March was an amazing month for horror!
I started off the month with Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey's The Dead Take The A Train, which was gruesomely fast-paced. I read the second book in the Sworn Soldier series, What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher and took a chance on KU for Whispers of Blackwell House by Amelia Cognet. The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed with its gothic fairytale feel was a favorite. Its fantasy/horror mashup was delightful. Keeping the forest theme going, C.G. Drews' Don't Let the Forest In won't publish until October but you want to put this YA book on your TBR now.
You'll have to wait on another couple of my favorites from this month: Christina Henry's new release The House That Horror Built is coming out in May and Chuck Tingle's newest Bury Your Gays will be published in July. When I say so many good books, I mean it!
My absolute favorite though was Nick Roberts' Mean Spirited. I haven't read something this creepy in a long time. Highly recommend!
What's next for April? Space horror, haunted houses, psychological horrors, it's all here!
Here are just a few of April's don't-miss horror releases.
See the whole list of 2024 releases here.
Rise and shine. The Evans women have some undead to kill.
It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny―Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter, have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone.
But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy’s body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it’s clear that the Strigoi―the original vampire―are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town.
As more folks in town turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes, the dead aren’t the only things you want to keep buried.
A crackling mystery-horror novel with big-hearted characters and Southern charm with a bite, Bless Your Heart is a gasp-worthy delight from start to finish.
It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny―Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter, have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone.
But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy’s body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it’s clear that the Strigoi―the original vampire―are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town.
As more folks in town turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes, the dead aren’t the only things you want to keep buried.
A crackling mystery-horror novel with big-hearted characters and Southern charm with a bite, Bless Your Heart is a gasp-worthy delight from start to finish.
Bram Stoker Award-winning author Hailey Piper joins Bad Hand Books with a supernatural crime novella.
What’s been happening at Cranberry Cove? It’s unspeakable. It’s unspoken.
Emberly Hale is about to take a dark journey inside the derelict hotel—and inside her own past—to find out the horrible truth.
What’s been happening at Cranberry Cove? It’s unspeakable. It’s unspoken.
Emberly Hale is about to take a dark journey inside the derelict hotel—and inside her own past—to find out the horrible truth.
Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell
Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.
However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.
Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?
Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.
And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.
A queer paranormal psychological horror novel, in the style of showrunner Mike Flannagan, showing the complex real-life terror inherent in grief and mental illness After the tragic death of their father and surviving a life-threatening eating disorder, 18-year-old Ellis moves with their mother to the small town of Black Stone, seeking a simpler life and some space to recover. But Black Stone feels off; it’s a disquieting place, one that’s surrounded by towns with some of the highest death rates in the country. It doesn’t help that everyone says Ellis’s new house is haunted. And Ellis has started to believe they see pulsing veins in the walls of their bedroom and specters in dark corners of the cellar. They soon discover Black Stone, and their house in particular, is the battleground in a decades-long spectral war, one that will claim their family ― and the town ― if it’s allowed to continue. Withered is queer psychological horror, a compelling tale that tackles important issues of mental health in the way that only horror by delving deep into them, cracking them open, and exposing their gruesome entrails.