Published July 14, 2023 by Three First Names When the dead return to abduct the living, the living turn into monsters… Jarod Huntingdon wan...
Feature Fiction || The Covenant Sacrifice by Lee Allen Howard
Published October 31, 2023 by Koehler Books In 1818, Cillian Valour, an Irish rebel's son with limited prospects, is determined to marr...
Feature Fiction || The Shadow of Banshee Hill by Fionn Mac Meldrum
Published October 31, 2023 by Koehler Books
Published September 5, 2023 by Timber Ghost Press Valerie Miller and her younger brother have spent their entire lives in the dreary town o...
Feature Fiction || What Doesn't Kill You by Ken Brosky
Published September 5, 2023 by Timber Ghost Press
Published May 15, 2018 by Rockhill Publishing LLC She's back and this time she brought a friend... The story continues: the sequel to Th...
Guest Post || Itching to Write! by Myron Edwards
Published May 15, 2018 by Rockhill Publishing LLC
Itching to write!
by Myron edwards
Published June 18, 2013 by 47North T hey only come when it snows, and nobody ever gets away. A group of close friends gathers at a secluded...
Book Review || The Shuddering by Ania Ahlborn
Published June 18, 2013 by 47North
A group of close friends gathers at a secluded cabin in the wintry mountains of Colorado for a final holiday hurrah. Instead, it may be their last stand. First a massive blizzard leaves them marooned. Then the more chilling realization: something is lurking in the woods, watching them, waiting...
Now a weekend of family, friends, and fun has turned into a test of love and loyalty in the face of inhuman horrors. The only hope for those huddled inside is to fight—tooth and nail, bullet and blade—for their lives. Otherwise, they'll end up like the monsters' other victims: bright pools of blood on glittering snow, screams lost in the vast mountains.
Published March 15, 2023 by Shadowpaw Press Reprise The first English edition of the popular young adult novel Les fantômes de Spiritwood, o...
Guest Post || Curiosity Kills the Cat but Benefits the Writer by Martine Noël-Maw
Published March 15, 2023 by Shadowpaw Press Reprise
Curiosity Kills the Cat but Benefits the Writer
by Martine Noël-Maw
The sanatorium, named Fort San, had opened its doors in 1917. The institution resembled a village, with many pavilions scattered in the valley along the lake shore. It included a nurses' residence, a visitor lodge, doctors and employees’ homes, and even a one-room school, a theatre and a library. It was even equipped with its own radio station, thanks to the ingenuity of some patients that had a lot of time on their hands. It would broadcast original programming performed by patients.
Maybe it is the location of the sanatorium, isolated in the fold of the hills, which contributed to its aura of mystery. According to many people, “The San” as it was familiarly called, was host to many ghosts. I heard numerous stories, starting with one from my neighbour, a respectable mother of three, who had stayed at The San, after it was converted into the Echo Valley Conference Centre. She was the sole occupant of a room with two single beds. One night, she got up to go to the bathroom and when she came back to her room, she was shocked to see a little boy dressed as a cowboy, including boots, hat and fake revolvers, sitting on the bed next to hers.
Around the same time, a friend of mine attended a conference at The San with a group of college students. Someone took a picture of her and two of her classmates. The picture is very good but also very spooky: the student sitting next to my friend, a girl in her early twenties, looks like a 90-year-old woman, with a wrinkly face and scruffy white hair... I saw the picture and it sent shivers down my spine.
The most famous ghost story related to The San is the one of Nurse Jane. According to some sources, the young woman would have hung herself from a tree, in front of the nurses’ residence. According to others, she hung herself in a bathroom located on the third floor of the children’s pavilion. What is really intriguing is the fact that, according to many, children could see her at the window. A witness told me that in the morning, they would wave at her ghostly figure as they were walking to school.
