American Nightmare – Kelly McWilliams
Historical horror
A light-skinned Black man goes undercover to investigate lynchings in the South, only to be confronted by the very evil that has pursued him since childhood.
Clark Wendell White first encountered the Nightmare as a child during the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906, when he and his father stood guard over their family home. In the eyes of the mob surging through his neighborhood, Clark sensed this malevolent presence. It was then that the Nightmare took shape, burrowing deep into his mind and feeding on his fear.
Years later, the same evil presence drives Clark to the NAACP’s headquarters in New York City, where he answers an ad seeking light-skinned Black men for dangerous undercover work. As a spy for the NAACP, Clark investigates lynchings, impersonating the very Nightmare that once tormented him.
As Clark descends deeper into this double life, another force rises: a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, finding a foothold in the storied streets of New York City. Among its eager recruits is Sam Cahill—the one man who can see past his disguise. Now Clark must outwit both the living and the dead, as he confronts a past that refuses to stay buried and a future where the act of passing exacts a soul-deep price.
Corpse Creek – Vincent Ralph
Psychological horror – Book 3 of Bleak Haven
In 2008, Ethan’s older brother drowned in Bleak Haven’s cursed creek. While the coroner ruled out foul play, Ethan has always suspected that there’s more to the story.
Four years later, 18-year-old Ethan chooses the anniversary of the tragedy to finally return to the creek, attempting to gain the closure that has always eluded him.
What starts as a healing process aided by his loyal friends turns sinister when something emerges from the shadows: a figure that looks unnervingly like Ethan’s dead brother, begging for a sacrifice that could change everything.
As Ethan digs deeper into the creek’s dark history, he discovers that someone did return when all seemed lost. Maybe they were the ‘miracle’ child the news reports painted them as. Or perhaps they only came back because someone took their place.
If that’s true, Ethan really could bring his lost brother home. But how far is he willing to go…and at what cost?
Descension – Edmund Stone
Supernatural horror
Something is buried beneath Salt Flat.
When Cole Masters moves his family into an aging house on the edge of town, the worst he expects is creaking pipes and sleepless nights. But the sounds in the walls aren’t settling noises, and the darkness under the floor isn’t empty.
Miles away, a mining operation shuts down without warning. New owners arrive. Strange cargo is delivered deep below the earth. Then the workers start disappearing.
At first, the two worlds don’t connect. A restless child. A cut finger. A vent that won’t stay closed. Small things. Easy to ignore.
Until they aren’t.
As Cole digs deeper, into the town, the mine, and the people who run both, he uncovers something far older than Salt Flat. Something broken. Something scattered. Something that has waited a long time to be made whole again.
And it’s not staying buried.
Now, with his family caught in the middle and the town unraveling around him, Cole is forced to confront a truth no one else is willing to see:
The danger isn’t what lies beneath. It’s what’s coming up.
Fear Farm – Vincent Ralph
Psychological horror – Book 4 of Bleak Haven
The Fear Farm fright-fest is the one night of the year when Bleak Haven’s residents are happy to be afraid.
Most people turn a blind eye to the “accidents” that have previously blighted the attraction, but seventeen-year-old Tori Swift has other ideas.
Convinced that there’s an aspiring killer in their midst, Tori auditions alongside her classmates, perfecting her role as the ideal villain while secretly searching for the real thing.
But when tragedy strikes, a murderer is suddenly on the loose in a place where everyone pays to be terrified.
The Final Final Girl – James Kaine
Killer horror
Three very different woman bonded by trauma will find themselves on a collision course, not just with each other, but with a killer that has unfinished business.
Survival made them famous. A deranged killer wants to make them dead.
Maddie Shephard learned the hard way that true crime is no laughing matter. Not when she found herself the target of a madman. Plagued by nightmares and a worsening neurological condition, she is a far cry from the flippant podcast host she used to be.
Heather Gorney was one of the first to earn the title “Final Girl.” She had money, fame and respect. But new Final Girls have emerged. Girls who want to be like her without earning it. Girls who need to be taught a lesson. Because Heather doesn’t share the spotlight.
Nova Cabrera is a nobody. A poor Dominican girl from the inner city, a brutal assault left her broken and desperate. The legal system failed her. The media ignores her. Her suffering doesn’t matter to them. If they won’t notice, she’ll just have to make them.
I Am the Monster Under the Bed – Emily Zinnikas
Supernatural horror
Something lives under Willa’s bed. As an adult, her fondest childhood memories are of the invisible entity under her bed who taught her how to read. Now thirty-two, Willa is a reclusive but successful painter until a bombshell news report exposes her identity as the controversial survivor of the unsolved Rapture Mystery Slayings, a small-town tragedy that splashed across headlines during her senior year of high school. Six teenagers died in the woods while Willa walked free, and everyone thinks she killed them.
When an old classmate calls about a funeral, Willa reluctantly travels to her sleepy hometown, where the possessed forest that stole her friends looms. The trees whistle for her attention, but she knows better than to listen. And the unexplained knocking from the shadows in the basement of her decaying childhood home is honestly the least of her problems.
