A Selection of Horror Books Released, 25 Feb to 2 Mar 2024
Themes: Supernatural, psychological, ghosts, dystopian, and dark fantasy horror
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Table of Contents
Bear Season – Gemma Fairclough
Wilderness horror
When Jade Hunter goes missing in the Alaskan wilderness, everyone is shocked. She was scheduled to speak at an academic symposium but never turned up. What was Jade really doing in Alaska?
When blood is found in the woods, suspicion immediately falls on reclusive survivalist Ursula Smith. She is swiftly arrested and convicted of Jade’s murder, even though a body has not been found.
Several years later, Jade’s doctoral thesis leaks online, fuelling rumour and conspiracy over the true nature of her disappearance, leading investigative journalist Carla Young to dig through Jade’s life to discover what did happen to Jade Hunter.
The Butcher of the Forest – Premee Mohamed
Dark fantasy horror
At the northern edge of a land ruled by a merciless foreign tyrant lies a wild, forbidden forest ruled by powerful magic.
Veris Thorn is the only one to ever enter the forest and survive and she is forced to go back inside to retrieve the tyrant’s missing children. But inside hides traps and trickery, ancient monsters, and hauntings of the past.
Veris has only one day and one misstep will cost everything.
The Canopy Keepers – Veronica G. Henry
Dark fantasy horror
Syrah Carthan doesn’t know why she accepted a job as the first female fire chief at Sequoia National Park, where, decades earlier, a forest fire killed her parents. That same day, her brother, Romelo, disappeared, as if pulled into the scorched earth itself.
Syrah has always had an uncanny affinity for the natural wonders of the park she protects, but after she sanctions a prescribed burn that goes terribly wrong, she quits her position in disgrace.
But, when another devastating wildfire breaks out, Syrah, is reluctantly pulled back into action and discovers an unknown world that has existed underground since the beginning of time.
This secret society, built around the forest’s complex root system, is now divided into two factions. One is ruled by the Keeper, the giant sequoias’ benevolent caretaker. The other by a mysterious undoer, who’s determined to wage war on humanity. Through him, nature can retaliate and wipe out the earth’s careless ravagers for good.
Ghost Island – Max Seeck
Ghost horror – Book 4 of Ghosts of the Past
Jessica Niemi is put on leave after a violent altercation between her and a belligerent man makes headlines.
To escape the unwanted scrutiny, Jessica travels to a remote island in the Åland archipelago and rents a room at a small seaside inn. She is hoping to be left alone as she faces the possibility that she is losing what is left of her sanity, but three elderly visitors have arrived at the inn for their yearly sojourn. Jessica learns that they are the remaining ‘birds of spring’, former refugees who fled Finland as children during World War II and lived together for a few months in an orphanage on the island.
The orphanage no longer exists but the local legend about one of its inhabitants, a girl named Maija, still haunts the surviving orphans. Every evening Maija would put on her blue coat and stand on the pier, looking out at the dark water until one night, she disappeared and was never seen again.
When one of the ‘birds of spring’ is found dead, drowned alongside the same pier, and Jessica learns about two other deaths from the past, also connected to the orphanage, she has to try and put the pieces of this terrifying mystery together.
Jessica can’t be sure whether she’s facing a killer or, as the legend says, the ghost of Maija, the girl in the blue coat. Uncertain what is real and what is not, Jessica desperately searches for answers that she hopes will stop the murders and finally silence her own demons once and for all.
King Nyx – Kirsten Bakis
Ghost horror
Anna Fort wants to be a supportive wife, even if that means accompanying her husband over the winter of 1918 to a remote, frozen island estate so he can finish his book as the guest of an eccentric millionaire.
Her husband’s masterpiece-in-progress features strange meteorological anomalies along with wild speculations about “facts” he believes scientists hide from the public. Most people think Charles Fort is a crackpot. That’s about to change now that wealthy Claude Arkel is his patron.
When Anna learns three girls are missing from a school run by their host, she realizes that finding them is up to her, even if that means risking her husband’s career, and possibly her life.
Yet Anna is sure something’s not right on Prosper Island, though the alarming return of her “troubles” makes her question her own sanity.
Accompanied reluctantly by a fellow guest, Anna embarks on a dangerous quest to find the missing girls before Arkel finds her, or before her own mind unravels.
Mewing – Chloe Spencer
Supernatural horror
Vixen would sell her soul to get into the Bleach Babes and, if she isn’t careful, she might just get what she wants.
One of the most exclusive influencer co-ops in LA, the Bleach Babes live and work together in one big house where they have it all: popularity, talent, and beauty. Their leader? Supermodel Margo, a woman as sinister as she is sexy.
After Margo agrees to take Vix under her wing, and into her bed, Vixen moves in and begins hustling. Success comes hard and fast, but the glitz and glamor comes with a price that may cost her sanity and her life.
My Name Was Eden – Eleanor Barker-White
Supernatural horror
When her daughter Eden came home from the hospital, Lucy was profoundly relieved. Eden had survived a drowning incident and had no apparent brain damage, no serious injuries, not even a scratch on her. Lucy fervently welcomed having a second chance at being the good mother she should have been before her teenager’s accident.
Until Eden tells her that Eden isn’t her name. Until she starts calling herself Eli. The name Lucy had reserved for Eden’s unborn twin.
Don’t worry, says the doctor. Eden is completely fine, says her husband. Of course I’m fine, Eden says, with that strange new smile of hers. I didn’t die. I’m here.
But Lucy knows something’s very wrong with Eden. She’s not her maddening, complicated teenage girl anymore. This straight-backed, even tempered, steady-eyed child in her house is someone else entirely.
Tomorrow’s Children – Daniel Polansky
Dystopian post-apocalyptic horror
Years ago, Tomorrow – a noxious cloud of funky gas – descended on Manhattan, cutting the island off from the rest of the world and mutating the remaining population.
Now, survivors exist amid the rubble of modernity, wearing cast-off clothing from generations past, worshipping celebrities from the past as ambivalent gods and communicating through roughly drawn emojis.
Manhattan exists in a state of delicate balance between neighbourhoods, with each group protecting themselves with Molotov cocktails and scrap metal spears.
But when the first tourist in centuries arrives on the island under mysterious circumstances, the uneasy web tangled between factions is about to unravel.
Violent Faculties – Charlene Elsby
Psychological horror
A philosophy professor, influenced by Sade and Bataille, is ejected by university administrators aiming to impose business strategies in the interest of profit over knowledge.
She designs a series of experiments to demonstrate the value of philosophy as a discipline, not because of its potential for financial benefit, but because of its relevance to life and death. The corpses proliferate as her experiments yield theoretical results and ethical conundrums.
She questions why it is wrong to kill humans, what is it about them that makes their lives sacred, and then attempts to find it in their bodies, their words, their thoughts, and their souls—seeking foundational truths with a knife in her home office.
Published: 1 March 2024
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