Beasts Beyond the River – Scott Sigler
Supernatural western horror
In 18th century colonial America amid a reimagined French and Indian War, a member of the legendary Rogers’ Rangers with indigenous ancestry must protect his father’s homeland from a vicious, unknown threat.
Amidst the brutality of the French and Indian War, an officer in the legendary Rogers’ Rangers is thrust into a nightmare that will challenge both his leadership and his lifelong quest to leave his father’s heritage behind. Lieutenant Geoffrey Rapelje is tasked with guiding a ranger detachment to his birthplace to preserve a fragile treaty between the British and his father’s people.
What Geoffrey finds is not the idyllic village of his youth, but a land – and a tribe – ravaged by a vicious, unknown force.
He and his rangers embark on a harrowing journey across a North American wilderness beset by violence, betrayal, and inexplicable terrors. To defeat a genocidal enemy, Geoffrey must embrace a dark truth he has long denied.
Blood is Dripping onto the Courtyard – Elvira Navarro
Horror collection
This is a world of precarious jobs, towns in the middle of nowhere, abandoned buildings, and cities that are nothing more than blocks of concrete whose contours are distorted to the point of giving reality the consistency of a nightmare.
In an almost imperceptible way, the disturbing infiltrates the lives of these men and women until they find themselves alone at the end of a dark road, afraid to turn around.
A young couple’s washing machine fills with blood.
A man saves animals who have been hit along the highway, turning his home in a peculiar zoo.
The security guard of a half-built housing development suffers from hallucinations.
A young woman struggles to understand the cruel neglect of the Parisian suburbs.
The Big Bad Book of Kaiju – Jonathan Maberry & Henry Herz (editors)
Monster horror anthology
An explosive collection of monster terror, featuring 25 original tales of creatures the size of skyscrapers. See cities shattered and worlds ended, as great beasts rise from the deep.
A thrilling and cataclysmic collection of city-smashing titans and the desperate coalitions of humanity clinging to survival in the wreckage, from the New York Times-bestselling and multiple award-winning editors.
Call Off the Dark – Hallie Shepherd
Psychological horror
Helen and Tyler were soulmates, a couple with a storybook beginning and an enduring bond, until Tyler’s sudden murder shattered her world. Numb with grief and desperate for escape, Helen impulsively marries Wade, a near stranger, and goes off-grid with him to a farmhouse in rural Washington.
Trading her polished Seattle existence for a tradwife life of canning vegetables and sewing during the day, she battles insomnia, PTSD, and haunting memories of Tyler at night until Wade’s brother Isaac shows up. The problem: Isaac died years ago in a farm accident, and Wade insists they’re now in danger.
Helen isn’t sure what to believe. Is Isaac back from the dead? Is Wade manipulating her? Or is Helen’s mind unraveling? As her suspicions close in from every side, Helen must navigate a maze of secrets, grief, and uncertainty, where trusting the wrong person could be fatal.
Crone – Keith Rosson
Supernatural horror
A father searching for his missing daughter finds darkness, both human and not human, at every turn.
Eli Lamp is a broken man. An ex-detective, ex-addict, and long-grieving father whose daughter, Hannah, disappeared a decade before, Eli decimated his old life investigating her abduction and is now indebted to the Crooked Wheel, a local drug gang, as an enforcer. He lives in a rundown trailer at the edge of the woods, where he keeps Hannah’s room in pristine condition and tries to make it through one day at a time.
But when the son of the Crooked Wheel’s boss is found viciously murdered in a crime scene that doesn’t seem to add up, Eli receives a new order: Find out who the killer is and your debt to the Crooked Wheel is clear forever. You’re free. This pursuit brings him into the orbit of Avery Bryant, Hannah’s best friend and the last person to see her before she went missing. Soon, Eli and Avery are entwined in a hunt for answers that spans decades, stretches the realm of possibility, and brings churning to the surface a conspiracy linking not only these current tragedies but the buried sorrows of Eli’s past.
