Category: The Fright Stuff

Compared to the other titles on this list, the cult in This Might Hurt is almost toothless. It takes advantage of emotionally vulnerable people like most cults, but it doesn’t have any higher motivation or purpose. It’s not even particularly dangerous, just manipulative. BUT. What happens when a promising new initiate proves to be a budding fanatic, who believes in the cult’s teachings even more than its founder? And has the ambition to match? What I love about This Might Hurt is that it’s almost like the origin story of a real cult. Though, as far as Natalie Collins knows, Wisewood isn’t a cult. It’s just a self-help facility! Really! The latest attempt by Natalie’s wayward sister Kit to pull her life together. But when a threatening email brings Natalie to Wisewood in search of Kit, it quickly becomes clear that something sinister is going on behind the scenes. Kit is acting strange, and if Natalie wants to save her sister she’ll have to get them both off the island before things get worse.

I’m not saying Academia is a cult but … I’m not not saying that either. I mean that’s (part of) the whole point of Dark Academia, right? Higher education but make it cultish? In Elisabeth Thomas’ fabulous gothic novel, the students of Catherine House go on to become some of the greatest minds in their chosen fields, but at a cost. In return for free tuition, room, board, and the promise of a bright future, accepted students give up their lives to Catherine House for three whole years. No outside contact. No family or friends, no media, no personal clothing. It seems like an easy choice for Ines, who expected to trade in her unhealthy past for a new life of study and potential. But instead she finds a world of secrets, parties, and high strung students competing for dominance. At any cost.

Sometimes a cult isn’t a group of strangers, sometimes it’s your cousin, her asshole husband, her husband’s creepy family, and their weird mushroom mediatrix. Not that Noemí knew what she was getting into when she first arrived at High Place, home of the strange (and extremely suspect) Doyle family, an old English family living in their crumbling family estate in the mountains. You could argue that in order for this to be a cult horror, the Doyle family would have to consist of more than its handful of pale, perishing descendants. But from the moment Noemí sets foot in High Place, she’s subjected to near constant gaslighting, coercion, and biochemical interference until she begins to question her own sanity. And all of it with the intention of forcing her to be “one of” the family.

For those playing along at home, check off a box on your card because that is a cult.

You’ll have to wait until May to get your hands on this forthcoming Nightfire title, but if you’re looking for a creepy cult, you’ll definitely want to add Just Like Mother to your list. Maeve was raised in a matriarchal cult before she escaped and built a new life for herself on the outside, albeit a lonely and isolated one. Which is why, when her cousin Andrea (who Maeve last saw the night of her escape) suddenly reappears, Maeve finds herself clinging to one of the few real attachments she has left in the world. The more time Maeve spends with Andrea, the more she becomes disconnected from her new life in New York and drawn into Andrea’s wealthy, fertility industry-funded world. And why not? Andrea is the only family she has now. But there’s something not quite right about Andrea’s friends and her work, and before long, Maeve has to wonder whether she’s escaped one cult only to be drawn into another.

Echo is the sort of queer horror love story that I desperately need more of in my life. Don’t be dissuaded by the official synopsis, because I don’t think it describes the book particularly well. Yes, Echo is about Nick surviving a terrible mountaineering accident that killed his climbing buddy Augustin and left Nick horribly scarred, haunted by the mountain Maudit that nearly took his life. But Echo isn’t just Nick’s story, it’s also about his boyfriend Sam. The pov passes back and forth between the two of them (Sam’s reality vs Nick’s written account of what happened) and Echo is as much about their pasts and their relationship as it is about trying to break Nick free of the mountain’s hold. It’s honestly so good, so emotional, and beautifully written.

