Backstabbers – Eliza Jabore
Slasher horror
When three friends lose their way in a serial killer’s old hunting ground, they must fight to survive the threat in the woods, and each other.
Never turn your back on a friend.
Jade, Stef, and Zoe are hiking Washington State’s Bones Hollow Trail, braving cougars, black bears, and storms that roll in without warning. Their anxiety isn’t helped by listening to a true crime podcast about the serial killer who once prowled this same forest.
When Stef twists her ankle badly, there’s no one to hear them scream for help. The only sign of life for miles is a cabin that looks to be straight out of a horror movie, occupied by a man who’s all too eager to invite them in.
As things take a chilling turn, the friends must find a way to stay alive together. After all, who can you trust when your back’s against the wall? Unfortunately for them, the only thing more twisted than this nightmare is their friendship.
Behold, He Scatters His Lightning – Shelly Lyons
Supernatural horror
After a rogue lightning bolt kills her estranged father, Gina Fade, a self-diagnosed screwup straight out of rehab, returns home to settle his estate in Kansas.
Already shaky and vulnerable, Gina guards against yet another fall from sobriety while navigating waves of grief for a man she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl.
Once in the house, things turn weird fast.
Sliding through shadowy corners of her head are memories so dark she can’t make out the details. Floors creak. Objects vanish and return. She hunts for Dad’s important papers, feeling watched.
Hidden inside Dad’s coffin is an old diary with missing pages.
She discovers a crate of liquor in Dad’s pantry. Mom’s voice sounds weird on the phone. Her nightmares feel real.
Then the other last living member of the Fade family tells her of the family curse: Lightning has stalked the Fades for a hundred years.
Now it’s her turn, and instead of helping, her Dad’s church aims to destroy what hides in the storm, even if it means Gina must die.
The Children – Melissa Albert
Dark fantasy horror
The estranged adult children of a legendary author, written into their dead mother’s beloved fantasy series, must contend with the vine-like creep of legacy, memory, and magic.
Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.
In one, she and her brother, Ennis, live in the wooded shadow of their family’s isolated Vermont farmhouse; in the other, the pages of their mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where their magical adventures have made them household names. In reality, Guinevere’s childhood isn’t the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine: she and Ennis are growing up near-feral, unwashed and underfed, escaping each day to the wild woods they’ve made their playland. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame—until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.
Now an adult coasting on her mother’s name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family’s legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled, simply, Mother. As rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show, unsettling recollections from Guinevere’s childhood begin to surface. Her public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she’s spent the last twenty years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s fantasy world?
Grief Eater – Emma Osborne
Zombie horror
When Kristina rises from her violent death, she’s not the same fragile woman her family once abandoned. She’s rageful, powerful, and hungry-for the blood of the ones who were supposed to love her.
With a newfound craving to see vengeance and grief served, she launches into a once-in-an-undead-lifetime journey across blood-slicked highways to the scorched Australian bush and her hometown.
As her body fails and her mind fractures, she’s left with one final question: Is she here to forgive, or to feed?
If it’s the Birds, We’re in Trouble – L. Marie Wood
Horror collection
Something’s wrong in Rothwood.
Morgues are overflowing. Social media is rife with conspiracy theories. Neighbors can’t be trusted. And the animals aren’t acting the way they should.
Part epistolary saga, part apocalyptic nightmare, a case file of disturbing clues that lead to a horrific discovery.
Marion – Leah Rowan
Slasher horror
What if the leading lady in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho fought back?
Marion is in deep. She’s stolen money from the Manhattan ad agency where she works in a desperate bid to help her sister escape an abusive marriage, but the bus breaks down before she can make it to Saratoga Springs. It’s late at night, and the only place with vacancies is an old set of cabins on the outskirts of town. She pays for a room in cash, and ends up chatting with Norm, the young innkeeper who’s handsome, charming and a touch hung-up on his elderly mother. Back in her room, she steps into the shower, scrubbing off the late-summer heat, when the curtain is pulled back.
Norm Billings is there with a knife. He raises his arm to strike, but before he does, Marion knees him in the balls, grabs the knife, and stabs the life out of him. Now, she’s covered in blood, and she’s a woman on the run―not just a thief, but a killer, too. Where will she go? How will she save both herself and her sister? And what mysteries will she uncover as she does?
Muñeca – Cynthia Gómez
Gothic witch horror
A queer, Latine, working class witch sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress and loses control of her powers and her heart in the process.
It is 1968 Oakland, and Natalia Fuentes has been hearing rumors about the beautiful Violeta Miramontes. The young heiress to Spanish colonial wealth has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness. But Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is certain that this is the work of dark magic.