And though none of them dare say the word witch, at least not out loud, something lurks in the woods, bent-backed and black-eyed, clawed and vengeful, looming ever closer.
The Diner – John Lynch
Slasher horror
Three years ago, a tragedy struck a small town, leaving a mother without her child.
Stricken with grief, Josephine struggles to cope with life after her son’s tragic and untimely passing. As time goes on, she grows desperate and dabbles with forces beyond comprehension.
Some things are better left buried.
Gordon Ellis, fresh off a bitter divorce and a failed business venture, leverages everything he has into purchasing a diner, hoping to start fresh. But business is far from booming and Gordon can’t seem to shake his substance abuse issues. He enlists a reality television production, Diner Deliverance, in a last-ditch effort to salvage his business and his future. But finances and substance abuse issues are about to be the least of Gordon’s problems.
The events Josephine sets in motion soon spiral out of control, and everyone, including Gordon, will pay
Dweller in Darkness – Sam Flynn
Dark fantasy horror
All of Cassius Marius’ life has been spent in service to the Pale King. Ever since his birth sixteen years ago on the night the Hero of Hathur died, his mother prepared him to join the Lightbringers: seven young men selected every equinox by the Church of the Pale King to descend underground to hunt and destroy the Dweller in Darkness, a chthonic entity the Church names as source of an unnatural blight ravaging Hathur and beyond, year after year.
Cassius has known since he could speak that he was destined to destroy the great evil poisoning his home. His inevitable confrontation with the Dweller on his holy descent changes him inside and out and puts him on a collision course with the Pale King he once worshipped. With his world and body crumbling around him, Cassius must choose between loyalty and honor, family and humanity, not to save his home. But to destroy it.
Etched in Ink – Corinne Price
Dark fantasy horror – Book 2 of The Vollmagus and The Etched
Everything Sybil Wyntres believed is a lie. The rune etched into her body, the magic she can’t control, even the order she once trusted. None of it is what it seems. Forced back into the Bastion she barely escaped, Sybil is sent across the fractured lands of Crae Vost with an ancient enchanter whose motives are as obscured as the truth she seeks. As whispers of the Void spread and their horrors grow less containable, Sybil begins to uncover a terrifying possibility: the enemy may not be what she was taught to fear.
Far beneath the world above, Raekin has lost everything. Dragged back into the Alpstraum by the noose he thought he had loosened, he is once again bound to the wire that broke him. All because he chose her. Now, marked by failure and forced into obedience, Raekin is sent to hunt the one person who may be able to unleash the nightmare of the Void onto the continent.
As their paths pull them toward the same unraveling mystery, Sybil and Raekin race against each other and the forces that control them to uncover the truth behind the tome that tore them apart. But in a world built on control and cruelty: knowledge is dangerous. And choosing the wrong side may cost them not just their lives, but the lives of those living on the surface.
Hail Mary – Elizabeth Urso
Supernatural horror
A woman returns to her small hometown and a haunted family business, where generational secrets and cold cases refuse to stay buried.
Welcome to North Shore Township. Where you can never dig a grave too deep, and you can never keep a secret for too long.
The Foreman family has made their fortune burying the dead (and not just funeral services, allegedly). Mary Foreman fled North Shore Township years ago to escape her family’s legacy. But when her estranged mother reappears during a local election, reigniting rumors of corporate corruption and criminal activity, Mary’s uncle summons her to help with his campaign.
Mary leaves Toronto and takes up residence in Foreman House—the now-vacant gothic mansion once home to the Foremans and their infamous funeral business. She also secures a teaching job at her alma mater, St. Joseph’s School for Girls, set to unearth the time capsule her great-grandmother helped mastermind. But when the time capsule is opened, the family’s legacy rears its ugly head once again.
