Category: The Fright Stuff

Being able to see the dead is just a part of who Jake Livingston is, just like being one of the only Black kids in his exclusive prep school, or being less popular than his well-liked older brother. But while being a teenager can be an endless series of threats–social, emotional, physical–some more serious than others, at least the dead can be relied upon to be predictable. Most are just harmless fragments of lost life, stuck in a loop of their own death. Sad but safe. Until Sawyer, a powerful vengeful ghost with the ability to put Jake’s very life in danger. In life, Sawyer committed a terrible act of violence, shooting six kids at a local high school and then himself. In death he has plans, and those plans require Jake.

There are a lot of amazing horror books coming out this summer (Seriously. My bank account weeps.), but this one is particularly high on my radar. Two girls–Logan, whose dads are the stars of the popular TV ghost hunting show ParaSpectors, and Ashley, a Snakebite native whose boyfriend has gone missing–face off against a small town full of secrets, slipping slowly into chaos. The ghost of Ashley’s boyfriend has begun haunting her and the only only one she can trust is Logan, even as their investigation into the town’s secrets threatens everything they believe they know about Snakebite, their families, and themselves.

Sometimes friendships end quietly. Transitions in our lives nudge us apart from the people we thought we knew better than everyone, and who we thought we’d know forever, and we just drift apart. It’s so gradual you don’t even notice it happening until they’re gone. Andrew and Eddie were best friends, closer than brothers. And when Eddie left to start his graduate program, Andrew knew that he’d be only six months behind him. Until that day, a few days before Andrew was supposed to leave for Nashville, when Eddie died by suicide and left behind a life that Andrew realizes he knew nothing about. A secret life full of strangers and grisly phantoms, lies, secrets; a dark, ugly family history and an Eddie he never knew who spent his days bouncing from a cutthroat academic world to a seedy underground world of vice and violence. Now it’s up to Andrew to discover who his friend really was before Eddie’s secret life can consume him as well.

Are you tired of me talking about this book yet? Not sorry! I’m so excited about this book. I finally have an ARC on my Kindle and it is just staring me down, waiting for me to finish my pre-determined reading list for this month. Though if any book can tempt me to break from The List, it will probably be Flowers for the Sea. Survivors of a flooded land exist in isolation, fighting for their continued survival on an ark. Supplies are dwindling, hungry, terrifying sea monsters circle – in other words, circumstances are NOT ideal. Among the survivors is Iraxi, pregnant with a child that may not be entirely human. The future of the ark and its survivors is uncertain, and Iraxi’s own fate may be darker still.

Jessica, is there anything that Hailey Piper writes that you won’t buy? Probably no. Particularly when it has to do with vagina dentata – because you know that’s going to be wild. Also have you seen that cover? It’s so pink! I love it! When Yaya Betancourt discovers that she has spouted teeth in her vagina, she assumes that it is a side effect of a pharmaceutically-induced genetic condition that she and thousands of others developed in the womb with a little help from AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical. Whoops. But when she realizes that ABP is determined to hunt her down after her incident of toothy sprouting, and when her condition suddenly… worsens, Yaya has to consider the possibility that there may be another, darker motive behind ABP’s pursuit.

Quick Note: If you don’t want to wait until the trade paperback release in November, there are still a few weeks to pre-order a special hardcover edition!

I’m a big fan of anything Piper writes at this point, but this was particularly my brand of horror. Set in the New York City of the ‘90s, where it’s easy for people to just disappear and never to be seen again, Worm’s protagonist Monique is on a quest to find her missing girlfriend, Donna. But she’s not the only one who has disappeared in recent days, and as other impoverished women start to vanish from the city streets, Monique begins to hear rumors of monsters stalking the city’s underbelly. In order to save Donna, Monique must follow the rumors deep into the world below New York, a subterranean kingdom of creatures, cultists, and an even more terrible, ancient evil lurking there in the dark.

