Published March 22nd 2022 by Titan Books

A chilling Gothic horror novel set at a coed boarding school in Scotland, where a teen girl must not only fight against her monstrous male classmates but the monster growing within her after being cursed.

Every wish granted comes with strings attached. That’s how Catriona Cameron gets a scholarship to Floodbane Academy—an elite boarding school in the Scottish Lowlands she never applied to—where she’ll be one of only six girls to enter the castle’s unwelcoming halls.

As the carnage mounts, Catriona faces the possibility that she is becoming as monstrous as those she hunts. Ultimately, is vengeance worth the loss of her humanity?

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Wishes are dangerous. Anyone who has ever read a fairy tale knows this, and yet we keep making them anyway. Ridley leans hard into that particular brand of fae cruelty, and the result is one of the more satisfying YA horrors I've read in a while. 

Catriona Cameron arrives at Floodbane Academy, an elite boarding school in the Scottish Lowlands, after such a wish. She is one of only six girls admitted to its halls, and its current students absolutely do not want them there. After a violent attack, those unseen dark fairies grant cruel wishes made flippantly against her. Catriona begins to change. She becomes more attractive, but cursed with an insatiable hunger to devour anyone who preys upon women. The fairies give, and the fairies take, and what they take is your sense of self.

It's a great take on the classic “be careful what you wish for”, and the inclusion of Scottish folklore and the baobhan sith adds an extra layer to the story. There is also a surprising amount of gore, but the violence works especially well alongside the female rage running through the story and the very real inequality these girls are dealing with. The boys are horrible people. They're cruel, entitled, and despicable, so watching them get their comeuppance was extremely satisfying.

However, Insatiable isn't a straightforward revenge fantasy with a gothic academic flair. As the carnage mounts, Catriona confronts the possibility that she is becoming as monstrous as those she hunts. Watching her grapple with wanting the hunger and fearing the hunger, but feeding it anyway, is tense in the best way. Ridley keeps the focus on that dilemma throughout the story. Where does the monster end and the girl begin?  And is vengeance worth the loss of her humanity? That's the kind of moral weight that elevates horror from pure pageantry into something that actually sticks with you.

If you like your gothic horror with fae curses, female rage, questionable morality, and a generous helping of bloodshed, this one delivers. I had a great time watching Catriona turn “be careful what you wish for” into a problem for everyone else. Sometimes the best solution to misogyny is a curse, a monster, and a little creative violence.

Published August 18, 2026 by Bantam

Published April 21, 2026 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books/12:01 Books

Published October 6, 2026 by Dutton

The Greers built their fortune on alligator bones.

Dartrine Beaumont believes her mother’s sudden death has left her alone in the world—until she learns of long-lost wealthy relatives living in Florida. Confused but delighted by the possibility of extended family, Dart travels to her grandmother’s stately Gilded Age mansion on Amelia Island for answers, just in time to stake a claim on an unusual inheritance: an alligator farming empire.

Her arrival at Greer House isn’t everything she hoped. Without warning, Dart finds herself in fierce competition with her grandmother’s arrogant heir-apparent, and tensions rise as threatening acts of vandalism escalate on one of the farms. More unsettling is her hostile grandmother’s fanatical belief that the danger stems from a curse; according to legend, a larger-than-life alligator hunted down by a bloodthirsty ancestor still haunts the family. Yet Dart can’t deny that the farm’s placid alligators hiss only at Greers, or that a shadowy figure creeps through the mansion’s halls, plaguing her with suspicions that the mythical alligator and monstrous, long-dead matriarch may have unfinished business.

As Dart uncovers the truth about her violent birthright, she faces a terrible accept her place in her family’s grim legacy or forge a new path by slaying a different beast entirely.

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The premise of this one had me completely sold. Florida Gothic? A crumbling mansion? An alligator farming empire haunted by a vengeful spirit? The bones (ha!) of something genuinely great are here, and I really wanted this book to deliver. It didn't quite get there for me, and I've been chewing on why.

