It Looks Like You in the Dark (2026) (Kobuk Valley) Mathilda Zeller "As chilling as permafrost and as inescapably dark as a never-ending Arctic winter. But while Mathilda Zeller has peopled her story with all-too-real evils and folkloric nightmares, she also never loses the promise of a future sunrise. A stellar expansion of her excellent short story."
Worry Box (2026) Chris Panatier "An outstanding read, and one I'll be revisiting whenever I need a reminder of how to write tragic cause-and-effect."
Newbourne Park (2026) Jennifer Thorne "Every Jennifer Thorne novel is a double-edged delight of creeping dread and wickedly smart satire. Readers are guaranteed a good time, but be warned: she'll cut you when you least expect it."
In the Woods They Wait (2026) Carrie Lee South "Carrie Lee South's impressive debut is as much about navigating the labyrinths of guilt and hope as it is surviving the Ozark wilderness. . . fleet-footed, compulsively readable, haunting, and monstrously satisfying."
The Cracks (2026) T H Huddleston "T. H. Huddleston's The Cracks is a refreshingly class-conscious creep-fest with a righteous energy. It's Hell House meets Richard Hell; Burnt Offerings by way of the Buzzcocks."
Blacktail (2026) Scott Hawkins "Scott Hawkins' Blacktail can be described in so many ways. Strange, beautiful, surreal, brutal, fantastic, fantastical. It evokes Richard Adams at his most bloodthirsty, Tolkien at his most apocalyptic. But, above all, it's simply transcendent. Transportive. A magnificent, bloody saga that will change the way you look at the world."
Carry Me to My Grave (2026) Christopher Golden "Carry Me to My Grave is an absolute barnburner of a book, giving us mystery, dread, action, deliciously complicated family dynamics, fight scenes that would be at home in an Indiana Jones or Repairman Jack adventure, monsters that would make TED Klein and Clive Barker cheer, and even some good old-fashioned smoldering romance. Once this train gets rolling, there's no stopping it. Golden has outdone himself with this one."
How to Fake a Haunting (2025) Christa Carmen "One of the most intriguing and beguiling takes on the suburban-gothic haunted house since Anne Rivers Siddon's The House Next Door. Carmen doesn't scrimp on the spooky atmospherics, but also wisely keeps the true scares rooted in the living and the all-too-real."
Teenage Girls Can Be Demons (2025) Hailey Piper "Nobody writes grounded cosmic horror like Hailey Piper. That might seem like a contradiction in terms, but read these thirteen wild - and wildly different - tales and get a taste of just how Piper can twist you into otherworldly shapes while still reminding you of your essential, heartbreaking humanity."
Play Nice (2025) Rachel Harrison "To call Play Nice Rachel Harrison's scariest book yet is to perhaps risk downplaying how it's also as deft and gripping a guessing game about literal and metaphorical demons as A Head Full of Ghosts or The Haunting of Hill House. Yes, this book is just that good. But it's also scary as hell."
The October Film Haunt (2025) Michael Wehunt "Michael Wehunt has given us a book as ominous and slippery as the grainy, uncanny fright flicks its protagonists are consumed by. Full of unshakeable imagery and gorgeous, can't-peel-your-eyes-away prose, The October Film Haunt feels like a cursed tape you're not sure you should've watched, but can't bring yourself to stop."
The Mean Ones (2025) Tatiana Schlote-Bonne "Heartbreaking and infuriating, full of delightfully ghoulish, garish imagery. The Mean Ones makes the wilderness as frightening as memories of cruel adolescent laughter . . . and vice versa."
Daedalus Is Dead (2025) Seamus Sullivan "An exquisitely wrought, tenderly examined portrait of fatherhood, invention, legacy, tragedy, and myth that would make Roberto Calasso proud. The irony is, for such a title as Daedalus is Dead, this story and these characters have never felt more alive."
Breathe In, Bleed Out (2025) Brian McAuley "It's no stretch to say Brian McAuley is our crown prince of slasher literature - but hold onto your sit bones because, with the cutting and sardonic BREATHE IN, BLEED OUT, he's become an artisanal asana assassin. These ain't the hot springs you're about to dip into; it's a bloodbath."
Acquired Taste (2025) Clay McLeod Chapman "Few writers are as dependably, delightfully depraved as Clay McLeod Chapman, and few pleasures remain in this world like being terrorized by his words. Please don't start charging us a subscription fee, Clay--with stories like these, it'd be impossible to say no!"
The Staircase in the Woods (2025) Chuck Wendig "Chuck Wendig has given us another stunner. The Staircase in the Woods is as mysterious, alluring, heartbreaking, ever-shifting, and unnervingly powerful as the nature of friendship itself."