Okay, so, not actually from the last few years. Technically Zárate’s cult vampire novella was published in 1998, but this gorgeous translation by David Bowles finally made this title available to English-language readers just this year. So I’m counting it! The Route of Ice and Salt is a queer retelling of a small portion of the plot of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: the journey of the doomed Demeter. Varna to Whitby is a route the steadfast captain of the Demeter has traveled many times, alone among his men, dreams full of longings and pleasures he cannot permit himself. But something about this journey is different. Wrong. Rumors spread that something evil is stalking the captain’s ship and the crew are uneasy, looking to their captain to protect them.

There are not enough dark fantasy polyamory stories in my life. Which is probably why I bought The Ravenous Dark before I even knew what it was really about. Throw in some magic and undead spirits and honestly what else do you need? In Thanopolis, undead spirits are used to control and guard the magically gifted. People like Rovan, whose life was upended when her magic was revealed. Now, surrounded by deceit and danger, she finds herself falling for both a rebellious princess, and the very spirit that now controls her body and soul. But can she trust them? Or will a dangerous secret that threatens all of Thanopolis force her to choose: give into her heart, or betray those she loves.

If you’re looking for something more romantic, delightfully queer, and more moderately scary (versus scare your pants off scary) for your Pride TBR, Aiden Thomas’ Cemetery Boys is the book for you. Yadriel is determined to prove to his traditional family that he is a real brujo so that they will finally accept his true gender. But when he sets out to find and free the spirit of his murdered cousin he accidentally summons the ghost of resident school bad boy, Julian Diaz, who now refuses to leave him alone. Until Yadriel helps Julian find out what happened to him, Julian is determined that he isn’t going anywhere.

Why have only one Dracula retelling on a list when you can have two? Plus, I could (and will if you let me) talk about this book forever. A Dowry of Blood is the story of Dracula’s brides, told from the perspective of Constanta, the first of three brides whom Dracula creates to be his companions over the course of the novel. It is written as a farewell letter to the man she loved and hated in equal measure, detailing a hundred lifetimes of tenderness, abuse, and the unexpected love that develops between her and her fellow brides. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and one of the most beautiful.

You know how much I love carnival and circus horror, but be forewarned: Veronica Henry’s June release may be called Bacchanal, but it’s no party. The titular Bacchanal Carnival conceals a terrible evil behind the veneer of a traveling Depression-era carnival, roaming the South. But Eliza Meeks, its newest member, is unaware of the danger. To her, the carnival is her only way out of Baton Rouge, and she quickly finds herself at home among the troupe of performers, carnies, and barkers, many of whom are far stranger than Eliza and her unusual gift of speaking to animals. She has no idea that an ancient demon resides at the heart of Bacchanal, preying on the innocent, or that she may be the only one capable of defeating it.

I don’t even have words for how excited I am about this book. I basically just spend my days refreshing my Barnes & Noble order page, waiting for it to ship… Okay I exaggerate. But seriously this is going to be complete catnip and I’m so ready. I blame Angela Carter for the fact that I’m helpless in the face of any dark fantasy fantasy retelling of Red Riding Hood. She ruined me, and Whitten is going to finish the job. Red is a Second Daughter, the first in centuries, which means that her one purpose in life is to be sacrificed. The Wolf in the Wood holds the world’s gods captive and every second daughter born is sacrificed in hopes that he might release them. But what she finds in the depths of the Wilderwood is a tangle of lies, and everything she thought she knew about her world comes undone.

(Oh. This one is going to hit me right in the obsessed Dragon Age fan feels, I can already tell.)

