The Body – Bethany C. Morrow
Supernatural horror
One woman must survive a series of bizarre and escalating attacks on her marriage.
Mavis broke from her parents’ congregation years ago, but she still hasn’t recovered. Their impossible expectations and soul-shredding critiques have dug deep into her mind, and she’s taunted by the knowledge that even when she’s done nothing wrong, she’ll never be right.
Now Mavis is afraid she’s about to lose the only thing she has: her husband, Jerrod. The man she’s always known was too good to be true. No one thinks she deserves him, not even after surviving the serial cheater they wanted her to stick by, and soon they’ll all find out they were right.
Mavis is already unraveling when a brush with death shows her what real fear looks like. Soon, she’s under constant attack from all directions. As the assaults turn increasingly vicious and bizarre, Mavis realizes that Hell isn’t reserved for the afterlife.
And sinner or not, no one is coming to save her.
Cherry Kills – Sean Thomas McDonnell
Psychological horror
Cherry Kills wants to be left alone.
Unfortunately, her Alternates: an overprotective lug, a happy-go-lucky child, and a mute rabbit the size of a man, have other plans.
The doctor calls them hallucinations, symptoms of trauma.
But when her Alternates start interacting with the world around her, Cherry realizes it might not be all in her head.
A Colder Home – Jillian Maria
Supernatural horror
Amateur cinematographer Cleo Moss hasn’t tried to make a film since her father’s death three years ago. Her cousin Noah, a director, is convinced that her latest script is the perfect opportunity to try again, but Cleo is less sure.
Those reservations grow when a blizzard nearly runs them off the road on their way to the shoot, and again when they discover that the house they’re filming in has a tragic past to rival Cleo’s own horror-filled writing. By the time she starts seeing ghostly shadows out of the corner of her eye, she’s convinced that the production is doomed.
At first, filming moves forward in spite of an unreliable camera battery and Noah’s surprise casting of Isobel, Cleo’s not-so-former crush. But as the worsening snow traps cast and crew in the house overnight, the strange shadows escalate into horrifying, dangerous specters.
While the rest of her friends fight to find a way out of this nightmare, Cleo can’t help but be drawn to the ghosts she captures in her viewfinder, just as she can’t help noticing how similar their story is to her own past.
Conjuring the Demon – John Durgin
Supernatural horror – Book 3 of The Newport Curse
Sometimes, to end a curse, you have to return to where it began.
2024. Howie Burke swore he’d never go back to Newport after the childhood murders that shattered his life. But twenty-five years later, a desperate call from his mother drags him home, and straight into the horrors he thought he left behind.
The town feels wrong the moment he arrives. Old ghosts lurk in the shadows, and something far darker has been growing in his absence. The secrets he and his childhood friends uncovered were only the beginning.
1978. Jessica and Henry Black move to Newport searching for a fresh start. For Jessica, it’s a chance to escape her fanatical upbringing and finally choose her own path, but the town offers a new kind of faith: one built on secrets, sacrifice, and blood.
As the townsfolk take a chilling interest in her, Jessica begins to understand the truth: she isn’t just welcome here.
She’s wanted. She’s chosen. She’s necessary.
Two timelines. One curse.
And the only way out… is through the coven that began it.
Dead First – Johnny Compton
Psychological horror
A private investigator is hired by a mysterious billionaire to discover why he can’t die.
When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of eccentric billionaire Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that, the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.
Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light.
Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers.
A Dozen Dead Roses – Katye Tilstone
Slasher horror
Before the curtain falls on the Sweetheart Festival, the town will learn that the truth doesn’t just hurt…it bleeds.
In Havenwood, love isn’t just a feeling, it’s an industry. As the annual Sweetheart Festival approaches, the town is a fever dream of pink lace, heart-shaped pastries, and “Everlasting Roses.” But behind the sugar-coated façade lies a rot that has been festering for decades, ever since a local woman’s cry for help was drowned out by the cheers and laughter.
Ben Vexley is the ultimate believer, moving to Havenwood and securing a simple job with a friend. He plans to propose to Clara, the ethereal florist’s assistant who represents everything pure in his world. He carries a diamond ring and a six-foot teddy bear, unaware that he is walking into a gallery of horrors.
Sasha Harvey is a famous news reporter for ‘The Global Wire’ with a nose for blood. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales, and she certainly doesn’t believe in Havenwood. She’s followed a trail of cold cases to the festival, convinced that the town’s “perfection” is a mask for a legacy of silenced victims and corruption.
When the local baker is found “plated” in her own shop window her stomach filled with jam and her body signed like a piece of art, the mask begins to slip. A killer known only as The Cherub is transforming the town’s citizens into grotesque “Exhibits,” using the tools of their own trades to expose their complicity in a decades-old crime.
