Bitterbloom – Teagan Olivia King
Ghost horror
In a village plagued by mysterious deaths, Adelaide Thorn wonders if she is truly touched by the Devil.
The villagers of Rixton, including Adelaide’s father, the vicar, believe her to be the monster responsible for all the town’s tragedies, spurred on by the strange visions and blackouts caused by her chronic illness. Kept locked away except for funerals, even Addie herself begins to wonder if she is the one with blood on her hands.
But when she discovers a peculiar bell nestled in a riverbed, Addie realizes the truth behind her strange visions: they are actually the ghosts of the village’s dead searching for rest. With the bell’s strange power allowing her to see the lost souls and open a doorway to the Rowan Wood where they are trapped, she strikes a deal with the ghost of Bram Avery and the young lord Ransom Black to venture into the hellish purgatory.
As the three make their way deeper into the Wood, each motivated by their own desperate desires, trust turns to betrayal and flawless facades begin to flicker. It may be that the ones Addie has so longed to reunite are those who have been lying to her her entire life.
Cabaret in Flames – Hache Pueyo
Creature horror
In an alternate-Brazil, brutal flesh-hungering Guls stalk the night streets and manipulate the government from their glittering cabaret.
Guls can be brutal. Few know this better than Ariadne, who lost half her body to their appetites, but their brutality is a predictable constant amid Brazil’s political chaos. Now, she treats them in the specialized clinic she inherited from Erik Yurkov, the mentor who rescued her as a child, trained her in medicine, built her prostheses, and disappeared without a trace.
Ariadne’s routine is disturbed when Quaint knocks on her door: a charming, tattooed gul claiming to be Erik’s oldest friend. Quaint suspects foul play in Erik’s disappearance, and they soon discover Erik sought asylum at Cabaré, an infamous club in Rio de Janeiro frequented by the gul elite.
Together, Ariadne and Quaint will unravel the conspiracy behind their friend’s disappearance, navigate the labyrinthine world of Ariadne’s memories, and discover what Erik means to them, and what they are starting to mean to each other.
Depths of Degradation – Jim Donohue
Horror collection
13 tales of darkness.
From the former girlfriend who keeps coming back, to the dialysis patient whose treatments may be more terrifying than the very disease that eats away at his body.
From the wolf who ventured too far into the haunted woods alone, to the practice of Santeria in the haunted Bronx Tenement.
Thirteen stories that will chill you to the bone, and will take you to a place you never wanted to go.
The Fox and the Devil – Kiersten White
Vampire horror
An obsession with an immortal serial killer entangles a vampire hunter’s daughter.
Anneke has a complicated relationship with her father, Abraham Van Helsing – doctor, scientist, and madman devoted to the study of vampires – until the night she comes home to find him murdered, with a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. A woman who leaves no trace behind, other than the dreams and nightmares that now plague Anneke every night.
Spurred by her desire for vengeance and armed with the latest forensic and investigatory techniques, Anneke puts together a team of detectives to catch this mysterious serial killer. Because her father isn’t the only inexplicable dead body. There’s a trail of victims across Europe, and Anneke is certain they’re all connected.
But during the years spent relentlessly hunting the killer, Anneke keeps crucial evidence to herself: infuriatingly coy letters, addressed only to her, occasionally soaked in blood, and always signed Diavola.
The closer Anneke gets to her devil, though, the less sense the world makes. Maybe her father wasn’t a madman after all. Diavola might be something much worse than a serial killer and much harder to destroy. Yet as Anneke unearths more of Diavola’s tragic past, she suspects there’s still a heart somewhere in that undead body.
A heart that beats for Anneke alone.
Haven – Ani Katz
Psychological horror
A summer retreat to an elite island enclave tied to a Big Tech company becomes a mother’s worst nightmare.
After months of financial strain and escalating arguments, Caroline is relieved when her husband, Adam, secures a job at Corridor, a prestigious Big Tech company. Though his long hours on top-secret projects often leave Caroline alone with their newborn son, Gabriel, the life-changing income seems worth the sacrifice.
When Adam suggests a summer retreat to Haven, the exclusive island community popular with Corridor employees, Caroline agrees, hoping the sun-soaked paradise will help Adam relax and bring their family closer. But she can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right about the town. Though Adam assures her of their safety, the locals’ behavior is oddly secretive and ritualistic, even cultish. It’s clear that Corridor hasn’t resolved tensions about the way the company is transforming the island. And it doesn’t help that Adam’s colleagues seem to have a few strange beliefs of their own.
When Caroline wakes to discover that Gabriel is missing, her worst fears are confirmed. Desperate and unsure of whom to trust, she must race to find her son, and pull back the curtain on this elite enclave, before he is lost to the island forever.
It Came from the Floodwaters – Seann Barbour
Vampire horror
Tam is alone in their Savannah apartment when a hurricane blows in.