At this point if V. Castro writes a book I barely stop to read the synopsis before I buy. Her books are just THAT good. This one, in particularly, I’m super excited for! In 2018, Belinda Alvarez returns to south Texas to attend her best friend’s wedding at a picturesque farm that happens to be the site of an eerie urban legend: La Reina de Las Chicharras. The Queen of the Cicadas. A murdered farmworker in the 1950s made a deal with an Aztec goddess of death to live again and take her vengeance on those who hurt her and those who forgot her. Now, as the legend unfolds, Belinda finds that her life – and that of the farmhouse owner, Hector – is entwined with that of the murdered woman, Milagros. As the two become immersed in the past it becomes clear that Milagros’ fate may be theirs as well.

Okay, so, I’m REALLY excited about this book. Playing up the isolation of a world before cellphones, and the vast emptiness of rural highways, Sager sets the stage for what promises to be a heart pounding new thriller guaranteed to keep us guessing! Charlie Jordan is a grief-stricken college student sharing the long ride home to Ohio with another student she barely knows. Josh claims that he’s hurrying home to help care for his sick father, and Charlie is fleeing her survivor guilt after her best friend fell prey to the Campus Killer, a serial offender stalking the college grounds. But trapped in a car with Josh on an empty highway in the middle of the night, Charlie starts to have doubts about her traveling companion. Now Charlie loves movies, she’s even named after a Hitchcock heroine, so it could just be her murder-fueled imagination talking. But there are holes in Josh’s story, and something in the trunk he doesn’t want her to see.

On a dark and stormy night (yes, literally), a woman on the run takes shelter in an abandoned groundskeeper’s cottage at the edge of a cemetery in the town of Blighty. Frankly, I think it sounds positively peaceful but then again I have noisy neighbors. And technically, so does Keira. Because while to others the cemetery would appear still and silent, Kiera can hear the dead whispering all around her. The cemetery is alive with the ghosts of those recently, and not so recently, departed, led by a woman who died before her time who begins to haunt Keira when she realizes that the living woman can see her. With the clock of her life running down, Keira races to unearth the dark secrets of Blighty’s past that will not let the woman’s spirit rest.

I honestly don’t have words for how excited I am for this book. All I know is that it had me at slasher homage, and August can’t come too soon. Most people think of small towns as intimate places where “everyone knows everyone” and everyone is at home. But when you are an outcast – the one person who doesn’t belong in a town that everyone else calls home – a small town can be the loneliest place in the world. Jade Daniels is the outcast in Proofrock, a small lake town slowly being overrun by gentrification. In her anger and her loneliness, Jade turns to horror for comfort, letting herself get lost in a world of masked killers and revenge. But when Proofrock’s wealthy newcomers begin dying in bizarre ways, Jade realizes that there is a familiar pattern to their deaths. A pattern that only she can see, and that may foretell a massacre in the making.

Lauren’s small town of Smith’s Hollow has a serious amnesia problem. Because they forgot that a year ago her father was found murdered with his heart ripped out, and even though the bodies of two girls have just been found torn apart, Lauren knows that it’s just a matter of time before they’re forgotten too. The police will never find the killer, and everyone will just move on. But somewhere out there in the woods a monster lurks and Lauren is determined to track it down before it can kill anyone else. She’s not going to “just move on” like everyone else, even if hunting the monster means uncovering frightening truths about the small town she calls home.

For Marigold, recently arrived from her California hometown by the sea, Cedarville is supposed to be a new beginning. But there’s something sinister lurking beneath the renovated façade of their new house, tucked between its rundown neighbors like a beacon of revitalization and change. Things move on their own, doors open, lights turn off. Marigold sees shadows, hears voices, and there’s a bad smell inside the house that no one else seems to notice. The more Marigold learns about the house, however, the more she realizes that the danger isn’t contained just within its walls. All of Cedarville is haunted by secrets from its past that will no longer be contained.

In Courtney Gould’s forthcoming small town horror, two girls–Logan, whose dads are the stars of the popular TV ghost hunting show ParaSpectors, and Ashley, a Snakebite native whose boyfriend has gone missing–face off against a small town full of secrets, slipping slowly into chaos. Ashley’s boyfriend was only the first in a string of teenage disappearances, only the dead have returned, and even the weather has turned unnatural. What’s more, the dead are not sleeping easy. The ghost of Ashley’s boyfriend has begun haunting her and the only one she can trust is Logan, even as their investigation into the town’s secrets threatens everything they believe they know about Snakebite, their families, and themselves.

