A Selection of Horror Books Released, 13 to 19 Oct 2024
Themes: Supernatural, psychological, ghosts, haunted house, and folklore horror
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Table of Contents
All the Hearts You Eat – Hailey Piper
Ghost horror
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.
Cold Snap – Lindy Ryan
Supernatural horror
A grieving mother and son hope to survive Christmas in a remote mountain cabin in Pennsylvania.
Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire’s husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn.
Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they’d reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.
It isn’t long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it’s just a forest animal – a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they’d stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody’d find it ’til spring.
But moose don’t walk upright like the shadowy figure does.
They don’t call Christine’s name with her dead husband’s voice.
Discontinue If Death Ensues – Flame Tree Collections
Women horror anthology
15 interlaced horror stories and 5 poems about women, written by 5 women, facing down the grim tipping point of humanity and offering a glimpse of the hope to come.
Horror stories about women, written by women. This anthology focuses on the strength of women faced with adversity. It explores many ways in which societal structures and personal action – including mistreatment of the environment and other people, particularly women – can reach a tipping point, creating unexpected changes, empowering women around the world.
Errant Roots – Sonora Taylor
Witch horror – Book 6 of Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena
Deirdre’s family tree was never something she thought much about. For 24 years it’s just been her and her mother.
But when she accidentally gets pregnant, her mother insists they go back to their family roots.
Now Deirdre is about to discover just what kind of sinister soil her family has sprouted from.
HorrorQuake – Edward Newton
Supernatural horror collection
Behind the curtain of anomalous weather, something prowls. Under the rising floodwaters, something lurks. Beneath the endless desert sand, something hungers.
Up north, a snowstorm of unprecedented ferocity descends upon Zukunft Falls, Montana, and the nearby Enchanted Point Ski Resort. Within the blinding whiteness created by the storm, something even more ferocious hunts the refugees as they seek shelter from the raging winds and plummeting temperatures.
Meanwhile, down south, a storm system forms off the coast of Florida with a speed that defies nature. The Governor quickly rescinds her evacuation order and advises citizens to shelter in place and ride out the storm. But homes and businesses are disappearing, being deconstructed around the terrified residents until they are forced into the open to become potential prey to something from which even the state’s most feared predators flee.
Deep in the Mojave wilderness of eastern California, an unlikely group of people-a vacationing family, a traveling coed, a truck driver, a cop and a convict, a preacher, and some bewildered locals-join together to survive the desolate desert as violent tremors increase in frequency and ferocity. Something stalks them from beneath the sand, threatening to swallow any one of them whole.
I Believe in Mister Bones – Max Booth III
Psychological horror
The email’s subject line reads: DO YOU BELIEVE IN MISTER BONES?
The recipient: Daniel Addams, one half of the Texas small press known as Fiendish Books, co-run with his wife Eileen.
Despite being closed for submissions, curiosity gets the best of him and he takes a look at the anonymous author’s bizarre manuscript, only to find himself obsessed with the titular Mister Bones, a mysterious entity rumored to steal your bones as you sleep, one by one, until he’s replaced your entire skeleton with an unknown substance.
But is Mister Bones real, and has Daniel unintentionally summoned him?
Or, as Eileen suspects, has he finally cracked from stress and lost his mind?
If I Stopped Haunting You – Colby Wilkens
Ghost comedy horror
An enemies to lovers romance with a spooky twist where two feuding writers end up on a writers retreat together at a haunted castle in Scotland
It’s been months since horror author Penelope Skinner threw a book at Neil Storm. But he was so infuriating, with his sparkling green eyes and his bestselling horror novels that claimed to break Native stereotypes. And now she’s a publishing pariah and hasn’t been able to write a word since. So, when her friend invites her on a too-good-to-be-true writers retreat in a supposedly haunted Scottish castle, she seizes the opportunity. Of course, some things really are too good to be true.
Neil wants nothing less than to be trapped in a castle with the frustratingly adorable woman who threw a book at him. She drew blood! Worse still, she unleashed a serious case of self-doubt! Neil is terrified to write another bestselling “book without a soul,” as Pen called it. All Neil wants is to find inspiration, while completely avoiding her.
But as the retreat begins, Pen and Neil are stunned to find themselves trapped in a real-life ghost story. Even more horrifying, they’re stuck together and a truly shocking (extremely hot) almost-kiss has left them rethinking their feelings. But if they can’t stop the ghosts pursuing them, they may never have the chance to find out.
In the End, You Kill Us Both – V. Ivan
Psychological horror
It’s nearly Halloween, the sky won’t stop weeping and from the guts of Olympia’s Eden Valley Psychiatric Unit emerges nineteen-year-old Leo Welch, staggering blindly into the streets of an unfamiliar city where her only company is a peculiar roommate, her two eldest children, and a bizarre collection of ladybug figurines.
Jobless, pill-reliant, and emotionally wounded, a life spent with one eye glaring at the past and the other squinting fearfully at the future is all Leo knows-until she meets fellow ex-inpatient Elowen Reeves, a mysterious drifter who swiftly captures Leo’s attention and emboldens her resentment towards the monster who destroyed her life in Ely.
When a sudden, horrific event shatters Leo’s image of her unusual new friend and sends them both on a dizzying road trip across the American West, Leo must finally face a choice she’s spent years ducking from-allow the pain to consume her once and for all, or dive headfirst into the underbelly of her Nevadan hometown to kill her demons before they can get another stab at killing her.
In Those Fading Stars – Andrew Najberg
Sci-fi horror collection
From a generational craft whose destination is so distant that no living passengers will reach it to a daughter’s new friend teaching her to break the trendiest of dimensional boundaries, these narratives shine a light on the intersections of humanity, mortality, and the uncanny.
A father whose son fades away every day unless he passes the boy a bit of his own life. Three robots holding a séance. A man suffering the effects of an intergalactic portal opening in his stomach.
Invite the Wolf – Iain Rob Wright
YA psychological horror
Alfie Everett is living his best life as a successful online content creator, exposing ‘wolves’ online with his friends. A wolf is an adult man or women who chats with minors online, grooming them and gaining their trust before trying to meet up with them in person.
But Alfie never lets that happen. Instead of innocent young lambs, these predators only ever find themselves face to face with a camera and a folder full of evidence, exposing their faces – and their perversions – to a massive online audience.
Alfie’s latest target is a wolf named ‘Claypole83.’ But this online episode is going to turn out very differently than planned. Claypole is an extremely dangerous individual, and it’s a very very bad idea to piss him off.
Some wolves are not meant to be teased.
Rest Stop – Nat Cassidy
Psychological horror
A young musician finds himself locked inside a gas station bathroom in the middle of the night by an unseen assailant, caught between the horrors on the other side of the door and the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside.
Published: 19 October 2024
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