Embroiled in a criminal investigation, one with eerie parallels to several cold cases, Mary begins to unravel a truth rooted in her cursed matrilineal line, the haunted funeral home she grew up in, and the crime her mother stood trial for decades earlier. Crushed by the weight of the township’s suspicion, Mary must fight to prove her own innocence. Not only of recent crimes, but past ones, too. For this is the North Shore of Lake Huron, and the past is always present where the dead don’t die.
In the Woods They Wait – Carrie Lee South
Southern gothic horror
Years ago, she lost her brother. Now the woods have taken another.
Fifteen years ago, Audrey Figg’s little brother, Benny, vanished on a family vacation to Devil’s Den state park, a day that split her life in two. Now, Audrey is a park ranger in the very same woods with expertise in wilderness search and rescue. Audrey has found a rhythm to her days: training new rangers, tending to injured hikers, protecting the backcountry, and still, searching.
When a little girl, Ivy, suddenly goes missing on the trails, Audrey can’t help but notice the similarities to her own brother’s case. As Audrey widens the scope of her search, she begins to believe Ivy wasn’t merely lost; it looks like she was taken by something, and maybe Benny was too. Yet the closer Audrey comes to answers, the more old memories push to the surface. Audrey is haunted not only by her brother’s loss, but a terrible secret from that day. A secret she has never shared with anyone.
Incarnate – Alma Katsu
Technology horror
A reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray for the internet age.
Beauty doesn’t fade. It feeds.
Dorothy Wagner has spent her whole life wanting nothing more than to be seen. But after failing to make her mark as an influencer, she takes a job working for a brilliant coder whose company is focused on cutting-edge deepfake technology. And there, in secret, is where she creates her salvation.
Isabella. An impossibly gorgeous girl who takes social media by storm. Dorothy’s artistry is brilliant, and Isabella seems so real that she garners millions of followers. But everybody knows overnight success doesn’t just happen. And when someone gets a little too close to the truth, a violent confrontation sends Dorothy on the run, forcing her to confront what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep her secrets.
The Line – Aron Beauregard
Extreme horror
Wade doesn’t know why he’s having fever dreams about a field in the middle of nowhere or a menacing man with sharp fingers and albino skin. The black pyramid and long line of obedient people waiting to get inside are equally unsettling. When he realizes it isn’t just a dream, Wade knows the thrill he’s always hungered for has finally arrived.
Everything that once excited Cora has been taken from her: her fiancé, a compelling career, and even her eyesight. But when she learns about a mysterious structure appearing nearby, it resurrects the fearless version of her she thought was dead. With rumblings about the pyramid’s powers gaining traction, she’ll stop at nothing to find out if there’s truth to the rumors.
The people in the town of Crone are told the pyramid holds exactly what they’ve been waiting for. All they have to do is get in line. But what they aren’t told is once they get in line, they can’t get out.
Little Kin – Katya de Becerra
Survival horror
A haunting island. A broken covenant. A woman who must survive both.
When Cass inherits a crumbling house on Rothagisht, a remote island near the Arctic Circle, she’s desperate for a new start. The land is stunning, the people strangely healthy, and for the first time, Cass feels like she might finally belong.
But Rothagisht comes with rules: Never go out after dark, and never open the door to a knock. As Cass is drawn into the island’s mysteries – and into the secrets of her own bloodline – she discovers Rothagisht is stalked by ancient creatures that rise from the heated depths when the old covenant stirs.
With the Festival of Giving and Receiving looming, and the island’s ancient covenant unraveling in blood, Cass must choose: embrace the community she’s longed for, or confront the nightmare that could consume them all.
The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me at Night – Joshua Chaplinsky
Supernatural horror
A surreal horror novel exploring generational trauma and the monsters it breeds.
The lives of three unlikely women unfold to reveal a shared history of neglect and abuse. At the center looms the Vogel House, a facade of rotten wood and sagging eaves that plays host to a parasitic dream: the malevolent entity known as The Man in the Watch.