The MC: Let's start with Dart. I wanted to root for her: she's grieving, she's an outsider, she's walking into a family that doesn't want her there. But her desperation to fit in with the Greers drove me absolutely crazy! These people are hostile to her from page one, and she just keeps trying to ingratiate herself with them anyway. I get that she is starved for family and connection, I do, but at some point it tips over from sympathy into frustration, and I lost patience with her faster than I expected to.

The Horror: The central threat, Ironheart, the alligator spirit haunting the family, sounds like a wild, creepy concept. And there are flashes of atmosphere where the swamp and the mansion genuinely drip with unease. But the tension never really builds into anything. Every time the story starts to feel genuinely unsettling, it pulls back. The family curse storyline resolves in a way that felt tidy rather than terrifying, and I finished the book feeling like I'd been promised something that never fully arrived.

The Setting: The muggy ambiance is doing heavy lifting here, and it does it well! Huneycutt clearly loves Florida's particular brand of gorgeous, rotting strangeness, and Amelia Island is rendered with care and detail. 

One thing I do want to flag loudly: there is a significant amount of animal harm in this book. Given that the story centers on an alligator farm, this isn't exactly surprising, but it's woven throughout and unavoidable. If that's a hard trigger for you, please go in prepared or sit this one out.  

If you're a die-hard for Southern Gothic and you can vibe with a slow, more character-driven read, there's something here for you. But if you need the horror to solidify, you might walk away a little underwhelmed.

Looking for more scary reads? Browse all of my horror book reviews.

Published October 20, 2026, by St. Martin's Press

From the bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence comes a new, genre-bending supernatural horror about a vampire broodmother fighting against her own monstrous descent.

Beatrice is a broodmother: a vampire responsible for nursing newly made fledglings through the first years of their unlife. She nests in an abandoned, isolated warren of office space beneath her patron's skyscraper, raising two fractious fledglings: Gorgeous—once a heartthrob, now to all appearances a living corpse—who longs for the return of the lover who made him immortal with all the fervor of a rebellious teen, and Fortunata, the scion of Beatrice's mistress, alien and ambitious in her desires.

But when Beatrice decides to take on a third fledgling, the product of an attempted siring gone wrong, teetering between vampiric purity and ghoulish depravity, Beatrice finds herself strained to breaking between the societal and physical demands of her position, her own ravenous hunger, and an obsessive need to discover what’s happening to her—because her body is changing too, transforming her into something even more monstrous. She begins to crave the taste of flesh, something anathema to all vampires, and to swing between desperate hunger and vicious power.

Desperate to master herself once more, Beatrice courts a mortal OBGYN who might be able to unravel the secrets of her unnatural anatomy. But soon their connection threatens the secrecy of her vampiric coven as well as the safety and development of her dependent nurslings… and the humans they stand to slaughter if left to their own devices.

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Motherhood in horror seems to be all the rage these days, but Milkteeth takes it in a brand new direction. Who knew vampires need mommy too?

Most vampire stories are focused on the change to vampire. Someone gets bitten by a vampire, dies, wakes up again, and bam, new vampire. Milkteeth takes it in a different direction and questions what happens in between life and undeath and life again. What steps have to be taken for a newly turned vampire to become a productive member of vampire society? What does feeding look like as a hungry newly undead? How does a fledgling learn to control its hunger so the world isn't littered with dead bodies? 

As a broodmother, Beatrice does all that and more for newly turned vampires or "fledglings". However, while she's trying to keep her fledglings fed, teach them to control their hunger, and generally trying to keep them from becoming a menace, strange things start happening to her too. The changes become more and more concerning, and her hunger is getting worse, her body is changing, and none of it makes sense. Beatrice turns to a mortal doctor for help, which brings a whole other set of problems. 

Instead of treating the fledgling as a finished vampire the second they rise from the transformation, Starling gives us the messy, prolonged, very physical process of becoming one. It made me look at her vampires as an entirely different creature instead of just a human with fangs. The broodmother angle brought something new and different, of course, but I think what I liked most about Milkteeth is that it made vampires feel weird again. Not sexy and brooding. Not tragic and moody. Just weird and very unhuman. I guess what I'm saying is that mothering made vampires less human instead of more. See? Weird. 