As her past pulls her back to the place where she swore she’d never return, Willa is drawn toward the monster she left behind―and becoming the villain her hometown has always believed her to be.
In Their Eyes – Simon F. Godin
Psychological horror
Gracie Boone’s small-town life has always felt safe and comfortable. She has a doting father, a steady relationship, and a promising future at university. But the illusion of security begins to crumble the moment she moves into her new dorm room.
Before long, a motionless figure looms in the darkness outside Gracie’s window, silent and watching her in the night. But no one else sees it, and no one else believes her. Gracie’s world further unravels when she faces evidence suggesting she may have been abducted as a child by her hometown’s police chief, the man she calls Dad.
Driven by her rising paranoia, Gracie must unearth the truth about herself and determine who keeps watching her in the dark. But she has to tread lightly, as alerting her father could ruin their relationship forever, or even put her in danger.
Most of all, Gracie fears uncovering her darkest reality, that she’s been manipulated for years, and that her life is nothing more than a carefully constructed façade.
Mothman Proudly Presents: A Circus Horror Novel – K. Bengston
Creature horror
For Garrett Platt, it all started with a missing child and a traveling show. He didn’t know the boy. He didn’t know the circus. But the moment the tents vanished, a predatory fixation gripped him, costing him his relationship, his sanity, and his future.
Now, Garrett and a fellow obsessed tracker have followed the trail to a decaying midwestern town. They think they’re hunting a myth. They don’t realize they’re walking directly into a trap decades in the making.
When the midway opens, reality fractures. Friends vanish, blood is spilled behind closed doors, and Garrett is thrust into a distorted maze of mirrors and deep-earth horrors that defy human comprehension. To survive the night, he’ll have to become just as lethal as the monsters in the dark-but maybe that’s exactly what they want.
Observer – Nicholas Russell
Cosmic horror
A young woman investigates her mother’s disappearance at an abandoned Nevada observatory.
On a scorched summer day, Renata Scarborough comes home to find the contents of her estranged mother Corinne’s life on her doorstep. Her aunt and cousin seem eager to conclude that the troublesome Corinne is dead. Renata isn’t convinced and begins poring over her mother’s journals for answers. Among descriptions of Corinne’s work at the McNairy Observatory, Renata unearths a hidden obsession with an early twentieth-century surveyor whose encounters with a mysterious entity bear a startling resemblance to her mother’s reports. Compelled beyond reason, Renata journeys to that now-abandoned outpost in the Nevada wilderness to search for the truth.
But in McNairy, a thorny, decades-long clash between science and the desert only complicates Renata’s questions. The town’s scarred and suspicious residents refuse to discuss the observatory’s closure, leaving Renata to wonder if Corinne’s version of events reflects reality. As she ascends the peak that looms over McNairy, Renata witnesses unnerving phenomena she can’t explain and feels a creeping dread that what is waiting for her isn’t her mother at all.
The Pumpkin Club – J. Boote & Lesley A. Camphouse
Halloween horror
Harold Saggerbob, the big, fat, friendly giant, moves into a house on Crom Street. A house where, years ago, a brutal murder took place.
Not that Harold cares; all he wants is to complete his pumpkin club. Only four more kids to go. But first, he has to earn the trust of the neighbourhood, so he can kill without interference, because Halloween is approaching fast.
Will Harold make it and finally complete his life’s work on Halloween? Or will his new neighbours catch on and realize he’s not as friendly on the outside as he appears?
31 days Harold has… 31 days of terrorizing the folks on Crom Street right under their very noses.
Rooted – Leopoldo Goût
Supernatural horror
One woman’s return to Mexico City digs away the layers of her forgotten past and the Aztec gods she awakened.
There’s nothing wrong with Aurora.
A successful art lawyer, she has returned to Mexico to celebrate a recent campaign for the repatriation of stolen artifacts, in particular a mysterious statue of an Aztec god, The Flayed One.
But Mexico City isn’t as she remembered. Nothing is. Elements of her past hint at darkness and power, and reality begins to crack and warp the streets.
There’s nothing wrong with Aurora.
As Aurora’s sanity unravels, she must pry apart her family’s secrets and accept the simplest of truths: The Flayed One cannot stay buried.
The Rouse – China Miéville
Grief horror
Maur’s life has been shaped by loss: an apparently ordinary tragedy. But in its aftermath arise deeper, stranger questions.
Their answers may lie within the dark heart and darker history of an old soldier who shares Maur’s obsessions and who is violently pursued by the same unknown, unquiet forces.
Sleep Well, Mommy – Mi-ae Seo
Psychological horror
A criminal psychologist’s interview with a serial killer has an unexpected effect on her relationship with her unnerving stepdaughter.
Criminal psychologist Seonkyeong receives a surprising call one day. Yi Byeongdo, a serial killer whose gruesome murders shook the world, is willing to break his silence and speak exclusively to her. Intrigued, Seonkyeong agrees to interview him.
That same day, Seonkyeong’s husband brings home Hayeong, his eleven-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. Hayeong has been living with her grandparents since her mother’s mysterious death, and now her grandparents have been killed in a house fire.