Dark Lullaby was one of those impulse buy books where the minute I read the synopsis I went straight to my buyer of choice and added it to my cart. Toted as Black Mirror meets The Handmaid’s Tale, Dark Lullaby is set in a near future society where parenting is strictly monitored and children not being reared to the exacting requirements of the Office of Standards in Parenting are Extracted. Kit thinks she knows the risks when she decides to have a child, and that she can live up to the depends of the OSIP. But when she comes under the Office’s scrutiny she has to decide how far she will go to protect her family.

Any book about the tragic death of a child is going to be a harrowing read, and Crossroads is as much about grief as it is about ghosts. Chris’ son Trey dies in a tragic car crash and takes her whole world with him. Until the day a drop of her blood falls on her son’s roadside memorial and changes everything. That night Chris sees her son’s ghost outside her window – or so she believes. But is it really her son? Or does something far more sinister lurk behind the face of the child she lost? And how deeply will Chris entangle herself with these dark forces if it means seeing Trey alive again?

Rivers Solomon’s newest book – hot off the presses from its May 4th release! – is about the metamorphic nature of motherhood, and what one mother will do to protect her children from the world in which she was raised. Vern fled the strict religious compound in which she grew up when she was seven months pregnant and took shelter in the woods, where she gives birth to twins. But the community she fled will not give her up so easily, and when Vern is forced to fight back against them her body begins to undergo a series of strange and frightening metamorphoses.

You’ll have to wait a couple of months for Catherine McCarthy’s forthcoming novel Immortelle (July 15) but it is definitely going to be worth the wait. Elinor, a ceramic artist whose work is inspired by her grandmother’s interest in the supernatural, bends her craft to its own supernatural purpose when her daughter Rowena is murdered. Elinor is sure she knows who is responsible, so she crafts an immortelle out of clay in the shape of a starling to try and capture Rowena’s spirit. As word of her skill spreads, Elinor is soon overwhelmed by requests for immortelles, her power growing with each crafting. And as the dead whisper their secrets and the truth about her daughter’s murder is revealed, Elinor begins to craft her terrible revenge.

Zin E Rocklyn’s Flowers for the Sea (October 19) is yet another reason to wish that October would hurry up and get here this year! I’m so excited about this book. Survivors of a flooded land exist in isolation, fighting for their continued survival on an ark. Supplies are dwindling, hungry, terrifying sea monsters circle – in other words, circumstances are NOT ideal. Among the survivors is Iraxi, pregnant with a child that may not be entirely human. The future of the ark and its survivors is uncertain, and Iraxi’s own fate may be darker still.

Cirque Berserk is seriously becoming one of my go-to recommendations. Not only does it fit into so many categories that I love (creepy carnival horror, retro-horror, coming of age massacres), it’s hands down a really good book. In the summer of 1989, disaster strikes the town of Shadows Creek, Florida when a group of teens massacred a dozen people at the local carnival and then vanished. Thirty years later a new group of teens escape their boring senior trip and decide to explore the mystery of the infamous Cirque Berserk, unaware of the bloody dangers that lurk behind its gates.

Set in the New York City of the ‘90s, where it’s easy for people to just disappear and never to be seen again, Worm’s protagonist Monique is on a quest to find her missing girlfriend Donna. But it’s not just Donna who has vanished, and as other impoverished women start to disappear from the city streets, Monique begins to hear rumors of monsters stalking the city’s underbelly. In order to save Donna, Monique must follow the rumors deep into the world below New York, a subterranean kingdom of creatures, cultists, and an even more terrible, ancient evil lurking there in the dark.

