Bone of My Bone – Johanna van Veen
Historical horror
The year is 1635. Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying man: the gilded skull of a saint.
It is said that if you reunite the saint’s skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic’s power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing truth: the magic they seek comes at a cost.
At the journey’s end, they’ll face an impossible choice, one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.
Dead Weight – Hildur Knútsdóttir
Psychological horror
Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.
When she tracks down the cat’s wayward owner, she finds a young woman just as lost and in need of help. Like a gust of cold air in a Reykjavík night, Ásta and her pet slip into Unnur’s life.
It’s unexpected, but welcome. Unnur likes the company, and she begins to rely on Ásta in turn. But like a black cat, trouble has been tailing her new friend, and Unnur is the only one there for Ásta when things take a violent turn.
The two women quickly learn: nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.
Forlorn Harbor – Jim Doran
YA supernatural horror
Squeaky-clean Martina Ramirez is about to commit her first crime with a group of six schoolmates: breaking and entering into an abandoned movie theater.
But the trespassers soon find themselves trapped inside, and while desperately trying to discover a way out, a projector starts playing a film introduction to a vintage episode of a horror series named Forlorn Harbor. When the introduction ends, one of the group becomes imprisoned within the film.
The only method of escape is to survive the episode, but Forlorn Harbor doesn’t play fair. As the terrifying night wears on, the projector displays more episodes, ensnaring the others one by one.
And as Martina’s turn arrives, she must face her own ominous trial alone.
The Girl in Green – Staci Layne Wilson
Serial killer horror
She is ten years old. She loves storybooks, puppies, and murder.
Her mother knows. She has always known. And still she runs with her, steals for her, looks the other way, because she is her little girl. Because somewhere beneath those flat, patient eyes is the child she once rocked to sleep.
Isn’t she?
In the gritty, pre-everything America of the early 1980s, a mother and daughter are leaving a quiet trail of bodies across state lines. When a dangerous man steps into their orbit and the police close in from behind, the mother faces the question she has spent a decade outrunning.
What is she raising? What has she always been raising? And what happens when her daughter decides she’s better off alone?
The Hollow One – Corinne Westbrook
Grief horror
In the quiet of a rundown house at the edge of town, a young girl named Ellie carries more than any child should. With a mother who is barely present and a baby brother who depends on her for everything, Ellie survives by staying small, silent, and unseen.
But something has started to knock at the window.
The figure lurking outside looks like her father, talks like him, remembers the lullabies he used to sing, but Ellie knows better than to trust too easily. Still, something in her aches to let him in, and once she does, he keeps coming back.
House of Margins – Tlotlo Tsamaase
Haunted house horror
A young African author disappears after being invited to an exclusive writing residency, and her sister is left only with a true crime podcast to help her uncover the truth.
Anaya Sebeya is missing.
Before her disappearance, Anaya was a brilliant writer: a rising star. Invited to a prestigious writing residency at Günter Huis, an eerie colonial mansion on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, Anaya was supposed to craft the next great African literary masterpiece, and so were four other young, emerging writers, all competing for the grand prize. But Anaya never made it home.
When a sensationalized true crime podcast about Anaya emerges, claiming to reveal everything that happened at Günter Huis, her sister Ranewa is both skeptical and furious. But with each surreal episode, Ranewa begins to piece together a truth worse than she ever could have imagined.
At Günter Huis, Anaya’s nightmares consume her. Time slips away from her. Günter Huis inflicts distorted visions and terrible supernatural visitations, pushing Anaya to tell a story no one dares. But exorcising the house’s endless cycle of evil requires a sacrifice that neither Anaya nor her fellows are ready to make.
I’ll Watch Your Baby – Neena Viel
Psychological horror
1974. Lottie Turner is already infamous. Running a wheel of schemes and scams, she’s willing to work for what she wants in creative ways. But no business is more lucrative than desperate families looking to adopt a child, and there’s only one way to procure children quickly.
And the only way to take what’s owed you is to cross the line no one else is willing to cross.
1994. Bless has finally found the family she deserved. After suffocating slowly with lackluster parents and a non-starter past, she’s found the friends that means everything to her. That she’d live and die for. As they make their way across the country, one smash and grab at a time, Bless is used to acting fast and thinking quickly.
But someone is playing a long game. Someone has unfinished business. Soon Bless is forced to extricate the horrifying pain of her past and choose to find forgiveness in her heart, or get revenge.
