CLAY MCLEOD CHAPMAN (Brooklyn, NY) is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. His previous publications include Rest Area, Miss Corpus, and The Tribe trilogy Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal, and Academic Assassins (Disney). His films include The Boy (SXSW 2015), Henley (Sundance 2012), and Late Bloomer (Sundance 2005). Theater: Commencement and Hostage Song (with Kyle Jarrow). Comics: Edge of Spider-Verse, The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, Vertigo Quarterly: SFX, and Self Storage. Chapman is a writing instructor at the Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University.
The Staircase in the Woods (2025) Chuck Wendig "Chuck Wendig is the Frank Lloyd Wright of horror, and here's his masterstroke of malaise. The Staircase in the Woods is a true blueprint for terror."
Senseless (2025) Ronald Malfi "A brutal Rubik's Cube of a book covered in blood... This vamped out, sun-bleached mobius strip is a masterclass in horror noir."
White Line Fever (2025) KC Jones "White Line Fever is the only novel I ever got a speed ticket for reading so fast. Once you hit KC Jones' haunted highway, you're not going to want to stop until you reach the shocking end. It reads like a joyride with the devil himself."
rekt (2025) Alex Gonzalez "rekt is a nihilistic annihilation of the senses, a David Fincher-directed Faces of Death for the digital age, a novocaine 120 Gigabytes of Sodom by a debut de Sade that leaves the reader uncomfortably numb. This book takes just as much from you as you take from it. Alex Gonzalez left me utterly gutted."
At Dark, I Become Loathsome (2025) Eric LaRocca "Imagine when literature had the power to be profane. Imagine reading Naked Lunch when it was first unleashed. Imagine no further. Eric LaRocca is this century's William S. Burroughs. He is a Rimbaud abomination. His writing is akin to every Season in Hell. At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a literary ritual, an unholy evocation of those unsparing authors who martyred themselves in the name of transgressive literature. To read this book is to partake in the agony and ecstasy of our poetic saints ... and to burn right alongside them at the stake."
You Better Watch Out (2024) James S Murray and Darren Wearmouth "Ho, ho oh no--It's SAW in Santa's workshop! Murray and Wearmouth make damn sure not a creature will be stirring once you're through reading this breakneck-paced, blissfully savage book. Wear a poncho, because things are about to get bloody. Real bloody."
Coup De Grace (2024) Sofia Ajram "Coup de Grace isn't merely absorbing - I feel as if I was digested by this book, dissolving bit by bit with every flip of the page. Sofia Ajram has constructed a stunning mobius strip of a nightmare, equal parts Clive Barker and M.C. Escher, full of fleshy architecture and seductively serpentine prose."
Cold Snap (2024) Lindy Ryan "Cold Snap reads like a whiteout of blinding grief. The deeper you plunge into this haunting novella, the more you lose sight of your surroundings. Before long, you won't be able to tell where the pages end and reality begins. It's that immersive."
Catherine the Ghost (2024) Kathe Koja "Kathe Koja divinely taps into the hereafter with Catherine the Ghost, summoning Wuthering Heights and beckoning Bronte to speak from beyond the veil. What they manifest together is a haunting meditation on love and literature, both for and from, two exquisite texts communing with one another across the centuries."
Guillotine (2024) Delilah S Dawson "Sometimes the line dividing the Haves from the Have-Nots is as thin as a razorblade or blunt as a sledgehammer, but in Delilah S. Dawson's cruelly capable hands, rest assured, it's gonna hurt no matter what. Her taut novella testifies revenge is a dish best served flambeed, or sous vide, or pounded into an absolute pulp. In Guillotine, you gleefully get all three... and then some."
Bitter is the Heart (2024) Mina Hardy "Bitter is the Heart is pure arrhythmic horror. Reading it disrupts your own pulse. Symptoms include deep-rooted trauma, disquieting mother-daughter bonds, and sleepless, sleepless nights."
A Mask of Flies (2024) Matthew Lyons "Matthew Lyons' bare knuckle prose is brutal enough to split skin, split lips, split the reader's soul straight down the middle. A Mask of Flies pulls no punches and finds a particular poetry in its bloodshed that resonates long after you've been knocked out."
The Drowning House (2024) Cherie Priest "Inhabiting the same sandy block as Michael McDowell's The Elementals and Josh Malerman's A House at the Bottom of a Lake, Cherie Priest's The Drowning House has taken up permanent residence in my subconscious alongside the briniest haunted houses around. Be forewarned: there's an undertow to this novel. Once you start reading, it'll suck you right in."
