Horror Shelf

A Certain Hunger

Chelsea G. Summers

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.

But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority. A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.

Comments
Make no mistake, this is not some shitty Hannibal Lecter rip off. It's a incredibly well written, deliciously gory, the pacing and plot and world building felt very realistic and well thought out. My only complaints is that it's pretty white, so metal self insert readers be wary, I guess. The bit about the Jewish man is weird but ok, I guess portraying Jewish people as paradigms is a lousy take. I'm goy so I'm not going to declare this a Good Thing or Bad Thing. It's morally gray, I'd say, in the least.

A Human Stain

Kelly Robson

A British expatriate at loose ends who is hired by her friend to temporarily care for his young, orphaned nephew in a remote castle-like structure in Germany.

Comments
Short, but sweet. I can appreciate the twist in how hopeless it all felt for the poor main character. And the monsters were interesting in the subtle absence. You can feel their presence creeping up the walls.

A Lush and Seething Hell

John Hornor Jacobs

The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself.

In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South—which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself.

Better red, Paolo Zerbini credit

A Spectral Hue

Craig Laurance Gidney

For generations, the marsh-surrounded town of Shimmer, Maryland has played host to a loose movement of African-American artists, all working in different media, but all utilizing the same haunting color. Landscape paintings, trompe l’oeil quilts, decorated dolls, mixed-media assemblages, and more, all featuring the same peculiar hue, a shifting pigment somewhere between purple and pink, the color of the saltmarsh orchid, a rare and indigenous flower.
Graduate student Xavier Wentworth has been drawn to Shimmer, hoping to study the work of artists like quilter Hazel Whitby and landscape painter Shadrach Grayson in detail, having experienced something akin to an epiphany when viewing a Hazel Whitby tapestry as a child. Xavier will find that others, too, have been drawn to Shimmer, called by something more than art, something in the marsh itself, a mysterious, spectral hue.

Comments
A vivid color haunts generations of Black Americans. What will happen to the latest affected by Her influence? Gorgeous prose, genuinely heartbreaking in horror and salvation. The use of color and immaculate way the specific color in question linked back to everything made me gasp. One of the few books I wish I could reread for the first time, again.

Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror

Shane Hawk

Welcome to Anoka, Minnesota, a small city just outside of the Twin Cities dubbed “The Halloween Capital of the World” since 1937. Here before you lie several tales involving bone collectors, pagan witches, werewolves, skeletal bison, and cloned children. It is up to you to decipher between fact and fiction as the author has woven historical facts into his narratives. With his debut horror collection, Cheyenne & Arapaho author Shane Hawk explores themes of family, grief, loneliness, and identity through the lens of indigenous life.

Comments
Admittedly it had a lot more pedophilia themes than I usually read in a book, but it was some pretty interesting horror.

Biogenesis

Tatsuaki Ishiguro

Told in the manner of scientific reports, this collection of science fiction stories explores the allegorical overtones about the precariousness of species. Biogenesis and Other Stories collects five stories by Tatsuaki Ishiguro.

In Biogenesis, two professors research the rare winged mouse and how the genetic makeup of the creatures pointed to their eventual extinction. The discover that upon mating, both the male and female of the species died. The professors try to clone the winged mice without success, so they breed the remaining pair in captivity, noting the procedure, which includes a vibration of the creatures' wings, what appeared to be kissing, and the shedding of tears—composed of the same substance as their blood—until their eventual death.

Comments
I really loved the variety in this. If you don't like a story, skip it to the next one as it'll be quite different. For once I don't have a specific favorite in an anthology because all of them were excellent in their own ways.
There are a few issues I have. There's some anti Ainu sentiment and incest in it. There's also mention of POW abuse / slavery during WW1. Whether one think it was handled well is up to the individual reader.

Bunny

Mona Awad

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

City of Red Midnight: A Hikayat

Usman T. Malik

In this spell-binding tale, a Pakistani storyteller captivates a group of wide-eyed tourists with a nesting doll of interlocked stories about a trickster and a hidden city ruled by the Queen of Red Midnight.