Rain falls, streets flood. When water comes pouring into the building’s lobby, it brings with it an old pine box.
Inside that box is something ancient, something evil. It arises, and it begins its feast.
Now as people are dying, the survivors gather together in one small apartment, desperate to live through the storm and live through the night.
But the evil lurks right outside their door. It’s hungry, it’s patient, and it has all night long to kill every last one of them.
The Midnight Muse – Jo Kaplan
Psychological horror
When a metal band’s lead singer vanishes in the woods, the mushrooms in the forest might know more than they’re letting on.
The dead collect in low places. That’s what Brynn Werner, lead singer of metal band Queen Carrion, wrote in her notebook before she vanished while staying at a cabin in Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest.
A year later, on the anniversary of her disappearance, the rest of her bandmates visit the cabin to remember her and find a way to move on. But tensions arise over who should be their new singer and who is responsible for Brynn’s disappearance, tensions that boil over as they realize not all is as it seems at Trail Creek Cabin.
Strange entries in the guestbook write about visions of a pale form that moves through the trees, figures wearing gas masks lurk in the distance, and there’s a strange fungus growing from the wall of a tunnel in the cabin’s basement. Then they hear Brynn’s voice echo impossibly through the forest, and the pale form that emerges from the trees is her perfect likeness. Is it her ghost or something else?
Brynn knew there was a secret in these woods. It’s why she chased her muse here to finish her masterpiece. The Midnight Muse is an alluring and grotesque dissection of self and fungus. Kaplan delivers an ominous spiral of psychological torment as the members of Queen Carrion slip into a more natural skin.
Partially Devoured – Daniel Kraus
Horror movie nonfiction
Daniel Kraus first saw George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead when he was five years old. Through watching it approximately three hundred times since, Kraus discovered the many ways the film is tied to his childhood trauma and how its influence has carried into his adulthood. He couldn’t help but wonder: Are there other admirers of the film out there who feel the same?
Partially Devoured uses a frame-by-frame deep dive into Night of the Living Dead to produce a kaleidoscopic cultural investigation of the film’s importance and to examine the author’s early life of rural isolation and local violence.
Careening from film analysis to rabbit-hole tangents, Partially Devoured will take readers from screaming laughter to the depths of grief, all while illustrating how a beloved genre film has woven itself into so many facets of our lives.
Spoiled Milk – Avery Curran
YA supernatural horror
In 1928, Emily Locke’s final year at the isolated Briarley School for Girls is derailed when Violet, the school’s brightest star (and a cunning beauty for whom Emily would do anything), falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday.
Emily and her buttoned-up rival Evelyn are, for once, in agreement: Violet’s death was no accident. There’s an obvious culprit, the French schoolmistress with whom Violet was getting a little too close, they only need to prove it.
Desperate for answers, Emily and her classmates turn to spiritualism, hoping for a glimpse of wisdom from the great beyond. To their shock, Violet’s spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium. And Violet has a warning for them: the danger has just begun.
Something deadly is infecting Briarley. It starts with rotten food and curdled milk, but quickly grows more threatening. As the body count rises and the students race to save themselves, Emily must confront the fatal forces poisoning the school.
Emily’s fight for survival forces her to reevaluate everything she knows: about Violet, Evelyn, Briarley, and, ultimately, herself.
The Telling – Anne Wolf
YA psychological horror
What happens when the line between myth and reality blurs?
Neglected by her father after her mother’s homicide, fifteen-year-old Maeve Newell enlists the help of a light witch, a new friend, Sylvie, and her dog, Pooch, to help her unravel the mystery surrounding her mother’s brutal death and get clarity for her recent nightmares, but she’s uncovering disturbingly horrifying truths about her family in the process.
It seems death is on the menu in rural Wren Falls. She needs to confront a vicious ancient Celtic monster, but to do so, she has to understand the meaning behind her terrifying dreams. And time is running out.
You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom – Vincent Tirado
Supernatural horror
Demons clash with inheritance claims as secrets unfold and violence is unleashed over twelve harrowing hours trapped in a house with the worst thing imaginable: family.
When Papi Ramon, the patriarch of the wealthy Abreu family dies, he gives the family one last message in the will: “One of you is el bacà, the demon that I made a deal with. Get rid of them or you will be damned.”
Xiomara, the uncontested favorite of Papi Ramon (and therefore the least liked in the family), watches as everyone dismisses this as the joke of a senile old man and demands the lawyer obtain the previous will Papi wrote.
While the lawyer drives back to his office, a storm breaks out, forcing the entire family to remain in the house. And the words of Papi’s will hangs over their heads even heavier than the rain clouds. Over the course of the night, scandal after scandal is revealed to the public about the family. Suddenly a tense few hours of surviving her family turns into a vicious night of recrimination, violence, accusations, and murder.
Xiomara is faced with an impossible task: uproot a demon and somehow kill it or excise the ghosts that linger within her own family.
And the clock is ticking…