The Dissonance (2024) Shaun Hamill "Shaun Hamill proves there are strange new worlds yet to be explored on the bookshelf. The Dissonance is yet another testament to Hamill's mantel as a master storyteller, blending the terrors and wonders of traumatic magic. You won't read another novel quite like The Dissonance this year, or perhaps ever in this life--or even beyond it."
Incidents Around the House (2024) Josh Malerman "Josh Malerman is such an insidious architect. I call all of his haunted houses home, and this just might be his most devilish design yet."
My Darling Dreadful Thing (2024) Johanna van Veen "A sapphic seance of preternatural proportions, My Darling Dreadful Thing summons a stunning new literary voice to be reckoned with. Johanna van Veen reaches beyond the veil to conjure up a gothic shocker like no other."
The House That Horror Built (2024) Christina Henry "After reading The House That Horror Built, I brought the terror into my own home and now it won't leave. Christina Henry has me questioning every creak, every warping floorboard, every stray sound around my house and now I can't sleep at night. There's something in the walls of this novel and it watches you while you read."
The Redemption of Morgan Bright (2024) Chris Panatier "Chris Panatier is a literary lepidopterist who goes-for-baroque with his gothic shocker The Redemption of Morgan Bright, metamorphosing a mindf**k of a novel that's equal parts Shock Corridor and Midsommar. You don't read this book as much as let it cocoon you, consume you, rearrange and change you from the inside out, and when it's done - with you - what emerges from its radiant pages is an altogether altered reader. What a beautiful butterfly of a book this is."
Forgotten Sisters (2024) Cynthia Pelayo "Cynthia Pelayo writes with an elegiacally forensic eye, equal parts poet and coroner. Her jaw-dropping autopsy Forgotten Sisters plays out like a true-crime Grey Gardens fantasia penned by Shirley Jackson and it's worth every lyrical incision."
Diavola (2024) Jennifer Thorne "Jennifer Thorne scorches the petals right off The White Lotus with this supernatural downward spiral of gut-wrenching, teeth-baring terror. If you thought vacationing with your family was a living hell, look no further than Diavola as a primo esempio that there are deeper, darker levels to descent that would make even Dante blush. This isn't your mama's Italian gothic, this is a literary garrote strapped right at your throat, and my God, does it ever squeeze."
A Botanical Daughter (2024) Noah Medlock "This flourishing horticultural horror could only be the monstrous byproduct of a mad phytologist, Mary Shelley grafted onto Jeff VanderMeer, a gothic greenhouse of sporror that reaches down deep into the substrata of the reader's subconscious and eternally takes root. I absolutely loved it."
This Wretched Valley (2024) Jenny Kiefer "A dread-inducing Kentucky spin on the Dyatlov Pass incident, This Wretched Valley drops its readers right into uncharted territory without a compass and demands we navigate our way out alive and in one piece. Not since Scott Smith's The Ruins has a novel imbued a region with such desperate horror."
Where the Dead Wait (2023) Ally Wilkes "With ALL THE WHITE SPACES, Ally Wilkes chilled readers to the bone, and now with WHERE THE DEAD WAIT, she sucks the very marrow out from them. Hallucinatory, haunting, and hunger-panged, this frostbitten novel gnawed away at my very sanity and I loved every nibble of it."
A Light Most Hateful (2023) Hailey Piper "What has sprouted out from Hailey Piper's head is a fully-formed goddess of a novel, equal parts terrifying, awe-inspiring, and downright worshipful. I'm still scorched by A Light Most Hateful, even after closing its pages, blinded by its brilliance."
Knock Knock, Open Wide (2023) Neil Sharpson "Celtic creepypasta Knock Knock, Open Wide is a dark miracle and Neil Sharpson is an infernal bard belched straight out from Hell itself. Your next nightmare has just arrived."
Edenville (2023) Sam Rebelein "Sam Rebelein's Edenville is pure cosmic gonzo...This jaw-dropping -- apologies, jaw-ripping -- novel earns its place amongst contemporary classics The Library at Mount Char and The Book of Accidents. You won't read anything quite like it... not in our universe, anyway."
The September House (2023) Carissa Orlando "Peel back The Yellow Wallpaper, check out of The Overlook, and say farewell to Hill House... There's a new haunted house on the market and Carissa Orlando is the realtor of our nightmares. You'll never want to leave once you start reading."
