Category: The Fright Stuff

We’ve got some exciting indie releases coming out in November! First up: Here’s an excellent new horror short story collection that’s out this week. Yah Yah Scholfield’s stories incorporate Southern Gothic and Afro-Gothic elements to tell spine-tingling stories that explore nature, religion, and the body.

Caroline Hardaker’s Mothtown mixes horror and literary fiction with truly chilling illustrations from bestselling illustrator and political cartoonist, Chris Riddell. No one would tell David what was going on. They told him it was to protect him. But even as a child, David knew something was wrong. Children kept going missing, and there were rumors of nests of bones spread across the mountains. Now, at 26, David lives on his own and tries to forget the horrors of his past. But then a strange package shows up on his doorstep…

We’ve got some exciting indie releases coming out in November! First up: Here’s an excellent new horror short story collection that’s out this week. Yah Yah Scholfield’s stories incorporate Southern Gothic and Afro-Gothic elements to tell spine-tingling stories that explore nature, religion, and the body.

Caroline Hardaker’s Mothtown mixes horror and literary fiction with truly chilling illustrations from bestselling illustrator and political cartoonist, Chris Riddell. No one would tell David what was going on. They told him it was to protect him. But even as a child, David knew something was wrong. Children kept going missing, and there were rumors of nests of bones spread across the mountains. Now, at 26, David lives on his own and tries to forget the horrors of his past. But then a strange package shows up on his doorstep…

We’ve got a couple of thriller/horror hybrids from two fan-favorite authors. First up, a new one from Darcy Coates. Who is the Stitcher? Something more terrifying than anything you can imagine. Abby Ward and her sister Hope live by strict guidelines. In their town, people go missing, and when they’re found, their bodies have been dismembered and put back together in strange ways. So, of course, they understand why they have to be so careful. But then Hope goes missing, and the police say there’s nothing they can do. Now, Abby must find her sister before she is literally torn apart.

This unnerving story is the latest from Christina Henry. It’s the story of three women who find themselves in three different but equally strange situations. Celia wakes up in a life that isn’t hers, with no idea of how she got there. Allie and her friends go on an unexpected trip to a cabin in the woods, and Allie can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Meanwhile, Maggie has been kidnapped and forced into playing a deadly survival game. These women have no idea how they found themselves in these situations, but they will have to find their way out.

I’m living for this cover, friends. Now that 18-year-old Sunny Lee’s pop star career has crash-landed, all she can do is reflect on the past. Once upon a time, she and her best friends Candie and Mina were inseparable. But then Mina unexpectedly jumped to her death, and everything changed. Now, Sunny has a chance to attend a K-Pop workshop with Candie and get some answers. But instead of getting the closure she wants, Sunny finds herself haunted by strange visions, and the other competitors in the workshop start getting hurt.

We Are the Crisis is the second book in Cadwell Turnbull’s Convergence Saga. A few years after the events of No Gods, No Monsters, the world is still reeling from the revelation that supernatural creatures actually exist. A werewolf pack is investigating the disappearance of some of their members, and the pro-monster activist group New Era is trying to work to bridge the conflict between monsters and humans and fight against the human-supremacist group, the Black Hand. As conflicts escalate, they reveal dark secrets about the gods that could change everything.

We’ve got a bunch of exciting new horror releases coming out tomorrow, which is not surprising because, like I said, HALLOWEEN. But these are the ones I’m most excited about. First up, Nestlings by Nat Cassidy. This one’s giving serious Rosemary’s Baby vibes. After a horrifically difficult birth, Ana is scarred in more ways than one. Now, she and her husband, Reid, are desperate for some good news. When they win an affordable apartment in one of New York’s most preeminent apartment buildings, they think this is it. But if something seems too good to be true, then you know it probably is.

At long last, this novel is finally coming out this Halloween! I feel like it’s been forever since we’ve gotten a new Tananarive Due novel, and it’s finally here! After kicking a white boy’s leg, Robert Stephen Jones Jr. is sent to Gracetown School for Boys in Gracetown, Florida. The reform school is a house of horrors full of racism, injustice, and the ghosts of the boys who died there.

