The Staircase in the Woods (2025) Chuck Wendig "Chuck Wendig has given us another stunner. The Staircase in the Woods is as mysterious, alluring, heartbreaking, ever-shifting, and unnervingly powerful as the nature of friendship itself."
Senseless (2025) Ronald Malfi "To read Ronald Malfi is to find yourself in your favorite bar, drink in hand, music you love coming out of the speakers, the comforting babble of the crowd around you. An intriguing stranger sidles up to you and begins to tell you a story. Before you know it, all those other noises fall away and you're enrapt. You barely even notice the glint of the blade as it slides into your gut. Malfi is just that bewitching, just that sneaky, just that brutal, just that good at what he does."
At Dark, I Become Loathsome (2025) Eric LaRocca "LaRocca's most unsparing book yet. At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a rich mosaic of alienation and loss that's as tender as it is compelling and ultimately appalling. Eric LaRocca is just so very seductive when it comes to digging graves we'll eagerly throw ourselves into."
Coup De Grace (2024) Sofia Ajram "To succinctly describe the power of this haunting labyrinth of a book would require a writer of Sofia Ajram's skill--and that's a rare thing indeed. This is the sort of story you read in one day and then think about for a lifetime. It's bigger on the inside."
This World is Not Yours (2024) Kemi Ashing-Giwa "A rich, sharp shock of a novella, churning with corrupted love and corrupted nature. This World Is Not Yours may occur galaxies away, but the dread it evokes is anything but alien. Because we all suspect our own version of the Gray is out there, don't we? And we're all preparing for its embrace."
Devils Kill Devils (2024) Johnny Compton "As full of twists and turns as a coil of barbed wire and twice as gripping. Devils Kill Devils is straight-up jaw-dropping in all the ways it subverts our preconceptions of beloved monsters. Count me in for everything Johnny Compton writes next."
A Mask of Flies (2024) Matthew Lyons "A spiraling nightmare of criminals, cops, cabins, cults...and the terrors hiding just beyond the spotlight of memory."
Dear Hanna (2024) (Hanna) Zoje Stage "Oh, but this is a deliciously nasty piece of work. Dear Hanna succeeds brilliantly on so many levels: as an ingenious follow-up to Baby Teeth, as a stand-alone thriller, and as one of the best, most squirm-inducing portraits of a deviant schemer this side of Gone Girl. However, Stage never skimps on the humanity of her characters; impossibly, you'll feel for Hanna almost as much as you'll dread whatever she's capable of doing next."
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."