Cold is a YA thriller with a bit of ghost story thrown in, told from the dual perspective of Todd and Georgia, two queer teens and social outcasts who didn’t know each other before Todd’s death brought them together. Sort of. Because all that’s left of Todd is a ghost, hovering over his own murdered body, recounting the events that led to his corpse being abandoned in the snow. And though they were strangers to each other, when she hears about Todd’s death, Georgia feels compelled to find out what happened to him. Cold is kind of heartbreaking, to be honest. On the surface it seems like the set up for a perfect murder mystery, with a bit of paranormal ghostliness thrown in. But at its heart, Cold is more of a character study of Georgia and Todd as they navigate a world that seems to have no place for them and that, for one of them, proved fatal.

Oh my god where do I START with Dead Silence. This book terrified me. I had to put it down at one point because I was reading and there was too much empty space around me. For real, I couldn’t even look at a dark, open doorway. Dead Silence is about an ill-fated attempt by an about-to-be-unemployed ship’s crew, staffing a small vessel tasked with repairing communications beacons. Their last beacon, way at the edge of the system, picks up a distress signal coming from outside the network, somewhere beyond the edge of “civilized” space. A signal that belongs the the Aurora, a luxury space liner that vanished into thin air on its maiden voyage, never to be seen again… Barnes is giving you Titanic but make it scary, she’s giving you Event Horizon, she’s giving you Ghost Ship; for real, this book will make your skin crawl.

You had me at “slow-burn social horror” about race and class. This is definitely going to be one of those books that keeps you in a perpetually paranoid state of not knowing who to trust. Which of course is exactly what you want from a thriller, right? Farrah Turner and Cherish Whitman are best friends, and the only two Black girls at their country club. But while Farrah lives with her biological parents, Cherish lives with her wealthy, white adopted parents who adore and spoil their daughter. When Farrah’s own family encounters sudden financial hardships, she starts a calculated campaign to – for all intents and purposes – take over Cherish’s life. While staying at Cherish’s house, Farrah begins trying to manipulate her way into the Whitman family, only to realize that things beneath that loving, pristine façade are not quite what they seem. As events inside the house begin to escalate and grow ever stranger, Farrah’s legendary control begins to falter, leaving her to wonder if she ever had control of the Whitmans to begin with.

Extasia is the perfect blend of The Year of the Witching with a healthy dose of The Village thrown in for that wonderful “what the hell just happened” feel. I thought I was getting “witchy Sapphic girls band together to save their village from evil” and instead I got “witchy Sapphic girls burn down the patriarchy” and I couldn’t be happier. Our heroine starts out the book without a name, because her birth name doesn’t matter, all that will matter is the name she takes when she becomes one of the saints that protects her village from the evil picking off their men one by one. But when saving her home means crossing the line from sainthood into witchcraft, she quickly finds out that the people she’s determined to protect may not be worth all that she’ll have to sacrifice. Extasia is gorgeous, dark, gloriously queer, and wow did it make me want to rage. It’s not an easy book to read in the world we’re currently living in, but it’s also incredibly cathartic! (Particularly the “burn shit down” part.)

The Whispering Dead (first in the Gravekeeper series) is what you’d get if the quintessential cozy mystery had a baby with a ghost story. It comes complete with a slightly run down but adorable cottage; a suspiciously intelligent stray cat; and a memorable array of secondary small town characters. Though not the type of scary that will leave you shaking in your seat, The Whispering Dead still packs a creepy punch as Keira investigates the murder of a young woman and uncovers a dark secret at the heart of this sleepy, unassuming town.

Out just in time for Halloween this last year, Cackle is the perfect marriage of all that is cozy horror. When Annie’s entire life is upended by her now ex, she decides to take a teaching job in upstate New York, and ends up moving into the perfect apartment in a friendly, picturesque little village. Everything seems to be off to a great start, especially when she meets Sophie. Beautiful, charismatic Sophie, who lives in a massive old house in the woods and who no one in town seems to trust. From cutesy small town stores to forest walks and farmers markets, ghosts, witchcraft, murder, and a bit of mayhem, Cackle has it all. Also, Rachel Harrison actually made me find a pet spider adorable, and honestly I don’t know what subgenre other than cozy horror could pull that off.

