Dark is When the Devil Comes (2026) Daisy Pearce "Daisy Pearce has taken a horrific abduction story and twisted it into something even more dark and terrifying, an insidious tale that will burrow deeper beneath your skin with each turned page before twining around your heart like blackened string. But DEVIL is also a story about family, and guilt, and the bond between two sisters fractured by a malevolent force, one that won't rest until it's torn them apart."
The Widows of Winding Gale (2026) Kealan Patrick Burke "A terrifying aquatic hellscape, an insane mashup of monsters and folklore and the occult, with a black, briny beating heart bursting with vengeance and death. A cold, wet, tentacled nightmare that will haunt you."
Burned Man at Night (2025) John S McFarland "McFarland is adept at creating unsettling scenarios within very human, everyday contexts. The horrors that plague his characters feel like something that could happen to anyone at any time, which is a great way to creep under a reader's skin and stay there a while."
Breathe In, Bleed Out (2025) Brian McAuley "Breathe In, Bleed Out is a breath of fresh air for the slasher genre-classic kills combined with a cheeky new age spiritual journey makes McAuley's newest entry a blast from start to finish. This novel goes straight for the chakra with a bloody blade, and you'll be putting together the pieces of this whodunit slay-fest until the last page. Great stuff."
Requiem (2025) John Palisano "Palisano takes the 'haunted house in space' trope and twists it into something completely fresh and totally unhinged. Requiem takes the most terrifyingly hallucinogenic moments of Event Horizon and combines them deftly, and powerfully, with the most human and heartfelt themes of Contact to create a new vision of extraterrestrial visitation, formulating a new take on one of the all-time great taglines: In space, no one can hear you scream... but you."
The Night Birds (2025) Christopher Golden "The Night Birds is a uniquely terrifying slice of witchy horror that will surprise and delight horror fans who think they've read it all. Visceral, dark, pedal-to-the-metal action makes Golden's newest a ride that readers won't soon forget."
Senseless (2025) Ronald Malfi "With Senseless, Malfi has created a warped, psychological thriller novel and painted it black with horror, creating something totally unique. Senseless combines all the chills of a crime-driven story about a serial killer with the dark, knife-twisting terrors of furious madness; the compulsion of a murder mystery with the distorted reality of the supernatural. I've never read anything quite like it."
White Line Fever (2025) KC Jones "A terrifying, nerve-shattering, white-knuckled road trip through hell. Jones takes the haunted house trope and stretches it like black tar across a landscape littered with inner demons, ghosts of the past, and the detritus of personal trauma--a rare blend of visceral horror and psychological suspense that will keep readers' feet firmly on the gas pedal."
The Haunting of Room 904 (2025) Erika T Wurth "The Haunting of Room 904 is a unique, richly layered ghost story steeped in the violence and injustice of American history, each page artfully woven with themes of loss, regret, and the complex heart of familial bonds. But the true power of Wurth's novel lies in its ideals of perseverance, and the bright hopefulness of love in all its forms."
How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive (2024) Craig DiLouie "How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive is a blood-spattered homage to horror films, an ode to the craft of filmmaking, and a cautionary tale about the fiery - often destructive - creative passion inside every artist, one that continuously teeters on the brink of insanity. DiLouie has created a celluloid cursed object story that John Carpenter himself would stand up and applaud from the front row."
Ghost Station (2024) S A Barnes "A taut, twisting thriller that subverts every trope and expectation in all the best-and most terrifying-ways imaginable."
Red River Seven (2023) A J Ryan "Bird Box meets World War Z in the genre-bending Red River Seven, a madly entertaining amalgam of locked-room mystery, heart-racing thriller, and terror-inducing horror show that will keep you up late into the night and darken your dreams long after you turn the last page."
The Pale House Devil (2023) (Discreet Eliminators, book 1) Richard Kadrey "A gleeful, bloody mashup of the occult, haunted houses, monsters, demons, assassins, and the undead. Only Kadrey could tie all these dark tropes together with such self-assured wizardry, carefully adding just enough gooey violence to make you squirm as you read, wondering what new insanity waits for you on the next page. A shot of horror adrenaline!"
Nestlings (2023) Nat Cassidy "Nestlings is a living, breathing, bleeding, haunting marvel of storytelling that does more than create skin-crawling terror; it slides beneath the itchy flesh and burrows, tick-like, into your heart . . . Reading this book will fill you with terror and (all-too-human) moments of despair, it will flood your senses with the sweet calling of the dark. But worry not, because Cassidy leaves a pinprick of light within reach, a distant beacon that feels like hope."
Fever House (2023) (Fever House Duology, book 1) Keith Rosson "Fever House is a punk-apocalyptic horror show with a good heart and bad intentions. The most ferocious, terrifying zombie novel since The Living Dead."
Sister, Maiden, Monster (2023) Lucy A Snyder "Sensuous, sinister, and sinewy; a blood-and-brains splattered shotgun-blast romp through the apocalypse that will simultaneously excite and disgust readers with equal pleasure."
The Hollow Kind (2022) Andy Davidson "Andy's prose is scrumptious, lofty, and brutal and heartbreaking. The story is all tension and terror."
Witch 13 (2022) (Thirteen Wands, book 1) Patrick Delaney "A classic trope reimagined for the modern world and overlaid with a thick black coat of cosmic horror."
Screams From the Dark (2022) Ellen Datlow "Screams From the Dark brings together some of the boldest voices in horror to create a shrieking chorus that will echo in your mind long after you've closed the book. There is a darkness in these pages that leaks out and shows you worlds you never dreamed possible. Not even in your worst nightmares."
To Dust You Shall Return (2021) Fred Venturini "To Dust You Shall Return is a wildly entertaining, mythic-level battle royale fought between a monstrous hitman with a busted spirit and a wanna-be king with supernatural powers. When the two forces collide on the small-town stage of Harlow, blood bursts from the dust like geysers and you can hear the bones snapping from outer space. Venturini has created a modern-day clash of the titans, an epic tale of revenge that’s more Penny Dreadful than Homer and has the body count to prove it. A masterful tour-de-force of violence and terror; a gruesome, gory reveal of the dark which lies hidden deep within the meat of the human heart."
The Dark Side of the Room (2020) Tyler Jones "What struck me the hardest was the delicate beauty of the telling. There's a tight-wired fragility to the prose, to the story, that creates a sense of both awe and uncertainty. A grisly tale, an ever-so-slow twisting of a knife. A triumphant piece of fiction."
Malorie (2019) (Bird Box , book 2) Josh Malerman "I can’t remember the last time I had to set a book down because it was too intense for me to continue. And that’s only the halfway point. Once Malerman hits the gas you better hang on tight, because he doesn’t let up until the stunning finish. Malorie is a relentless thriller that will fry your nerves and twist your heart. It’s absolutely brilliant."