Looking for more scary reads? Browse all of my horror book reviews.

Published September 2, 2026

Ebon Hollow has always kept its secrets close.

When Jeni Michaelson returns to the rituals her family taught her as a child, the old rules no longer feel like superstition. Hold the threshold. Count the beats. Never answer what calls from the other side.

Then the house begins answering back.

As an unnatural tide approaches the isolated coastal town, Jeni and those closest to her uncover generations of hidden journals, forbidden rituals, and a secret buried beneath Ebon Hollow long before any of them were born. Something imprisoned beneath the island is waking—and it has spent centuries learning the voices of the people who keep it contained.

Every answer draws them deeper into a legacy built on sacrifice. Every discovery makes it harder to know whom they can trust.

David Baldus is a Marine Corps veteran and the author of Tides of Ebon Hollow, his debut novel.

After more than sixteen years of service in the United States Marine Corps, David traded military life for a career in recruiting—but never lost his fascination with dark stories, unexplained things, and the question of what ordinary people will do when faced with something they cannot explain or escape.

His fiction blends slow-burn gothic horror, supernatural mystery, family bonds, and atmospheric settings, with an emphasis on characters who feel human even when the world around them becomes anything but.

David lives in Oklahoma with his wife and family. Tides of Ebon Hollow is his first published novel.

Published August 16, 2026 

What happens when a story refuses to end with the final page?

When a series of mysterious deaths draws Chicago detectives Andrew Hudginson and Ben Turner into an increasingly disturbing investigation, one object keeps appearing: a strange bookmark that looks different to everyone who sees it.

It reveals the reader’s deepest desire and seems to make it real. But every wish comes with a price.

As the investigation leads from present-day Chicago to the secrets of a British family and Damascus in 1330, Andy and Ben uncover the history of an object that has survived for centuries, waiting for its next reader.

Some books are meant to be read. Others are meant to find you.

Eugene A. Stripe writes psychological and supernatural thrillers where history is never merely background, the supernatural is never an escape, and every choice has consequences.

I Am The Monster Under Your Bed by Emily Zinnikas 

Published September 15th 2026 by St. Martins Press

Something lives under Willa’s bed. As an adult, her fondest childhood memories are of the invisible entity under her bed who taught her how to read. Now thirty-two, Willa is a reclusive but successful painter until a bombshell news report exposes her identity as the controversial survivor of the unsolved Rapture Mystery Slayings, a small-town tragedy that splashed across headlines during her senior year of high school. Six teenagers died in the woods while Willa walked free, and everyone thinks she killed them.

When an old classmate calls about a funeral, Willa reluctantly travels to her sleepy hometown, where the possessed forest that stole her friends looms. The trees whistle for her attention, but she knows better than to listen. And the unexplained knocking from the shadows in the basement of her decaying childhood home is honestly the least of her problems.

As her past pulls her back to the place where she swore she’d never return, Willa is drawn toward the monster she left behind—and becoming the villain her hometown has always believed her to be. 

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I Am the Monster Under the Bed is an ambitious debut that dreams big, and Zinnikas has some nightmares to share.

There is a lot happening here: multiple plot threads, timelines folding in on each other, flashbacks woven throughout, and there are definitely moments where it gets in its own way. 

Willa is an unreliable narrator with survivor's guilt. She's impulsive, possibly a little bonkers, and has childhood trauma dragging her down as well. I actually liked her a lot. 

The supernatural elements left me wanting more. The rules of the monster-verse, in particular, were fuzzy. I kept wanting Zinnikas to slow down and really let the weirdness breathe. Maybe that filling-in-the-blanks is why it works in the end though. (I'm also leaving this review a little vague to not give anything away.)

It has the kind of finale that makes you sit with the book closed for a second because you didn't see it coming, but it lands exactly right. Surprising, yet satisfying in equal measure, which is pretty difficult to pull off for a debut novel.

