A Selection of Horror Books Released, 22 to 28 Sep 2024
Themes: Supernatural, psychological, crime, summer camp, slasher, ghost, hotel, serial killer, witch, dark fantasy, vampire, folk, and home invasion horror
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Table of Contents
Benjamin – Aron Beauregard and Shane McKenzie
Crime horror
In the city of fear, money holds dominion over all. With a new designer drug numbing the population, a rash of mysterious disappearances, and a murder rate rising higher than the tallest skyscraper, the only people with the means to distance themselves from the corruption are the ones fostering it.
Enter Benjamin: a lone hundred-dollar bill caught in the middle. In a storm of pills, bullets, and bloodshed, Benjamin passes through the hands of several desperate criminals. Will this bill be the missing piece that finally solves their problems, or a witness to their final moments?
There’s only one way to find out: follow Benjamin.
Immersive entertainment experience: This volume contains 6 QR codes – over 14 minutes of complementary animated video – and 6 interior illustrations. The immersive videos are designed to give the reader a sense of the story’s atmosphere before beginning the experience. These nightmarish fever dreams are laced with symbolism open to the viewer’s interpretation. Can you find the deeper meaning?
Camp Slasher Lake: Volume 3 – Fedowar Press
Summer camp horror anthology
A tribute to the glorious slasher movies of the 1980s, Volume 3.
Featuring stories by: Jonathan Maberry, Will Suffer, MJ Mars, Brian G. Berry, Megan Stockton, Jay Bower, Eric Butler, M Ennenbach, RJ Roles, Angel Van Atta, and D.W. Hitz.
Chopping Spree – Angela Sylvaine
YA slasher horror
Eden Hills, Minnesota, is famous for two things: its lucrative, ’80s-inspired fashion mall, and a missing-persons epidemic that has plagued the town’s youth and confounded officials for years.
High school junior Penny has grown skeptical of the town’s official stance on the disappearances but has so far kept that to herself. She just started her first-ever job at one of the mall’s trendiest stores and doesn’t want to sound like a conspiracy nut to her cool friends and the popular guy who might just help her get over the dream girl who broke her heart.
But when a late-night party in the mall turns deadly, Penny won’t have the luxury of playing it cool. A killer is on the loose, and the dark history of Eden Hills is about to be revealed.
Cicada – Tanya Pell
Supernatural horror – Book 4 of Killer VHS series
Ash is stranded at a rural horror film festival about a giant killer cicada and can’t decide what’s worse, the movie or her idiot boyfriend, until she realizes she’s starring in the bloody sequel when people start dying and the locals won’t let them leave.
Devils Kill Devils – Johnny Compton
Supernatural horror
Sarita has been watched over by a guardian angel her entire life. She calls him Angelo, and keeps him a secret. But secrets can’t 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.
Don’t Eat the Pie – Monique Asher
Ghost horror
When her mother-in-law falls ill, Sam dutifully moves her family to Edenic Camillia Island to care for her. The older women of the island welcome Sam and her daughter Emma with open arms, endless cocktails, and plenty of superstition.
It seems perfect until it’s not. The house next to her mother-in-law’s is creepy. Not only that, it’s where Ben’s first wife died.
Sam’s teen daughter Emma isn’t interested in spending the summer in Camillia. It gets even worse when Emma starts to see things, knowing that there are ghosts trying to warn her of something.
Despite Emma’s pleas, Sam doesn’t want to rock the boat with her new family. Emma won’t pretend nothing is happening, especially as the messages become grimmer and more frequent.
Fringes of Grey – Lene MacLeod
Horror collection
A collection of dark stories that explores themes of aging, death, grief, the supernatural, and spaces of liminality present on the fringes of the everyday.
An elderly woman recruits an old friend of her late husband to help unravel the mystery of a decorative bottle. Does she know more than she is letting on?
A woman still grieves the loss of her pet, when a stray dog enters her home one day, and mysterious events ensue.
A young woman is reluctant to have her caricature done, but she has more to fear than an unflattering drawing.
These and other stories will make you question things as ordinary as frost patterns on windows, pedestrian tunnels, craft beads, and bathroom stalls. There is no escape: there are fringes of grey everywhere.
The Hitchcock Hotel – Stephanie Wrobel
Hotel horror
A Hitchcock fanatic with an agenda invites old friends for a weekend stay at his secluded themed hotel.
Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.
To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.
But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.
After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.
Incantations of Blood – S.R. Fischer
Supernatural horror
Celia Dickenson finds herself alone in the forest, searching for a missing woman. Minerva Penderghast performs a seance at the behest of a grieving family, only to reap disastrous consequences. Maeve Baudelaire is reeling from the unexpected loss of her mother.
For these three women, all roads lead to Shady Grove.
Ancient demonic forces are stirring deep in the forest surrounding the small town, clamoring for sacrificed souls to slake their thirst.
Armed with a cursed book and knowledge of the occult, can an unlikely group of friends save Shady Grove from a threat that’s been festering for centuries?
Welcome to Shady Grove: a town where horrifying family secrets and coming of age just might be the end of you.
Kill Your Darling – Clay McLeod Chapman
Psychological horror
The body of Glenn Partridge’s 15-year-old son was discovered in a vacant lot nearly forty years ago. The police are still no closer to finding the murderer decades later.
Glenn refuses to let the memory of his son fade-or let anyone else within this small working-class community forget. His long-suffering wife signs him up for an amateur fiction-writing workshop at the local library, just to get him out of the house and out of his own head.