Though more atmospheric than outright scary, Mooncakes is a the perfect read if you’re missing those autumnal Halloween feels. If you’re looking for dark fall nights, witchcraft, demons, werewolves, and queer love, you can’t go wrong with this gorgeous graphic novel. Nova Huang is a witch from a family of witches, and works at her grandmothers’ bookshop in a tiny town in New England. Tam Lang, Nova’s childhood crush, used to call the same town home, but she hasn’t been back in years. So Nova is surprised to find that rumours about a white wolf in the woods lead her to Tam, who is locked in battle with a demon. Dark magic and occult rituals serve as the backdrop for Nova and Tam’s budding romance as they work together to discover the source of the evil that threatens their town.

Maybe it’s an excess of plants that my brain finds cozy? The whole idea of a big old dilapidated estate surrounded by its vast gardens just fills my brain with joy. Especially when one of the gardens is comprised of nothing but the world’s most deadly plants. Cozy murder. This is the very setting where Briseis finds herself spending the summer, at the estate of her dead aunt. There, Bri hopes that she will learn to control her extraordinary gift: the ability to grow plants from seed to full bloom with just a touch of her hand. As she falls into creating tinctures and elixirs for those who come to the house seeking help, Bri meets Marie, a young woman keeping dark secrets who knows more about the estate than she is letting on.

There’s just something inherently cozy about middle grade horror. Probably because it can be plenty creepy, even downright scary at times, but it doesn’t go as hard as some YA or adult horror and it tends to end on a high note while emphasizing themes of family and friendship. In Ghost Squad, Lucely Luna and her best friend Syd have to band together with Syd’s witch grandmother and her adorable cat to fight a host of malicious spirits that Lucely accidently unleashed on St. Augustine. This delightful middle grade horror is exactly what I’m talking about when I refer to an emphasis on family and friendship. Any chance that Lucely, Syd, Babette, and (the aptly named tabby cat) Chunk have to save their town relies entirely on the bonds between them. MG horror makes for perfect cozy horror reading because it can give you genuine stakes that you can invest in, but you have the reassurance that everything will be okay in the end.

As Horror readers, it can sometimes take a lot to shake us. But at the same time, we should never strive to become immune to the things in horror that upset or discomfort us. Because at its heart, horror is an empathetic genre.You have to let yourself feel it, respond to it. It is my belief that, by extension, horror makes us more empathetic, sympathetic human beings. If horror makes us flinch, that’s a good thing.

Such a Pretty Smile is a raw, bloody, open wound of a book, and DeMeester does not shrink from the violence against women – both physical and mental – that serves as her central theme. (Which is why I’ve tried to highlight some of the bigger content warnings down below, fyi.) But one thing I really loved about this book is that the violence, though visceral and at times tough to read, is never gratuitous. For something to be gratuitous it has to be unwarranted, unnecessary, and play no reasonable part in the telling of the story. But the story in question, that of a mother and daughter struggling against a vicious cycle of intergenerational and social traumas, is inherently violent and every drop of blood spilled is vital.

Told from two perspectives across two timelines, Such a Pretty Smile covers a span of 15 years in the lives of Caroline and her 13 year old daughter, Lila. In 2004, Caroline is a talented young artist weighed down by her duty to her dying father and the insecure overbearance of her fiancé, a man who is supposed to be in love with her but seems more interested in surpassing her. When she starts hearing the phantom barking and screaming of dogs, Caroline uncovers a part of herself she had forgotten and a dark secret from her past that will come to shape not only her life, but Lila’s as well.

In 2019, Lila is struggling with societal and parental expectations, the neglect of her distant father, and her own developing sexuality. Lila has a crush on her popular best friend Macie, but her feelings for Macie are complicated by the other girl’s casual cruelty, and her determination to transform Lila into the “right” kind of girl. When Lila’s growing resentment and unrequited feelings start to manifest in strange and frightening ways, she begins to clash with the fragile façade of a life that Caroline has constructed to protect them both. And in doing so, she opens the door to a darkness in Caroline’s past that threatens both their lives.

