Hailey Piper is the author of The Worm and His Kings, Queen of Teeth, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, Benny Rose the Cannibal King, and The Possession of Natalie Glasgow. Her short stories appear in Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, Tales to Terrify, and Year's Best Hardcore Horror, among other publications. An avid reader, lifelong Godzilla fangirl, and member of the Horror Writers Association, she spends much of her free time either writing new horrors or helping her wife haunt their apartment by making spooky noises.
Itch! (2025) Gemma Amor "Gut-churning yet inspired folk horror. Anyone who's grown up in the woods knows the endlessness Amor has painted here, vivid and tactile, and yet a place where dreams and nightmares come alive from every copse and hillock. A skin-crawling book of brutal secrets."
Herculine (2025) Grace Byron "Provocative and poetic. Herculine evokes the tradition of grungy queer lit, decked out with infernal style and slick with the poison of isolation."
Spread Me (2025) Sarah Gailey "Hot, messed-up horror that puts you in a maniacal 'sickos meme' state. The vivacious pace keeps the pages flying, while the core of Spread Me is a blooming flower, revealing its beauty petal by petal. Another reason Gailey is one of my favorite authors."
This is My Body (2025) Lindsay King-Miller "A cathartic tangle of love, rage, and religious trauma. . . . King-Miller explores the fraught dynamics of mothers and daughters, bodily autonomy, and generational curses in an inventive possession tale unlike any you've read."
Overgrowth (2025) Mira Grant "A sweeping green storm in which Grant offers a garden of seclusion, and finding yourself, and the end of the world too. Overgrowth is charming and yet horrific, a modern sci-fi shadow cast by past fears and the looming future of our lonely planet."
The Butcher's Daughter (2025) Corinne Leigh Clark and David Demchuk "A Victorian nightmare. Demchuk and Clark present an assembly of communications and reports that together form temporal windows to a slaughterhouse, turning us into voyeurs glimpsing the edges of carnage. All the ingredients of a macabre treat."
When the Wolf Comes Home (2025) Nat Cassidy "At a point it becomes clear Nat Cassidy has lost his mind, and I love it. When the Wolf Comes Home tears loose from the start. No sitting around-you're on the run with this book, driving off the ledge of full weird and into a wonderful shapeshifting fusion of terror and awe."
Senseless (2025) Ronald Malfi "A stark look at a haunted world, filled with ghosts of once-people."
Coup De Grace (2024) Sofia Ajram "A stunner. Ajram makes earnest ennui feel like the most natural state of a story. Don't assume you get to just read; you're part of this too."
So Thirsty (2024) Rachel Harrison "What a delight! Harrison pulls you into this car, insists we're in it for a good time, forever, and tears off on one fun, bloody ride. So Thirsty conjures up those chaotic in-it-to-the-end friendships you'd set your life on fire for, and you're happy to watch it burn so long as you're together."
Out of the Drowning Deep (2024) A C Wise "A unique vision. Automatons, angels, and cosmic horror nuns are only the beginning of a murder mystery wondrously orbited by metaphysical sci-fi as only A.C. Wise can weave together. Out of the Drowning Deep introduces a universe of the undefinable fantastic, gifted by one of our finest imaginations."
Midnight Rooms (2024) Donyae Coles "An immersive horror fairy tale marrying Crimson Peak to Pan's Labyrinth upon strange foundations. You're never really safe here, with Midnight Rooms wondrously defying expectations and refusing obedience. Donyae Coles leads us into a house of sinister magic, full of corners for peeking around, but careful - these walls have claws. A feverish, labyrinthine debut."
Incidents Around the House (2024) Josh Malerman "This book does worse than stay with you'it stalks you. Page-turning and nerve-burning - don't read it after dark."
Cuckoo (2024) Gretchen Felker-Martin "An instantly absorbing battle cry. Felker-Martin nests seamless psychic links with Lisa Tuttle and Stephen King, forming her unique nightmarish bear trap and fighting it with sustained, justified rage. Through all of Cuckoo's visceral brutality, it's the moments of kindness and bravery that broke my heart."
Forgotten Sisters (2024) Cynthia Pelayo "Personal, historical, and heart-deep. Forgotten Sisters captures the complicated sense of being stifled by home yet lost without it. From the eerie start to the unforgettable ending, Pelayo brings the chill of crime stories, grim fairy tales, and the gothic into a haunting mystery that will drag you into dark waters and never let go."
