Amusement Park Arcana – Jennifer R. Donohue
Amusement park horror
Riley’s best friend Tara went missing last October from the shitty amusement park where she worked. By spring, the police are no closer to having any answers, so Riley’s taking it in her own hands.
She just knows Tara’s still at the park somewhere, and an uncanny phone call on Riley’s first day as a park employee only confirms that. The quest to bring Tara or her body home draws Riley further from her family and her boyfriend as she spends more time in the park’s liminal spaces and opening day looms large.
Beasts of 42nd Street (new edition) – Preston Fassel
Cursed movie horror
Times Square, 1977. In the kingdom of the damned that is 42nd Street, there’s no lowlier subject than Andy Lew. An unrepentantly vulgar drug fiend and degenerate, he’s only tolerated by the more dangerous men around him because he keeps the projectors at the Colossus theater running on time.
There’s something unique about Andy, though. He owns a movie. It’s the only copy in the world. No one knows who made it. Only he knows where it came from- and what he had to do to get it. The woman it stars is beautiful beyond imagination. The images it depicts are more nightmarish than the darkest depths of Hell. And if underworld lore is to be believed, it may hold a terrible power.
Once the beasts of 42nd street learn of the film’s existence, Andy finds himself in a race to the bottom against corrupt cops, washed-up actors, and Satanic cultists eager to claim it for their own. He has an advantage they don’t, though: Andy loves the woman in the movie, and he’ll do anything to protect “her.”
Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die – Mallory Arnold
Slasher horror
Three women lure their cheating boyfriend to a remote mountain cabin, only to discover that darkness lurks within the very walls, waiting to pick them off one by one.
One isolated cabin. One cheating boyfriend. One plan to get even.
When Nora, Ruby, and Cham discover that they’ve each been dating the same man, what starts as outrage quickly spirals into a plot for revenge. Together they hatch a plan to lure their boyfriend to a romantic getaway in a secluded cabin at the top of a snow-covered mountain.
Only what was meant to be harmless payback soon takes a chilling turn when their not-so-adoring boyfriend is found dead in the cabin.
Stranded and snowed in, the women begin to look at each other with increasing suspicion. And as tensions rise, hidden motives come to light. To survive, each woman must confront her own demons as they fight to uncover if one of them is the killer, or if something else lurks in the freezing wilderness, waiting to pick them off one by one.
Darkness into Light – Iain Rob Wright
Serial killer horror
Two killers. One victim.
Ella Bennett is camping alone.
No phone. No people. Just the trees, the fire, and the long silence she has been craving; the silence she needs to begin healing from a devastating loss.
She doesn’t know that two miles north, a man has been watching and waiting for exactly the right woman to come along.
She doesn’t know that two miles south, another man has been doing the same thing.
Neither killer knows about the other.
But by midnight, both will be coming for Ella.
And when their carefully laid plans collide, Ella will find herself trapped at the centre of a nightmare unlike anything any of them expected.
The Harvest of the Dead – A Michael Smith
Supernatural horror
One man’s creation to pay the world back for his tortured existence becomes an ancient being’s weapon to destroy the world.
The dead will rise and blood will flow.
Home Sick – Rhiannon Grist
Psychological horror
A troubled woman seeking a fresh start in the Scottish countryside believes her neighbour may be behind the strange disturbances in her home.
After a violent incident at work, Tamsin goes looking for a fresh start in a remote cottage far away from her old life. Here she could make real friends, find a job she loves, become a whole new person, even.
But the solitary cottage is actually a semi-detached, with only a thin wall separating her from a total stranger. Her neighbour is an enigma. Dowdy one moment, vivacious the next, but always wearing an unnerving smile. Tamsin can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with her, especially when she starts experiencing disturbances in her own home.
As the locals share strange stories about her house, and her barely contained paranoia spirals out of control, Tamsin begins to suspect that the past she was so desperate to escape might never let her go.
Infernal Tramps – Alex Grass
Horror collection
Step into a dimension of blood and consequence. But buyer beware! Crack the spine and these dark tales are not so easily forgotten.
A boy discovers his father’s oracular grotesque in a secret dungeon below their family funeral home.
An antique spiked collar transforms Philadelphia into a city that worships a dead dog.
A video game dominates the market for years and then disappears, except for one man’s memories of its horrors.
A mother with a trunkful of hungry, inhuman babies tracks down the family that abandoned them.
The warden of a penal colony offers to pardon a murderer, but only if the inmate can find the antidote to the poison wine the warden gave him.
A wealthy young woman receives a surgical implant that delivers more than just a shapely body.
My Monsters Ain’t Like Yours – R.J. Joseph
Horror collection
Black feminist intersectional horror at its rawest.