It’s a story about what it means to be a woman, living in a world determined to make you small, and meek, and above all, quiet. About the trauma that results from being forced to conform for safety, and how, in trying to protect her daughter, a mother can end up perpetuating the very societal rules and expectations that were used to suppress her own identity and joy. Caroline conformed for survival, and she has been trying ever since to keep her daughter sweet, good, compliant, and therefore safe. But the harder Caroline tries to protect her daughter, the more she kindles Lila’s anger, which draws the attention of the omnipresent third figure in Such a Pretty Smile: The Cur. As much metaphor as man or monster, The Cur leaves behind a trail of murdered and mutilated girls, punctuating both Caroline and Lila’s timelines with corpses.

Not all of the fungi on this list are out to take over our bodies. I promise. But Cad? Cad is definitely a fungi of the concerning, mind-altering kind, and coming into contact with it ends in one of three ways: death, immunity, or infection. For those, like Reid, who have been infected, Cad forms a symbiotic relationship with its host, even offering them a measure of protection in order to ensure its own survival. Because for Cad, survival is paramount. It even posses the ability to manipulate its hosts fear responses to ensure continued survival. Reid lives in a shrinking colony of survivalists, scraping out a living in a world devastated by climate disasters. Those who leave never return. So when a letter arrives inviting Reid to join an exclusive university – one of the last strongholds of civilization – she finds herself torn between the family and colony that rely on her, and a future beyond the meager existence she’s always known. There may even be a chance to find a cure for Cad before it consumes her entirely. While The Annual Migration of Clouds is more sci-fi than horror, I promise there are a few squirm-worthy moments of body horror involving mushrooms in places where mushrooms… should not be.

Speaking of mind-controlling fungi: I debated whether to add The Luminous Dead to this list, if only because the spore-happy cave mold Gyre encounters underground – though technically a fungi – isn’t 100% proven to be the biological villain of the book. Most of what happens could just be in Gyre’s head. But it’s also not 100% NOT responsible for the strange happenings that plague her as she tries to make her way into the depths of the unmarked cave system, with only her extremely suspect handler Em as her guide. At worst, it’s some ancient, malicious fungus determined to control her mind to keep her from ever leaving the cave. At best (questionably best) it’s simply driven by an extremely strong biological imperative to keep her in the cave so it can colonize her corpse and propagate. Either way, it’s bad news. Particularly if you’re already stranded miles underground, low on supplies, and running out of power for the suit that is literally the only thing keeping you alive. At that point a pushy mind-melting mold is the last thing you need.

If I haven’t convinced you to read Sorrowland by now, I really need to try harder. Cults, religious fanaticism, genetic experimentation, queer characters, fungi; it’s honestly every thing you could want in one book. Determined to escape the strict religious compound in which she was raised – Cainland – and the horrible, nightly experiments she was forced to endure there, a heavily pregnant Vern flees into the woods to give birth to her children. Though there is no way of knowing if any of them will survive the experience, she will do anything to ensure that her children are free of Cainland’s grasp. But Vern did not escape unscathed. She survives the birth of her children, but as she struggles to keep them all alive in an unfamiliar world, her own body begins to betray her, permanently altered by Cainland’s strange experiments. She’s transforming into something new, dangerous, and unknown – and whatever she’s becoming, Cainland desperately wants to conceal. Sorrowland can be a rough read at times, grappling as it does with various heavy topics, but is also beautiful, strange, and unforgettable.

That cover is so gorgeous and so upsetting, I honestly can’t even stand it. (I love it.) Obviously, you can see why I’m so excited about this book. Oh, and did I mention that it’s an adaptation of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”? Why, oh why is July so far away! What Moves the Dead, much like Poe’s original tale, is centered around the slow, rotting death of an aristocratic family and their moldering estate. Alex Easton is summoned to the ancestral home of the Ushers by their childhood friend Madeline, who entreats them for help to save the state from the nightmarish fungi that have overtaken the landscape and possessed the local wildlife. With the help of a mycologist and a doctor, Alex must discover the source of Madeline’s disturbed nights, her brother Roderick’s nervous malady, and the rampant, unnatural fungi if they have any hope of saving their friends. If they fail, the House of Usher itself will fall and take them all down with it.

