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."
Diavola (2024) Jennifer Thorne "First, she took us to a terrifying British isle, and now to a terrifying Italian villa? Jennifer Thorne is the travel agent from Hell, and DIAVOLA is an exquisitely paced, thoroughly entertaining thrill ride. The delightfully dysfunctional family dynamics draw you in, while the dread cinches tight around your ankles. Like any dish that bears its name, this book will make you sweat."
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."
A Light Most Hateful (2023) Hailey Piper "A LIGHT MOST HATEFUL begins with a scream, and that's appropriate given you'll be screaming your way through this swirling, phantasmagoric, unpredictable nightmare. Escaping the suburbs has never been so harrowing."
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."
Black Sheep (2023) Rachel Harrison "Once again, Rachel Harrison finds light in the darkness and darkness in the light - Black Sheep sits proudly among her family of contemporary horror classics."
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."
Everything the Darkness Eats (2023) Eric LaRocca "After already conquering short stories and novellas, it should be no surprise that more Eric LaRocca is even better. With his novel-length debut, he promises us a feast fit for Darkness itself, and, my God, does he deliver."