Being a French literature graduate and having grown up with a ghost in my living room, I have always been interested in that kind of story. So, the day my boyfriend took me to Fort San, after I walk the grounds of this mythical site, I told him: “This is it! I know what my first novel is going to be about.” That visit triggered my curiosity like nothing before. It launched me on a research journey that lasted nearly five years. My first novel, Dans le pli des collines was published in 2004. It became an award-winning book and was published in English in 2013 under the title In the Fold of the Hills (Ekstatis Editions of Victoria, British Columbia). The book is still taught in college, and I am always happy whenever a ghost-lover reader reaches out to me.
What set me on the path to becoming a professional writer is my insatiable curiosity. And I didn’t stop with that first book. Since then, I have spent years researching characters like Will James and Louis Riel. I even embarked on two walks on the Camino de Santiago, in Spain, to write the story of a pilgrim. All this to say that although curiosity may be bad for cats, it has given me the gift of a very rewarding and fulfilling career. As I write these lines, I am anxious to find out where my curiosity will take me next.
© Martine Noël-Maw 2023
Get ready to pad your TBR, here are just a few of September's new releases! If you've missed the previous lists ( January , Febr...
This Month in Horror || October 2023
Get ready to pad your TBR, here are just a few of September's new releases!
If you've missed the previous lists (January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September), you can still check those out. And if you are looking for what's still to come, you can see the whole list for 2023 here.
If you have a book releasing this year and want to get on the list, click here and I'll get you added!
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The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey
Expected publication: October 3, 2023 by Tor Nightfire
Julie Crews is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-something who packs a lot of magic into her small body. She’s been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs to claw her way to the top.
Julie is desperate for a quick career boost to break the dead-end grind, but her pleas draw the attention of an eldritch god who is hungry for revenge. Her power grab sets off a deadly chain of events that puts her closest friends – and the entire world – directly in the path of annihilation.
The first explosive adventure in the Carrion City Duology, The Dead Take the A Train fuses Khaw’s cosmic horror and Kadrey’s gritty fantasy into a full-throttle thrill ride straight into New York’s magical underbelly.
Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies by E. M. Roy
Expected publication: October 10, 2023 by Ghoulish Books
In the small town of Eston, Maine . . . weird things happen sometimes.
Leo Bates knows what’s behind every corner in her hometown, where she’s lived her whole life. Some disjointed memories and grief for her late parents, sure, but nothing dangerous. Nothing unexplainable.
But the familiar becomes strange the longer you look at it. When Tate Mulder goes missing and Leo is pinned as the prime suspect, she can only watch as the town she thought she knew deteriorates around her. She is forced to confront the truth about her parents, Eston, and her relationship if she is to survive an onslaught of conspiracies, cryptic monstrosities, and whatever is hiding in the woods where Tate was last seen. Finding the girl she loves may be the only way to restore balance to Eston—if such a thing ever existed to begin with.
A Light Most Hateful by Hailey Piper
When a summer storm sweeps through a sleepy town unleashing a monstrous and otherworldy power that threatens to break reality, Olivia will stop at nothing to find her best friend and get them to safety.
Mona Awad’s Bunny meets Stranger Things in this mind-bending and terrifying examination of female friendship and the lengths we'll go to protect the ones we love, from the Bram Stoker award winning author of Queen of Teeth.
Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower.
Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow.
If Olivia’s going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she’ll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower.
But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves.
Including Olivia.
Expected publication: October 1, 2023 by Hansen House
Monsters are real and the United States is infested...
In the year 1900, a section of the Mid-Western United States, known as The Infested, is overrun with ghosts and monsters. Despite the evil that lurks just outside their door, Desdemona and her family live in The Infested. Their home is a haven for those that make the treacherous journey from east to west.
While magic keeps them safe, Desdemona has always felt indescribably drawn to the Infested. A dangerous compulsion when her mother dies and her father is late leading the wagon train from the East. When a shadow creature appears on their land, and mysterious, alluring visitors arrive, Desdemona is forced to do something she never wanted: lead her family.
Desdemona and her siblings must band together to save themselves and their home. If they can’t escape the darkness and overcome the tension that has grown between them, their father may very well return to nothing but a graveyard.