Despite the chaos of the middle, even the monster under the bed thinks the ending was worth the wait.

June is bringing us zombies, vampires, serial killers, sinister fairy tales, and weird westerns to keep the TBR pile growing at an irresponsible rate.

Whether you're looking for something bloody and brutal, something really strange, or a book that makes you wonder why you ever thought the woods were a good place to visit, June has you covered.

Here are some of the best new horror books coming your way this month.

June 1

Grief Eater by Emma Osborne

When Kristina rises from her violent death, she's no longer the woman her family abandoned. She's angry, powerful, and very, very hungry. Her undead road trip takes her across Australia's scorched landscape as she searches for vengeance, answers, and perhaps a little closure.

A gory, queer zombie novella about grief, rage, found family, and what happens when the dead decide they're not finished yet.

Try Not to Die: In Slattery Falls by Brennan LaFaro

Welcome to Slattery Falls, home to a haunted house that has been watching, waiting, and feeding for years.

This interactive horror adventure puts you in the driver's seat. Every decision matters, and most of those decisions will probably get you horribly murdered.

There are more than a dozen ways to die, but only one path to survival.

June 2

Backstabbers by Eliza Jabore

When three best friends get lost in the woods, they discover that surviving the wilderness might be easier than surviving each other. Backstabbers puts friendship under the world's most stressful pressure cooker: a slasher movie.

Expect blood, bad decisions, shifting loyalties, and the uncomfortable realization that your best friend knows exactly where to stick the knife.

June 9

The Sourdough Compendium: Dark and Dangerous Fairy Tales by A.G. Slatter

If you've read A.G. Slatter before, you already know her fairy tales aren't exactly the sort you'd want to read to children at bedtime.

This collection gathers stories from the dark gothic world of The Sourdough universe, featuring witches, assassins, pirates, monsters, and all manner of terrible people.

Basically, it's fairy tales for people who prefer their happily-ever-afters with considerably more bloodshed, like all the good fairy tales do.

It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo

Set during World War I, Wendy Darling is now an adult working as a teacher and helping soldiers returning from the Western Front. But when children begin disappearing again, Wendy starts to suspect that the nightmare she thought she'd escaped as a child has returned.

Peter Pan meets It in this dark, bloody reimagining of Neverland.

June 16

Women of the Weird West edited by KC Grifant

Women of the Weird West brings together stories from women and marginalized-gender authors, taking the classic Western and giving it a supernatural makeover. Expect ghosts, monsters, fae, magic, strange worlds, and plenty of women who aren't interested in playing the damsel-in-distress.

June 19

Teeth by Dana Isaly

Poe has moved into her mother's old house in the Appalachian mountains, hoping to sort through her belongings and finally move forward.

Instead, she finds strange journal entries, disturbing photographs, warnings, and the growing feeling that something in the woods is watching her.

And apparently the number one rule of this particular nightmare is: if you hear something, no you don't.

June 23

Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh

Stutley Tillinghast is a quiet minister living in rural Rhode Island.
He's also been killing people and burying them in his cellar for decades.

When a desperately ill nineteen-year-old woman arrives claiming to be related to him, Stutley discovers that she has symptoms eerily similar to his own. Suddenly his carefully isolated existence gets considerably more complicated.

A slow-burning literary vampire story with gothic atmosphere, family secrets, and one very reluctant monster.

The Infested by Renée Lake

The American frontier wasn't won. It was surrendered to the monsters.

In 1900, a cursed stretch of the American frontier is crawling with ghosts, monsters, and ancient things that should have stayed buried. Desdemona's family has survived there for generations behind magical wards.

But after her mother's death, her father's disappearance, and the arrival of a mysterious shadow creature, their safe little sanctuary starts looking considerably less safe.

Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Four edited by Alex Woodroe

The fourth volume of Brave New Weird brings together twenty-three stories showcasing some of the strangest, most inventive horror around. Expect speculative horror, genre mashups, grotesque ideas, experimental storytelling, and plenty of things that don't fit neatly into a little genre box.