Constance

Matthew FitzSimmons

In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it's an abomination against nature. For young Constance "Con" D'Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it's terrifying.

After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness--stored for that inevitable transition--something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it's eighteen months later. Her recent memories are missing. Her original, she's told, is dead. If that's true, what does that make her?

The secrets of Con's disorienting new life are buried deep. So are those of how and why she died. To uncover the truth, Con is retracing the last days she can recall, crossing paths with a detective who's just as curious. On the run, she needs someone she can trust. Because only one thing has become clear: Con is being marked for murder--all over again.

Dark Matter

Michelle Paver

January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely, and desperate to change his life, so when he's offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year, Gruhuken, but the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice: stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return--when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark.

Devil's Day

Andrew Michael Hurley

Every autumn, John Pentecost returns to the Lancashire farm where he grew up to help gather the sheep from the moors. Generally, very little changes in the Briardale Valley, but this year things are different. His grandfather—known to everyone as the Gaffer—has died and John's new wife, Katherine, is accompanying him for the first time.

Every year, the Gaffer would redraw the boundary lines of the village, with pen and paper but also through the remembrance of folk tales, family stories and timeless communal rituals which keep the sheep safe from the Devil. This year, though, the determination of some members of the community to defend those boundary lines has strengthened, and John and Katherine must decide where their loyalties lie, and whether they are prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to join the tribe...

Experimental Film

Gemma Files

img credit The Watcher by Shaun Tan.

Fired at almost the same time as her son Clark's Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, former film critic turned teacher Lois Cairns is caught in a depressive downward spiral, convinced she's a failure who's spent half her adult life writing about other people's dreams without ever seeing any of her own come true.

One night Lois attends a program of experimental film and emerges convinced she's seen something no one else has--a sampled piece of silver nitrate silent film footage whose existence might prove that an eccentric early 20th-century socialite who disappeared under mysterious circumstances was also one of Canada's first female movie-makers.

Though it raises her spirits and revitalizes her creatively, Lois's headlong quest to discover the truth about Mrs. A. Macalla Whitcomb almost immediately begins to send her much further than she ever wanted to go, revealing increasingly troubling links between her subject's life and her own. Slowly but surely, the malign influence of Mrs Whitcomb's muse begins to creep into every aspect of Lois's life, even placing her son in danger. But how can one increasingly ill and unstable woman possibly hope to defeat a threat that's half long-lost folklore, half cinematically framed hallucination--an existential nightmare made physical, projected off the screen and into real life? Quick Comments
Autism In Horror: the novel. NO WAIT hear me out. It's not in an ableist way but it does touch upon ableism towards people with autism. A woman journalist delves in the filmography of the first woman director in Canadian history, and discovers the monstrous divine is now haunting her. I loved the unusual folk tale/rural paganism the monster was based in. The themes might be on the nose for those skilled in picking out topics, but oh my god it was a genuine delight to have such a skillful portrayal of neurodivergence. This is one of the books that make me go 'oh yeah, right, THIS is why I read horror.'

FantasticLand

Mike Bockoven

Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun is Guaranteed!” But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares.

How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience.

Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People.

If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online.

Comments
Certainly more of a suspense novel than pure horror, but I think this counts because of the apocalyptic tones. Ah, the world gone to shit, and how horrible white people can be to each other. I liked the revolving POV which kept things fresh. It vaguely reminds of me of Matt Wesolowski's character, Scott King, in the Six Stories series. Initially and carefully removed, but there's enough of a personality and empathy in the sort of narrator.

Flowers for the Sea

Zin E. Rocklyn

We are a people who do not forget.
Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp.
Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine. Quick Comments
Pregnancy horror, but make it oceanic and Black. I wish it was longer, but it did a lot to create an atmosphere and unique mythology. Absolutely an author to keep an eye on.

