A Selection of Horror Books Released, 2 to 8 Feb 2025
Themes: Supernatural, psychological, and ghost horror
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Table of Contents
Junie – Erin Crosby Eckstine
Ghost
A young girl faces a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost.
Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.
When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act, one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.
With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life.
Listen to Your Sister – Neena Viel
Supernatural
Twenty-five-year-old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie, but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing.
And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.
When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives, and reality, hang in the balance.
Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.
Osgood as Dead – Cooper S. Beckett
Supernatural comedy – Book 4 of The Spectral Inspector
Osgood is in a pretty sorry state, but watching your girlfriend get bisected by flying glass and then being hurled from a crashed subway train car yourself, well it isn’t pretty. She’s spent a lot of time in the hospital in the past, but now she’s got Locked-In Syndrome. She can see, she can feel, she can experience all around her but is paralyzed and cannot communicate, and while this is happening, something inside her is desperate to make a deal to wear her like clothing.
When she gets back to work, she’ll have to up her game. That very subway crash that tried to kill Osgood managed to kill 844 other Chicagoans, ushering in an opportunity for someone or something to bring forth the end of the world.
With Chicago besieged by spectral forces, Osgood and her stalwart Spectral Inspectors find themselves face to face with a body-hopping force who may just be the avatar of a god.
The Sound of Suffering – Mark Towse
Psychological
Malcolm Turner has suffered from what he thought was tinnitus all his life. Of late, the episodes make him feel like his brain is bleeding, depriving him of sleep and working away at his already faltering marriage and stale career. Little hope remains.
Desperation leads him to a chatroom and a group of similar folks who call themselves ‘The Undertones.’ After a series of shared experiences, the group contemplate that this bane of their lives may not be a curse but a gift, free-thinking radicals picking up on something other than the grind of the machine.
As sinister events begin to unfold around the world, ‘The Undertones’ become convinced that this noise in their ears might hold the key to these horrors.
Malcolm has already tasted grief, but the stakes are as high as they come this time.
These Vengeful Wishes – Vanessa Montalban
YA supernatural
A vengeful female spirit with a thirst for justice ignites a teen girl’s rage.
When her stepfather is arrested, aspiring artist Ceci moves back to her mother’s hometown of Santa Aguas, an eccentric small town steeped in the legend of La Cegua, the specter of a wronged witch who appears on lonely roads at night, luring untrustworthy men to their deaths.
Ceci and her mother take up residence in the abandoned manor of the Sevilla family, rumored to have been cursed by La Cegua, where she begins to uncover a past connected to her mother. The more she learns of the Sevillas, the more Ceci finds herself forming a strange affinity with the feared Cegua, who she suspects is the one inspiring her paintings of a mysterious door in the forest.
When the very door Ceci has been painting appears in the woods, she ventures through it with her new friend, and maybe crush, Jamie. Together, they discover a well for granting wishes. The well of La Cegua.
After learning others are also searching for the well, Ceci must confront the truth of her mother’s past and prevent La Cegua’s wishes from being used for the wrong reasons. Every wish has its price, and La Cegua never forgets the ones who have wronged her.
Victorian Psycho – Virginia Feito
Psychological
Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children.
But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family: Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze.
Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery … and creeping across the moonlit lawns.
Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House.
Published: 8 February 2025
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