Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He's the author of BLACKBIRDS, DOUBLE DEAD and DINOCALYPSE NOW, and is co-writer of the short film PANDEMIC, the feature film HiM, and the Emmy-nominated digital narrative COLLAPSUS. He lives in Pennsylvania with wife, taco terrier, and tiny human.
The Night That Finds Us All (2025) John Hornor Jacobs "Builds like a dark wave, and once it crests, it'll knock you over - John Hornor Jacobs has crafted a masterful tale, one of uncanny alienation out at sea with a protagonist whose savvy, sharp-tongued voice is alone worth the price of entry. Yet again, Jacobs reminds us that he is a writer of singular ability, and if the gods are just, this will be regarded as a classic of the genre."
Crafting for Sinners (2025) Jenny Kiefer "Crafting for Sinners is like a deranged, hellish variant of Die Hard except instead it's a gay woman trapped inside a craft store run by an evangelical nightmare cult. It's surreal, terrifying, thrilling, and looks right down the barrel at the cultural horrors at the center of our current era."
Spread Me (2025) Sarah Gailey "Spread Me has it all. It's tense, tight, squicky, slippery, lusty, claustrophobic. Somehow it is both terrifying and tantalizing. This story, like what's in it, eagerly crawls inside you and replaces you with itself. Perhaps the true gift here, though, is Gailey's character work--these fully-realized individuals do not feel contained to the page, and truly feel alive."
Let Not Your Sorrow Die (2025) Bracken MacLeod "With this collection, MacLeod offers up a powerful array of ferocious, toothsome tales -- but these are not just stories, but strips and slices of the darkest parts of the human heart. This is horror working well below the surface, at a deeper level. And it is, to my demerit, the first MacLeod I've read, but it sure won't be the last."
Another (2025) Paul Tremblay "Another brings the creepy, crawly, sinking-into-quicksand vibes with this terror-fed kids' tale of loss-of-self, isolation, and strange friendship. Paul Tremblay has mastered horror for adults but proves here that he's more than capable of speaking to the horrors unique to middle-grade kids."
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes (2025) Clay McLeod Chapman "With Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, Chapman isn't merely checking the pulse of America - he's tapping the vein. And trust me, there's blood everywhere. This book throbs with body horror and familial conflict and, most notably, the sociopolitical nightmare we find ourselves in."
At Dark, I Become Loathsome (2025) Eric LaRocca "At Dark, I Become Loathsome continues to prove that LaRocca is a master navigator of the beautiful and the grotesque, plumbing the darkest, maddest depths of the human heart and retrieving from within all the grief and all the guilt the heart can hold. If there is a greatest strength here - in a book full of them - it is that LaRocca writes with an unswerving attention to the empathy of his characters, caring about them, even when they are, as the title suggests, loathsome."
Memorials (2024) Richard Chizmar "Memorials is destined to be a horror classic - this is broad-shouldered, big-hearted horror written by someone with a distinct mastery of the form. It reaches a grim, unholy crescendo that can't be beat. Chizmar nails it."
It Will Only Hurt for a Moment (2024) Delilah S Dawson "Steadily mounting mysteries and disturbing revelations at an art commune in this story about a woman's liberation from an abusive relationship make this another must-read in Dawson's growing canon of work."
American Rapture (2024) CJ Leede "A blistering, feverish ride through a uniquely American apocalypse. Leede crafts a deeply compelling descent through an unraveling heartland. Sure to rattle the cages of our Puritanical nightmare country."
All the Hearts You Eat (2024) Hailey Piper "You think you know how this haunting will go, but you don't. All the Hearts You Eat has a dark and powerful undertow, and it'll pull you far, far out to sea."
Graveyard Shift (2024) M L Rio "This place has everything-rats, fungus, thrills, chills, mysteries, hostile incidents-and M.L. Rio deftly weaves it all together into a short, sweet (okay maybe not that sweet) story. A rad, crisp, creepy read."
A Mask of Flies (2024) Matthew Lyons "A Mask of Flies blows through the intersection at Horror Street and Crime Avenue and doesn't let off the accelerator as it takes you on a white-knuckled ride to places you do not expect."
The Drowning House (2024) Cherie Priest "Cherie Priest is our new queen of darkness, folks. Time to kneel before her, lest she take our heads."
Small Town Horror (2024) Ronald Malfi "This is bedrock American horror fiction, sure to be a classic. Malfi deftly draws you down into the darkness of a group of friends in a small town (natch) who find themselves literally haunted by the secrets and mistakes of their shared past."
When Among Crows (2024) (Curse Bearer, book 1) Veronica Roth "From word one, Roth captivates the reader and takes you into a folkloric Chicago full of dark magic and dark delight."
Almost Surely Dead (2024) Amina Akhtar "A shocking act of violence opens the door to a terrifying mystery in this eerie, addictive thriller from Amina Akhtar."
The Forest Demands Its Due (2023) Kosoko Jackson "Strange magic, mad creatures, and cruel curses abound in this eerie tale of becoming. This book calls to you sure as the dark forest calls to Douglas - and if you know what's good for you, you'll answer that call."
