Category: The Fright Stuff

I would just like to say: This whole newsletter is Premee Mohamed’s fault. The gorgeous, eerie cover of her recent short fiction collection No One Will Come Back for Us (another beautiful book brought to you by the one and only Undertow Publications!) captivated me and I had to pay it tribute. Combining science fiction and dark fantasy with harrowing cosmic horror, the stories in No One Will Come Back for Us catapult readers from the forgotten realms of ancient gods deep beneath the sea to the vast, merciless depths of space.The only thing guaranteed is that monsters await in all the shadowed, forgotten corners of the world that Mohamed crafts. And they probably have tentacles.

I loved this weird, creepy, queer Lovecraft-inspired YA horror so much, and I am begging you to please read it and then come talk to me. Adelle and Connie are best friends and super fans of an obscure gothic romance novel called Moira. So much so that when offered the opportunity to be transported into the novel and experience the world of Moira for themselves, they decide to take the chance. But inside the pages of Moira, things have gone terribly wrong. Instead of a lush Gothic setting, dripping with romance and velvet, the two girls find themselves trapped in a horror story, surrounded by the creepy servants of the tentacle monster that’s squatting in the harbor, and entangled with the book’s characters in a desperate bid to save both themselves and the fictional world they love

If you love Cassandra Khaw’s more recent books, but have caught yourself thinking: “you know what The Salt Grows Heavy needs? More eyes and tentacles!” Oh jiminy do I have a book recommendation for you. Hammers on Bone, and its sequel A Song for Quiet, are an excellent mix of arcane monsters and hardboiled detective work. A bit Lovecraft, a bit noir, it’ll scratch all your cosmic horror itches (even the ones the tentacles can’t reach). John Persons is a P.I. with a talent for handling the ancient and abominable, being ancient and somewhat abominable himself. Which makes him the perfect person to hunt down the stepfather of his newest client, a man infected with a monstrous alien presence.

My last pick of the week is S.L Coney’s forthcoming, Wild Spaces, a cosmic horror novel about an 11-year-old boy and a dark family secret. He lives with his parents and his dog on the remote South Carolina coast, and his childhood, though isolated, was not unhappy. Until the day his estranged grandfather turns up at the house, and his unwanted visit begins to expose the inconsistencies in the boy’s life that he cared to question before. Now it’s clear that his parents are and have been keeping secrets from him. Things they still refuse to explain. Things that, just maybe, have something to do with the strange and frightening changes happening to the boy’s body, transforming him into something new and monstrous.

The Death I Gave Him is actually the first of two horror/dark fiction Shakespeare retellings on this list. Which, as an eternal English major, I find just so delightful. The name of the game is Hamlet through the lens of a locked room sci-fi thriller, with plenty of murder, gore, and body horror to satisfy any horror reader. A scientist on the verge of a momentous discovery — the defeat of death itself — has his work interrupted in brutal fashion when his father (and co-researcher) is murdered in their lab. In a bid to catch the killer himself, Hayden steals his own research. Only to discover that his father had suspected his death was near and left a message charging Hayden to avenge him. What ensues is a deadly game of whodunnit within the locked down laboratory. There are only four other people in the building besides Hyden, and one of them is a murderer.

Now, see, that’s an Upsetting cover. So squiggly. So wiggly. Slimy. Pulpy. I just love it, and I can’t wait for Brainwyrms to hit shelves this October. I absolutely devoured Rumfitt’s oh so disturbing and terrifying Tell Me I’m Worthless when it came out earlier this year, and I have been eagerly anticipating the release of Brainwyrms ever since. When the aftermath of a transphobia-motivated bombing at her workplace upends Frankei’s life, it leaves her grasping for someway to cope with the fallout. Along the way she finds herself falling hard and fast for a mysterious woman with too many secrets. The more time Frankie spends with Vanya, the more she’s sure Vanya’s hiding something sinister from her, and unfortunately for Frankie, she’s right.

Someone give me this book already. Please, just put it in my hands so I can put it in my eyes. December is such a long time away and, as someone who absolutely adored Wilkes’ All the White Spaces, I am impatient! Taking us back to the cold and the dark, Wilkes steers us towards the Arctic this time, following in the footsteps of William Day who is returning to the ice 13 years after his disastrous Arctic expedition. His then second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has vanished, and if Day can find Jesse, just maybe he can redeemed himself in the eyes of society. But things soon go from bad to worse when Day’s rescue mission descends into chaos and darkness. The ice is unforgiving and its memory is long. Day will have to face the horrors of his own past if he hopes to survive the dark days ahead and bring Jesse home.