Frozen Hell

John W. Campbell Jr.

FROZEN HELL is the original version of John W. Campbell's classic novella, Who Goes There? (filmed as The Thing). Recently discovered among Campbell's papers, this version adds another 45 pages to the story. Includes a Preface by Alec Nevala-Lee and an Introduction by Robert Silverberg.

Kill Creek

Thomas Scott

At the end of a dark prairie road, nearly forgotten in the Kansas countryside, is the Finch House. For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests…

When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country’s most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won’t be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.

Last Days

Adam Nevill

Last Days (winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel of the Year) by Adam Nevill is a Blair Witch style novel in which a documentary film-maker undertakes the investigation of a dangerous cult—with creepy consequences

When guerrilla documentary maker, Kyle Freeman, is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been answered.

The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle’s brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organization that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage, and occult rituals.

The shoot’s locations take him to the cult’s first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France, and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where The Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven’t broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots.

Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artifacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him?

Comments
I just wanted to mention real quick that the MC [and perhaps author] is not good at using the correct pronouns which rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not sure if it was intentionnally transphobic or transmisogynistic, but it bothered me.

Mapping the Interior

Stephen Graham Jones

Walking through his own house at night, a twelve-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew.
The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.

My Best Friend's Exorcism

Grady Hendrix

The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act...different. She's moody. She's irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she's nearby. Abby's investigation leads her to some startling discoveries--and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil? Quick Comments
YA genre but I think it works for the plot. There's plenty of silly pop culture references but there's genuine heart and compassionate characters that you can easily delve into it.

Never Have I Ever

Isabel Yap

Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales: the magic in Isabel Yap’s debut collection jumps right off the page, from the joy in her new novella,

Night Film

Marisha Pessl

Night Film tells the haunting story of a journalist who becomes obsessed with the mysterious death of a troubled prodigy—the daughter of an iconic, reclusive filmmaker.
On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova—a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years.
For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova’s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.
Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova’s eerie, hypnotic world.The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more. Quick Comments
I'll be honest here. There's a lot of transmisogyny that should never have been included, and I think does not add anything to the book. It's about the club scene. keep that in mind if you go into it. Loved the presentation, the depth of the world built up.

Prosper's Demon

K.J. Parker

In a botched demonic extraction, they say the demon feels it ten times worse than the man.

But they don’t die, and we do. Equilibrium. The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out—he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.

Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.

Revelator

Daryl Gregory

The dark, gripping tale of a 1930's family in the remote hills of the Smoky Mountains, their secret religion, and the daughter who turns her back on their mysterious god--from the acclaimed author of Spoonbenders.

In 1933, nine-year-old Stella is left in the care of her grandmother, Motty, in the backwoods of Tennessee. The mountains are home to dangerous secrets, and soon after she arrives, Stella wanders into a dark cavern where she encounters the family's personal god, an entity known as the Ghostdaddy. Years later, after a tragic incident that caused her to flee, Stella--now a professional bootlegger--returns for Motty's funeral, and to check on the mysterious ten-year-old girl named Sunny that Motty adopted.

Sunny appears innocent enough, but she is more powerful than Stella could imagine--and she's a direct link to Stella's buried past and her family's destructive faith.

Haunting and wholly engrossing, summoning mesmerizing voices and giving shape to the dark, Revelator is a southern gothic tale for the ages.

Comments
Fair warning. Due to the location and time period, Black characters are not treated well, canonically.

