A Selection of Horror Books Released, 3 to 9 Aug 2025

9 horror books this week

Themes: Supernatural, psychological, haunted movie, western, survival, and body horror

All Trap No Bait – Joseph Worthen

Psychological horror

It’s the summer of 2020 in Alabama, and Beverly Jane Ornett is terminally online.

To be fair, the real world’s lost its charms. Thanks to the pandemic, she hasn’t worked in months.

Plus, her longtime roommate is moving out of their filthy apartment to live with her wealthy boyfriend, and the only people she communicates with are the weirdos and pariahs in her crappy poetry collective.

And she’s spending way too much time pining for one of them, an aloof redneck she dated the previous summer.

Sure, she could ponder these cascading depressing failures, or she could zone out on Xanax and watch YouTube tutorials on eyebrow threading, and videos of hydraulic presses crushing random objects; she could peruse the poetry collective’s group chat, or even go to the Domino’s website and use their online tools to sprinkle virtual toppings on the pizza she’d order if only she had the money.

Then comes a chat message from an unfamiliar handle, a demon, or something worse. The demon is asking for favors, and posting Bev’s secrets online.

Now Bev has to get to the bottom of things.

Maybe the truth is out there, and maybe it’s not, but either way, Bev’s life is about to change forever.

Black Flame – Gretchen Felker-Martin

Haunted movie horror

One woman’s deadly obsession with a haunted archival film precipitates her undoing.

A cursed film. A haunted past. A deadly secret.

The Baroness, an infamous exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer, deeply closeted and pathologically repressed, begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.

As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real, and is happening to her. And that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control.

Until it all fades to black, and all that remains is a voice asking a question Ellen can’t answer but can’t get out of her mind.

Do you want it?

More than anything?

The Contest – David Golemon

Western horror

An ancient evil lurks on the American frontier, and seven contestants from around the world must compete to eradicate it.

In 1865, from a law office in Paris, seven ornate envelopes are sent to the most fearsome killers around the world, a samurai, sharpshooter, war hero, and serial killer among the recipients. Inside the gilded envelopes is a letter inviting each of them to participate in the contest of a lifetime.

On the cold plains of the American frontier there roams a beast. Kill it and the million dollar prize is theirs.

Despite mystery shrouding the competition’s host, each man agrees to participate. But when the contestants arrive for the hunt, they soon realize there’s more to this Contest than meets the eye.

Strange sounds float across the plains, warning of an otherworldly threat. Their target is not a mere animal but a fearsome beast of legend hunting them in return.

Can the contestants survive the cold, creatures, and each other long enough to kill the beast? Or will they soon find they were right to fear the dark?

Duplicated – Laura Bilodeau

Horror anthology

Eight tales about duplication, including twins, triplets, clones and more in this journey through a realm of bizarre, twisted, and terrifying mishaps.

How to Survive Camping: The Man with No Shadow – Bonnie Quinn

Supernatural horror

A manager of a haunted campground is just trying to get through the season.

Goat Valley Campground has killed generations of Kate’s family. The land is old, passed down through generations, but the campground’s reputation doesn’t just draw campers year after year. Creatures from folklore and horror have made Goat Valley not just their home, but their hunting ground.

As campground manager, Kate has rules to protect her campers: if the man with the skull cup offers you a drink, accept it or you will die a gruesome death; don’t buy ice from the children with no wagon; and of course, never ever follow the lights.

Still, not every camper follows the rules, which means not every camper survives their stay.

Soon decapitated and exsanguinated campers are the least of Kate’s worries; one of the most dangerous inhabitants of the campground is determined to claim the land for himself.

Meanwhile, something in the land is shifting, the tides are turning, and the curse that hunts members of her bloodline begins to close in.

Other Atrocities – William F. Gray

Horror collection

Stories range from rural slashers to zombie apocalypses, hoarding gone wrong, and even what happens when you take penny pinching one step too far.

Scarred – Lula Von Goth

Body horror

Trish once had everything, but now she has been left with nothing.

The bright lights of Osso’s Steak and Strip Club call to her offering some salvation.

Despite her reservations, in part due to the rumours of what really happened to Scarlet, a previous stripper within the club, Trish decides to try her luck.

She builds friendships and with hints of a potential romance, what’s the worst that could happen?

This Is My Body – Lindsay King-Miller

Supernatural horror

Gay single mom Brigid always thought that cutting ties with her extremist Catholic family was the best thing she could have done for her daughter, Dylan, and for herself. But when Dylan starts having terrifying fits of unnatural violence, Brigid can’t shake her memories of a girl from her childhood who behaved the same way, until Brigid’s uncle, Father Angus, performed an exorcism.

Convinced that her daughter is suffering from demonic possession, Brigid does the thing she told herself she’d never do: she goes home. Father Angus is the worst person she knows, but he’s also the only person who can help her daughter.

But as Brigid starts to uncover secrets about Father Angus, that long-ago exorcism, and her family’s past, she realizes that she and Dylan have never been in more danger.

We Like It Cherry – Jacy Morris

Survival horror

Documentarist Ezra Montbanc thinks he’s hit the jackpot when he receives an invitation to document the rites of a mysterious, hitherto unknown tribe: the Winoquin, who reside in the harrowing, inhospitable Arctic.

It’s a shot at the prestigious journalism career he’s long envisioned, and a path out from the borderline-exploitative series detailing the celebrations of Indigenous tribes he’s been mired in with his life and filmmaking partner, Stu.

Buzzing with possibility, Ezra and his crew depart for the home of the Winoquin, only to find themselves in a frozen and bloody battle for survival atop an inaccessible glacier ritual site, where men and mythical horrors hunger for sacrifice.