After spending the night in an abandoned house, Jenna Thomas returns home haunted by someone else’s past. She revisits the scene in the hopes of exorcising her dreams, only to uncover something far worse. Mrs. Vogel receives an unexpected letter from her estranged daughter. It fills the old woman with hope for the future, even though her daughter is long since dead. Meanwhile, a young woman contends with the legacy of her father while simultaneously fighting for the future of her unborn child.
Mazywood – Tananarive Due
Psychological horror
The grandson of a famous Black actress returns to his grandmother’s cabin retreat in the California mountains only to encounter the legacy of her rage born in Old Hollywood.
When Johnny, a filmmaker and grandson of the famous Black actress Mazelle Washington, brings his family to Mazywood, the secluded California mountain lodge left behind by his grandmother, he expects a quiet retreat. Instead, he uncovers a legacy of rage, secrets, and terror that has haunted his family for generations.
Set primarily in the present day, with haunting flashbacks to Hollywood’s Golden Age, Mazywood explores three generations while following Johnny as he pieces together the true story of his grandmother. As a young Black actress whose career spanned from the 1920s to the 1940s, Mazelle brushed shoulders with giants like Lena Horne, Clark Gable, and Hattie McDaniel. But beneath her public appearance, she carried a secret she had kept and nurtured since she was a child, when a dark wish came true and changed the course of her life forever.
Now, fifty years after Mazelle’s death, Johnny finds himself confronting the truth she buried, and the consequences she left behind. For a monster lurks outside Mazywood, hidden for generations, and Johnny brought his family to its hunting grounds.
Monstrous – Bryan Smith
Cosmic horror
Accompanied by an unsuspecting target, an aspiring serial killer journeys to a remote mountainous location at the same time as a woman looking to bury evidence of a heinous crime walks the same trail.
A sudden unnatural storm transports them to a mist-shrouded field that rolls on for countless miles in all directions. A towering skyscraper stands at the centre that they both must enter; a plaque on the door reads simply, MONSTROUS, a hint of the surreal cosmic horrors lurking inside.
Have they been delivered to this strange place for a chance at redemption, or for some ultimate form of punishment not available to earthly forces? Will they ever know the truth?
The Need – Megan Mostyn-Brown
Psychological horror
Every family has its secrets, but some families have The Need.
The Need is a rare genetic disorder. Those who have it must consume human flesh or die. For some, The Need is power. For others, it is a curse.
Talia has been on the run with her two teenagers since the kids were babies, changing names and identities every time someone gets close to discovering her familyʼs tragic secret. Sam is her son, tormented by The Need, unable to stop giving in to his darkest desires, much to his mother’s chagrin. Rosie, his twin sister, whoʼs escaped her mom’s and brotherʼs genetic curse, is desperate for a life of normalcy, like a TikTok account, Homecoming, or a kiss with her mysterious new friend Naomi. But her brother keeps eating people and, frankly, itʼs ruining her life.
Vera, a former supermodel and member of New York City’s elite Armstrong family, lives a life of luxury, haute couture, and eating people. Yes, unlike Talia, the Armstrongs secretly pride themselves on their genetic abnormality. But beneath Veraʼs opulent lifestyle is a woman whoʼs ruthlessly haunted by a mistake from her past. It has corrupted her standing with the Armstrongs, ruined her relationship with her kids, and is slowly unraveling her sanity. Vera will do whatever it takes to correct it.
On the surface, these two families have nothing in common. But Talia is harboring a secret from the twins, one that will bring them crashing into the Armstrongs. And when the truth comes out, no one will ever be the same.
Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell – Robert G. Penner
Supernatural comedy horror
The empire on which the sun never sets has turned its ambitions toward a land where it’s never even risen: Victorian Britain is colonizing Hell itself.
The demons who once ran amok down there, torturing lost souls, were easy enough to subdue. The damned, left without tormentors, have been put to work on cotton and tobacco plantations. As for the colonists, it takes all sorts to stake a claim on the infernal frontier: there’s MacTavish, the dissipated District Commissioner; the savvy spiritualist Penelope Hodgson-Huntley; the preacher’s-son-turned-engineer Elijah Biddle; a cartful of orphaned girls sent down as part of an immigration scheme; and a zealous missionary offering salvation to the living and the dead alike.