Rules for Vanishing

Kate Alice Marshall

In the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project comes the campfire story of a missing girl, a vengeful ghost, and the girl who is determined to find her sister--at all costs.
Once a year, the path appears in the forest and Lucy Gallows beckons. Who is brave enough to find her--and who won't make it out of the woods?
It's been exactly one year since Sara's sister, Becca, disappeared, and high school life has far from settled back to normal. With her sister gone, Sara doesn't know whether her former friends no longer like her...or are scared of her, and the days of eating alone at lunch have started to blend together. When a mysterious text message invites Sara and her estranged friends to "play the game" and find local ghost legend Lucy Gallows, Sara is sure this is the only way to find Becca--before she's lost forever. And even though she's hardly spoken with them for a year, Sara finds herself deep in the darkness of the forest, her friends--and their cameras--following her down the path. Together, they will have to draw on all of their strengths to survive. The road is rarely forgiving, and no one will be the same on the other side. Quick Comments
Do you like marble hornets, ARGs, uncommon creepypastas, found footage esque movies? How about books that utilize a variety of media like podcast interviews, video transcripts, rotating POVs? This book is for you. There is some lgbt characters. I thought the adopted sibling relationship was cute and endearing.

Scanlines

Todd Keisling

殿敷侃 Tadashi Tonoshiki, BARRICADE TELEVISION ←→ YAMAGUCHI, Found Objects, 60 TV sets, Gallery Nakano, Yamaguchi, Nov 20 1989

In 1987, Congressman Benjamin Hardy III died by suicide on live television amidst accusations of political corruption. Years later, rumors of a recording surfaced among VHS trading groups and urban legend chat rooms. Dubbed the “Duncan Tape,” after the deceased cameraman who attempted to sell the video, the rumors allege that anyone who watches the tape is driven to suicide. Or so the story goes. In truth, no one has ever seen the supposed Duncan Tape, presumably because it doesn’t exist. It’s a ghost story perpetuated on the forums and chat rooms of the internet, another handful of bytes scattered across the Information Superhighway at blistering 56K modem speeds. For Robby and his friends, an urban legend is the last thing on their minds when a boring Friday night presents a chance to download porn. But the short clip they watch turns out to be something far more graphic and disturbing, and in the coming days, they’ll learn even the most outlandish urban legends possess a shred of truth…

Six Stories Series

Matt Wesolowski

Six Stories series is a collection of novels featuring the podcast journalist Scott King. King investigates infamous cold cases and mysteries, issuing each part as a individual interview and examination of the mystery in six parts per podcast episode. The first of the series starts with the novel 'Six Stories'.

Elusive online journalist Scott King investigates a series of cold cases in his Six Stories podcasts, interviewing witnesses whose testimonies shed new light on unsolved cases ... One body Six stories Which one is true?

1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who embarked on that fateful trip, and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby. 2017.

Enter elusive investigative journalist Scott King, whose podcast examinations of complicated cases have rivalled the success of Serial, with his concealed identity making him a cult internet figure.In a series of six interviews, King attempts to work out how the dynamics of a group of idle teenagers conspired with the sinister legends surrounding the fell to result in Jeffries' mysterious death. And who's to blame...

As every interview unveils a new revelation, you'll be forced to work out for yourself how Tom Jeffries died, and who is telling the truth.

Comments
Listen. I am no true crime freak. I think capitalizing on tragedy and trauma, current or past, is hideously evil. I know Black people are more likely to be ignored victims of violence and that the fear mongering sentiment that poor widdle white women are more at risk of being harmed is fictionalized.

The reason why I like this series is because it is fictional to a point, and there is far more empathy shown by the main character at fictional victims than real life true crime podcasters. The book 'Demon' even touches upon this in some detail.

Stranded

Bracken MacLeod

Badly battered by an apocalyptic storm, the crew of the Arctic Promise find themselves in increasingly dire circumstances as they sail blindly into unfamiliar waters and an ominously thickening fog. Without functioning navigation or communication equipment, they are lost and completely alone. One by one, the men fall prey to a mysterious illness. Deckhand Noah Cabot is the only person unaffected by the strange force plaguing the ship and her crew, which does little to ease their growing distrust of him.

Dismissing Noah's warnings of worsening conditions, the captain of the ship presses on until the sea freezes into ice and they can go no farther. When the men are ordered overboard in an attempt to break the ship free by hand, the fog clears, revealing a faint shape in the distance that may or may not be their destination. Noah leads the last of the able-bodied crew on a journey across the ice and into an uncertain future where they must fight for their lives against the elements, the ghosts of the past and, ultimately, themselves.