Prey – Graham Mulvein
Creature horror
When the lake fell, something rose.
The Andalusian reservoir has dropped to record lows, exposing land buried for decades.
Four teenagers enter the olive groves. The terrain shifts. Paths loop. Slopes steepen. The grove closes in. By nightfall they have not returned.
Something is out there – it doesn’t chase. It adjusts.
Former Special Forces officer Julian Navarro leads the search. He knows these hills. He knows real fear. Dogs refuse to track. Radios cut to static. Men lose their bearings. Then the storm hits – the ground gives way.
Whatever surfaced is tightening its trap. And it knows exactly where they are.
Something’s Gotta Kill You – Greg Sisco
Horror collection
18 dark tales ranging from scary to satirical and from hopeful to heartbreaking, but always from the darkest corridors of the human heart.
Here you’ll find a haunted film in an old-timey movie house, a quaint Christmas village guarding a morbid secret, a brutal crime in an otherworldly hotel, smugly intellectual parasites possessing a college campus, a chef who treats bad reviews as personal affronts, and a society governed by an artificial being, as well as a dozen other sinister stories.
Teddy Bears Never Die – Cho Yeeun
Slasher horror
A young woman and a possessed teddy bear set out on a revenge quest unlike any other.
When the fledgling coastal town of Yamu is rocked by a mass-poisoning attack at the Seaview Parc, a luxury high-rise apartment, Hwayoung is one of many who lost family members. Except, she has never believed that her mother was poisoned.
Now, fueled by grief and a desire for revenge, Hwayoung spends her time hustling to save every penny and bring those responsible to justice. Across town, Doha wakes up in a teddy bear and realizes something sinister has taken his body.
When fate brings Hwayoung and Doha together, the two team up for a revenge quest that will shake the city’s shiny façade to its rotten core.
This time, revenge is not just personal, it’s supernatural.
Thrill Killers – Steven Caumo
Survival horror
More than 8 million people visit the beautiful beach town of Paradise, Maryland every year. It’s the perfect vacation destination for families, friends, and lovers. Jack and Diane are recently engaged and looking forward to a few days of rest and relaxation.
On their second day in Paradise, they meet newlyweds Brett and Claire. Jack and Diane hit it off with the couple and decide to kick back at Brett and Claire’s condo for a night of fun and games. Unfortunately, Brett and Claire’s idea of fun and games is something far more twisted and demented than what the newly engaged couple were expecting.
Now, Jack and Diane are forced to fight for their lives, both desperate to do whatever it takes to save the other. And when the sun rises the next morning, only one couple will be strong enough to win the deranged game.
We Could Be Anyone – Anna-Marie McLemore
YA horror
Two teen con-artists must execute an almost impossible scam at an exclusive mansion.
Lola and I grew up hearing that we could become anything, but our parents hadn’t meant it the way gringo parents did. They meant it as a warning.
Lola and Lisandro are actors during Hollywood’s Golden Age, but you won’t see them on any silver screen. Instead, these siblings use their talents to scam the rich and famous out of their ill-begotten cash. They have their act down to a science: Lola plays the tragic ghost who haunts the mansions of the wealthy, and Lisandro plays the brave spiritualist who will help her soul find peace. For a small fee, of course.
The siblings have their sights set on their next target: The Coterie, the opulent estate of newspaper tycoon Bixby Fairfax and his famous mistress Blythe Bell. A score this big will allow them to move… well, anywhere but here. But this job requires them to do something they’ve never done before: switch roles. And as strange things keep happening at The Coterie… things that even Lola and Lisandro can’t explain.
As they are drawn deeper into The Coterie’s gleaming façade and tensions rise between brother and sister, one question looms over them. Will they be able to pull off their act? Or will this be their last performance?
Who’s Satan Inside? – Vincere Press
Extreme horror anthology
Evil doesn’t always arrive with horns and fire. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it tempts. Sometimes it wears your face.
A brutal, unflinching extreme horror anthology that explores corruption from the inside out, where damnation is forced upon its victims.
Across eleven harrowing stories, acclaimed horror authors push readers into encounters with possession, religious terror, moral collapse, and psychological unraveling. Each tale asks the same unsettling question in a different way:
Is Satan something that hunts us… or something we invite in?
This anthology expands the dark universe of Try Not to Die: With Satan Inside, featuring eleven authors who have all contributed to (or are soon contributing to) the Try Not to Die interactive horror series. These stories stand alone, but together they form a descent into temptation, submission, and irreversible consequence.