When it comes to Frankenstein adaptations, this is one of my favorites! White recenters Mary Shelley’s original novel around the figure of Elizabeth Lavenza, who as a young child was taken in by the Frankenstein family to be a companion to their strange, frightening son Victor. She grew up doing her best to become indispensable to the family, cementing her place in luxury and ease through her ability to manage Victor’s dark and dangerous moods. But behind Elizabeth’s calm, sweet, tame-the-beast exterior she has teeth and ambition of her own.

I love including graphic novels on this list when I have the chance, particularly when they’re as beautifully illustrated and compellingly written as this. Destroyer drags Mary Shelley’s novel into the new century and continues the creature’s journey hundreds of years after the death of Victor Frankenstein. Gone, however, is the sympathetic creature who wanted only love and human connection. After so many long years alone, all the creature wants is to destroy humanity completely. At his side is one of Frankenstein’s own descendents, Dr. Baker, a grieving mother who’s son was killed in an encounter with the police, and who wants to see humankind wiped out almost as much as the creature does.

I’m breaking my own rules a bit here, because I really do try (though I don’t always succeed) to not talk about the same book two years in a row. However! Not only is Anatomy an exciting new January release (out almost exactly one week from today), it’s also a delightfully gruesome Frankenstein-inspired YA horror. Hazel Sinnett’s only desire in life is to be a surgeon, healing bodies and maybe even finding a cure for the terrible Roman Plague that claimed her older brother’s life. She will do whatever it takes to overcome the barriers in her way, even dressing as a boy in order to attend classes on anatomy. When her ruse is discovered, however, Hazel finds herself thrown out of the classroom, leaving her no choice but to continue her studies of the human body in private. By any means necessary.

You’ll have to wait until August to get your hands on this Frankenstein adaptation, but everything I’ve read so far suggests it will be well worth the wait! Billed as a queer gender reversal of Mary Shelley’s original novel, the narrator of Unwieldy Creatures is a medical intern who finds her prized internship in the the country’s most prestigious embryologist lab upended when the renowned star scientist of the lab, Dr. Frank, has a breakdown and ends up couch surfing in the intern’s house. While she recovers, Dr. Frank tells the intern her story of an experiment gone wrong. A tale of ambition, murder, and bloody revenge.

Unwieldy Creatures doesn’t have a cover yet, nor is it available to pre-order, but the link above will take you to the publisher’s forthcoming titles page, so keep an eye out as we get closer to August!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of those early teen influences in my life that pretty much guaranteed I’d end up a horror fan. So obviously it is my great delight to include Kendare Blake’s forthcoming Buffy Universe novel on this list! Frankie Rosenberg, daughter of our favorite local witch, Willow, is a sophomore at New Sunnydale High (RIP old Sunnydale HS, you went through some shit) when her life is suddenly upended by a new girl who arrives at the school with word of an attack on the annual Slayer convention. With all the Slayers potentially slain (ba dum tish), a new hero must rise to take their place. But as a Slayer-Witch Frankie is the first of her kind, and it will take all the help her new friends can give if she has any chance of preventing (you guessed it!) the opening of the Hellmouth.

Alright my gruesome Gothic lovers, this one’s for you. Get ready for some corpse-stealing hijinks in 19th century Edinburgh and a whole lot of Frankenstein vibes. I had the chance to read this one a bit early and it’s honestly so entertaining, and just the right bit of creepy meets gross. (Like, corpse gore in your hair gross). Hazel Sinnett may have been born a lady, but her only desire in life is to be a surgeon, healing bodies and maybe even finding a cure for the terrible Roman Plague that claimed her older brother’s life. But when her disguise as a boy is uncovered and she’s expelled from her anatomy classes, Hazel finds herself forced to use more nefarious means to continue her studies. Enter Jack Currer, a resurrection man walking a thin line between poverty and plague. Hazel needs bodies, and Jack needs coin. It’s a perfect (and perfectly dreadful) arrangement.

