Category: The Fright Stuff

Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians has disturbing imagery that will haunt you for a lifetime. This story follows what happens to Blackfoot Native American friends who took a hunting trip in their youth, made some mistakes, and upset a spirit in the process. Now, that spirit is out to seek revenge on the friends, one by one.

Everyone has the scary things that freak them out the most. For me, it’s haunted house stories. After her son dies by suicide, Angela Toussant is looking to rebuild her law practice and her life. So she journeys to the family home where her son’s suicide took place, looking for answers. What she finds instead is an invisible, evil force that is driving people to acts of violence.

If haunted house stories don’t scare the heck out of you, surely demonic possessions will. The Barretts are a seemingly normal family whose lives are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie exhibits signs of schizophrenia. But what if it’s demon possession? A local Catholic priest thinks it might be and offers to perform an exorcism. With Marjorie’s medical bills looming, the family agrees to film the whole thing for a reality TV show. 

This is one of my favorite horror books of all time, and FUN FACT: it all starts with a birthday party. That’s right. Gretchen and Abby become best friends after hanging out at Abby’s E.T.-themed roller rink birthday party, and the rest is history. But their friendship is truly put to the test when Gretchen becomes possessed by a demon. Yeah, evil demons are tough, but is the power of female friendship tougher? Spoiler: why yes, yes it is.

Let’s keep the nostalgia train going with this birthday-themed Give Yourself Goosebumps book. You probably get the idea, but just in case, this series is a fun choose-your-own-path story where you get to decide what happens. If you’ve ever watched a horror movie and thought to yourself, “Hmm…I would make different decisions if I were in this situation,” well, this is the horror book for you. Of course, this book is appropriate for kids, but if you were a Goosebumps kid and are looking for a book that will remind you of your childhood while also reminding you of how old you’re getting, well, then Happy Birthday to YOU!

This first collection just came out earlier this month! This dark fantasy/horror anthology features a collection of “wholly original and shiver-inducing tales” from Indigenous authors and an introduction from Stephen Graham Jones. Other authors include Darcie Little Badger, Cherie Dimaline, Rebecca Roanhorse, and many more!

If you’re a fan of astrology, then you know that sometimes your fate written in the stars can be encouraging and enlightening. Sometimes, it can be downright horrifying. This anthology of dark fantasy poems and short stories, all inspired by the Zodiac, are for those latter times when destiny is less than kind.

This cover really gives me the creeps! And the stories inside are even creepier. This anthology is a collection of horror short stories written by 13 different trans and nonbinary writers. Bound in Flesh includes stories by Hailey Piper, Joe Koch, Bitter Karella, and others.

It’s time to highlight just a few of the many notable horror books by Hispanic and Latine Americans. This first book is a bit of a cheat because it features a lot of works from a lot of different authors. But it was so hard to narrow down the list! And this anthology’s got 15 great monster stories from some really excellent writers.

This book is a little more light-hearted than the other two books on this list, but it’s soooo much fun. Like, when the book is compared to Veronica Mars and The Craft, how can it not be fun? After Mila’s best friend dies under mysterious circumstances, she casts a spell to bring her friend back to life and find out what happened. But in doing so, she brings back the two other girls who died as well. And so Mila unwittingly creates… (wait for it) an Undead Girl Gang (TM).

If you love horror, you’re probably already WELL AWARE of Carmen Maria Machado’s stunning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, but if you somehow missed the boat on this one, this month is the perfect time to pick this one up! These stories use horror and dark sci-fi/fantasy to explore women and the violence they face in their everyday lives.

These book recommendations are bringing the autumnal vibes. Why does The Weight of Blood feel like a fall horror book? Maybe it’s because it’s set in a school so it’s perfect for back-to-school season. Or maybe it’s because it’s a smart, thought-provoking retelling of Carrie by Stephen King, the literal KING of Spooky Season. Either way, it wouldn’t be Halloween season without a Tiffany D. Jackson horror novel. I’m obsessed. And if you haven’t read this yet, just know you will get totally sucked in by this one too!