Monsters are personal. Monsters are universal. These facts create an intriguing juxtaposition where the things deemed monstrous or frightening can be shaped by personal experiences, while also representing many aspects of the human condition; our fears are much more similar than dissimilar.
This means my monsters are absolutely like yours: they are our collective nightmares.
Scary Movie Night – Miranda Smith
Ghost horror
A horror-themed birthday party turns deadly when guests start disappearing and the birthday girl realizes that she must face a long-buried secret to make it out alive.
Tippi is ready for a fresh start. After breaking off her engagement to an increasingly demanding, controlling, and emotionally unstable man, she is newly inspired to do whatever it takes to put herself first. Plus, her thirty-fifth birthday is coming up: a perfect occasion to ring in this new era. Tippi’s friends see the opportunity, too, and lean into her love of horror films by throwing her a lavish theme party at a secluded mansion, where everyone dresses as characters from iconic scary movies. But Tippi’s attempts to enjoy the night are shattered when she starts receiving terrifying messages from her ex, Oliver, to expose a secret she was ready to take to the grave.
At first, Tippi can’t believe her eyes. Oliver moved across the country after they broke up, he can’t have crashed her party. Could one of her friends have found out? But when her guests begin to disappear one by one, it becomes clear that the threats have very real consequences. And the messages make clear one thing: the call is coming from inside the house.
As Tippi is forced to navigate the deception of those closest to her, she realizes that in the end, some things are indeed like in the movies, and she’ll do whatever it takes to just survive the night.
The Sea Hides Its Dead – Megan Bontrager
Supernatural horror
Trapped in an underwater cave, a group of academics must face a series of deadly, supernatural trials, each one demanding they confront their darkest sins.
Grad student Caro has no idea what she wants to do with her life, but when the opportunity arises to act as a research assistant on an anthropological expedition for her professor and lover, Edward Beck, she doesn’t hesitate.
Beck assembles a team of academics and professionals to study the ancient sea-based Cult of the Leviathan, and the expedition descends into the sea caves where the cult is said to have dwelt.
But when the cave entrance collapses, trapping them inside, the expedition will find they are not alone in the darkness. An ancient trial has been set in motion. One by one, the members of the expedition will be tested and forced to atone for their greatest sins, or die.
The Turn – Rachel Feder
Gothic horror
When Baxter, a young writer and recent college graduate, accepts a live-in nanny position for an affluent professor’s family in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, she rapidly becomes aware of strange happenings orbiting the family and their children, Quinn and Thebes.
After the father becomes estranged and the mother disappears into the night with only one child, Baxter is left utterly lost and in charge of the baby, Thebes, as she struggles to make sense of the bizarre occurrences within the family, the house, and even her own body.
But the unnatural occurrences are far from over, and as Baxter stumbles in the dark to protect the child, something sinister stalks the night, looking to sink in its teeth.
White Rabbit – Abigail Rose-Marie
Grief horror
A girl grapples with her father’s sudden departure and her new companion – the ghost of Sylvia Plath – in a crumbling seaside house that holds more secrets than memories.
In a yellow house perched on the crumbling edge of Massachusetts Bay, eleven-year-old Penelope Willows is living in the shadow of loss. Her father is gone, leaving behind only whispers and shadows, while her mother drifts further away each day, lost in her own grief. Left alone in a home that seems frozen in time, Penelope clings to her routines, counting everything she can – logs by the stove, soup cans in the pantry – hoping to hold the world together.
But this is no ordinary house. It once belonged to the poet Sylvia Plath, and her presence lingers in every corner, her ghost becoming an unexpected companion to Penelope. As the days stretch on, Penelope begins to hear the echoes of Plath’s poetry in the wind, feel her sadness seep into the walls, and see her ghost in the mirrors and empty rooms.
When Penelope’s mother begins to withdraw further into her own world, leaving Penelope more isolated than ever, the girl’s grip on reality starts to fray. Haunted by the absence of her father and the presence of a ghost, Penelope must navigate the treacherous waters of memory, madness, and the fear that she, too, will be lost to the abyss.
The World Below the World – Boris Bacic
Dark fantasy horror – Book 2 of The Beyond
Something ancient lurks below the world, waiting to catch unsuspecting travelers in their snare.
After narrowly escaping the necropolis, Trish and her friends continue toward the black pillar. But an accident causes them to collapse through the ground into an entirely new ecosystem, hundreds of feet below the surface.
Unable to climb back up, they must find a different way to continue their journey. But the world below harbors its own dangers. The cult that worships a forgotten god is only one of their worries, because something ancient lives there, and it’s been waiting for new victims for centuries.