Seonkyeong is determined to make the child feel at home, but to her husband’s frustration she finds it difficult to connect with the child who says little and acts strangely. It’s not long before Seonkyeong notices similarities between her stepdaughter and Yi Byeongdo: they both look at her with cold eyes, each possessing an unnerving calmness that hides a fierce, cruel temper.
As Seonkyeong begins to question details of Hayeong’s past, and as her relationship with Yi Byeongdo grows more complex, she begins to wonder what her young stepdaughter is truly capable of.
Something of a Calling – Zoje Stage
Psychological horror
Detective Andy Cooper is about to retire. She isn’t sure what’s next. Perhaps traveling in the RV she has yet to buy, with a dog she doesn’t currently own. Perhaps gardening near the ever-shrinking patch of woods behind her house, once the cable company’s backhoe is removed.
She’ll need to do something, if only to distract herself from how empty her life has become. After the murder of her young daughter by a drunk driver. After the divorce. After the realization that all she has is her job and that she’s about to lose that, too.
Everything changes when bodies begin to turn up. Murdered, but how? Not by knife, gun, or any obvious weapon. Instead: teethmarks. Chunks missing. Like they’d been chewed on. And not by humans.
As she’s struggling to solve her final case, an unexpected new friendship seems like just what Andy needs. Where she is detached from life, Fiona embraces it. Where she is a homebody, Fiona roams. Yet the women are drawn together by a shared love of nature and wildlife. Until Andy learns the dark truth behind Fiona’s smile. A secret that threatens to unravel the world as she knows it.
This is the Table Where We Wash Our Dead – K.H. Vaughan
Horror collection
12 tales of the weird and fantastic.
A utility worker is pursued by nightmarish horses in dreams and in life.
A monster in hiding develops an uneasy friendship with a neglected child.
A sex-worker’s encounters become increasingly bizarre as he seeks entrance to a secret nightclub.
Estranged brothers wake to find everyone in the world on fire and embark on a surreal walk from their West Texas home to the Gulf Coast.
This Movie Doesn’t End the Way We Want – Hailey Piper
Urban legend horror
A woman haunted by the disappearance of her sister and best friend thirty years ago uncovers the terrifying urban legend behind the last film they watched together.
In November 1994, three girls visit their local movie theater to see an obscure film. Only one of them is ever seen again.
Thirty years later, Val McQueen has never forgotten the day she lost her little sister and best friend, but she’s closed the curtain on it, certain she’s moved on despite her parents’ resentment and hounding by true crime enthusiasts.
That is until a stranger’s murder brings it all screaming back; a terror she’s tried to tell herself is only a movie. Enlisting the help of cinephile and former classmate Roxie de la Fontaine to find the film, Val soon realizes that hers is not the only pursuit. Someone, or something involved with the movie is on the hunt, too.
For the girl who got away all those years ago.
The Thing on the Doorstep – Simon Birks, Willi Roberts, Rob Jones
Cosmic horror comic
“It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer.”
The year is 1933, and Edward Derby’s best friend, Daniel Upton, visits him in Arkham Sanitorium and shoots him dead to the horror of the guards.
It’s an open and shut case, or is it? What happened to this lifelong friendship for it to end this way? Who exactly was Edward Derby at the end of his life?
And, most importantly, will his murder be enough to stop him?
Thoughts Be Bloody – Auden Patrick
Psychological horror
A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them together.
The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident, despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene.
A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and Hamlett: avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls.
Elsinore has given Horatio everything – knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man – and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets, Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web.
The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first.
A Thousand Monstrous Forms – Saratoga Schaefer
Psychological horror
Artist Poppy Reed doesn’t care if others think her marriage to Celia Marie Fox, a wealthy art dealer, is impulsive. Sure, they’ve only known each other for six months, and Celia has an infamous romantic reputation, but Poppy is brimming with excitement when she moves across the country to Celia’s home: a formidable, isolated, and art-filled manor called Busirane.
As Poppy tries to celebrate her first weeks of marriage and enjoy her new home, Busirane seems intent on rebuffing her every attempt to settle in. Strange noises and confounding occurrences lead Poppy to believe the house is haunted, a suspicion worsened by Celia’s insistence that Poppy avoid the locked basement.
When Celia leaves for a work trip, Poppy is left alone in the house, then finds herself snowed in. Surrounded by secrets, stalked by faceless statues, and beset by bodiless whispers, she struggles to trust her wife, and her own mind. When Poppy is eventually drawn to the forbidden basement, dark truths shatter everything she thought she knew, throwing her into a desperate bid for survival.
Unearthed – Dan Coxon & Philip Fracassi (editors)
Horror anthology
19 original horror stories exploring ancient sites, uncovering forgotten histories and prising open the tombs of the past.
Unearthed digs beneath these crumbling structures to reveal their archaic pasts, and their darkest secrets.
Featuring the best modern writers of horror and dark fantasy, these stories explore the caverns and the catacombs, the ruined temples and the monoliths – and drag an ancient evil back into the light.