Caitlin Marceau’s But A Dream is the aforementioned second Shakespeare retelling on this list, and honestly December can not come fast enough. Because as excited as I am for all the new queer horror we’re getting this year, I am absolutely over the moon that Marceau is giving us a dark retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my absolute favorite Shakespeare play. But a Dream is about a group of four friends whose camping trip in the Canadian wilderness goes awry. Horribly awry. Cataclysmically, terribly, violently awry when they kill and eat what they assume to be a deer but is in fact a witch in disguise. A witch whose magic, upon consumption, produces some very…unpleasant side effects…

Werewolves vs. Vampires! A horror rivalry for the ages, and one at the heart of Olivia Stephens’ graphic novel Artie and the Wolf Moon. When Artie Irvin sneaks out of the house one night and catches her mother turning into a werewolf — or rather, a werewolf turning back into her mother — her whole life turned upside down. Reluctantly, Artie’s mom tells her everything: about where they come from, about the father that died when Artie was small, and the long line of werewolves from which they are descended. But even though Artie couldn’t be more excited about uncovering her own wolfish tendencies and becoming part of the larger werewolf community, not every new discovery is a good one. It turns out werewolves aren’t the only monsters in the world.

You’ve heard me say it before: the best ghost stories are about more than ghosts. So it is with Kyle Lukoff’s Too Bright to See, about a young trans kid discovering who they are while trying to uncover the truth about the ghost haunting their house. Bug is 11, just getting ready to start middle school, and even though summer is supposed to be the best part of the year when you’re a kid, Bug’s isn’t off to a great start. Bug’s best friend Moira only wants to talk about boys and how to be the right kind of girl for middle school, which Bug couldn’t care less about, and oh by the way, Bug’s house is haunted! But the more Bug digs into the mystery of the ghost and what it wants, the more difficult the questions Bug has to answer. And not just about the ghost.

Another Kind is one of those great graphic novels that’s going to appeal to so many readers. It’s Stranger Things meets D&D meets just enough creepy monster goodness to tip it into the dark side of fantasy, veering towards horror. Six children, each a little bit more than human, are forced to flee a secret government facility known as the Playroom, where they were being raised and taught how to control their powers. The Playroom kept them safe and hidden from the world. Now they only have each other to rely on as they try to navigate their frightening new reality, and evade the clutches of the mysterious shadowy being stalking their every move. The thing that calls itself The Collector.

Ah. Nothing like the chilling knowledge that the starship you’re literally trapped on has been infiltrated by an unknown threat. I know that’s the premise of most space horror stories, but it just never gets old. Or less creepy. I mean, when the monster’s in the house and the house is floating through space, it’s not like you can just check into a motel! When every crew member on board the starship M.G Yellowjacket suddenly disappears except for communications specialist Alto, what should have been an ordinary shift in an ordinary workday takes a frightening turn. Something has made its way onboard the Yellowjacket, something with the ability to dig into the minds of crewmembers and control what they think and feel. Alto’s only chance is to risk a journey through the now infected passages of the Yellowjacket to reach the bridge and reunite with what remains of the crew before things get even worse.

Have I convince you to that you definitely want to read The Scourge Between Stars yet? Because I’m happy to keep trying! Set on the starship Calypso, one of a flotilla of ships (possibly the last of a flotilla of ships for all anyone on board knows), is in imminent danger. They’re trying to make the journey home to Earth ever since their colony failed centuries ago, but at the speed they’re traveling, and beset as they are by invisible deep space forces that bat their ship around like a cat with a toy, it seems unlikely that the crew and ex-colonists will ever make it home. Especially when a series of brutal murders on board make it suddenly clear that there’s a dangerous stowaway lurking somewhere within the massive hulk of the Calypso. Jacklyn Albright is acting captain, responsible for the Calypso’s survival in her father’s absence, and if she wants to have any chance of seeing her ship and her people home safely, she and her team will have to hunt the creature down one deck at a time. Get ready to be STRESSED, because this novella had me on my toes.

