A Selection of Horror Books Released, 18 to 24 Feb 2024
Themes: Supernatural, haunted house, dark fantasy, folklore, erotic, urban legend, and Frankenstein horror
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Table of Contents
The Bad Ones – Melissa Albert
Supernatural horror
During a single winter’s night in a small town, four people vanish.
Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the missing. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel.
These clues lead Nora to a piece of local lore about a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in their own childhood games.
Eynhallow – Tim McGregor
Frankenstein horror
Orkney Islands, 1797. Agnes Tulloch feels a little cheated. This windswept place is not the island paradise her husband promised it would be when they wed. Now with four young children, she struggles to provide for her family while her husband grows increasingly distant.
When a stranger comes ashore to rent an abandoned cottage, Agnes and the other islanders are abuzz with curiosity. Who is this wealthy foreigner and why on earth would he come to Eynhallow?
Her curiosity is soon replaced with vexation when her husband hires her out as cook and washerwoman to this stranger. Agnes begrudgingly befriends this aristocrat-in-exile; a mercurial scientist who toils night and day on some secret pursuit.
Despite herself, she’s drawn to his dark, brooding charm.
His name is Frankenstein and he’s come to this remote isle to fulfill a monstrous obligation.
The Hampton House Mystery – Ellen Alexander
YA haunted house horror – Part of The Dinswood Chroncles
It’s the end of Emma’s sophomore year at Dinswood Academy, and that means only one thing: summer vacation! “Glamping” sounds exciting, and Emma can’t wait to join Martha and Sebastian’s families at a local campground, especially when she learns that Doug will be joining them.
When Emma and the gang hear about a local legend, they are intrigued. According to the story, a family mysteriously disappeared twelve years ago, and rumor has it that the abandoned house is haunted.
When the teens learn that Hampton House is near their campsite, they decide to investigate-unaware that danger lies ahead.
Island Witch – Amanda Jayatissa
Dark fantasy horror
19th century, Sri Lanka. As the daughter of the village Capuwa, or demon-priest, Amara is used to keeping mostly to herself. Influenced by the new religious practices brought in by the British colonizers, the villagers who once respected her father’s craft have turned on the family. Yet, they all still call on him whenever supernatural disturbances arise.
Now someone, or something, is viciously attacking men in the jungle. But instead of enlisting Amara’s father’s help, the villagers accuse him of carrying out the attacks himself.
As she tries to clear her father’s name, Amara is haunted by dreams that eerily predict the dark forces on her island.
And she can’t shake the feeling that it’s all connected to the night she was recovering from a strange illness, and woke up, scared and confused, to hear her mother’s frantic cries: No one can find out what happened.
Knock, Knock – Belle Zimet
Urban legend horror – Book 5 of Urban Legends Series
After the black-eyed children, Poppy Kennedy is no stranger to the paranormal. However, the supernatural beings find her again in a mining ghost town left to her by an old friend.
Deep in the gold-flecked caverns, the ghosts of miners don’t rest. Creaks, raps, and taps foretell doom, or do they? Are these wayward spirits friends or foes? Do they warn of impending disaster or lure the unsuspecting straight into it?
Poppy just wants to revive history, bringing the small mining town back as an attraction, but the ghosts of the past want to be heard first.
The Knowing – Carolyn Mitchell Boykin
Supernatural folklore horror
Cora was born with a veil. She can discern spirits and wield the power of both the dark and the light, and has the ability to heal.
Her grandmother called it The Knowing, and Cora has carried it as both a prophetic blessing and a curse, struggling under the burden until one decision changes her world.
She is unable to turn away when Fannie arrives on her doorstep, ripped, torn, and hanging precariously on the knife’s edge of death. As torn at the birth of her child, Clyde, as she was at his conception, Fannie believes she has been chosen as the vessel for this coming savior.
In this tale of magical realism and spiritual folklore, Clyde and Cora are bound by a contract of which neither can be extricated except by the destruction of the other.
Lies that Bind – April Yates and Rae Knowles
Erotic horror
Lorelei Keyes and Adele Hughes are content, if not entirely happy, running a sham seance business in an English tourist town.
Lorelei’s business savvy and Adele’s gift for mimicry provide for their basic needs, but the customers are not the only ones deceived. With the arrival of a mysterious visitor, Viola, the couple finds their long-held secrets under threat of exposure and their quiet life upended.
Viola pulls the pair onto a transatlantic crossing bound for Adele’s homeland of New York, and the turbulent seas are nothing compared to the treacherous and tawdry happenings aboard the ship.
Adele’s gifts run much deeper than mimicry and Lorelei’s past is more depraved than she lets on.
The couple faces the end of their romance, and may stand to lose much more than that if they cannot discern Viola’s true intentions before reaching their final destination.
My Throat an Open Grave – Tori Bovalino
YA dark fantasy horror
Leah goes to church every Sunday, works when she isn’t at school, and takes care of her baby brother, Owen. Like every girl in Winston, she tries to be right and good and holy. If she isn’t, the Lord of the Wood will take her, and she’ll disappear like so many other girls before her.
But living up to the rigorous standards of the town takes its toll. One night, when Owen won’t stop screaming, Leah wishes him away, and the Lord listens. The screaming stops, and all that’s left in the crib is a small bundle of sticks tied with a ribbon.
Filled with shame and the weight of the town’s judgment, Leah crosses the river into the Lord of the Wood’s domain to bring Owen back. But the devilish figure who has haunted Winston for generations isn’t what she expects. He tells her she can have her brother back, for the price of a song. A song that Leah will have one month to write.
It’s a bargain that will uncover secrets her hometown has tried to keep buried for decades. And what she unearths will have her questioning everything she’s been taught to fear.
Vertigo Peaks – Dion Anja
Vampire horror – Book 1 of The Vertigo Legacy
In the eclipse of her marriage, Valerie’s days are cold and lonely. As Ethan Vertigo’s new bride, she suffers from isolation and hostility from the townspeople. That is, until an unexpected traveler, Mircalla Karnstein, appears at her door seeking refuge from a snowstorm.
The mysterious and charming visitor’s presence is accompanied by feverish nightmares and itching puncture marks, and Valerie’s reputation is threatened when Mircalla draws her close with passionate midnight escapades.
As rumors of a plague terrorize the town and the dark secrets of Vertigo Peaks surface, Valerie struggles to reconcile her growing desire for Mircalla and her role as Ethan Vertigo’s wife.
Webster – Amanda Desiree
Supernatural horror – Book 2 of Smithy
In the summer of 1974, in a derelict Rhode Island mansion called Trevor Hall, a team of scientists taught American Sign Language to a chimpanzee. They affectionately christened their subject “Smithy.” His official name was Webster.
The Smithy Project ended in tragedy, some believing that a dark presence inside Trevor Hall had been disturbed. Webster was acquired by CSAM, a research lab in California, which had a reputation for sullen staff, gloomy conditions, and cruel experiments. Despite this, two of Webster’s original researchers, Jeff Dalton and Ruby Cardini, followed him west, determined to look after their friend.
But another entity followed the chimp as well, and in the waning years of the 1970s, “Webster” became synonymous with a menagerie of inexplicable events, strange social movements, curious legal cases, and chilling courtroom testimonies.
All were haunted by the question left unanswered at Trevor Hall: Had Webster not only bridged the gap between man and animal, but between this world and the next?
Published: 24 February 2024
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