Bonus points for having a cover that is drop dead GORGEOUS.

If you’ve already read your way through Castro’s 2021 releases, Goddess of Filth and The Queen of Cicadas, fear not! Because she’s ready and waiting to kick off your new year with a gorgeous, dark collection of short stories that you won’t want to miss. On the other hand, if you haven’t read any of Castro’s books yet, Mestiza Blood will make an excellent jumping off point! I’ve said more than once that when it comes to exploring a new author, I always go straight for a collection to get the best idea of their range and style. The stories in Mestiza Blood, for example, draw their inspiration from a variety of sources – from urban legends and Mexican folklore, to traditional horror archetypes and personal experience – and once again Castro delivers up the chills and nightmares her readers have come to expect.

This book kind of wrecked me, I’m not going to lie. I mean I expected it to be amazing, but I did not at all expect it to get under my skin the way it did. Such a Pretty Smile is about two figures, a mother and a daughter, and two timelines: Caroline in 2004, the young and talented artist finds herself married to a loser, struggling with her mental health, and unexpectedly pregnant just as a dark, buried secret from her past begins to reveal itself. Then there’s Lila in 2019, Caroline’s young daughter who is secretly in love with her (terrible) best friend Macie, and facing a mental crisis of her own as she chafes under her mother’s anxious control. Though there is evil a plenty to face, and monsters both literal and figurative, at its heart, Such a Pretty Smile is about not just survival after terrible trauma, but also the way in which mothers can hand their trauma down to their daughters, even when trying to protect them.

Content Warnings: there are definite content warnings for rape and sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and kidnapping, among other associated factors, which some readers might wish to avoid. If in doubt, check the early reviews.

This is how you do an anthology, people. This is the kind of TOC I would like to see more of! Over half of the authors in this collection are authors of color, and of the thirty, some total contributing authors about two-thirds are women. And not only is the TOC diverse, it’s also loaded with talent. If you’re looking for an anthology to kick off your 2022, definitely start here. Now, technically, Trouble the Waters is more broadly a SFF/Spec Fic anthology, which means that it’s not 100% horror, but with Nalo Hopkinson, Linda D. Addison, and Maurice Broaddus contributing to the collection, you know at least a few of the stories will be delightfully dark.

May I offer you some queer short fiction in these trying times? No but seriously, this anthology is everything that I want an anthology to be. Not only is it full of delightfully dark stories, but almost half of the thirty-some authors and artists who contributed to Unfettered Hexes are authors and artists of color, and two-thirds are women or nonbinary, or otherwise gender-nonconforming. You know there’s nothing I hate more than a largely white, straight, cis anthology – I’ve never bothered to hide my frustration about that – and I went through easily a dozen anthologies for this list trying to find one that had actually representation in its TOC. Thankfully, I remembered that Unfettered Hexes exists. This collection of dark speculative fiction is diverse, delicious, witchy perfection, and you couldn’t ask for a better collection of stories to fill out your midwinter evenings.

A.C. Wise’s 2021 new release, Wendy, Darling, was the first book of hers I’d ever read, and it instantly made a fan of me. So when I found out that one of my favorite indie horror presses, Undertow Publications, was publishing her new collection of short fiction (complete with that absolutely gorgeous cover) I made sure to pre-order my copy asap. Wise is one of those authors whose work is so gorgeous that it leaves you feeling starry-eyed when you finish reading, like you’ve just emerged from a dream. The synopsis for The Ghost Sequences describes these stories as “profoundly and intimately human” even when brimming with horrors and darkness – and I honestly couldn’t think of a better way to describe the appeal of Wise’s work. No matter the external monsters or dangers her stories present, the real heart of her work will always be its humanity.

