A Selection of Horror Books Released, 16 to 22 Jun 2024
Themes: Supernatural, psychological, cosmic, and haunted house horror
- This post may contain affiliate links, which means that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase using these links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Table of Contents
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil – Ananda Lima
Supernatural horror collection
At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.
Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences – of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging – and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.
How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive – Craig DiLouie
Supernatural comedy horror
A famous 80s slasher director sets out to shoot the most terrifying horror movie ever made using an occult camera that might be (and probably is) demonic.
Max Maurey should be on top of the world. He’s a famous horror director. Actors love him. Hollywood needs him. He’s making money hand over fist. But it’s the 80s, and he’s directing cheap slashers for audiences who only crave more blood, not real art. Not real horror. And Max’s slimy producer refuses to fund any of his new ideas.
Sally Priest dreams of being the Final Girl. She knows she’s got what it takes to score the lead role, even if she’s only been cast in small parts so far. When Sally meets Max at his latest wrap party, she sets out to impress him and prove her scream queen prowess.
But when Max discovers an old camera that filmed a very real Hollywood horror, he knows that he has to use this camera for his next movie. The only problem is that it came with a cryptic warning and sometimes wails.
By the time Max discovers the true evil lying within, he’s already dead set on finishing the scariest movie ever put to film, and like it or not, it’s Sally’s time to shine as the Final Girl.
Middle of the Night – Riley Sager
Psychological horror
A man contends with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.
The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul-de-sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.
Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul-de-sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?
The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed ghosts roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.
The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place, be it quiet forest or suburban street, is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.
Reboot – DE McCluskey
Cosmic horror
Turn it off, then turn it on again… The sage advice IT Departments have been giving businesses since the dawn of the new technology.
Yet, it does work! If you follow this advice you may find you have something that can be used in a whole new way.
Carl Riggs is a typical IT engineer. Everything about his job annoys him, especially Gerard Medley, the CEO.
Medley is a VIP, a Very Insistent Pervert, and it’s Carl’s job to fix what he breaks. When Carl finds a strange icon hiding within the usual filth on the CEO’s laptop, against his better judgement, he clicks on it. Instantly, he is drawn down a rabbit hole, one of hideous horrors, strange perversions, and bizarre promises.
Something is coming, and Carl, aided by the unlikely ally of Gerard Medley, has been chosen to usher in the new regime.
His one job now is to turn them off and then turn them on again.
It’s what he’s best at.
Skulls – J.D. Allen
Supernatural horror
Alien skulls? Demonic skulls?
When the bony orbs fall from the sky like hail in a winter storm onto the tilled ground of his cursed south field, Carl Cressel has no idea what they are, or what to do with them.
Carl acts upon his compulsion to bury them like spectral seeds in that malignant dirt, and an unholy crop of cartilage creatures soon sprouts, with a deadly harvest awaiting the midnight hour.
Three Wishes and a Miracle – Mere Rain
Supernatural medieval horror
Aelred hasn’t been outside the monastery since his parents donated him as a child. He knows he shouldn’t want more than this life of prayer, but he dreams of the far-off lands spoken of in the Bible.
When a wealthy patron leaves a chest of treasures to be catalogued, Aelred is fascinated by their beauty. Most beautiful of all is the strange man who appears from nowhere and claims to be a djinn … with wishes for Aelred!
Aelred is sure the djinn is a demon sent to lure him into damnation. There is nothing a monk ought to wish for. He has no use for riches. And he certainly shouldn’t wish for earthly pleasures. He shouldn’t even be thinking about the djinn’s offers, magical or carnal. But not thinking about the djinn grows more and more difficult as they spend time together, and the djinn’s stories awaken Aelred’s longing for adventure … and for love.
The djinn tells Aelred he can have what he desires. But are his promises truth or temptation?
We Used to Live Here – Marcus Kliewer
Haunted house horror
The lives of two homeowners are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit.
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. Eve lets them in.
As soon as the strangers enter their home, uncanny and inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over.
When Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family, or is Eve just imagining things?
Published: 22 June 2024
Subscribe
Horror-themed clothing, notebooks, homewares, and accessories
