The House That Screamed – Alex Hunter
Haunted house horror
Some houses are haunted by more than ghosts.
The Fleming family, recovering from a terrible loss, believe they’ve found a fresh start in sleepy Harrowridge. But at 1123 Jefferson Street, something is waiting.
Within weeks, whispers turn into screams. Family ties unravel. Blood is spilled.
The Flemings flee, leaving the house behind. Or so they think.
Now, decades later, after the family’s story has been transformed into a bestselling book and a film franchise, a team of podcasters reopens the door to America’s most infamous house, determined to separate truth from legend. To their horror, they begin to uncover what the legends got wrong.
Because at the house that screamed, not everything that hungers is dead.
I Woke Up a Final Girl – John Durgin
Slasher horror
Sabrina Campbell wakes up in a pool of someone else’s blood. She’s in the Hensley house, a disgusting, ramshackle building. She knows its horrific past but has no memory of hers, and now the doors are sealed and the windows barricaded, the gloomy halls whispering with the echoes of a decades old massacre.
As Sabrina searches for her missing friends and the medication keeping her heart beating, she discovers she is not alone. A ghoulish, masked figure stalks her from the shadows and pushes her to the edge of her physical limits. She must stay calm, think fast, and evade a killer who wants the past remembered – one victim at a time.
Not everything from the past should be remembered, but the house – the house remembers everything.
Inside These Walls – Jed Kent
Creature horror – Book 2 of The Golem
When a wave of inexplicable, live-streamed suicides erupts across the East Coast, the nation becomes addicted to watching death in real time. Authorities call it mass hysteria. The media brands it the Inheritance Plague. But Matthew knows better; it is the return of the Golem.
Haunted by loss and desperate for death, Matthew is pulled into a final battle against an evil that no longer needs to touch its victims to destroy them. As the nation fractures, he must face the truth: The real horror isn’t outside the walls.
It’s already inside. And he invited it in.
Little Wild – Laura Evans
Psychological horror
Suffolk, 1937. As the English countryside swelters in a historic heat wave, preparations for a party at Snare House are in full swing. The Winthers’ only daughter, Joanie, is returning from a summer on the Continent, a flying visit before she leaves for university at Oxford. Only Margaret, longtime ward of the family and Joanie’s closest friend, knows the truth: Joanie won’t be going to Oxford. Instead, the two will be leaving the stultifying society they know to live together in London, as lovers.
Then the pair is discovered, and everything goes wrong. Banished to a cabin in the nearby woods, Margaret is alone with her estranged father. As summer curdles into autumn and magpies throng the forest, Margaret begins to lose herself. Her dreams turn dark and terrifying, and she wakes from them with dirt on the soles of her feet and scratches on her back.
Everything suggests that a perverse power is awakening within her, perhaps the very one that led to her mother’s ostracism and eventual death. If she can harness it, Margaret may be able to secure an approximation of the love she’s always crave, but at what cost?
The Sixth Nik – Daniel Kraus
Space horror
Deep into space, far past the triworld outposts, beyond range of the lethal trollbot internet, soars The Sickness: a ship woven from biomatter and capable of reacting to every need of its human crew. Sisilla, a nine-year-old cultist with a brain enhanced by arcane tech known as “niks,” has boarded to investigate the enigma of Fém, a plague-riddled planet that has abruptly gone rogue.
The mysterious crew includes a faceless assassin, a beautiful engineer jigsawed by plastic surgery, a peyote-addicted medic, and – most lethal of all – a rugged, NonModded captain with a score to settle with Sisilla. Other dangers abound. A hacked robot begins to believe Sisilla is its daughter.
The Sickness itself is mutating, possibly even pregnant. And the secret of Fém is more horrific than anyone could have imagined. To survive, Sisilla will need to forsake her predetermined fate and embrace the unknown.
Slasher Summer – E.L. Chen
Slasher horror
Seven friends reunite for a weekend of fun, only to be hunted down by a cold-blooded killer. But the real horror is not being able to escape who you were in high school.
The sleepy town of Cedar Lake is best known as the shooting location of the campy ’80s horror flick Slasher. In high school, preppy Patrick, jock Jason, cheerleader Tiffany, stoner Freddy, goth Jennifer, and nerdy Mikey had played the cast of Slasher during midnight showings, with virginal Carrie as the Final Girl, of course.
Years later, the friends reunite at the remote cabin where Slasher was filmed. They’ve changed since high school. Carrie found a boyfriend, Patrick came out, Mikey bulked up, and, well, Freddy’s still stoned, and they’re looking forward to a weekend to catch up. But when night falls, and the eponymous masked killer is spotted, the reunion takes a deadly turn. The friends discover their tires deflated and the phone line disconnected, and soon they’re being stalked by a mysterious assailant. Is someone trying to make their Slasher experience as authentic as possible?
One thing is for sure. Before the night is over, they each will have to take on the role they thought they’d left behind.
Stay Out of Fort Dread – John Ward
Middle-grade horror – Book 9 of Scareville Books
Keegan and his friends are determined to become the next big thing in live streaming. But chasing views can lead you somewhere you should never go.
When they discover that their favorite urban exploring team, the LAF Crew, is planning a livestream inside the abandoned military compound known as Fort Dradd, they can’t believe their luck. Locals call it Fort Dread for a reason. No one knows what really happened there. Whether the stories were fact or fiction.
They tune in to watch the stream.
At first, it’s just empty halls and peeling paint, but then they watched on in horror as something came after the LAF Crew. Now Keegan and his friends have a choice: forget what they saw…or go to Fort Dread themselves and uncover the truth.
But some legends don’t want to be exposed. And some places were meant to stay abandoned.
