Category: The Fright Stuff

You’ll also hear me mention this one on this week’s All the Books podcast. Noemi Broussard longs to leave the reservation she grew up on behind, but her plans are dashed when her boyfriend, Roddy, dies under mysterious circumstances. Everyone assumes it was by suicide, but to Noemi, the story just isn’t adding up. Something strange is happening on the reservation, and Noemi is determined to get to the bottom of it, no matter how terrifying the truth may be.

From Philip K. Dick Award finalist Elwin Cotman comes a thought-provoking short story collection that explores the horrors of living in the world as a Black person. These seven literary horror stories call upon the fantastical and the supernatural to explore the very real fears and anxieties of being Black in our contemporary world. From a town controlled by a violent tree that punishes children to a day of LARPing that takes a surprising turn, these inventive stories will definitely surprise you.

Here’s the only book this week that isn’t sci-fi, but it’s too good not to share. When a young boy is found dead and all the blood drained from his body, the citizens of the small Alaskan town Deadhart know what happened to him. And who was responsible. A death like this hasn’t occurred in the past 25 years, but everyone knows about the Colony, a community of vampyrs living deep in the woods.

And yes, this is the book that inspired this week’s theme. This new horror sci-fi mash-up is set on an abandoned planet. Here, psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray will establish residency with a small exploration crew. Ophelia hopes to help the crew recover from the recent loss of their colleague, who died under tragic circumstances. But not long after the group arrives on the planet, it becomes clear to Ophelia that the crew is hiding something. They seem uninterested in opening up to Ophelia about what happened, instead spending their days exploring this strange and mysterious planet. Then, their pilot is violently murdered, and despite the lack of trust amongst the group, they must now all work together to figure out what happened.

We’ve got two new horror short story collections to kick off April! The first is an anthology featuring stories where (you guessed it) the Black girls survive the horrors they are forced to face. Authors include Erin E. Adams, Monica Brashears, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Desiree S. Evans, Saraciea J. Fennell, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Daka Hermon, Justina Ireland, L.L. McKinney, Brittney Morris, Maika & Maritza Moulite, Eden Royce, and Vincent Tirado. The foreword is by Tananarive Due.

If you read Eric LaRocca’s Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and thought, “Okay, this is pretty messed up, but I WANT MORE,” get ready for four even more intense short stories from this Bram Stoker Award-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author.

I’ve been hyping this one up for some time, and it’s here this week! Hooray! We’re finally getting the final chapter in Stephen Graham Jones’ Indian Lake Trilogy. Four years after the events of the first novel, our heroine Jade Daniels has returned to Proofrock, Idaho, to rebuild her life after protecting her friend Letha and her family all those years ago. It’s also a chance for one final confrontation, to face the Lake Witch and end the curse once and for all.

I’m so obsessed with this cover! My copy just came in the mail, and I was immediately like, “Oh yes, this is top-tier horror novel cover design stuff right here.” But also, this story sounds soooo creepy, and I can’t wait to dive in. This is a story about a family vacation gone very, very wrong. The Pace family has planned a vacation in a remote villa in Monteperso. But, for Anna Pace, who has always felt like an outsider in her family, this is all way too much family time. And now, to make matters worse, she keeps hearing strange noises at night, and the villagers approach the family with unsettling warnings about the villa’s violent past.

Okay, let’s talk about the queer horror new releases that inspired this week’s focus on LGBTQ+ stories. First up, a new horror anthology that features 16 stories by queer authors that explore and subvert the tragic “bury your gays” trope. This includes new stories from Cassandra Khaw, Joe Koch, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Robbie Banfitch, August Clarke, Son M., Jonathan Louis Duckworth, M.V. Pine, Ed Kurtz, LC Von Hessen, Matteo L. Cerilli, November Rush, Meredith Rose, Charlene Adhiambo, Violet, and Thomas Kearnes.

And we’re getting a new one from Lee Mandelo — author of Summer Sons and Feed them Silence — this week. Set in Appalachia in the 1920s, The Woods All Black is a queer historical romance/horror story/revenge thriller. When Leslie Brun is sent to the township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, he believes he’s truly ready for the judging eyes of Spar Creek’s backwoods/churchy inhabitants. But something violent is bubbling beneath the surface in this town, and the hills and the woods surrounding Spar Creek contain secrets and horrors beyond Leslie’s comprehension.