A Botanical Daughter (2024) Noah Medlock "A dreamlike green Frankenstein. Medlock's debut is full of uncertainty and charm, where wonder and suspense grow entangled with each other in a book that grips you tight. A captivating weird gothic."
Your Shadow Half Remains (2024) Sunny Moraine "A haunting dance of imaginative dread. A mesmerizing descent into a pit of isolation, fascination, and paranoia."
Almost Surely Dead (2024) Amina Akhtar "Akhtar coils constant paranoia, flash-forward dread, and family tragedy into an electric threat of a novel. This book will have you glancing over your shoulder. A unique thriller."
This Wretched Valley (2024) Jenny Kiefer "This Wretched Valley made me nervous to keep going; not many books can do that. There's a heaviness to the dread, and Kiefer layers looming atmosphere onto gripping desperation with a masterful touch. Forget the outdoors - stay inside with this enthralling book instead."
Where the Dead Wait (2023) Ally Wilkes "Harrowing and clawing with the iciest fingernails. The only thing harder to escape than the bloodthirsty sea is the longing and regret. WHERE THE DEAD WAIT proves that the frozen nightmare is the domain of Ally Wilkes; we're just left to survive it."
The Daughters of Block Island (2023) Christa Carmen "The Daughters of Block Island offers an atmospheric, harrowing plight of ghosts and murder. Christa Carmen paints an island of vivid and unsettling imagery, where every claustrophobic twist leads deeper into an underworld of dread. A compelling mystery, with arresting characters ready to engulf you."
Who Lost, I Found (2023) Eden Royce "Endlessly absorbing. A charismatic, ensnaring collection of haunted locales and legacies, with a magic both bloody and wondrous. I couldn't tear myself away. Royce deftly navigates her sea of stories to enchant your imagination, make your skin crawl, and even break your heart."
Brainwyrms (2023) Alison Rumfitt "A gut-churning infestation mixing extreme depravity with a hive of obsessive violence. Rumfitt consistently has her finger to the societal pulse."
Bloom (2023) Delilah S Dawson "Dawson has brought the kind of irresistible treat you've been hungering for. Sapphic longing with a dash of darkness - the perfect recipe. Superbly seductive."
Black River Orchard (2023) Chuck Wendig "Creepy and insidious, Black River Orchard whets your appetite and then turns you inside out."
Fever House (2023) (Fever House Duology, book 1) Keith Rosson "Devilishly relentless . . . This book is concrete brutality that will leave you bruised and out of breath."
Our Own Unique Affliction (2023) Scott J Moses "Moses tenders a vampire's origin and fate in the skin of a mood-soaked tragedy, embraced by bloody nights and unyielding regrets. Fans of Paul Tremblay's The Pallbearers Club should sink their fangs in before sunrise."
Looking Glass Sound (2023) Catriona Ward "I couldn't tear myself away. Looking Glass Sound is slyly addictive. Falling into a Catriona Ward book means knowing you'll be caught and never let go. Unconventional, imaginative, and brazenly twisted."
Linghun (2023) Ai Jiang "The neighborhood in Linghun is a twisted-neck demon, forever looking backward at the ghosts and ghosts-to-be. Ai Jiang builds an altar of the flawed living and the perfect dead with an unflinching eye for death-cloaked domestic tragedy. A haunting, brilliant debut."
Sister, Maiden, Monster (2023) Lucy A Snyder "On every charged page, Snyder sets to work catching and devouring the grimmest of social ills. Sister, Maiden, Monster is a gory treat of rich monster science and near-decadent body horror. Delicious and devious."
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes (2022) Eric LaRocca "'Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke' is a tight, merciless epistolary, each piece of correspondence coiling the reader around its finger and never letting go. LaRocca skillfully weaves a grotesque, unforgettable page-turner of manipulation and depravity."
The Butcher (2022) Laura Kat Young "Young crafts a mean little world of stark landscapes and sharp edges, and beneath each turn lies a wound. Psychologically claustrophobic, and a harrowing debut."
Screams From the Dark (2022) Ellen Datlow "Screams From the Dark crackles with ferocious energy and ravenous delights. A thrilling feast for we who love monsters. Datlow has gathered the kinds of stories to which all gruesome campfire tales aspire."
The Sharp End of the Rainbow (2022) Madeleine Swann "A dazzling storm of bizarre daydreams and nightmares. Swann is an expert surrealist, and she yanks just the right cryptic nerves to check if they'll flinch. Sometimes playful, other times shocking, these are stories of worlds and people twisted in their odd logic, much like our own, much like us."