Rule number one is Write what you know, so Glenn decides to share his son’s story. The class offers him a chance to make sense of a senseless crime and find the fictional closure life never provided. But as Glenn’s story takes on a life of its own, someone from the past is compelled to come out of hiding before he reaches… The End.
Legacy of Blood – Heather Graham
Serial killer horror – Book 3 of The Blackbird Files
When Special Agent Jeannette LaFarge is called in to investigate a vineyard in the Reims region of France, the last thing she expects to find is multiple bodies with every vein bled dry. It’s yet another case tailor-made for Blackbird. Joining her is recent recruit Detective Daniel Murray, eager to use his newfound abilities to track down whoever is terrorizing Paris and its surrounding areas.
With each ashen victim grows the realization that those responsible weren’t inspired by vampiric creatures of the night but by Elizabeth Báthory herself. The Hungarian noblewoman’s unspeakable crimes against her people are being reenacted in both the City of Lights and across the French countryside. Unless the two of them act quickly, the upcoming harvest promises to yield blood instead of wine.
Love is a Crematorium and Other Tales – Mercedes M. Yardley
Horror collection
A collection of seventeen stories that are both bleak and beautiful, devastating and sweet. Enter the crematorium to experience grief, starlit nights, and gorgeous tragedy that make our souls burn from the inside out.
A woman builds her lover from carefully scavenged pieces and parts.
A young girl is groomed for madness by one who loves her most.
A neurodivergent boy organizes his life, and loss, by the ticking of a clock.
And love can be the most splendid and destructive force in the entire world.
Necrology – Meg Ripley
Witch horror
In a fantastical aftermath of the Salem witch trials, magical women known as the Dirty have signed a contract swearing off their innate magic in exchange for freedom from violence by non-magical Freemen.
Two hundred years later, in a Catskills orphanage, headmistress Whitetail has sprouted antlers-proof of a violated contract. When her wealthy benefactor visits, proposing marriage, her appearance sparks abuse. Rushing to her teacher’s defense, eight-year-old Rabbit curses the Beard dead, and Whitetail’s arrested on trumped-up charges.
As Whitetail awaits her trial and execution, Rabbit is groomed as the Freemen’s star witness and learns of the terrifying reality to which they aspire. With her magic at stake and a loose tooth in her mouth, Rabbit has little left to lose. And a revolution to gain.
Night Noise – David G Allen
Dark fantasy horror
The most malevolent, bloodthirsty beast Kanatan’s village had ever seen has marked his family for destruction.
To make matters worse, its attack sends his once-unified community freefalling into a fractured landscape of suspicion and betrayal. With each grisly kill, the secrets of Kanatan’s family unravel, and the burden falls upon him to rid his village and the surrounding Night Forest of the terror stalking its woods.
When failure means a violent death and an end to his tribe’s way of life, he has no choice but to grow up early, face fear itself right in its glowing yellow eyes, and reconnect with an ancient source of wisdom and power that he had only known through vain praise and empty words.
Reawakening – Alethea Lyons
Horror collection
After centuries of suppression, the magic of England is Reawakening
Return to the world of The Seer of York with this collection of new tales set in the aftermath of The Hiding.
Harper, Grace, Saqib, Heresy, and AJ bond as a team and as a family to save innocents, supernatural and human, despite hunters pursuing them.
Introducing Zero, a starlight cat with a bleak and painful past.
Demonic-possession, Faery circles, Pūcas, and more.
Sinophagia: A Celebration of Chinese Horror 2024 – Solaris
Chinese supernatural horror anthology
Fourteen horror stories that delve deep into the psyche of modern China.
From the menacing vision of a red umbrella, to the ominous atmosphere of the Laughing Mountain; from the waking dream of virtual working to the sinister games of the locked room.
They Didn’t Know – Stephen Barnard
Home invasion horror
Gary and Trisha Naylor allow their son, Dom, to have a 19th birthday party at the house.
It passes without too much incident and all that’s left is to ensure that everyone leaves safely and happily.
Except, that isn’t so easy when the final guest doesn’t want to go. He has an agenda, and he’ll do whatever it takes to achieve his aims, regardless of who gets in his way.
The White Room – Alistair Cross
Vampire horror – Book 6 of The Vampires of Crimson Cove
In the picturesque mountain town of Crimson Cove, the Founder’s Day Fair is in full swing. Tourists and locals revel in the festivities, unaware of the sinister presence lurking in the shadows. A bloodthirsty killer is leaving a trail of butchered bodies in his wake, and the first thing Sheriff Ethan Hunter needs to know is if the perp is human or vampire.
But murder isn’t Ethan’s only problem. The old Victorian he and Sheila moved into has always been shrouded in dark rumors, and as lights flicker, voices whisper, and phantom footsteps walk the chilly halls, it seems the legends may be true. Something sinister wants their attention, and as the Hunters uncover the house’s sordid past, they start down a twisted road steeped in vengeance, lies, and blood.
Meanwhile, at the Crimson Corset nightclub, Gretchen VanTreese, beautiful and undead, is spinning a treacherous web. As her dark ambitions take terrifying shape, vampire assassin Cade Colter finds himself in her crosshairs. And when she springs her deadly trap, Cade discovers that sometimes, abandoning your own humanity is the only way to survive.
Withered Hill – David Barnett
Folk horror
A dual timeline folk horror novel.
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?
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.
Published: 28 September 2024
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