We’re talking monsters this week, so I have to mention this new Frankenstein adaptation that just came out this month. Against the backdrop of a United States politicizing the reanimation process, an unnamed paralegal is brought back to life. All memories of his life pre-reanimation have been lost, and as he searches for answers on the life he left behind, he falls in love with a lawyer named Faustina Godínez and comes to terms with a world that would rather he didn’t exist.

Okay, not a monster novel (sorry), but this is a book I hyped late last year, so now I have to ring the alarm and alert everyone that it’s out. Meaning, you can go read it right now. Twenty years ago, Velkwood Street and everyone who lived there disappeared overnight. The only ones who survived were three best friends. They watched their homes and their loved ones disappear behind a near-impenetrable veil that’s now known as the Velkwood Vicinity. But what happened all those years ago? Now that a researcher is tracking down the survivors, will they finally be able to get answers?

Another classic haunted house story, The Shining, follows a writer and his family as they stay at the Overlook Hotel in the off-season. Jack Torrence has plenty of time to work on his novel while serving as caretaker of the hotel. This could even be an opportunity to repair his relationship with his wife and young son. As they are snowed in, though, the claustrophobia and the supernatural forces that haunt the hotel make for a deadly combination.

There are plenty of modern haunted house stories that give the classics a run for their money, starting with The Good House. When Angela lived in her grandmother’s house for a summer years ago, a tragedy upended her world. Now, she’s ready to return and face her past, but she finds that her hometown has been wracked with tragedies since she has been gone. Angela discovers that something awoke in the house that summer, and she is determined to solve the puzzle of how to end this cycle for good.

Stephen Graham Jones is one of the best horror authors writing today, known for The Only Good Indians and the Indian Lake Trilogy, but he also has written an unsettling haunted house novella! In Mapping the Interior, a 15-year-old boy sees the ghost of his father in his home. He races to follow the figure, but he soon finds himself lost. He spends the next few nights trying to map the strange dimensions of this house, but when his obsession puts his little brother in danger, he’ll risk everything to save him.

Every night, Yewon dreams of a hotel with infinite keys to infinite rooms. She can’t control her dreams of this place, a place that’s horrifying and intriguing all at once. As Yewon’s real life gets further and further out of her control, she finds herself retreating more and more into her dreams, to the strange hotel in her mind.

Simone St. James has established herself as a must-read if you love twisty supernatural horror thrillers. And her latest is out tomorrow. In the summer of 1995, Eddie and April Carter are driving to their honeymoon hotel when they see something disturbing on the side of the road: a hitchhiker covered in blood and on the brink of death. Even though they rush her to the hospital, she dies, and the young couple become suspects in a murder. What’s more, this is only one of several murders that have occurred recently on that same road. As April and Eddie dig into the history of the town in the hopes of clearing their name, they discover that something supernatural might be going on in Coldlake Falls.

This gothic horror novel is described as Carrie meets The Exorcist. Amara is the daughter of the village Capuwa, or demon priest. Normally, her father is who everyone turns to when anything supernatural happens in the village. But now, something is attacking people in the jungle, and everyone thinks Amara’s father is behind the attacks. As Amara works to clear her father’s name, she also uncovers unsettling truths about her own past.

S.T. Gibson, the author of A Dowry of Blood, is back with a reimagining of the classic sapphic vampire story Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. From the very first day Laura Sheridan enters Saint Perpetua’s College, she finds herself in an intense and surprisingly passionate rivalry with fellow student Carmilla. But rivalry turns into obsession as the two become more deeply entrenched in each other’s lives and that of their strange and darkly mysterious poetry professor, De Lafontaine.

Here’s a new ghosty book to get us started: the supernatural historical horror novel The Warm Hands of Ghosts. During the First World War, Laura Iven is a combat nurse who is discharged only to find out shortly after that her brother Freddie died in combat. Only, Laura is sure it isn’t true. Searching for the truth, Laura returns to Belgium in search of her brother. Everywhere, people whisper about ghosts in the trenches. Laura wonders if her brother really is still alive or if something else has happened to him.

Also out now is the highly anticipated sequel to What Moves the Dead. Retired soldier Alex Easton has escaped the Usher manor and heads to their family’s hunting lodge in the country of Gallacia. But when they arrive, nothing is as it should be. The caretaker has died, and there is talk in the village of a horrible monster who has taken residence there.