Published November 4, 2025 by Berkley 

A woman must confront the evil that's been terrorizing her street since she was a child in this gripping haunted house novel from the national bestselling author of The House That Horror Built and Good Girls Don’t Die.

On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago, there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible things happened. The children who live on this block are told by their parents to stay away from that house. But of course, children don’t listen. Children think it’s fun to be scared, to dare each other to go inside.

Jessie Campanelli did what many older sisters do and dared her little brother Paul. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn’t return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course adults didn’t believe that. Adults never believe what kids say. They thought someone kidnapped Paul, or otherwise hurt him. They thought Paul had disappeared in a way that was ordinary, explainable.

The disappearance of her little brother broke Jessie’s family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie grew up, had a child of her own, kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive—alive and hungry.

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This is horror tucked inside a monster house, with an entire cosmos pulsing just beneath the floorboards. The house is alive in that constant, watching-you way, crowded with impossible voices and layered tragedy. Cosmic horror often feels vast and distant, but here it’s close. It presses in. It’s slow, suffocating, and painfully personal. The universe doesn’t just fail to care. It mocks.

What hit hardest was the found family at the center of it. These characters are bound together by shared damage, survival, and the kind of loyalty that forms after everyone else has already failed you. The house has taken so much from the neighborhood, and they stay behind to bear witness. To keep watch. To carry the guilt that refuses to be outrun.

Bleak, eerie, and still emotionally cutting.

Published April 9, 2024 by Tor Nightfire

A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.

Space exploration can be lonely and isolating.

Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she's assigned to a small exploration crew, she's eager to make a difference. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.

While Ophelia focuses on her new role, her crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizer's hasty departure than opening up to her.

That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting—a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?

Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by…and the crew isn’t the only one keeping secrets.

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S.A. Barnes catapulted herself onto my must-read list with Dead Silence in 2022.  Space horror isn't something I typically pick up, but I adored her take on an abandoned ghost ship in space. Choosing to read Ghost Station was, therefore, a complete no-brainer for me. 

Set on a remote research outpost far from Earth, Ghost Station follows a team sent to investigate an abandoned space station with a dark history. Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray is sent along with them to ensure everyone remains in a good mental state while away. Of course, that makes her the outsider. The crew, who have been on previous missions together, is tense, secretive, and clearly hiding something from Ophelia. 

Ghost Station delivers Barnes' blend of sci-fi horror stout with atmospheric dread, deep psychological apprehension, and a feeling of aloneness.  The tension that Barnes creates in the station and between the characters is prominent. You feel the seclusion, the anxiety, the creeping sense that something is very wrong, even as you still aren't sure what. 

Here's where it went wrong for me. There's a lot of telling, not showing, in this book.  Granted, there's a lot of backstory to get through, but so much of it is given to us in the form of Ophelia's inner monologue. Ophelia is deeply unreliable with herself while trying to portray herself to her team as a reliable psychologist. She second-guesses every sensation, every memory, every emotional reaction. While I understand the results, it was exhausting to read. I wanted more horror, less emotional vacillation.

While Ghost Station didn’t absolutely blow me away, it definitely kept me interested in some of the mysteries and had some really creepy moments. If you’re into slow-burn sci-fi horror with great atmosphere and unreliable characters, it's worth a read. It just didn't quite make it into the territory of Dead Silence.