Like a lot of single author collections – and a lot of anthologies, honestly – stories in Never Have I Ever veer freely to either side of the genre lines, from sci-fi to horror to fantasy and back again. Honestly that’s why I love collections by authors of dark fiction! You get the best of all possible variations. This is Yap’s debut collection, and I’m honestly so excited to see where she goes from here, because every one of these stories was a gem. They’re a mix of urban legends and stories inspired by the legends of the Philippines, and many of them also feature queer themes and/or characters. Which is always a plus! It’s such a great, creepy, creative collection that’s also suitably gruesome for folks who want their horror stories to contain a certain amount of viscera and monsters devouring children.

I honestly can’t believe that I haven’t recommended Hailey Piper’s new collection yet in The Fright Stuff. Someone ring the shame bell. I have made no secret of my adoration for Piper’s work. Her novella The Worm and His Kings is still one of my top horror reads, so obviously I was beyond excited to read Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy and get familiar with her short fiction as well. There are 18 stories in this collection, and they cover a range of themes and subgenres, which means there’s a little something for every kind of horror reader. If you want more queer horror in your life (and you know you do) then I highly recommend picking up a copy of Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy and filling your long evenings with a collection of stories that span everything from cosmic terror to terrifying fantasy.

Now, it’s true that the towns folk of Amity Falls aren’t forbidden from leaving, and other people aren’t forbidden from visiting. But buried as deep in the shadow of Blackspire Mountains as the village is, and surrounded as it is on all sides by a nearly impenetrable forest rumored to be full of devils, it’s safe to say that trips out of the village and visitors to it are… uncommon. Usually only supply parties travel through, providing the village with much needed goods that they aren’t able to produce themselves. When one of those parties goes missing, however, and a series of strange, unfortunate occurrences start to plague Amity Falls, it gets the locals wondering whether the devils in the forest have returned, with their dark promises and too tempting bargains.

You might remember A History of Wild Places from the December new releases newsletter last week! It is a brand new, shiny horror release that begins with two unexplained disappearances: Maggie St. James, author of dark, macabre children’s books, and Travis Wren, the private investigator who was hired to look for her. Years later, we have Theo, who has lived in Pastoral all his life, and knows very well that the community rule is no one in, no one out. People don’t leave Pastoral, and outsiders definitely don’t come to Pastoral. So when Theo discovers Travis’ long abandoned truck outside the border of the settlement, it raises a lot of questions about the supposedly isolated world into which he was born.

Technically, people can leave Bethel for the outside world in The Year of the Witching. But though it is possible to physically leave Bethel (though only with permission), leaving Bethel doesn’t really mean you’ve escaped Bethel, as we see all too clearly at one point in the book. On the whole, Bethel is a forbidding, insular community of people whose lives are dictated by a rigid, religious ruler. Their Prophet. Immanuelle, our heroine, is the unwanted child of the disgraced daughter of a once powerful man of the church, her birth brought her whole family down into the dust, and no matter how hard she tries to obey the laws of Bethel, she can never scrape free of her mother’s shame. But when a trip to the market gone awry finds Immanuelle deep in the confines of the forbidden Darkwood that surrounds Bethel – a place of witches, spirits, and evil – new secrets about her mother emerge and turn Immanuelle’s life on its head.

The Beauty is one of the strangest books (in the best possible way) that I have ever read. So, personally, I think its brilliant, and not just because it’s about creepy fungi. The Valley of the Rocks is a secluded, traditionalist society of people who have retreated from the outside world, seeking a new way of life. But the peaceful balance of the village is upended when a frightening fungal plague sweeps through the population, affecting and killing all the women. Now only a small population of men and boys survive, gathering each night to hear tales of the women they lost and believing themselves to be the last generation of humanity. Whether the fungal plague exists outside of the Valley of the Rocks is something we’re never told, it’s really up to the reader to decide, but the unexpected fallout from the plague is on full display as peculiar mushrooms start growing from the graves of the dead, taking human form.