What’s more fall than a haunted house story? A haunted house story that takes place on HALLOWEEN NIGHT. In this book, four authors have been invited to spend the night in a haunted house. It’s just supposed to be a publicity stunt for fun and exposure. But as you might have guessed, not everything goes according to plan, and the night of fun turns into something completely horrifying.

I mean, this one literally has “harvest” in the title, so I don’t think I have to make the argument for this one being fall-appropriate. Dark Harvest is set in a small midwestern town where a strange visitor comes to visit from the cornfields every Halloween season. He’s known by many names. October Boy. Ol’ Hacksaw Face. Sawtooth Jack. Whatever name he goes by, it doesn’t matter. This year, the townspeople plan to kill him.

I can’t wait to get my hands on Andrew Joseph White’s new book. You all know how much I love historical horror, the darker the better. Set in 1883, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is about a 16-year-old named Silas Bell, whose violet-eyes have doomed him to a life as a medium for the Royal Speaker Society, married against his will and consigned to the role of Speaker wife. The world is determined to see Silas as a girl, and Silas is determined to do whatever he must to escape the life they have planned for him. But things go from bad to worse when his resistance results in him being shipped off to a “sanatorium” masquerading as a finishing school. It’s really a place full of suffering and the ghosts of those who could not be “reformed” into proper wives. If Silas wants to survive, he’ll have to expose the darkness hiding beneath the school’s respectable facade.

Oh my grimy gods, this book is everything. Bloom packs so much dread and chaotic fallout into its limited page count, and I need you all to read it when it comes out and then come find me where I lie, perishing slowly from how much I am obsessed with this sharp, dark, sapphic disaster. Rosemary and Ash meet at the farmer’s market, where Ash has a stall selling everything from candles and soap to plants and decadent, creatively flavored cupcakes. What starts as a tentative friendship over plant parenthood and Rosemary’s affection for cupcakes quickly becomes a romance. But Ash’s life is full of secrets and lines that she’s determined Rosemary not cross. And Rosemary’s growing obsession with Ash may be blinding her to a dark and frightening truth.

H. E. Edgmon is back with a new book this November! Godly Heathens is more fantasy, technically, not horror, but this tale of a war between gods is dark enough that I feel comfortable sneaking it onto this list. It’s about a group of teens who find themselves embroiled in an ancient divine war. Gem has always had violent, frightening dreams, but they had no way of knowing that those dreams were visions of a past life and a precursor of the danger to come. That’s why they’ve never told their friend Enzo about the dreams, even though Enzo knows everything else about Gem. But when Gem is attacked by someone claiming to be the Goddess of Death, they have to face the possibility that there’s more going on than they can see. Meanwhile, Willa Mae, newly arrived in Gem’s tiny town, seems to have the answers and spins a fantastical story about reincarnated gods, a love that spans the ages, and the wrath of enemies determined to destroy Gem for the actions of the god he used to be.

Nightmare Island is about 12-year-old Serenity who finds herself pitted against an island of faceless monsters with backward feet in an effort to save her little brother. Serenity has always had nightmares, and she’s always hidden those frightening dreams about silver butterflies and shadowy monsters from her parents. But when her younger brother, Peace, starts having nightmares of his own and her parents take him away to the sinister Duppy Island for “treatment,” Serenity starts to question whether the images she’s been seeing in her head were ever nightmares to begin with. Because if she’s suddenly seeing silver butterflies in real life, shadowy monsters can’t be far behind.

An 11-year-old trans boy, Simon, and his siblings, are sent to stay at their grandmother’s strange old house while their parents have the kind of “talk” about their marriage that you don’t have around your young children. But if the knowledge that things in his family are about to change drastically, and the fact that he’s the only one in his family who actually knows he’s a boy named Simon, weren’t enough for a young boy to handle, there’s also something very wrong with his grandmother’s house. Creepy shadows are gathering in the corners. Something is scratching inside the walls. Determined to discover the truth, Simon recruits his sisters into a ghost hunt. Someone is haunting his grandmother’s home and Simon’s going to find out who and why.

