Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II – Shane Hawk & Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (editors)
Indigenous horror anthology
21 new, groundbreaking, gruesome stories authored by both established and newly unearthed Indigenous talent and illustrated by renowned Cheyenne and Arapaho painter Brent Learned.
Featuring stories of unspeakable yet satisfying terror, from twisted psychological tales to gore-filled monster hunts, Never Whistle at Night, Part II: Back for Blood is a further celebration of Indigenous survival and the enduring tradition of transforming adversity into art.
The Calamities – Chuck Wendig
Supernatural horror – Book 1 of The Fiends
Mourning Mayne knows he’ll one day bear the duty of managing his family’s vast empire of wealth and power. But the feckless Mourning has always struggled to accept this legacy of cruelty, domination, and exploitation … and something even darker.
Because the Maynes are no ordinary family: Hidden in our world are the fiends – half-human, half-demon, and possessed of a dark magic born from buying human souls – and the Maynes are one of the oldest and most influential fiendish families.
But when Mourning’s estranged father, the formidable and terrifying Hadrian Mayne, demands that Mourning return to the fold, he has to decide whether to accept his legacy and embrace his role in the family or to forge his own destiny, and with it, change the course of the world.
Because along the way home, he will meet Key, a black-market seller of human souls, and Quinn, an artist who may hold the dark truth behind the fate of the fiends. Alone, they have all struggled with the darkness of their natures but together, they might find a path out of the shadows.
Ghosts of Chanterlands – Catherine Cavendish
Ghost horror
1940. Pamela Courtney is evacuated to Chanterlands – the home of her aunts: Jilly, the eccentric one, who dreams of her days as a star of the silver screen, and Bunny, the pragmatic one.
But Chanterlands is home to more than just the living. There’s the spectral lonely boy whose room Pamela sleeps in and, in the long-neglected attic, she discovers a sinister secret of this once-great house. But greater danger awaits Pamela during that summer long ago when war raged all over Europe and the safety her mother had wished for her took a dark and fatal turn.
The Halls of the Dead – S.M. Hallow
Gothic horror
London, December 1849. Irene Shallcross Haley has dedicated her life to necromancy, a forbidden, reviled art that is passed along through sentient grimoires bound in human skin. With her undead husband St. John, a marriage of kindred spirits and platonic convenience, she has been protecting the knowledge of generations of witches that came before her. Like any magic, it has come at a cost: her reputation, her relationship with her sister, and her soul. But when Irene’s love, Agnes, is hanged for witchcraft, Irene refuses to let Agnes be one more thing that is taken from her.
A true resurrection has not been achieved in two thousand years, but Irene is determined. With the help of St. John, Irene bangs on the doors of the Halls of the Dead, demanding the third part of their triumverate back… or did she? Because the Agnes that awakens comes with both a hunger for raw flesh and a malignant ghost tied to her soul.
Necromancy is the art of saying no – no, I won’t let you go; no, I won’t let you be destroyed – and Irene’s work is not yet done. She must find a way to bring Agnes back to her true self, she must navigate her feelings for her resurrected lover as well as St. John, and she must do all of this without catching the attention of Sir Silas Underhill, the man who sentenced Agnes to death.
Death is not the end of love. But Irene may realize it can actually be the beginning.
The House that Eats the Dead – Max Doty
Haunted house horror
A family moves into their dream home, only to discover that it hides an insatiable hunger.
The new house is a fresh start for Claire and her family. It’s a move away from the cityscape of a declining San Francisco and towards the quiet suburban life she has craved since her turbulent childhood; a step up the corporate ladder for her husband, Tom; and a safe haven for their two children.
Yet as they unpack their boxes, she senses something is wrong. Fresh flowers dry up, store-bought eggs are inexplicably hollow, and her daughter’s favorite toy disappears. Claire soon confronts a series of impossible truths: The house is hungry. It’s devouring anything that was once alive. And only Claire and Tom, the owners of the house, will remember that this “food” ever existed.
When Claire exploits the house’s power in a moment of weakness, she and the house forge a fragile bond. But as its hunger intensifies and Claire loses control, she fears who else might be drawn to her home, and what sinister appetites they’ll bring.
Lights! Camera! Frendo! – Adam Cesare
Clown slasher horror – Book 4 of Clown in a Cornfield
This time Frendo goes Hollywood – with all the blood, guts, and mayhem you’d expect.
Sabrina Alvarez is pretty much a nobody, until she lands the starring role in the big budget film based on the Kettle Springs Massacre.
Sabrina knows she should be on top of the world. She’s going to be THE Quinn Maybrook, Final Girl of Final Girls, national hero and certified badass.
But as soon as Sabrina gets to Kettle Springs, she just can’t quite shake the feeling that something’s off.
A spate of deaths, an out-of-control director, a town decimated by loss and divided by anger, and a movie designed to glorify it all. Something bad is brewing, and this time, it’s all on film.
Marla – Jonathan Janz
Psychological horror
Every small town has ghosts. King’s Branch has Marla.
A reclusive young woman who lives with her mother in a creepy Gothic house, Marla Gorman is the stuff of urban legends. Some believe she’s a prisoner. Others claim she’s a witch.
The evening of the first murder, Detective Carl Lancaster sees Marla leering at him from her bedroom window. He sees her again at the exact moment a second man is killed. And though Marla was nowhere near either murder site, Carl is convinced she’s connected to the crimes.
To Carl, Marla is a menace. To social worker Annie Frost, Marla bears a bizarre connection to her past. To Dylan Ellison, a struggling college student, Marla might be the companion for whom he’s been longing.
But none of them understands Marla’s true nature. She’s about to plunge them, and everyone in King’s Branch, into an unspeakable nightmare. And teach them the true meaning of terror.