Last but not least, this incredible horror novella is out this Halloween as well. Following the death of her estranged father, Rita wins a week-long artist’s residency in a secluded cabin. This is an opportunity for Rita to spend a week focusing on her painting, but it’s also a chance for her to reconnect with the father she never knew. After all, this cabin is located close to where her father grew up. But you’re a horror fan, so you know a cabin in the woods is always a site for creepy things.

So today, I went into Starbucks, and they were already playing Christmas music. I was so upset! Let us have Halloween first, right? Well…I hate to say it, but October means it’s time for Christmas book releases as well. That’s just the way it is, friends. Thankfully, we have Christmas horror to look forward to! This anthology is a collection of horror set during the winter solstice. It includes new works from some of the horror greats, including Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, and Josh Malerman. It hits shelves tomorrow!

Horror anthologies! They’re so good! They’re so exciting! And here’s another new one you won’t want to miss. All These Sunken Souls highlights Black voices in horror fiction, including some best-selling faves and some brand-new writers. Contributors include Kalynn Bayron, Ashia Monet, Liselle Sambury, Ryan Douglass, and more!

Rebecca Hirsch Garcia’s debut short story collection explores the beautiful and grotesque aspects of living inside of a body, from a girl who is slowly losing her senses to another who produces valuable gems from her bodily fluids. This one is great for fans of Carmen Maria Machado, the perfect mix of fabulism and horror.

In this new queer horror novel, Frankie’s world is falling apart after her workplace was bombed by a transphobe. Now, Frankie deals with the trauma by partying, sleeping around, and hanging out with her new friend, Vanya. The two quickly fall into an intense friendship with one another, but the closer Vanya and Frankie get, the more Frankie grows suspicious that Vanya is hiding something from her. Something dark and impossibly evil.

A Haunting on the Hill is the first-ever authorized return to the world of Shirley Jackson’s classic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House. Holly Sherwin is a struggling playwright who has received a grant to develop her play The Witch of Edmonton. When she comes upon Hill House, she thinks it’s the perfect getaway spot to finish the play. Soon, Holly is joined by her girlfriend, Nisa, and a group of actors. But each person who enters Hill House brings with them ghosts of their own.

If Jordan Peele comes out with a horror anthology, well, you have to read it if you consider yourself a real fan of horror. This collection features terrifying new stories from Black authors, including Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.

Think Jumanji, but make it horror and make it inspired by Japanese yōkai. Owen, Madeline, Emerson, and Dax have survived to their senior year of high school. Their friend Ian, however, was not so lucky. The five friends started playing a game four years ago—a deadly game that they never finished after Ian’s death. Now they have one night to finish the game once and for all. If they don’t, they’ll be stuck in the world forever. But not everyone will make it through alive.

Cosmic horror fans will want to nab this one when it hits shelves this Tuesday (October 3). Set in a world filled with magic and monsters, The Dead Take the A Train follows thirtysomething Julie Crews, who has been trying to make a name for herself in the New York City magic scene. But her hunger for fame, power, and money draws the attention of a vengeful eldritch god.

What screams fall more than horror books and apple orchards? As the season changes to fall in the town of Harrow, the orchard is starting to sprout strange new fruit: apples so red they look black. Taking a bite from these apples makes you stronger, happier, more confident, more powerful. And with every bite, you only want to eat more. Soon, everyone in Harrow becomes obsessed with this new fruit. But what they don’t know is that the apples have a dark history.

And Then She Fell tells the story of Alice, a young Indigenous woman who has just given birth to a baby girl named Dawn and has recently moved to Toronto with her white husband, Steve. Between all these changes in her life and the recent loss of her own mother, Alice feels lost. She has trouble connecting with her daughter, and her feelings of depression and self-doubt are hindering her from moving forward with her own work. When, on top of everything else, she starts hearing voices in her head and starts losing time, her husband tells her it’s all in her head. But Alice can’t help but feel that something is very wrong.