Backed by the power of Britain at its globe-spanning peak, however, the great and good of the colony will not be content until they have plundered even the unconquered interior: Hell Undiminished. All that’s needed is a pretext for taking up arms, and when a series of lurid murders sends the lonely farms and towns of British Hell into a panic, war seems inevitable. Will Her Majesty’s colonial forces prove victorious, or will they be made, at last, to give the devil his due?
Our Cut of Salt – Deena Helm
Psychological horror
Three generations of Palestinian women must put the haunting of their ancestral home to rest, before the secrets of the past drown them all.
There is something haunting Nuhad’s childhood home in Haifa. Cats avoid its perimeter, strange noises come from within, and residents have mysteriously vanished without a trace. Although Nuhad has not returned to her home since the Nakba in 1948, she always held a place for the house in her heart.
And, in return, the house did the same for her.
After Nuhad passes away, her granddaughter, Marina, is determined to visit her grandmother’s home after a lifetime of being kept in the dark about her culture and family history. Marina’s mother, Haifa – named for the city that was lost to their family – reluctantly agrees to her trip, though she knows firsthand that some secrets are better left buried.
But the house is no longer a home. It is a painful, festering wound that infects everything it touches. The more Marina digs into her family’s past, the sicker she becomes. Despite Nuhad’s ghostly warnings, Haifa rushes to help her daughter.
As the three women converge in their ancestral home, they must put the haunting to rest before the secrets of the past drown them all.
Our Lady of Holy Slaughter – S.J. Shank
Medieval horror
Livonia, 1236. The crusading Sword Brothers marched south from Riga expecting glorious victory. They found catastrophic defeat.
Now, far from their stronghold, a handful of survivors seeks refuge in the swamp, relying as much on their prayers as their wiles to evade the pagans who hunt them—and the devils said to rule the wastes.
What, then, to make of the mysterious veiled woman who appears beneath the moonlight? Has the apparition come to deliver them from evil or to their doom?
When one has strayed this far, few paths lead to salvation.
Out of Body – Chris Vanjonack
Horror collection
A collection of interconnected speculative stories spanning the multiverse, demonic attachment, and life after death.
An aimless ghost haunts his ex-girlfriend for evidence that she’s actually upset about his death.
A group of teens discovers a machine that purports to predict the best day of its users’ lives.
A young woman is horrified to discover that an aggressive stranger she met on a night of bar-hopping now manifests in every photo that is taken of her.
A drunken posse descends into the woods in search of clowns that have been terrorizing their small town.
Roots & Wrath – E.J. Wenstrom
Witch horror
Once, there were six. Six young witches were hungry to achieve remarkable things, until they performed a clandestine ritual in the dark wood. Only five witches returned. The secret they buried beneath a hungry great oak split them apart forever.
Now there are five. Eighteen years later, the death of their legendary mentor forces them back together. In her will, the professor binds them to carry on her work until their magical bond is shattered for good by death.
Soon, there will be four. The remaining witches scramble to uncover who is willing to kill to escape their bond. Magical spells and broken alliances-not to mention a relentless ghost of their past deeds-drive them back to the dark wood to unearth their past.
Sometimes I Scare Myself – Jeneva Rose
Horror collection
Three horror stories: A dinner party. A quiet house. A roadside stop.
A thirtieth birthday dinner turns deadly after someone hires a medium for a playful séance. When the ritual spirals out of control and the medium dies, the guests cover it up, unaware that leaving the séance unfinished has allowed something dark to cross over.
The Dalton family moves into what they believe is their forever home, in the quiet town of Tillington, until the house whispers, the neighbors watch, and no one believes the one person who knows something is wrong. Newly postpartum, Kristin Dalton soon uncovers a horrifying truth: every family who has lived in this house has died or disappeared.