A found family of queer cyborg clones just trying to deal with their traumas while surviving the heartless void of space and the all-powerful AI who rules the known universe? Don’t mind if I do. In a bid to discover what truly happened on their last, disastrous mission together, this group of soldiers turned criminals reunite in search of their missing comrade and the secret hidden at the heart of a planet that might hold all the answers they’re seeking. But the secret deep inside Dimmuborgir is also the key to controlling the universe, and the AI will do anything to make sure it never falls into human hands. If they want to solve the mystery of their past, our ragtag band of former friends will have to pull together if they want to get to the heart of Dimmuborgir alive with a whole universe full of enemies at their heels.

So you were all just going to let me sleep on the queer “I’d do anything to be a flesh eating mermaid. Anything” horror book, huh? To be honest, I have no idea how Chlorine slipped under my radar, but as a girl who has wished on more than one occasion that she could fling herself into the ocean, sprout gills, and consume unwary sailor folk, I am so glad that I know about it now. Because that’s all that Ren Yu wants, really: 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.

Monstersona is the kind of mad scientists, monsters, and government conspiracies romp that you won’t want to miss. It’s about 16-year-old Riley, who lives in Little Brook, Maine — headquarters of Titan Technologies. She wakes up one night to find her town on fire and full of monsters. With her dog in tow, Riley beats feet out of town, stopping just long enough to scoop up a passenger from the roadside: Aspen, Riley’s crush and quite possibly the only other survivor of the fire. The two girls set off on a dangerous cross-country journey to try and reach Riley’s father in Oregon, but nothing about the fire or the now-destroyed Titan Technologies is what it seems to be. And neither is Aspen. If Riley wants to survive long enough to see her father again, she’s going to have to get to the bottom of the shadowy conspiracy she’s found herself enmeshed in. No matter how terrible the truth may be.

This is my romance-meets-horror addition to this week’s list, because there’s been some Chatter lately (or so the internet tells me) devaluing romance in comparison to other genre fiction. And since it is frowned upon to fight strangers from the internet in a Walmart parking lot, I’m just going to point out, not for the first time, that romance and horror can not only peacefully coexist, but actually make rather spectacular bedfellows. As it were. Something Freydis Moon understands very well, as evidenced by their newest book Heart, Haunt, Havoc about a trans exorcist, Colin, who was hired to deal with what seemed like a standard domestic haunting. Only to find that the home in question, owned by the handsome Bishop Martinez, may prove more of a challenge than Colin first anticipated. It’s awash in restless spirits, drawn by the house’s dark, heartbreaking past. As he navigates the horrors of the house and his budding romance with its owner, Colin finds himself digging into secrets that Bishop would rather forget, further muddying an already messy supernatural situation.

If short fiction is your horror form of choice, this week’s first pick is for you! I love this debut collection from Isabel Yap. I know I’m a sucker for collections in general, but this one really was an instant favorite. I’m pretty sure that “Good Girls,” which kicks off the whole collection with a horrifying bang, has imprinted itself on my brain permanently. The 13 stories of Never Have I Ever, inspired both by urban legends and the folklore of the Philippines, span the whole range of speculative genres, from sci-fi to horror to fantasy, to form a haunting, surreal collection that you won’t soon forget.

Y’all know I love horror retellings of the Countess Bathory legend. What can I say: I see a beautiful, evil monster woman and I fall in love. Now, obviously I know that legend is not history, and that the real Bathory was more maligned than malicious, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying books like Kulski’s Fairest Flesh, which marries the Bathory legend with the kind of bloodshed and dark magic that only the most brutal (and therefore the best) of Grimm’s fairy tales can provide. If you’re looking for a stunner of a debut novel that takes a well known horror story and actually manages to make it even more horrifying, Fairest Flesh is the one for you!

Intended as an expansion on the theme of “otherness” the began in the Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women anthology, Tortured Willows is a companion poetry anthology featuring the work of four Southeast Asian horror writers. The anthology focuses specifically on exploring the symbolism of the willow, and its associations with femininity, desire, death and rebirth. If you enjoyed Black Cranes, and the follow-up nonfiction collection, Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror, I highly recommend picking up this next installment.