As the body count rises and the “art” becomes more ambitious, Ben and Sasha find themselves on a collision course with a truth more jagged than a rose thorn. In Havenwood, the secrets are deep, the residents are silent, and The Cherub is ready for her grand opening.
First Date – Gemma Amor
Survival horror
A couple of lonely misfits on their first date are kidnapped and held captive in the remote wilds of the Norfolk Broads.
Deciding to end years of loneliness, Amandine takes a leap of faith and enters the dating pool. After seemingly endless disappointments, it seems her luck has changed when she meets Connor, another lonely heart.
What starts as a dinner date ends in a night that will change their lives forever. For neither of them knows that they are being watched by a killer whose primary target is happy couples.
Soon, Amandine and Connor will find themselves fighting for their lives. Their only chance of survival lies in each other, but can they work as a team to escape before their time runs out?
And even if they do, will they ever be able to escape each other?
For Human Use – Sarah G. Pierce
Psychological horror
Modern dating is dead.
Finding a human connection online has become impossible. Enter Liv: a dating app that matches people with dead bodies. Somehow, it has taken the world by storm. Millions of users are convinced that life with a corpse presents a better alternative to conventional relationships.
Flailing against Liv’s popularity, venture capital superstar Tom Williamson, whose company is funding Liv, isn’t buying it. Mostly because dating an embalmed cadaver, let alone monetizing it, is obscene.
Believing that Liv is the future, Auden White, the insufferable “visionary” behind the app begins demanding more and more funding, quickly making enemies with Tom.
It’s no secret that Tom struggles with people, dead or alive, but when he has a chance meeting with the woman who knows Auden (and his secrets) best, Mara Reed, he realizes everything is about to change for all three of them.
With Liv’s userbase growing by the day, the need for cadavers rapidly increases. Humanity might not want to connect with other living, breathing people anymore, but they do want to connect with something. What could go wrong?
A Forest, Darkly – A.G. Slatter
Dark fantasy horror
Deep in the forest lives Mehrab the witch, quietly battling her demons.
One evening, a young woman arrives at her door pursued by god-hounds, who wish to destroy all those practising magic, and Mehrab’s solitary existence is disrupted. Together they forge a cure for their isolation with heartbreaking consequences.
Meanwhile, in the local village, children begin to disappear. Sinister offerings appear on Mehrab’s doorstep, and a dark power pursues her through the trees.
As the villagers turn hostile and the god-hounds close in, Mehrab finds herself at the centre of a struggle to save the soul of the forest, the life of an old love, and her own new-formed family.
The Fourth Princess – Janie Chang
Gothic horror
Two young women living in a crumbling, once-grand Shanghai mansion face danger as secrets of their pasts come to light, even as the mansion’s own secret threatens the present.
Shanghai, 1911. Lisan Liu is elated when she is hired as secretary to wealthy American Caroline Stanton, the new mistress of Lennox Manor on the outskirts of Shanghai’s International Settlement. However, the Manor has a dark past due to a previous owner’s suicide, and soon Lisan’s childhood nightmares resurface with more intensity and meld with haunted visions of a woman in red. Adding to her unease is the young gardener, Yao, who both entices and disturbs her.
Newly married Caroline looks forward to life in China with her husband, Thomas, away from the shadows of another earlier tragedy. But an unwelcome guest, Andrew Grey, attends her party and claims to know secrets she can’t afford to have exposed. At the same party, the notorious princess Masako Kyo approaches Lisan with questions about the young woman’s family that the orphaned Lisan can’t answer.
As Caroline struggles with Grey’s extortion and Thomas’s mysterious illness, Lisan’s future is upended when she learns the truth about her past, and why her identity has been hidden all these years. All the while, strange incidents accelerate, driving Lisan to doubt her sanity as Lennox Manor seems unwilling to release her until she fulfills demands from beyond the grave.
Grace – A.M. Shine
Gothic horror
Ancient evil is awakened on a lonely isle off the coast of Ireland.
Off the west coast of Ireland lies a lonely island, isolated and wilfully forgotten. Some say there hasn’t been a child born on the island for thirty years. Others speak of strange deaths there, decades ago. But no one really knows what happened. Locals believe that the dark times are behind them.
They are mistaken.
Grace, adopted at four years old, has never known where she came from. A mysterious phone call leads her back to the island where she was born, and where a terrible evil has been disturbed.
As the evil starts to spread, Grace finds herself dragged back into a living nightmare that threatens to engulf anyone who steps into its path.