Okay so I know that this is one of those books that I keep recommending over and over again but it’s just so good. The Last Final Girl is a love letter to slasher films, and in particular to the glory that is ’80s horror. Homecoming Queen Lindsay is a final girl. She survived – barely – the brutal attentions of Billie Jean, the sadistic murder in a Michael Jackson mask who was determined to kill her. She’s a legend. But Billie Jean isn’t done with Lindsey, and Lindsey’s not the only final girl in town. When the masked killer slaughters her royal court, Lindsay replaces them with other final girls, stacking the decks in her favor. One psycho killer vs a homecoming court full of final girls, all competing to be the last survivor standing when the credits roll.

I had the chance to read Mina and the Undead before it was released earlier this year and it really hit me right in the nostalgia sweet spot. If The Last Final Girl is a tribute to slasher films, this is Amy McCaw’s love letter to the vampire genre. Seventeen-year-old Mina travels from England to New Orleans to visit with her estranged sister Libby, excited to explore a city as steeped in vampire literary references as her home town of Whitby. But Mina gets more than she bargained for when she becomes embroiled in a series of violent murders that all seem to point to Libby. Technically, Mina and the Undead has only been released in the UK, but luckily you can still order a copy through Book Depository!

Okay so Hendrix’s forthcoming book isn’t set in the ’80s or the ’90s like the rest of these books, but I had to include it on this list. Because The Final Girl Support Group wouldn’t exist without the horror of the late ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. We all know who the final girl is, most horror fans can name at least a handful without really having to think about it. She’s the one who survives. She’s the one who fights back. She’s every horror villain’s worst nightmare because her life spells their death. But what happens with the credits roll and the monster IS dead, but the final girl is still left standing? Lynnette is one of a group of former final girls who, years later, are just trying to put their lives back together. Until one of them goes missing.

Set in 1902, Plain Bad Heroines tells the linked stories of two sets of girls whose lives are entwined in the history of a mysterious New England boarding school (It’s always New England, right? All we have up here are creepy small towns and creepy, isolated boarding schools, apparently). There’s Flo and Clara, who were students at the school and died tragically, and over a century later, there’s Harper and Audrey, who are playing Flo and Clara in a horror film about their gruesome deaths and the supposedly haunted and cursed Gilded-Age school. When past and present get tangled up during filming what is real and what is fiction becomes increasingly uncertain.

Set in the famous (or, in many ways, infamous) Lowell Textile Mills in 19th century Massachusetts, Malerich’s horror novella is about two young women embroiled in a worker’s strike at the mills. The success of the strike means fair wages, safe working conditions, and decent room and board for all the mill girls. So Judith, a newcomer to Lowell and ringleader of the strike, and Hannah, her best friend and possible love, will do whatever it takes to to make sure this strike does not fail. Thankfully, they’ve got witchcraft on their side to make sure the picket line holds.

Set in Prohibition Georgia, Ring Shout imagines an alternative history of the South in which D.W. Griffith’s terrible The Birth of a Nation is actually a spell that gathers its power from the dark thoughts and wishes at the heart of the country and raises the Klan into a place of prominence as they spearhead a plot to unleashed a terrible evil. But whiskey bootlegger and magic sword wielder Maryse Boudreaux – along with her companions, a foul-mouth sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter – is ready to fight back. Her mission is to destroy the monstrous Klan members, she’s damn good at it, and she’ll do whatever it takes to stem the tide of hate that threatens to consume her entire world.

Ah, the Victorian Age. Era of extravagance. Era of invention. Era… of fucking creepy dolls. Now, I’ll grant you, the painted wooden figure in Purcell’s The Silent Companions is not exactly one of the terrifying porcelain faced dolls of my nightmares. But it’s still creepy. Terrifying really. And it looks uncannily like our heroine. Elsie was widowed almost as soon as she was married, her dreams of a luxurious life are in danger, her servants are resentful strangers, and the local villagers are downright hostile, making her a prisoner inside the home she once coveted. But she’s not alone in this prison, because behind a locked door she finds the strange wooden figure. One that terrifies the locals, though she doesn’t know why. One that has her face. And though she tries to dismiss it all as superstition and the strain of grief, there is something deeply unsettling about the way it follows her with its eyes.