Now, obviously, apocalyptic stories don’t always fall under the horror umbrella. Alex Wise vs. the End of the World is actually a middle grade fantasy novel about rising 7th grader Alex Wise who ends up being gifted with powers and charged with stopping the Horsemen of the Apocalypse from ending the world. But hey, it’s got shadow monsters, and of course, there are the sinister figures of the Horsemen themselves. So I’d argue Benton-Walker’s newest definitely has a place in this newsletter! Alex will have to figure out his new powers quickly if he and his ragtag team of co-heroes are going to manage to not only defeat the horsemen and save the world but also save Alex’s sister Mags from the spirit of Death possessing her. Not what you’d call your average summer vacation!

You know what is always a terrible idea? Exploring an abandoned military bunker rumored to have been used for top secret scientific experiments. (She says, knowing that she’d probably do it anyway if given the chance.) Because, I mean, even if the local legends are wrong, you’re still going to be underground in a creepy, abandoned bunker. I’ve seen that horror movie. It seldom ends well. It certainly didn’t end well for Liv, who led her friends on a trip to a former military bunker that, so the stories say, is inhabited by monsters. But it’s just a story, right? Where’s the danger? Well, apparently it’s in that bunker. Because Liv is the only one who gets out alive. She turns up at the local police station, covered in blood, raving about — of all things — killer mermaids.

This book. Ya’ll, seriously. It’s so good. It fulfills all the dreams of the little mermaid loving horror fan I once was (and still am, let’s be honest). All Ren Yu wants is to become a mermaid. (And feast on the flesh of tasty sea goers.) She’s already a swimmer, whose love of being in the water butts up against the expectations that she’ll use her skill at swimming to advance in life. Get into a good college on an athletic scholarship. Be successful — a state of being highly defined by everyone in Ren’s life except herself. When really all she wants is to escape from landlocked concerns and sink deep into the ocean until she’s nothing but fins and teeth. She wants to be free, and she’ll stop at nothing to make it happen.

Now Into the Drowning Deep is the obvious pick for this list, I know. It’s a fantastic bit of ocean horror, killer mermaids included, and I’ve actually never featured it in The Fright Stuff before now! So I’d say it’s about time. Seven years before the story begins, a cruise ship called the Atargatis set out for the Mariana Trench with a film crew on board. Their plan was to acquire enough footage and eyewitness testimonies to slap together a “mockumentary” on mermaids, but they found much more than they bargained for. Now a second crew has been brought together to research the fate of the Atargatis, among them Victoria Stewart whose sister was lost when the Atargatis went down. The truth about what happened to her sister can only be found on that same stretch of ocean above the trench, the Atargatis’ last known location, and Victoria isn’t going home without answers. No matter what secrets might lurk beneath the waves.

I have chosen to include Mermaids Never Drown in this week’s list with the caveat that it is an anthology that is not exclusively horror. I’m willing to lay odds that there’s more than one dark and horrifying twist on the mermaid mythos in this collection of 14 stories, given that a few of the authors included frequent the horror genre. However, I cannot promise you an anthology full of JUST flesh eating and bloodied waters. That being said, I’m so beyond excited that Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker are editing another collection like Vampires Never Get Old, and this time around, centering the history of merfolk in folklore and storytelling. And with authors like Kalynn Bayron, June Hur, Kerri Maniscalco, and many others on board, you just know that Mermaids Never Drown is going to be fin-tastic. (I won’t apologize for that, you can’t mako me.)