House of Splinters – Laura Purcell
Gothic horror
Not every house is a home …
Belinda Bainbridge has spent her life in the shadow of her anxious mother, so when her father-in-law dies at The Bridge, his remote ancestral seat, she is secretly thrilled. His death means she, her husband, Wilfred, and their children can relocate and finally begin to create their own happy home together: born a merchant’s daughter, she will now be lady of the manor.
But their new home quickly proves far from ideal. The garden is a wilderness, the estate is struggling financially, there are whispers about the mysterious death of a servant many years before, while their young son, Freddie, seems unusually fixated on the strange wooden figures – so-called “silent companions” – that were once owned by his ancestors.
When Wilfred’s charismatic brother, Nathan, arrives unexpectedly from abroad, bringing a very different account of the family’s past, Belinda begins to question what her husband has told her. What really lies behind the sad history of the house?
And are Belinda’s children truly safe here?
Maria the Wanted – V. Castro
Vampire horror
Newly turned Mexican vampire, Maria, is not just out for blood, she wants answers.
Maria is a wanted woman. She’s wanted by an Aztec trafficker, a cartel boss, the people she fights for, and now the devil she can’t resist.
A would-be immigrant turned vampire, Maria is forced to leave her home and family and embark on a journey across Mexico. She learns to fight, becoming an unlikely bad-ass enforcer of justice.
Then an encounter with a violent, ruthless vampire boss leads her to find her creator.
Drawn into a world of ancient vampires, deadly conspiracies and a dangerously seductive devil, Maria must find a way to fight for herself and all humankind.
Of Beasts – M. Jane Worma
Supernatural horror
A priest falls in love with the antichrist and even God can’t stop the horror it will bring.
Dante, a protestant young man, and Jude, a sadistic pastor of a small Texas church, harbor a terrible secret from the world; they’re together. The two share a taboo and passionate relationship in hidden peace, until the dreams start.
God speaks to them in visions of smoke and fire, night after night, until the two of them come to a truth they cannot ignore; Dante is the Antichrist, sent by God and urged to start off the apocalypse.
Dante refuses to participate in the end of the world and the damnation of souls. But Jude is a loyal pastor, indifferent to the suffering of others, and is compelled to do what God tells him; even if it means killing the love of his life.
The Rise: Tales from the Gulp 3 – Alan Baxter
Psychological horror – Book 3 of Tales from the Gulp
Strange things happen in The Gulp. The residents have grown used to it.
The isolated Australian harbour town of Gulpepper is not like other places. Some maps don’t even show it. And only outsiders use the full name. Everyone who lives there calls it The Gulp. The place has a habit of swallowing people.
Five more novellas. Five more descents into darkness.
A couple of weed dealers give themselves a real headache.
A young man finds joy in a secret place with the new love of his life.
The children of violent, bigoted parents fight for survival.
One of the world’s biggest stars takes time out in Gulpepper’s newest Institution.
The return of an old foe threatens the existence of Gulpepper itself.
Welcome to The Gulp, where nothing is as it seems.
She Made Herself a Monster – Anna Kovatcheva
Vampire horror
In nineteenth-century Bulgaria, a self-proclaimed vampire slayer joins forces with a teenage girl to create a monster deadly enough to vanquish their own demons.
Yana rides from one desolate town to the next, staging grisly displays while the villagers sleep: animal corpses in the public square, eggs filled with blood in the chicken coop. She tells the stricken villagers stories of vampires that stalk the night. Then she eliminates the threat, and sows seeds of hope in her wake.
The village Koprivci is plagued by exceptional illness and misfortune, its children rarely surviving infancy. There, Yana meets Anka: a headstrong orphan who the villagers blame for their curse. As Anka approaches womanhood, the village Captain is grooming her for marriage against her will. Anka is powerless against him, that is, until Yana arrives.
Together, the orphan and the vampire slayer hatch a plan: to conjure a monster so vile, it might provide cover for Anka to escape. But their plan quickly takes on a horrifying life of its own.
The Skeleton Theory – Joe Clifford
Supernatural horror
He failed to catch the killer. Now, he’ll rewrite reality to save his daughter.
Jericho “Echo” Keane is a broken man. Disgraced from the SFPD and living in self-imposed exile in a shipping container, he is tortured by the memory of the Mission Street Killer who murdered his thirteen-year-old daughter, Olivia. Driven by failure and consuming guilt, Echo’s only reason for getting out of bed is the slim chance he might not let the morning win.
But one desperate encounter at a grief meeting changes everything. A gaunt stranger offers Echo the impossible: a chance to manipulate the “Mandela Effect” and bring back his daughter. This is no dream; it’s a brutal reality where time can be “rewound” and consequences altered.