Night of the Living Dead: The Official Story of the Film – Simon Braund
Horror movie non-fiction
The full story of the first “zombie” movie, the 1968 George A. Romero cult film that denoted the birth of modern horror genre.
Released in 1968, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead revolutionized horror, redefining the zombie subgenre and influencing filmmakers for generations.
This official retrospective tells the full story of how the film was made by a small group of people at the outset of their film-making careers. Interviews with cast and production company members explore the genesis of the movie, from persuading friends and family to become investors, finding the perfect run-down farmhouse in rural western Pennsylvania for the central location, assembling a cast of extras to portray “flesh-eating ghouls”, and the ground-breaking casting of a black actor in a leading role – Duane Jones as Ben – to the rough-and-tumble guerilla-style shoot.
The book explores how Night of the Living Dead went from controversial to iconic over the years, gaining critical acclaim and a hardcore cult following. And how zombies, as envisioned by Romero and his co-creators, now permeate everything from video games to literature, all tracing back to the unparalleled original.
Illustrated with movie stills, memorabilia, and unpublished on-set photos never previously seen, and including analysis of the original shooting script annotated by George A. Romero, this book is a must-have for horror fans.
And the Sea Gave Up the Dead – William Friend
Gothic horror
Grief, mystery, and something undead haunt a young woman and her family, and soon, a dark history will repeat itself.
Some grief echoes. Some grief knocks.
When Morwenna receives a troubling call from her reclusive Aunt Bethan, she reluctantly returns to the family’s crumbling chateau by the French seaside. Bethan has lived there alone for years, ever since her husband vanished in circumstances the locals are still gripped by. Some whisper she killed him. Others claim something older, and far worse, took him.
What Morwenna finds is a house warped by grief. Rooms shift when no one is looking. Time seems to shift there, too. And the deeper Morwenna digs, the more the chateau seems aware of her presence, hungry for it. Worse, it seems drawn to her children.
Local folklore speaks of revenants rising from the sea, of creatures returning when the veil thins and old hungers wake. As strange events escalate, Morwenna must uncover the truth about her uncle’s fate and the beings the villagers believe still haunt the estate, before history repeats itself. Because if the tales are true, something long buried is stirring and it has been waiting for her family to return.
The dead are not done with this house.
Tapeworm – A.P. Thayer
Vampire horror
A group of friends confront questions of identity, aging, and desire during a vampire infestation in an isolated Californian desert.
It needs to feed.
After the recent separation from his wife Trish, Victor hopes his friends’ annual weekend retreat to the Californian desert town of Superstition will loosen him up and reforge the group’s fraying bonds. But something is waiting underneath Superstition, crawling its way into their group, and feeding into their desires.
Victor knows too well what it means to repress his desires. He’s always attempted to be the perfect partner, yet often found himself lacking. With Trish skipping the trip, he begins falling into the wild underbelly of Superstition in new ways. When the leader of the town’s Welcoming Committee approaches him with a romantic, sexually charged offer, Victor wonders if it’s too good to be true.
But the Welcoming Committee expects a price to be paid for its services. One that cannot be fulfilled by willing bodies alone. By the end of the weekend, group bonding will have developed a whole new meaning.
Because something is hungry for Victor and his friends.
There Was No One There – Marc E. Fitch
Horror collection
15 dark and unsettling stories that turn the tables on the reader to illustrate the real-life horrors we confront every day.
A disturbed young man is haunted by the photograph his father took of a serial killer years ago.
A social recluse begins to see the woman from his favorite snuff film in a café.
A scholar travels to the deep south to uncover the origins of song only to be met by a new god.
A hedge fund partner hides from a federal investigation in his beach house only to witness a ghostly child drown in the ocean night after night.
These Walls Remember – Del Sandeen
Haunted house horror
When two estranged sisters inherit a home possessed by the horrors of its dark past, they must work together to survive.
Do not go into the attic, the note warned.
But that’s exactly what sisters Mickie and Delilah do when they inherit a distant relative’s house in Savannah, Georgia. They intend to sell the property, divide the proceeds, and go their separate ways once and for all.
But 724 Hartford Street has other plans.
As the sisters learn about this house and its history, past wounds begin to fester and spill into the present: strange visions, memory lapses, unexplained accidents, and surreal echoes of the house’s previous inhabitants, some of whom disappeared after living in the home. The sisters suspect the residents of the sleepy Savannah neighborhood know more than they’re saying about what really happened there.
And then Delilah, once adamant about selling and never looking back, develops an uncanny attachment to the house, her personality changing in alarming ways. Mickie knows that she’ll have to pull her sister from the home’s clutches or they will both succumb to that which hungers in its walls.
This Place Eats You and Other Stories – Sam Whittaker
Horror collection
A mix of never-before-published shorts and novellas, along with previously published short works.
From getting trapped in liminal spaces to sailing the high seas surrounded by Zombie Sharks, this collection is packed with flash fiction, short stories, and novellas designed to peel back your skin and prod your nerves with the rusty needle of fear.
Here are just a few of the strange tales contained within:
A brother and sister’s road trip home to see their dying father takes an unexpected detour when they nearly run over their old dog on the road home… a dog that has been dead for five years. Soon, they find themselves trapped in an impossible and endless nightmare of a building in the woods.
Jimmy is excited to go trick-or-treating by himself for the first time. But there are rules he must follow. And if he doesn’t… what harm could it be?
A trip to the beach turns terrifying for Maggie and her young children. The day is hot, and for some reason, they can’t remember where they parked. But it’s far worse than a case of losing one’s bearings. And there’s something in the sand…
An end-of-school party boat turns bloody for a group of co-eds.