Sundial

Catriona Ward

You can’t escape what’s in your blood… All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice. Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive…The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.

Comments
This book felt like a bad trip, in a good way. Shit just kept happening and then dogs were introduced and then oh my god what is that man doing, is this even legal, what do you mean you got the wrong person? I do hate the later / final half of the plot. I felt it weakened the story and was rather ableist. Absolutely check for content warnings, this story touches on some fucked up shit.

Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories

Neil Christopher

"Taaqtumi" is an Inuktitut word that means "in the dark"—and these spine-tingling horror stories by Northern writers show just how dangerous darkness can be. A family clinging to survival out on the tundra after a vicious zombie virus. A door that beckons, waiting to unleash the terror behind it. A post-apocalyptic community in the far North where things aren't quite what they seem.

Comments
An amazing assortment of horror, all immaculately written. If you read only one story, read Lounge. Then go ahead and read all the rest of them.

The Ballad of Black Tom

Victor LaValle

People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?

The Breach

M. T. Hill

Freya Medlock, a reporter at her local paper, is down on her luck and chasing a break. When she's assigned to cover the death of a young climber named Stephen, she might just have the story she needs. Digging into Stephen's life, Freya uncovers a strange photo uploaded to an urban exploration forum not long before he died. It seems to show a weird nest, yet the caption below suggests there's more to it.

Freya believes this nest - discovering what it really is and where it's hidden - could be the key to understanding the mysteries surrounding Stephen's death.

Soon she meets Shep, a trainee steeplejack with his own secret life. When Shep's not working up chimneys, he's also into urban exploration - undertaking dangerous 'missions' into abandoned and restricted sites. As Shep draws Freya deeper into the urbex scene, the circumstances of Stephen's death become increasingly unsettling - and Freya finds herself risking more and more to get the answers she wants.

But neither Freya nor Shep realise that some dark corners are better left unlit.

Comments
Granted, this is the barest hint of horror, but the idea of parasite horror is incredibly fascinating and I wish it was explored more. Or that I've read more on it. Fair warning there's some sexual harassment scenes, do check the content warnings.

The Changeling

Victor LaValle

Apollo Kagwa has had strange dreams that have haunted him since childhood. An antiquarian book dealer with a business called Improbabilia, he is just beginning to settle into his new life as a committed and involved father, unlike his own father who abandoned him, when his wife Emma begins acting strange.

Disconnected and uninterested in their new baby boy, Emma at first seems to be exhibiting all the signs of post-partum depression, but it quickly becomes clear that her troubles go far beyond that. Before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act--beyond any parent's comprehension--and vanishes, seemingly into thin air.

Thus begins Apollo's odyssey through a world he only thought he understood to find a wife and child who are nothing like he'd imagined. His quest begins when he meets a mysterious stranger who claims to have information about Emma's whereabouts. Apollo then begins a journey that takes him to a forgotten island in the East River of New York City, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest in Queens where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever.

Comments
This is a modern age epic. I say this with full confidence having read very little epics. This is a modernized take on the hero's journey, on fairy tales and horror. The concept of changeling in this novel was fascinating. There's more layers to this than a mountain of halva.

The End of the Sentence

Maria Dahvana Headley Kat Howard

In Chuchonnyhoof, they've created a new kind of Beast, longing, centuries later, for Beauty.

Comments
Folk Horror! A fascinating collision of haunted houses, colonization horror, and the supernatural. I wish it wasn't written by whites because I think it could have delved into the folk horror and colonization aspects a lot better.

The Final Reconciliation

Todd Keisling

Thirty years ago, a progressive rock band called The Yellow Kings began recording what would become their first and final album. Titled “The Final Reconciliation,” the album was expected to usher in a new renaissance of heavy metal , but it was shelved following a tragic concert that left all but one dead.