I think Sorrowland might be the only title on this list where most of the action actually takes pace out in the “don’t go out there” zone, as a pregnant Vern flees the strict religious compound in which she was raised, Cainland, fleeing to the woods to give birth to her children. In the outside world, Vern does her best to survive in an unfamiliar world while evading the compound’s grasp. Unfortunately, wherever Vern goes, Cainland follows after, making true escape almost impossible. When Vern’s body begins to transform, metamorphizing into something new, powerful, and strange, it becomes clear why Cainland is so reluctant to let her go. Whatever she’s becoming is evidence of how deep the cult’s corruption goes.

Kicking off our list this month is Samantha Kolesnik’s newest novella, Waif, and can we just take a moment to admire that gorgeous pulp-style cover? You know I’m a sucker for clever cover design, and I just love everything about this one. Plus I think it really sells the gritty feel of the novel itself as we follow former housewife Angela on a strange, dangerous sexual journey into a treacherous underground of pornography and plastic surgery as she tries to escape the “dream” life that was killing her slowly. When Angela falls for a fetish film performer named Reena, and falls in with a queer gang called The Waifs, she finds herself forced to choose between the woman she used to be and the woman she’s becoming.

You know I love it best of all when fairy tales go bad, and twisted, and horrific. So of course I zeroed right in on Shea Earnshaw’s forthcoming book A History of Wild Places. It begins with two unexplained disappearances: Maggie St. James, author of dark, macabre children’s books, and Travis Wren, the private investigator who was hired to look for her. Travis has a talent for locating the missing, but when his search for Maggie leads him to a mysterious commune called Pastoral that’s not supposed to exist, he too vanishes into thin air. It’s only years later that Theo, who has lived in Pastoral all his life, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck outside the border of the community and begins to question the isolated world in which he was raised. But as Pastoral’s secrets begin to unravel, Theo may find himself faced with a truth far darker and more dangerous than expected.

Technically, Ahdieh’s The Beautiful Quartet series is more on the dark fantasy side of the dark fiction line than the horror side, but you know I love my dark fantasy novels, so I’m playing my Basically Weened on Anne Rice Card, and declaring that if vampires, then horror. Or horror-ish, anyway. Though I guess in the case of the The Righteous, if dark, menacing fae, then horror. I mean an angry Good Neighbor will fuck you up, let’s be honest. And Pippa knows that, she does, but when her best friend Celine (heroine of the first two books) suddenly disappears, Pippa has no choice but to travel into the treacherous world of the fae and try to bring Celine back. She’s done losing everything she loves, and she’ll do what ever it takes to find Celine, even if it means dealing with the dangerously charismatic Arjun Desai.

Speaking of ongoing series, if you’ve been waiting on novella number three in Sriduangkaew’s Her Pitiless Command series, your wait is almost over! Shattersteel continues the story that began in Sriduangkaew’s gorgeous dark, queer sci-fi/fantasy novella Winterglass, which you might remember from last month’s fairy tale retelling newsletter! But where in Winterglass Nuawa was a bold insurgent, determined to destroy the Winter Queen and end her reign of cold and darkness, Shattersteel finds her laid low. Her attempt to assassinate the queen has failed and now the weapon that Nuawa had so carefully turned herself into is just a tool that the Winter Queen can use. And one that the Queen would happily sacrifice to make her lover, General Lussadh, immortal at last. Unless Nuawa can stop her, and is willing to pay the cost to do so. This final attempt to kill the Queen might just succeed, but if it does, Nuawa will lose not only her soul, but Lussadh as well.

I mean, was I supposed to NOT include Alex White’s new Star Trek book? What, when I am still absolutely obsessed with their recent Alien tie-in novel, Into Charybdis, and when I’m such a Star Trek fan? Please. Now excuse me, I have to marathon Deep Space Nine so I can read this book when it comes out. When Trill Trade Commissioner Etom Prit askes Jadzia Dax to help recover his wayward granddaughter from a resort casino while on shore leave, it seems like an easy favor to do for an old friend. But the Nemi she finds when she arrives planet side isn’t the young woman she remembers, and Dax’s struggle to find the truth of what happened to Nemi will expose a terrifying web of secrets and lies.