Senseless (2025) Ronald Malfi "To read Ronald Malfi is to find yourself in your favorite bar, drink in hand, music you love coming out of the speakers, the comforting babble of the crowd around you. An intriguing stranger sidles up to you and begins to tell you a story. Before you know it, all those other noises fall away and you're enrapt. You barely even notice the glint of the blade as it slides into your gut. Malfi is just that bewitching, just that sneaky, just that brutal, just that good at what he does."
White Line Fever (2025) KC Jones "White Line Fever is one pulse-pounding, cinematic hell ride. While 1408, The Descent, and Death Proof are cackling in the backseat, KC Jones is behind the wheel, foot on the gas, with new, terrifying destinations in mind. Climb on in. You won't regret it."
At Dark, I Become Loathsome (2025) Eric LaRocca "LaRocca's most unsparing book yet. At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a rich mosaic of alienation and loss that's as tender as it is compelling and ultimately appalling. Eric LaRocca is just so very seductive when it comes to digging graves we'll eagerly throw ourselves into."
Coup De Grace (2024) Sofia Ajram "To succinctly describe the power of this haunting labyrinth of a book would require a writer of Sofia Ajram's skill--and that's a rare thing indeed. This is the sort of story you read in one day and then think about for a lifetime. It's bigger on the inside."
This World is Not Yours (2024) Kemi Ashing-Giwa "A rich, sharp shock of a novella, churning with corrupted love and corrupted nature. This World Is Not Yours may occur galaxies away, but the dread it evokes is anything but alien. Because we all suspect our own version of the Gray is out there, don't we? And we're all preparing for its embrace."
Devils Kill Devils (2024) Johnny Compton "As full of twists and turns as a coil of barbed wire and twice as gripping. Devils Kill Devils is straight-up jaw-dropping in all the ways it subverts our preconceptions of beloved monsters. Count me in for everything Johnny Compton writes next."
A Mask of Flies (2024) Matthew Lyons "A spiraling nightmare of criminals, cops, cabins, cults...and the terrors hiding just beyond the spotlight of memory."
Dear Hanna (2024) (Hanna) Zoje Stage "Oh, but this is a deliciously nasty piece of work. Dear Hanna succeeds brilliantly on so many levels: as an ingenious follow-up to Baby Teeth, as a stand-alone thriller, and as one of the best, most squirm-inducing portraits of a deviant schemer this side of Gone Girl. However, Stage never skimps on the humanity of her characters; impossibly, you'll feel for Hanna almost as much as you'll dread whatever she's capable of doing next."
Bless Your Heart (2024) (Bless Your Heart, book 1) Lindy Ryan "If you don't think a horror novel can somehow feel like Steel Magnolias meets Buffy with a dab of Straub's Ghost Story, well . . . Bless Your Heart. Lindy Ryan's debut novel is a bloodsoaked blast, packed with delightful characters and shockingly gruesome mayhem. And its ending seems to imply further adventures involving the Evans women, something I would welcome like a glass of sweet tea on a hot summer day."
A Better World (2024) Sarah Langan "A five-minutes-into-the-future dystopian satire that's so sharp and bloodthirsty you might think of Harvest Home as reimagined by Ira Levin. But the wit and empathy and thrumming cosmic dread are all pure Sarah Langan. It is, indeed, a better world with books like this out there."
Your Shadow Half Remains (2024) Sunny Moraine "Gorgeously written and impossible to put down.... Alongside the mounting dread, Moraine evokes a loneliness and an aching for simple human connection that's so palpable you can't not recognize it as your own."
Where the Dead Wait (2023) Ally Wilkes "Chillingly, thrillingly existential, packed with heartache and dread. WHERE THE DEAD WAITis a Conradian trek into an Arctic heart of darkness, where the past is (literally) present, and the present marches us inch by inch towards our shared, unspeakable fate."
Last to Leave the Room (2023) Caitlin Starling "No two Caitlin Starling books are the same, save for their intelligence, imagination, and compulsive readability. But with Last to Leave the Room, Starling has outdone herself. If, by the end of Chapter 3, you're not *desperate* to know what happens next, you're as baffling as non-Euclidean geometry."
Schrader's Chord (2023) Scott Leeds "Schrader's Chord builds with more twists and turns than your favorite prog rock epic, before reaching a phantasmagoric, surprisingly heart-tugging climax. But perhaps what's most remarkable about Leeds' debut is, for all its ghosts and corpses, how thoroughly it thrums with life."
Night's Edge (2023) (Night's Edge , book 1) Liz Kerin "Night's Edge delivers all the vampiric thrills you could wish for. But if you were raised by a single parent, or found yourself taking care of an ailing guardian, or just felt your blood pulling you towards an ever-complicating relationship of any kind, this book will captivate you, break your heart, and sing to you like an impossibly personal tribute."