The sole survivor of that horrific incident was the band’s lead guitarist, Aidan Cross, who’s kept silent about the circumstances leading up to that ill-fated performance —until now. For the first time since the tragedy, Aidan has granted an exclusive interview to finally put rumors to rest and address a question that has haunted the music industry for decades: What happened to The Yellow Kings? The answer will terrify you.

Comments
Oh Chambers. You had a good idea about Yellow Kings. And while a lot of people took that and ran with it, I wish this plot stopped before the very last plot twist. Also, jesus fuck there's a lot of misogyny and anti Rromani slurs in this. I used a name switcher in my ereader app to change the g slur t 'hot dog magician' and frankly that was an improvement. But not by much. I liked the concept of the plot, I just wish it was executed better. It did collapse under the unnecessary expectations of the horror genre.

The Fisherman

John Langan

In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman’s Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other’s company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story.

Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It’s a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.

Comments
Folk Horror meets Cosmic Horror meets Otherworld / Location Horror! With a hint of Religious Horror. Every once in a while I'll read an adult genre horror novel that makes me remember just why I like horror so much. It's nice to read a well written novel that hits all the spots.

The Girl from Rawblood

Catriona Ward

What if it's not your house that's haunted--it's you? For generations, the Villarcas have died young, under mysterious circumstances. Now Iris and her father will finally find out why... Young Iris Villarca is the last of her family's line. They are haunted by "her," a curse passed down through the generations that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak and death. But Iris dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began, and where it must all end... Quick Comments
This is the first book I read from this author and it's so good it made me read other works despite them being pretty... underwhelming. And kinda ableist. Like the author certainly tried but it missed several marks. But anyways. I loved the concept of hauntings and intergenerational ghosts. I thought the writing was fantastic and I loved the atmosphere. Definitely check the content warnings, this book does touch upon traumatic themes.

The Good Demon

Jimmy Cajoleas

Clare has been miserable since her exorcism. The preacher that rid her of evil didn’t understand that her demon—simply known as Her—was like a sister to Clare. Now, Clare will do almost anything to get Her back. After a chance encounter with the son of the preacher who exorcised her, Clare goes on an adventure through the dark underbelly of her small Southern town, discovering its deep-seated occult roots. As she searches for Her, she must question the fine lines between good and evil, love and hate, and religion and free will. Vivid and sharp, The Good Demon tells the unusual story of friendship amid dark Gothic horror. Quick Comments
I'm an adult. I'm not a fan of reading stories from a teenage POV. This is absolutely a teenaged POV but the plot was interesting enough that I could tolerate it. I liked the demonic perspective and the take on demonic possession. An interesting twist on the typical demonic possession plot, set in a town where demonic friends is easier than friends with the local yokels. Except it's never that simple. Neat variation of basic christian demons, too.

The Grip of It

Jac Jemc

Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between ocean and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to settle into their home and their relationship, the house and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The architecture—claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of bruises; mold spores taint the water that James pours from the sink. Together the couple embark on a panicked search for the source of their mutual torment, a journey that mires them in the history of their peculiar neighbors and the mysterious residents who lived in the house before Julia and James.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks

Jason Arnopp

Jack Sparks died while writing this book.

It was no secret that journalist Jack Sparks had been researching the occult for his new book. No stranger to controversy, he'd already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed.

Then there was that video: forty seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.

Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed - until now.

Comments
Oooh oh boy. Talk about unlikeable characters. Yeah you'll hate this guy and you'll pity his destiny,in some small way. Religious [catholic] horror! Fantastic!!

Molly Southbourne duology

Tade Thompson

The Murders of Molly Southbourne [book one]
The rule is simple: don't bleed. For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

The Survival of Molly Southbourne [book two]
Who was Molly Southbourne? What did she leave behind? A burnt-out basement. A name stained in blood. Bodies that remember murder, one of them left alive. A set of rules that no longer apply. Molly Southbourne is alive. If she wants to survive, she'll need to run, hide, and be ready to fight. There are people who remember her, who know what she is and what she's done. Some want her alive, some want her dead, and all hold a piece to the puzzles in her head. Can Molly escape them, or will she confront the bloody history that made her?