Teaming up with Michelle Vale, a mother whose own daughter was the killer’s first victim, Echo throws himself into a temporal war. He finds himself hunted by shadowy military-trained mercenaries hired by the ruthless E-Skinz corporation. To protect the new timeline and save the girls, Echo must become the rogue operator he never was.
The Thirteenth Floor Anthology – Guy Adams (editor)
AI horror anthology
Thirteen horror stories set across the globe.
Max goes worldwide!
London’s Maxwell Towers have long been under the control of Max, an all-seeing AI intent on punishing wrongdoers and wicked tenants by sending them to the Thirteenth Floor, where unspeakable horrors come to life.
Now, Max’s coding has been embedded in computer systems all over the world, and there is no escape from his nightmarish reign.
Tradwife – Saratoga Schaefer
Supernatural horror
Every #tradwife needs a baby. She’ll get one at any cost.
When Camille Deming isn’t cooking, cleaning, or homesteading in her picture-perfect country farmhouse, she’s posting about her tradwife lifestyle for her online followers. She takes inspiration from other tradwives on social media, aspiring to be like them, but Camille’s missing a key component: a baby. And contrary to what she posts online, things with her husband, Graham, have been strained. Pressured by her eager followers, Camille fears that without a baby, her relationship will suffer and her social media will never grow out of its infancy.
When Camille discovers a mysterious, decrepit well in the wheatfield behind her house, she makes a wish for a baby. Afterward, she has unsettling experiences that she convinces herself are angelic in nature, and when she’s visited one night by a strange creature, her wish comes true.
Camille’s pregnancy announcement gets more engagement than anything she’s ever posted. So what if Graham’s reaction is lukewarm? Camille’s life is finally falling into place. Never mind that her pregnancy is developing freakishly rapidly and she’s suddenly craving raw meat. Being a traditional wife is worth it.
Warning Signs – Tracy Sierra
Survival horror
A father-son ski weekend becomes a desperate fight for survival.
At twelve years old, Zach admires his father almost as much as he fears him. When Bram takes him on a father-son ski trip in the Colorado backcountry with a few select others, Zach feels brave, cautiously optimistic. His mother taught him the ways of the mountain, and the hushed whiteness should quiet Bram’s complaints, his temper.
But Zach knows his father well enough to always be on high alert: to the shifting dynamics inside the cabin, to his father’s every move, to what lies beyond the warmth of the fireplace. Because something is out there, on the mountain. Something that’s killing animals and picking them clean.
And when the trip takes a turn for the worse, Zach fears he’s in more danger than he realized. He’ll have to rely on his own survival skills if he hopes to make it home alive.
Wilson – Jack Finn
Serial killer horror
For years, Wilson has travelled with a carnival of oddities across 1940s America, a serial killer hidden among the workers and attractions. Working the carnival’s photo booth, Wilson possesses a camera with the hidden ability to capture the secret dreams and desires of its subjects on film. However, in doing so, the camera carves a pathway into the person’s mind that Wilson can traverse in their dreams.
Transforming into a beast of incredible strength, cruelty, and insatiable hunger; Wilson hunts, rends, and devours his victims in their dreams, leaving their corporeal bodies little more than empty husks. He is the perfect serial killer. Undetectable. Untraceable.
However, Wilson is losing control. He is killing more often and closer to home, incurring the ire of the carnival’s proprietor and arousing the suspicions of the local police department. Despite endeavoring to curb his murderous desires, Wilson encounters Dahlia, a woman so flawless the camera only sees her as she is. Wilson becomes consumed with the thought of preying upon the woman, and defiling this living vision of perfection.
The desire to kill Dahlia draws Wilson into a web of deception and terror that even the most vicious serial killer cannot escape.
There is always a more skilled hunter.
There is always a more lethal killer.
There is always a more terrifying monster.
With the Heart of a Ghost – Lim Sunwoo
Ghost horror collection
Eight fantastical stories that explore feelings unseen, unconveyed, unexplainable.
A ghost who looks just like the narrator reflects her feelings back to her in a bun shop.
Mutant jellyfish take over the world and if you touch one you become one yourself.
A heartbroken man becomes a tree in his ex’s apartment.
The ghost of a wannabe K-pop star stuck in a vacuum cleaner wants out.
Jugyeong helps a man hibernate by burying him up to his neck.
Huiae, in deep conflict with her husband, reconnects with her strange old friend.
Jo has lost his best friend, a gecko, but won’t give up the search.
Suyeong plots revenge on a wild dog that killed her cats by channeling her inner cat.