Armed with a plan to break the spell and earn a handsome reward, Nati works her way into the house as Violeta’s caretaker, and immediately discovers her suspicions are true. But who cursed Violeta? And why?
As feelings between the two women bloom into romance, Nati grows more and more reckless, and is forced to face her own ghosts, ones she hoped would stay gone forever.
Phoning Faust – Sophie Mutiara Nova
Dark fantasy horror
Queer mixed Indonesian college student Dian Faust attempts to call the suicide hotline only to dial the wrong number, her finger slipping and typing in six three times (the mark of the Devil).
The mysterious voice on the other end of the line is revealed to be a charming scam caller named Memphis with a penchant for chattiness, trapped in a dingy bus stop bathroom, wanting to learn a concerning amount about the lonely Dian’s life.
But this scam caller is more than just a Mr. Robot hacker wannabe-a sinister presence lurks in the pixels on Dian’s laptop screen in the shadows of her apartment. The Devil themself has come to collect Dian’s soul, and “Memphis” is actually Mephistopheles-Hell’s foremost golden-tongued agent and notorious liar.
Rottenheart – Kat Dunn
Gothic horror
Odette and Cecilia are young women, living between their grand homes in Hampstead and the imposing, ancient Herne House in Suffolk. Though Odette’s artist mother Lydia keeps a tight grasp on her, she and her beloved Cecilia are mostly left free to roam, to learn and to love.
But when Lydia inexplicably sickens and dies, a dark veil falls. As the funeral rites are performed, Odette’s aunt, the cold and implacable Claudine, increasingly takes charge of the household, while her father retreats to his study. Odette, lost in grief, disappears into the shadows.
But as Claudine is announced as Odette’s new stepmother, a sinister presence in the house makes itself known. To her horror, Odette realises that despite her death, Lydia never really left. And now she wants revenge.
The Shaft – Iain Rob Wright
Supernatural horror – Book 10 of The Cursed Manuscripts
Three missing children. One woman forced to face the monster that stole her sister.
Diane Ord escaped Hartgate once. She has no intention of going back.
But when three children vanish from the decaying County Durham pit village, Diane is sent there on official business, and dragged straight into the nightmare she has spent her life trying to forget.
Thirty years ago, her little sister disappeared near The Clough, the abandoned mine that towers over Hartgate like a curse. The locals blamed an old ghost story: Coal-Faced Ted, the blackened miner who takes children into the dark.
Diane never believed in monsters.
Not really.
But the missing children have all dreamed of a man in the mine. The mayor is desperate to bury the past. The village records have been tampered with. And something beneath The Clough is stirring as demolition crews prepare to tear it open.
To save the children, Diane must return to the place where her own childhood ended.
But the mine remembers her.
And this time, it wants to keep her.
Tillinghast – Clare Cavenagh
Monster horror
Stutley Tillinghast lives a solitary life, ostensibly as the minister of a remote rural parish in Rhode Island. For many decades now, what little human contact he allows himself has been brief, frenzied and bloody, and always ends in a shallow grave in his cellar.
You and I would have a name for what he is, but he prefers not to use it. He has needs, and when they become unbearable, he fulfils them.
Then the girl arrives. 19 years old, she has travelled from the UK to find him. She seems to have his surname, and her resemblance to him is uncanny. She is sick, very sick, and Tillinghast recognises her symptoms all too well. Which means he also knows what she needs.
Unsettled Score: A Mixtape of Arthouse Horror – Rebecca Rowland
Horror collection
14-track collection of psychological, transgressive, and literary horror riffing on classic rock, delivering stories that slide from nostalgic to nightmarish.
From dating disasters to haunted homes and twisted families.
Urban Decay – R.J. Daly
Psychological horror
Welcome to Barberville. If the streets don’t claim you, someone, or something, most certainly will.
Hustling a living on the streets is no picnic. Potential danger lurks around every corner. The lawless tenements attract undesirables, social outcasts, and criminals, and accommodate all manner of illicit activity. In a city where everyone is on the make, is there any point in playing by the rules?
Jimmy Henderson didn’t choose his life. Strapped for cash, he takes to the streets with the only thing he has left to sell: himself. When he thinks things can’t get any worse, he stumbles on an opportunity he hopes will change everything for the better. But will it work out the way he envisions, or will it end in disaster?
Paul and Tony Jeron rule the slums. When a drug deal goes wrong, and their product goes missing, Paul decides to send a brutal message. Will the degenerate’s ruthless tactics pay off, or has he gone too far in asserting his dominance?