Comments
Changeling Horror. Doppelganger Horror. At the same time, generational abuse horror, dressed up in a dystopia setting that does not feel dystopian, merely every day society that got to that point like a frog in boiling water. The way the author describes the doppelganger scared the shit out of me. I desperately wish for there to be a third book, but at the same time I am satisfied. The story has said everything it needs to. No more. No need for endless sequels and prequels and side stories and dlc.

The Only Good Indians

Stephen Graham Jones

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way. Quick Comments
Persistence Hunting. Noun. A type of hunting where the predator uses a combination of running and tracking to pursue the prey to exhaustion. A long time ago they used this type of hunting, following their prey, until exhaustion set in and the person ground to a halt in surrender.

The Possession of Natalie Glasgow

Hailey Piper

Margaret Willow has never met an eleven-year-old as dangerous as Natalie Glasgow. Natalie spends her days comatose, but at night she prowls her mother's home, unnaturally strong and insatiably carnivorous.

With doctors baffled, Natalie's mother reaches out to Margaret, an expert in the supernatural. But even Margaret is mystified and terrified by Natalie's condition.

She's dying, and before she dies, she might kill someone. Has a demon clawed its way inside an eleven-year-old girl? Or does the source of this nightmare lie with Natalie's dead father?

Comments
I don't read much possession horror. Nor religious horror. Reading about christianity and/or catholicism and th same old battle of good vs evil is not appealing to me. This isn't that. This is surprisingly endearing. Horrifying, yes, gorey, absolutely. The way the characters are all women and the way the mother's concerns aren't dismissed because 'oh no she's hysterical and crazy haha those females amirite?' and the way the truth is revealed. Oh yeah, I love this.

The Twenty Days of Turin

Giorgio De Maria

In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another’s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library’s users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the city’s occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: what’s shared can never be unshared.
An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a fervent cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of "lone-wolf" terrorism fueled by social media, we can find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Maria’s vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internet—and the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharing—this bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever.
Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Maria’s place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Hauntingly imaginative, with visceral prose that chills to the marrow, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus, long overdue but ever timely.

The Worm and His Kings

Hailey Piper

New York City, 1990: When you slip through the cracks, no one is there to catch you. Monique learns that the hard way after her girlfriend Donna vanishes without a trace.
Only after the disappearances of several other impoverished women does Monique hear the rumors. A taloned monster stalks the city’s underground and snatches victims into the dark.
Donna isn’t missing. She was taken.
To save the woman she loves, Monique must descend deeper than the known underground, into a subterranean world of enigmatic cultists and shadowy creatures. But what she finds looms beyond her wildest fears—a darkness that stretches from the dawn of time and across the stars.

Quick Comments
Eldritch horror ft women mcs, and a trans woman MC. I loved the original mythology and the plot twists were amazing. Generic cishet white men writers can be blamed for populating genres with the most redundant shit about another cishet white guy, usually bougie, getting into x y z troubles in said genre. The cosmic horror genre, especially the lovecraftian horror genre, is absolutely one of these. A cosmic horror story solely about an unhoused trans woman trying to find her signifcant other and stumbling across a cult that's recruiting other unhoused people for nefarious means is a goddamn hurricane of fresh air. The mythology was unique and not another goddamn cthulhu rip off. The location was interesting and the characters, low class outcast unhoused people of society, were genuine humans. They weren't stereotypes steeped in classism and transphobia. If you like cosmic horror, and want something different, this is for you.

We Are All Completely Fine

Daryl Gregory

Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping. Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses.

Unsurprisingly, no one believes their horrific tales until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these likely-insane outcasts join a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within and which are lurking in plain sight.