This is the most recent title on this week’s list, and if you haven’t added She is a Haunting to your TBR yet, I highly recommend that you do! When Jade agreed to return to Vietnam to visit with her estranged father in hopes of persuading him to release the college funds that he promised her, she thought the hardest part would be pretending to enjoy herself while pretending to be someone she’s not. Just five weeks playing happy family at the house he’s restoring, and she’ll be able to walk away with her education funded. But there’s something undeniably wrong with the house — the strange noises, the alarming number of creepy bugs, the beautiful ghost that keeps trying to warn her not to eat. And if Jade can’t uncover the house’s secrets in time, this family vacation might be her last.

Motherhood is a central theme in V. Castro’s frightening yet hopeful story of grief, anger, and generational trauma. The Haunting of Alejandra is told through the history of a family cursed by a monstrous creature from beyond our world, who feeds on the pain and suffering of the families it stalks through the generations. But Alejandra doesn’t know about the monster or the curse, all she knows is that she feels haunted. Both by the life she lives but no longer wants, and by a spectral figure in white who encourages her darkest, saddest thoughts. As she struggles to learn more about herself and her history in order to try and heal, Alejandra finds a legacy of sorrow and loss. A line of ancestors who suffered tragedy, oppression, and cruelty, leading back and back into the past. But alongside their grief, Alejandra also finds their strength, and the means to fight back against the monster before it can consume her and everyone she loves.

I hope y’all are ready for some body horror, because Katrina Monroe didn’t come to play with her newest book, Graveyard of Lost Children. She begins the novel by putting a body horror twist on birth and then builds on it as Olivia struggles, first with the changes to her body after giving birth to her daughter Flora, and then with the certainty that her body is dying when she becomes convinced that her baby has been replaced with a creature that is slowly draining her life with every feeding. Changeling lore intersects with a heavy discussion of postpartum depression and the societal pressures around being not just a “good” mother, but a “happy” mother. No one can see the horror that Oliva sees, no one seems to see her wasting away. But they see that she’s not as happy as she “should be” now that she’s a mother. They don’t see the black-haired woman who’s dogging her steps, they just see a woman wracked with paranoia and fear. But Olivia can see the woman, and so could Olivia’s mother, Shannon. If Olivia wants to protect herself and her daughter, she will have to seek the black-haired woman out where she lives, and confront a past full of silence and family secrets.

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 young artist weighed down by her duty to her dying father and the overbearance of her fiancé, an insecure man who is supposed to be in love with her but seems more interested in suppressing her talents in favor of his own career. In 2019, Lila is struggling with societal and parental expectations, the neglect of her distant father, and her own developing sexuality. 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.

Cale Dietrich’s The Pledge kicked off our year of slashers back in February with a delightfully classic slasher setup: a masked murderer on the loose on a college campus. Someone is picking off the frat boys of Monroe University. Sam already survived one murderous masked killer on a spree — in fact he was the survivor of a long night of terror that left his friends dead and Sam’s life in ruins. College was supposed to be his chance to start over. He can have a new life and, thanks to his fraternity, a new group of friends. A brand new beginning. Until, that is, one of his frat brothers is found dead. It’s the first death in a violent spree that, to Sam’s horror, seems to have been inspired by the one that haunts him. If Sam wants to protect his new life, and the lives of his new friends, he’ll have to work fast to identify the killer before his bloody history repeats itself.

Make sure you add Kalynn Bayron’s forthcoming slasher, You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight to your TBR, because it’s going to be the perfect summer horror read. Take it to the lake! What could go wrong? Horror fan Charity scored the perfect summer job when she got cast to play the “final girl” in an interactive attraction based on the classic slasher, Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. It’s a full-contract experience where guests pay to immerse themselves in scenes from the film. The more frightening the better. Until the last weekend of the season when things at Camp Mirror Lake take a deadly turn, leaving Charity and her girlfriend Bezi fighting to survive the unknown killer that’s picking off Charity’s fellow cast members one by one.