June 26

Crater Girl by Polly Schattel

Polly Schattel returns with Crater Girl, a genre-bending novel mixing dark fantasy, noir, and horror with a distinctly Southern flavor.

It's a strange, satirical look at the modern South, and Schattel describes it as a "genre-inclusive" novel.

June 28

The Echo of Monsters by David H. Rankin

The Echo of Monsters promises another dive into the darker corners of horror, making it one to keep an eye on if your preferred reading material involves things that probably shouldn't exist and definitely shouldn't be making noises in the dark.

June 30

Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay

Julia Flang is a former professional gamer who gets hired by a massive tech company to escort a man in a vegetative state across the country. The catch? There's an artificial intelligence implanted in his head.

A near-future technological horror story that gets increasingly more uncomfortable the more you think about it. 

The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave

Welcome to Guadalajara in the summer of 1977, where children encounter ghosts, monsters, strange adults, a serpent girl in a carnival glass box, and all the little horrors that hide beneath ordinary life.

June is shaping up to be a seriously weird month for horror.

We've got angry zombies, murderous friends, evil fairy tales, haunted frontiers, vampires pretending not to be vampires, AI nightmares, and enough monsters to populate several small towns.

There's something weird here for everyone.

Happy June, horror friends. May your summer reading be hot, your drinks be cold, and your nightmares be someone else's problem.

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May is bringing us a respectable amount of bad news in book form.

We've got haunted places, human experimentation, sinister spirits, strange festivals, monstrous transformations, twisted fairy tales, gothic nightmares, and enough questionable life choices performed by unreliable narrators to keep the horror shelves fully stocked.

Here are some of the horror books I'm most excited about coming out this month. 

If you want to see everything coming in 2026, check out my This Year in Horror 2026 release calendar.

May 5

She Waits Where Shadows Gather by Michelle Tang

Some places feel wrong before you can explain why. She Waits Where Shadows Gather promises the kind of unsettling horror where the shadows themselves may be the least of your problems.

If atmospheric, creeping dread is your thing, this one belongs on the May TBR.

I Know A Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours by Nat Cassidy

Nat Cassidy is taking us on a road trip and he's not stopping by the World's Biggest Ball of Twine.

This collection brings together Rest Stop and a dozen other dark detours, sending readers through suspicious rest stops, creepy offices, haunted kitchens, bizarre apartments, and other places where you shouldn't be alone after dark. 

Accumulation by Aimee Pokwatka

Tennessee Cherish thought moving into her dream house would be a fresh start. Cute house, new town, happy family. 

The kids start acting weird. Her husband is never home. And the house has a few quirks, including a faucet that runs on its own, a creepy doll that keeps appearing in different rooms, and, a human tooth in the floorboards.

Then things get really weird. The family starts repeating everyday actions over and over, with each loop becoming more dangerous than the last.

Tenn needs to figure out what the hell is happening in her new home before the house finishes what it started.

May 8

The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman

The Blood Year Daughter is a collection of fairytale horror stories filled with murderous brides, strange transformations, ghosts, witches, snakes, revenge, and women who are absolutely done playing by the rules.

Silverman's debut collection mixes horror, magical realism, and twisted fairy tales into something that sounds like it crawled out of a very dark corner of the Brothers Grimm.

May 12

Muntu by Eugen Bacon

Eugen Bacon brings her particular brand of unsettling speculative fiction to Muntu, a book that promises to be strange, atmospheric, and decidedly not interested in making you comfortable.

This is one for readers who like their horror with a literary edge and plenty of things lurking beneath the surface.

Abyss by Nicholas Binge

Joe always had potential. He just doesn't expect much from himself, so when he lands a low-key admin assistant job at a company he's never heard of, he's hoping it won't expect much from him either.

Then he walks into the offices of Ponos.

Turns out, potential is exactly what they're looking for.

Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda

Two friends head into the Andes for an eight-day music festival at the foot of a volcano. There's mysticism, underground music, altered states, an ancient landscape, and a girl who starts speaking in a voice that isn't her own.

Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun blends psychological horror, supernatural elements, psychedelic imagery, and Indigenous Andean traditions into something wonderfully strange.

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

Celia is lonely, grieving, and desperate to belong, so she heads to the mysterious Kindred Cove for its annual Salt Festival. The community promises healing, transformation, and a life without grief.

Sarah Gailey's latest sounds like the perfect combination of creepy island community, questionable self-improvement, and the horrifying realization that maybe becoming a better version of yourself has a price.

Femme Feral by Sam Beckbessinger

Is it menopause or lycanthropy?

Femme Feral promises a wild, vicious take on womanhood, transformation, and the things lurking just beneath the surface.

May 19

The Dorians by Nick Cutter

Five people are invited to a remote island in the Canadian wilderness with an offer that sounds almost too good to be true: stop aging. Maybe even reverse it.

The secret to restoring their youth comes from an ancient biological agent with one very simple goal: survive.

What could possibly go wrong?

I hope their aren't any turtles. IYKYK.

Decomposition Book by Sara van Os

Savannah retreats to her parents' empty lake house after a disastrous falling-out with her best friend. She's drinking, overthinking, and generally spiraling when she wakes up in the woods beside a dead body. Turns out she's the best friend Savannah could ask for.

The Temptation of Charlotte North by Camilla Bruce

In 1910, Charlotte North lives on a remote island where an ancient tower has been standing guard over something that really should have stayed imprisoned.

Then the tower collapses.

The Temptation of Charlotte North combines gothic horror, dark fantasy, an isolated island, a sinister spirit, and a woman discovering just how dangerous getting what you want can be.

Salomé by Leslie Baird

A dark, strange take on an old story? Yes, please.

Salomé puts a familiar figure into a horror setting and promises to give this particular tale some teeth.

Filth Eaters by Ito Romo

In 1849, vampire Radamés discovers that New World vampires get to live a little more like humans. They marry. They have children. They actually get to build lives. Naturally, he wants that for himself.

His search takes him to Mexico, where he falls for a member of the ancient Filth Eaters and fathers a new kind of vampire. From there, the story jumps across centuries, mixing vampires with empire, greed, climate change, and the very human need to find someone to love.

May 26

House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Anaya Sebeya is a brilliant young writer who disappears after attending a prestigious writing residency at Günter Huis, an eerie colonial mansion on Devil’s Peak.

Years later, her sister Ranewa becomes obsessed with a true-crime podcast claiming to reveal what happened to Anaya. As she listens, she starts piecing together a much stranger and more horrifying story.

Because at Günter Huis, Anaya wasn't just struggling to write. The house was getting inside her head, twisting time and reality and demanding a story that apparently wasn't meant to be told.

Bone of My Bone by Johanna van Veen

It’s 1635, the Thirty Years’ War is tearing through Bavaria, and Ursula, a runaway nun, and Elsebeth, a peasant, are hiding from marauding soldiers in the forest.

Then they find a gilded saint’s skull.

Legend says that reunite the skull with the saint’s body and you get a wish. Unfortunately, they're not the only ones interested in the relic. A necromancer wants it, the saint starts whispering at night, and the magic comes with a price.

Teddy Bears Never Die by Cho Yeeun

A deadly cyanide poisoning kills Hwa-young's mother, but Hwa-young doesn't believe it was an accident. Determined to find the person responsible, she takes whatever work she can get to save enough money to hire a hitman.

Hwa-young is about to become the next victim when a grubby teddy bear starts talking to her.

Now the two team up to uncover the truth, take revenge, and bring the real killer to justice.

Between Nat Cassidy's dark detours, Sarah Gailey's creepy island, Mónica Ojeda's psychedelic festival nightmare, gothic spirits, twisted fairy tales, human experimentation, and several books that appear to have taken the concept of "gross" as a personal challenge, there's plenty here to keep horror readers busy.

Which is great news for us but not so great for our TBR pile.

Happy May, horror friends, and may your books be creepy, your coffee be strong, and your house remain suspiciously tooth-free.

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