Where They Wait

Scott Carson

A new supernatural novel about a sinister mindfulness app with fatal consequences from the New York Times bestselling author of The Chill.Recently laid-off from his newspaper and desperate for work, war correspondent Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity. It’s easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for the first time in years. The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas—relaxing white noise and guided meditations.

But then there are the “Sleep Songs.” A woman’s hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing—it’s disturbing, and more of a warning than a relaxation—but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows. So do the nightmares. Vivid and chilling, they feature a dead woman who calls Nick by name and whispers guidance—or are they threats? And her voice follows him long after the song is done. As the effects of the nightmares begin to permeate his waking life, Nick makes a terrifying discovery: no one involved with Clarity has any interest in his article. Their interest is in him.

Comments
Ok so this is a very soft on horror and more like scifi flavored thriller. But it does feature some fucked up colonization / genocide and paranormal occurrences and oh yeah, the app? It's haunted. It's not a one note story though, there's a little more depth to it than an updated Twilight Zone / Outer Limits plot of haunted phones.

White Tears

Hari Kunzru

Ghost story, murder mystery, love letter to American music--White Tears is all of this and more, a thrilling investigation of race and appropriation in society today.
Seth is a shy, awkward twentysomething. Carter is more glamorous, the heir to a great American fortune. But they share an obsession with music--especially the blues. One day, Seth discovers that he's accidentally recorded an unknown blues singer in a park.

Carter puts the file online, claiming it's a 1920s recording by a made-up musician named Charlie Shaw. But when a music collector tells them that their recording is genuine--that there really was a singer named Charlie Shaw--the two white boys, along with Carter's sister, find themselves in over their heads, delving deeper and deeper into America's dark, vengeful heart. White Tears is a literary thriller and a meditation on art--who owns it, who can consume it, and who profits from it.

Comments
What the hell do you even call this? Race Horror? That sounds tactless. Horror, definitely, and of the paranormal flavor. I loved the concept here, of a ghost haunting through the sound waves, through time and space. I think it explored fairly well how nonBlack people, specifically white people, appropriate and dress up as Black people until it's no longer fun. I wish an actual Black author had written this or something in this genre. While the author is a person of color, he is nonBlack as far as a internet search reveals. That said, it's a very interesting take on Jim Crow laws and antiblack racism in us history. Just go in knowing that the author isn't speaking from experience and this is another piece of media that's probably exploiting Black people trauma. Also fair warning. Check the Content Warnings. There is explicit torture and antiblack racism.

You Let Me In

Camilla Bruce

Cassandra Tipp is dead...or is she?After all, the notorious recluse and eccentric bestselling novelist has always been prone to flights of fancy—everyone in town remembers the shocking events leading up to Cassie's infamous trial (she may have been acquitted, but the insanity defense only stretches so far).Cassandra Tipp has left behind no body—just her massive fortune, and one final manuscript.

Then again, there are enough bodies in her past—her husband Tommy Tipp, whose mysterious disembowelment has never been solved, and a few years later, the shocking murder-suicide of her father and brother.Cassandra Tipp will tell you a story—but it will come with a terrible price.

What really happened, out there in the woods—and who has Cassie been protecting all along? Read on, if you dare...

Comments
What the fuck do I call this. Fae horror, obviously. If I were a tasteless jackass I'd call it Incest Horror. Yes, that is what this is explicitly about. No, I'm not one of those freaks into incest and csa/rape as a fetish. While the book is explicit about what is/has happened to a child, it's never graphically shown on screen. If that makes any sense. It's not ambiguous, but it's not trauma porn, portraying the violent betrayal of a child by her father. If I remember right, the most explicit scene is blood in a bed. What made me read and finish this book once I realized ok it's not a metaphor, it's literal incest, was the writing. The metaphor of the Fae and Changelings and how a child's trauma manifested as a literal Other. So far, I had never seen such a theme shown in this light, and would enjoy more.