On the way to a remote winter cabin, a group of friends stops at a roadside store with a hand-painted warning: “All items cursed. Curse lifted at time of sale.” They laugh it off, until one of them discovers an item in her bag she never paid for. As a storm traps them inside the cabin and bodies start to pile up, paranoia takes hold and suspicion turns inward.
Strange Bedfellows – Amanda Mortlock
Witch horror
A girl, who is sometimes a cat, the witch she loves, and the toxic secrets from her past that are threatening to unravel the delicate balance of her future.
Cleo is a willfully aloof college student with an impossible secret. When she meets Wes, a brooding musician, at a Halloween party, their connection is instant, electric, and impossible to ignore. Their romance takes a mystical turn when Wes discovers what Cleo’s been hiding: sometimes she takes the form of his pet cat.
Enter Bailey and Ollie – their magical counterparts – who reveal a deeper tie between Cleo and Wes: he’s a witch, and she’s his familiar. As past secrets collide with their entangled present, Cleo faces her greatest fear: losing Wes.
With long-gone threats returning and danger looming, Cleo must confront her role in their dark and violent shared history and decide if she’s willing to fight for their future.
Traps and Specters – Philip Fracassi
Horror collection
Fourteen stories of the macabre that will frighten, disturb, and ensnare readers in a dark web of twisted tales.
Talking corpses and deadly tombs, misguided exorcists, technology gone wrong, blood-soaked prison riots, and enough vengeful spirits and haunted objects to fill a grave.
#VanDeath – Brian Asman
Slasher horror
Two feuding #VanLife influencers must put aside their differences in order to survive when they are stalked by a masked killer in a remote stretch of Death Valley.
Morgan and Jasper are the couple everyone wants to be: beautiful, successful, and constantly mobile. Their #VanLife content has captured the hearts and minds of a million online followers, who all “smash that subscribe button” to watch as the loving couple documents their outdoor adventures.
But it’s all a sham. Their relationship is on the rocks. Jasper doesn’t know Morgan’s trolling the dating apps. Morgan doesn’t know Jasper blew all their earnings on shady crypto investments. What started as a fun way to share their love of nature has turned into a grind. Plus, they’ve also got stalkers: fans whose parasocial obsession with the couple verges on the terrifying.
When Jasper gets a contract to shoot a promo for an upstart granola company at the Ubehebe Crater, a gorgeous but remote section of Death Valley, he talks Morgan into a last-minute trip. He’s secretly hoping this trip will not only solve their financial woes but also help them reconcile. But things go wrong immediately. A mysterious black van runs them off the road. Their cameraman seems like a lunatic. And soon, they find themselves stranded in the desert, pursued by a masked killer.
Witches of the Wheel – Lindsay Merbaum
Psychological horror
Gold grows up knowing only a few things about herself: something lets her see ghosts and read her neighbors’ secrets, and her mother seems to hate her. But when she strikes out on her own, she stumbles into a job at The Wheel, a literally-underground lesbian bar where a coven gathers every Thursday and each entrance requires a painful sacrifice. It feels like the first place she’s belonged.
But the bar, its patrons, and its history are more complicated, and more dangerous, than Gold ever realized. As she entangles herself in her new community, she learns more about herself than she wanted to know―and attracts an ancient goddess’s deadly attention.
Worry Box – Chris Panatier
Psychological horror
The Martins need a new home for their growing family. For Alison, Nathan, daughter Dru, and foster child Lailah, it’s love at first sight when they see the house in Tumbling Hills. It even has a cozy attic, which is great for Lailah; she needs a quiet place to be alone when her intrusive thoughts creep in.
(crack an egg into the coffee machine)
The family gets settled. The house is perfect, and so is the timing – Lailah’s adoption will soon be finalized.
(push your sister down the stairs)
But as the date approaches, her intrusive thoughts get worse, and Lailah fears she’s losing control.
(burn them alive in their beds)