The Water Outlaws (2023) (Water Outlaws, book 1) S L Huang "This book lines up like a perfect, elegant equation--it's fast, furious, and adds up to one of the coolest, most crackin' reads this year."
The Salt-Black Tree (2023) (Dead God's Heart, book 2) Lilith Saintcrow "Saintcrow's rough, rawboned prose paints a world not on the edge, but already over it, revealing an alternate history of America that is achingly relevant to the America in which we live. Simply put, Saintcrow doesn't f*** around."
Fever House (2023) (Fever House Duology, book 1) Keith Rosson "Fever House is like being electrocuted with an awesome story and sharp, snapping prose. It somehow executes noir, pulp, spy thriller and visceral crime horror as one entire package and doesn't skip a beat doing it."
Malice House (2022) (Malice Compendium, book 1) Megan Shepherd "This book, like Malice House itself, contains many secrets, and you will read it voraciously to try to find and consume them all. May it compel you as swiftly as it compelled me."
Hide (2022) Kiersten White "Equal parts hell-ride thriller and American fable, Kiersten White's HIDE runs you through a sinister child's game set in a nightmare amusement park, and it does so with gleeful, fiendish delight. I hung onto this book with bloodless knuckles, and I adored every spine-chilling second."
The Fervor (2022) Alma Katsu "A haunting, harrowing slice of historical horror conjured by a masterful storyteller."
Road of Bones (2022) Christopher Golden "This book is legit great. Golden is the master of what I think of as 'adventure horror.' People in strange places and extreme situations meeting terror at the edges of the world. Road of Bones is scary as hell and does not fuck around."
The All-Consuming World (2021) Cassandra Khaw "Reminds me of the first time I read Snow Crash — The All-Consuming World has that frenetic, urgent energy that doesn’t so much compel you to read further as it grabs you by the chin and drags you across the pages. Khaw has written a surly, sneering, zero-g, sharp-toothed poem of vulgarity and violence, and I am here for every electric word of it."
Hummingbird Salamander (2021) Jeff VanderMeer "This is an astonishing book, topical and madly compelling. A timely, unsettling novel of obsession and descent--a thriller equal parts ecological and psychological, whose puzzle warns of a natural world on the edge of ruination. There's an urgency to it, but it's not preachy. VanderMeer shines in revealing our current dystopia."
The Hollow Places (2020) T Kingfisher "Reads so fast and so effortless that you don t realize how in thrall you are to it. It s the sensation of being a little kid who stayed out too long past dinner and sure, you were having fun, but now it s a moonless night and the forest is dark and you are hopelessly lost. This is righteous, folkloric horror, and the devil is waiting in between these pages."
Mask of Ghosts (2020) (Ghostwriters, book 5) J H Moncrieff "J.H. Moncrieff is a bold new voice in horror and supernatural suspense."
Burn the Dark (2020) (Malus Domestica, book 1) S A Hunt "S.A. Hunt is a kickass storyteller conquering the zone between fantasy and horror. Keep an eye on this one, because they're just getting started."
Seven Blades in Black (2019) (Grave of Empires, book 1) Sam Sykes "Gunslingers and mad mages and monsters, oh my. Sykes' latest is a brutal and vulgar epic yet still fun enough that - and I say this as the highest of compliments - makes me wish like hell it ends up with an adaptation into a role-playing game."
Inspection (2019) Josh Malerman "A wonderfully mad bit of narrative knotwork, braiding together threads of The Handmaid’s Tale and BioShock with aplomb. Malerman is a master at unsettling you—and keeping you off-balance until the last page is turned."
Space Opera (2018) (Space Opera, book 1) Catherynne M Valente "SPACE OPERA is a book I really needed in this dour, dire age: Valente’s book contains a story and prose that is both electric and breathless, It has the heart of Douglas Adams and the soul of David Bowie. I loved it and it made me happy."
The Oracle Year (2018) Charles Soule "Soule’s The Oracle Year is like a sliding puzzle, except every time you think you can predict what the image will be, new pieces slide into place. It’s a wonderfully mysterious thriller that proves Soule is as much a master of prose as he is of comic book script."
The Armored Saint (2018) (Sacred Throne, book 1) Myke Cole "A dark fantasy tale with sharp teeth and a hard punch. Heloise is the hero we need, and Myke Cole is the writer to bring her transformation to light."
The Fold (2015) Peter Clines "That rare thriller that always keeps just one step ahead of the reader...a crackling, electric read."
Broken Souls (2014) (Eric Carter, book 2) Stephen Blackmoore "Demons and dark magic and gods of death: what's not to like? Blackmoore's hard-charging prose hits like a bullet fired from a cursed gun...."
The Three (2014) (Three , book 1) Sarah Lotz "One of the finest, freakiest horror novels I've read."
Vicious (2013) (Villains, book 1) V E Schwab "An epic collision of super-powered nemeses. The writing and storycraft is Schwab's own superpower as this tale leaps off the page in all its dark, four-color comic-book glory."