The damage that family can do when they don’t love you the way they should, just the way you are, is at the heart of this gorgeous retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When Gabriel Utterson was sent to London by his father to study medicine he fell head over heels in love with fellow medical student Henry Jekyll. But it’s hard to hide a love that burns that brightly, and before long rumors and whispers begin to follow Henry and Gabriel, forcing them to separate. When Gabriel returns to London after a long summer away, it becomes instantly clear that something is wrong with Henry, and Gabriel is certain that it has to do the with the strange young man, Hyde, who has been seen coming and going from the Jekyll household. If Gabriel cannot discover the truth about what has happened to Henry, he may be at risk of losing the boy he loves forever.

This book, y’all. The slow, unfolding realization of the horrifying truth at the heart of Vera’s childhood. The eerie almost-haunting rooted in the things she doesn’t want to remember. Just so good. Vera returns to her childhood home — the home that her father built — at the behest of her dying mother. But any hopes Vera might have had of loving, tearful reconciliations are dashed soon after she arrives. Her mother is as caustic and distant as ever, and her serial killer father’s ghost lurks around every corner. Possibly literally. Add to that the artist with avaristic intent, and a lascivious interest in Vera’s bloody past, who is currently squatting in the converted garden shed in the backyard, and is it any wonder that all Vera’s darkest memories are coming home to roost?

Speaking of books that fall into the category of “Read This. Just Do It.” When Black Sheep comes out in September, I need you all to run not walk to the bookstore. Okay? Promise. Because this book is the crown jewel of “your family can fuck you up like no other.” I mean after all, that’s why Vesper left her tiny religious community when she was 18. She didn’t believe so she didn’t belong, and having chosen to leave, she couldn’t go back if she wanted to. Until, that is, a wedding invitation arrives and with it an offer: come home. Unable to resist the pull of family after so many years alone, Vesper gets on a train. But back home things aren’t quite like she remembers, and secrets new and old are bubbling to the surface. When one particularly terrifying truth comes to light, Vera will have to reconsider everything she thought she knew about her childhood, her family’s faith, and the people who were supposed to love her.

Between literature, TV, and film, there are thousands of stories of people traveling into the unknown, remote “American West,” in search of new opportunities or fleeing pasts they hope won’t follow them (though they always do). Lavalle has taken that familiar story and given it a sharp, horrifying twist in Lone Women. It’s the story of a woman who arrives on the Montana frontier to take the U.S. government up on its offer of free land in the wilderness to any homesteader who can settle and keep it. And Adelaide isn’t the only one; there are a number of “lone women” taking their chances on the Montana frontier. But not all of them have come to Montana literally dragging their pasts behind them like Adelaide has, hidden away in the massive steamer trunk that travels with her but always remains locked.

Hailey Piper’s Cruel Angels Past Sundown, published just last week, is the most recent title in Death’s Head Press’ Splatter Western series, whose gorgeous pulpy covers are almost as memorable as the stories they contain. Set in New Mexico Territory in 1882, Cruel Angels Past Sundown is about a woman, Annette, and her husband, whose life together is violently and irrevocably interrupted one day at sunset when a naked, pregnant woman stumbles onto their ranch. Escaping the bloodshed that follows, Annette flees to the nearby town. But the nightmare of that night has followed her to Low’s Bend. If she wants to survive the hell that’s coming, she’ll have to put her trust in new friends and face down an evil more frightening than anything she has yet encountered.

Vampires of El Norte takes place in 1846 in a territory that was once part of Mexico before being annexed into the United States, and is centered around the events that sparked the Mexican-American War. Nena and Néstor were childhood sweethearts growing up on her father’s ranch until the night that Nena was attacked by a terrifying winged creature. Néstor vanished into the night, sure that Nena was dead and that he would be blamed. Years later, they’re brought together again by the looming war with the United States, and find themselves having to set aside their past in order to survive when the violence of the battlefield gives way to an even more horrifying, unnatural danger in the form of the same monsters that once attacked Nena. The only way for Nena and Néstor to protect their home and the ones they love is to work together, or everything will be lost, including their second chance at a life together.