Schrader's Chord (2023) Scott Leeds "Scott Leeds truly has an ear for fear. Any reader who cracks this cursed book open is doomed to devour it in one sitting like I did. Now I hear ghosts wherever I go."
Black Sheep (2023) Rachel Harrison "No other contemporary author harnesses the humanity found in horror quite like Rachel Harrison. With Black Sheep, she warms your heart, then breaks it, then rips it out."
Whalefall (2023) Daniel Kraus "A brutal, unsparing, wildly uplifting book. The sheer buoyancy had me breathless by the end."
Unquiet (2023) E Saxey "Unquiet deceptively presents itself like a frozen lake: The further one treads across E. Saxey's haunting, delicate text, the closer to cracking the ice one gets. I fell through this gorgeously gothic novel and still haven't come up for air."
Burn the Negative (2023) Josh Winning "Josh Winning has won my heart with this Hollywood horror-noir, which plays out like A Nightmare On Sunset Boulevard."
Bunker Dogs (2023) Gage Greenwood "Claustrophobically composed and tautly paced, BUNKER DOGS takes a suffocating plunge into utter what-the-fuckery that will leave you losing sleep just to reach the paralyzing end. I tore through this book."
Looking Glass Sound (2023) Catriona Ward "Catriona Ward is an inspired spider and Looking Glass Sound is her most masterful web yet... while we, dear readers, are nothing more than mere flies happily trapped within the pages of this brilliantly intricate novel."
Linghun (2023) Ai Jiang "Ai Jiang probes the very notion of ghosts to offer us something far more haunting: it is the living who we should fear the most, where the boundless parameters of our own grief lay down the blueprint for an altogether new Hill House to inhabit."
The Haunting of Alejandra (2023) V Castro "V. Castro charts a terrifying legacy of tears with The Haunting of Alejandra, an empathic epic that maps out the birth of a curse and tethers itself to the very ancestry of its tragic protagonist."
Gothic (2023) Philip Fracassi "GOTHIC is the literary equivalent of the abyss gazing right back at you from the hellish depths of its pages. Don't lean in too close, lest you fall into this nightmarish novel and never find your way out again."
A History of Fear (2022) Luke Dumas "A History of Fear presents itself as a disquieting cache of nightmares, a nested doll narrative that reads like a found-footage Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg. Readers, beware: this novel is not safe and will have you questioning what's real for many sleepless nights to come."
Curse of the Reaper (2022) Brian McAuley "Brian McAuley takes Method acting to maniacal meta-horror heights in his Poe-infused slasher Curse of the Reaper, which reads like a pitch-perfect riff off of Peter Bogdanovich's Targets, a Los Angeles-cast Cask of Amontillado, and a Jerry Stahl-penned tug-of-war between Boris Karloff and Kane Hodder. Read it."
What Moves the Dead (2022) (Sworn Soldier, book 1) T Kingfisher "The distilled terror of T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead insinuates itself into the reader's nervous system from the very first sentence and quickly overtakes their sense of self control. I was powerless against this novella's pestilential pull and had to finish it in one sitting... or maybe it finished me. Now it's under my skin and I can't trust the touch of anything anymore."
Echo (2022) Thomas Olde Heuvelt "I just scaled Mt. Olde Heuvelt and let me tell you, the view up here is absolutely terrifying. Reading ECHO caused me vertigo. The sense of dread inspired by this breathtaking novel - the dread of something monstrous wearing the face of someone we love - reaches so deep, I can still feel the lingering chill in my bones well after putting the book down."
Slewfoot (2021) Brom "Brom has made a convert out of me with Slewfoot, which takes hold of the maxim 'sympathy for the devil' and yanks hard on that literary taproot, unearthing a far more elemental and complex truth. Demon or no, evil or not, the mighty stag Slewfoot deserves our love and devotion. He's got mine now. All hail Brom, all hail Slewfoot!"
Chasing the Boogeyman (2021) (Boogeyman, book 1) Richard Chizmar "Chizmar’s Chasing the Boogeyman has been written upon missing person flyers and published on telephone poles. HAVE YOU READ THIS STORY? For your own safety, you should… The Boogeyman will soon enter the pantheon of suburban legends that fill our backyards like summer fireflies, his name whispered into ears all over. Pray you keep yours."
Impacted (2021) Benji Carr "Like a shot of novocaine, Benji Carr injects his novel with enough pitch black comedy to take all my pain away. Impacted had my jaw on the floor, either from laughter or sheer gob-smacking shock. Pray you remember to grab your own mandible back up once you've finished reading this hilarious debut novel."