1926, Shanghai. Two gangs locked in a bloody feud have submerged the city in chaos in this Romeo and Juliette-inspired dark tale of vengeance and monsters. Eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai is heir to the Scarlet Gang, a powerful criminal network and the rivals of the White Flowers, with whom they have been at war for hundreds of years. Roma Montagov is, you guessed it, the heir to the White Flowers. Roma is also Juliette’s first love and the one who brutally betrayed her. Is there any thing better than lovers-to-enemies? So much loathing mixed with longing. So much unresolved sexual tension. But when a strange contagion starts to spread through both gangs, causing members to go mad and claw their own throats out in the end, Roma and Juliette have no choice but the try and put their past aside and work together to fight this unknown evil before all of Shanghai falls victim.

I ordered the books in this newsletter based on released date, not on how badly I want to read them. But I have to confess that I might have put this one first regardless, because I am desperate to get my hands on it. This also gives me a chance to once again recommend this dark fantasy series to horror readers looking for books that successfully bridge the genre lines. As much cosmic horror (so. many. eyes.) as it is dark fantasy, this Slavic-inspired setting is peopled with bloody magic, hungry gods, and (again) so SO many eyeballs. In places that eyeballs really should not be. Blessed Monsters is the final book in this trilogy, so if you’ve been looking for a completed series to marathon, now’s your chance!

I’ve already had the pleasure of reading Near the Bone, and it is 100% everything I want in a horror novel. The isolation, the deep and growing sense of dread, it’s fantastic. Mattie and William have been living on the mountain for longer than she can remember, just the two of them. Until the day that Mattie finds a mutilated fox in the woods and realizes that there is someone or something on the mountain with them. Lurking in the trees, making terrible noises, savaging the wildlife with sharp teeth and claws. But when a group of strangers appears to hunt the creature in the woods they don’t just pose a threat to the monster. Their unwelcome presence makes William angry, and Mattie knows how dangerous it can be when William gets angry.

From the author of last year’s chilling The Silence of the Bones comes a new story about families, secrets, and deception. Hwani’s family and life have fallen apart ever since she and her younger sister vanished and were found unconscious in the forest on the edge of a crime scene. Though the family fled their small village to escape the incident, some histories are not so easily banished. Years later Hawni’s father, Detective Min, is drawn back to their hometown by the unsolved cases of 13 other girls who recently vanished under similar circumstances as his own daughters. But when he returns to investigate, he too vanishes, leaving Hwani to follow in his footsteps in an attempt to find her father and finally put an end to the mystery that tore her family apart.

Based on the early reviews I’ve seen, Witches Steeped in Gold is going to be a deliciously dark edition to both the fantasy and horror genres. This Jamaican-inspired fantasy pits two enemy witches against a powerful queen, forcing them into an uneasy alliance in order to take her down. Iraya has lived her whole life in a cell, plotting her revenge. Jasmyne is the queen’s daughter, and determined not to be the next body in a long line of daughters sacrificed to strengthen their mother’s power. Though she and Iraya are sworn enemies, they are left with no choice but to combine forces and pursue, at any cost, the queen who threatens both their lives.

Okay so by now we all know that I adore a short fiction collections, yes? And since I also have an obsession with themes of transformation in horror (thanks Mary Shelley), obviously I am super excited for trans author Callum Angus’ forthcoming debut collection A Natural History of Transition. Angus’ collection “disrupts the notion that trans people can only have one transformation” as its characters undergo incredible, unusual, and at times alarming changes, exploring what it means to “become”. Described as a mix of alternative history, horror, and magic steeped realism, Angus’ first collection promises to be a memorable introduction to a talented new author.