I’m so excited for There’s No Way I’d Die First. What can I say? I’m a horror child from Stephen King country, and I love a scary clown. When Noelle Layne uses her horror movie expertise to throw the biggest, most exclusive Halloween bash for her senior class, she expects the night to go down in history as one of the best parties of her high school career. Not one of the most deadly. That is, until the knock-off creepy clown that she hired puts an ax in one of her guests, and a serious wrinkle in her party plans. As the night descends into terror, Noelle will have to rely on everything she’s learned from a lifetime of watching horror movies if she wants to be the Final Girl in her own personal slasher film.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading any of Gemma Amor’s work before, I highly recommend starting with her 2020 folk horror novel, White Pines. It has all the things that make folk horror so compelling: a remote, isolated town with a secretive history and a penchant for old traditions; a protagonist whose life is in disarray, making them uniquely susceptible to what is about to happen to them; a bit of cult activity (are you even having fun if no one’s in danger of being inducted into a mysterious cult?); and a slow, spiraling descent in which the character’s perception of reality begins to distort. Ah. That’s the good stuff. Megan, the main character of White Pines, suddenly inherits a cottage in the Scottish Highlands, and since her marriage has just fallen apart, she makes the decision to move to the small community while she works out what to do next. But the longer she stays at the cottage, the less real the world around her begins to feel, and the more it becomes apparent that there’s something very wrong with the village and the nearby island with its eerie white trees.

If you’re looking for a folk horror novel that’s not centered on European folklore, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of Rin Chupeco’s The Sacrifice. I really enjoyed this book, which deftly marries action scenes with the eerie ominousness of folk horror, while also offering a blistering commentary on both historical and modern colonialism in Southeast Asia. On the surface, the island of Kisapmata seems like a perfect oasis of white sand and green jungle. But the legends tell another story, one of sleeping gods and tormented ghosts. The locals know well enough to steer clear of Kisapmata, so when an overbearing team of Hollywood producers and their entire crew descend on the island with the intention of monetizing its tragic past, the only local who steps in to try and protect them from Kisapmata’s dangers is Alon, a teen who knows the island better than anyone living. But even Alon’s knowledge of Kisapmata and its secrets may not be enough to protect the crew from the island’s curse. Or its hunger.

I would like it to be noted that I have gone (nearly) a whole calendar year without pestering you (again) to read Slewfoot. But it’s spring and I’m back on my bullshit folks, so listen up: NATURE. Nature is at the heart of this delightful, witchy, folklore-ish/adjacent book that you should definitely all be reading. Fantastical and horrifying, Slewfoot is a dark, magical story about how monsters and witches are made. When Abitha is widowed suddenly by a suspicious accident, she finds her self desperately trying to hold on to her freedom in the midst of a pious and patriarchal society that would rather see her tucked neatly under the thumb of another man. Enter Slewfoot, a newly woken forest spirit who, like Abitha, is searching for his place in the world, for good or for evil.

Alma Katsu really is the undefeated champion of historical horror. And, of course, the novel that she’s best known for is The Hunger, a story as much about desperation and superstition as it is about cannibalism. I don’t really have to tell you much about the plot of The Hunger. Most folks are familiar with the doomed Donner Party who, with their great journey West already having been plagued by a string of disasters, become stranded in the Sierra Nevada range and find themselves in a situation where survival seems increasingly unlikely. But inThe Hunger it’s not just the weather threatening their lives. Something has been stalking the Donner party for miles. Something hungry. And it’s been picking them off, one at a time, sowing fear and suspicion in its wake.

Adding to this week’s mini-theme of weird plagues: returning to Cleveland for the first time in years, Phoebe Shaw is catapulted back to the summer of 1980 when the girls of Denton Street were suddenly struck by an alarming illness that caused their bodies to literally corrode, becoming rusted, jagged, metallic things that mirrored the collapse of the industrial city around them. The Rust Maidens. Told in alternating timelines between Phoebe’s past and her present, Kiste’s The Rust Maidens is a chilling, grotesque work of body horror about the tragedy of a dying city, and the people left behind. At its heart is the hidden secret behind the illness of the Rust Maidens; a mystery that Phoebe must unravel if she hopes to protect herself and those she loves.

2018 was also the year that Lily Anderson gave us Undead Girl Gang, and introduced readers to her brilliant blend of horror and humor. When Mila’s best friend Riley dies suddenly, along with two mean girls from their school, in what appears to be a suicide pact, Mila does the only thing she can to prove that it’s not true: she raises the dead. With some lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila brings both Riley and the two girls, June and Dayton, back to life so she can discover the truth about their suspicious deaths. Only, none of the girls can remember who killed them. Now Mila has three undead teens on her hands, all with unfinished business to attend to, and only seven days to solve the mystery of their deaths before they crawl back into their graves, leaving their murderer free to kill again.