthology
Dive into worlds where royalty rises above all else, where it’s off with their heads in these horrific tales of bloody queen bees.
From queens of the night to Queen Anne houses, this anthology will chill you to the bone.
Which story will rule your nightmares?
The Thing in the Wind – Bill Mullen
Psychological survival horror
A search party stumbles upon an unspeakable horror that threatens both their lives and sanity.
In the heart of the Canadian wilderness, a woman’s world is shattered by the disappearance of her mother in the remote reaches of northern Saskatchewan. Along with her father and a small, determined search party, she embarks on a desperate quest for answers, only to encounter an unspeakable terror lurking in the shadows of the ancient forests.
As the group navigates the treacherous wilderness, their journey becomes a chilling fight for survival against not only the harsh elements but also a malevolent force that defies explanation. Haunted by eerie premonitions and the feeling of being stalked by an unseen entity, they begin to realize that they are facing a horror far beyond their wildest imaginations.
The Underhistory – Kaaron Warren
Psychological horror
People come to visit my home and I love to show them around. It’s not the original house of course. That was destroyed the day my entire family died. But I don’t think their ghosts know the difference.
Pera Sinclair was nine the day the pilot intentionally crashed his plane into her family’s grand home. She was the girl who survived the tragedy, a sympathetic oddity, growing stranger by the day.
Over the decades she rebuilt the huge and rambling building on the original site, recreating what she had lost, each room telling a piece of the story of her life and that of the many people who died there, both before and after the disaster. Her sister, murdered a hundred miles away. The soldier, broken by war.
Death follows Pera, and she welcomes it in as an old friend. And while she doesn’t believe in ghosts, she’s not above telling a ghost story or two to those who come to visit Sinclair House.
As Pera shows a young family around her home on the last haunted house tour of the season, an unexpected group of men arrive. One she recognises, but the others are strangers. But she knows their type all too well. Dangerous men, who will hurt the family without a second thought, and who will keep an old woman alive only so long as she is useful. But as she begins to show them around her home and reveal its secrets, the dangerous men will learn that she is far from helpless. After all, death seems to follow her wherever she goes…
Published: 13 April 2024
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