Sapphic, Bi and Trans Rep
TW: Eating disorder, anxiety, gore, war, trauma
All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology, Circe Moskowitz ed.
Expected publication: October 17, 2023 by Amberjack Publishing
Welcome to the Dark.
We are all familiar with tropes of the horror genre: slasher and victims, demon and the possessed. Bloody screams, haunted visions, and the peddler of wares we aren’t sure we can trust. In this young adult horror anthology, fans of Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country, and Horror Noire will get a little bit of everything they love—and a lot of what they fear—through a twisted blend of horror lenses, from the thoughtful to the terrifying.
From haunted, hungry Victorian mansions, temporal monster–infested asylums, and ravaging zombie apocalypses, to southern gothic hoodoo practitioners and cursed patriarchs in search of Black Excellence, All These Sunken Souls features the chilling creations of acclaimed bestsellers and hot new talents, with stories from Kalynn Bayron, Donyae Coles, Ryan Douglass, Sami Ellis, Brent Lambert, Ashia Monet, Circe Moskowitz, Joel Rochester, Liselle Sambury, and Joelle Wellington.
Expected publication: October 24, 2023 by North Star Editions
Growing up in the dark tourism capital of the United States, sixteen-year-old Olive should be comfortable with death. But ever since an allergic reaction almost sent her to the wrong side of the grass, she’s been terrified that there is no afterlife. And after the death of her surrogate grandmother, Olive has kept everyone at arm’s length because if there’s Nothing after we die, relationships and love can only end in sorrow.
When she summons a spirit to answer her questions about death, Olive meets Jay, a hitchhiking ghost trapped in the woods behind the poorhouse where he died. Olive agrees to help Jay find his unmarked grave in exchange for answers about the other side and what comes next.
Meanwhile, someone―or something―is targeting Olive’s classmates, and the longer Jay lingers, the more serious the attacks become. Blaming herself for having brought Jay back, Olive teams up with maybe-nemesis, maybe-crush Maren, ex-best friend Davis, and new girl Vanessa to free Jay’s spirit before he’s trapped as a malevolent shade and the attacks turn deadly. But in doing so, Olive must face her fear of death and risk losing another person she loves to the Nothing.
Expected publication: October 31, 2023 by Tor Nightfire
Ana and Reid needed a lucky break.
The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling: with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. That's about to change with the words any New Yorker would love to hear―affordable housing lottery.
They've won an apartment in the Deptford, one of Manhattan's most revered buildings with beautiful vistas of Central Park and stunning architecture.
Reid dismisses disturbing events and Ana’s deep unease and paranoia as the price of living in New York―people are odd―but he can't explain the needle-like bite marks on the baby.
Get ready to pad your TBR, here are just a few of September's new releases! If you've missed the previous lists ( January , Febr...
This Month in Horror || September 2023
Get ready to pad your TBR, here are just a few of September's new releases!
If you've missed the previous lists (January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August), you can still check those out. And if you are looking for what's still to come, you can see the whole list for 2023 here.
If you have a book releasing this year and want to get on the list, click here and I'll get you added!
__________________________________________
Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison
Expected publication: September 12, 2023 by Berkley
A cynical twentysomething must confront her unconventional family’s dark secrets in this fiery, irreverent horror novel from the author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle.
Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep.
Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it means returning to the toxic environment she escaped. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen.
When Vesper’s homecoming exhumes a terrifying secret, she’s forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith in this deliciously sinister novel that explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to find our place in the world.
Rainbow Filth is a weirdo horror novella about a small cult that believes a rare psychedelic substance can physically transport them to another universe.
Expected publication: September 12, 2023 by Delacorte Press
Forced to spend her summer in her aunt's strange small town, a teen girl discovers dark secrets hidden in the woods. From the author of Bad Witch Burning comes another pulse-pounding novel perfect for fans of Supernatural and Lovecraft Country.
Don't go outside past dark. Come straight home after church. And above all—never, ever, go into Red Wood.
These are the rules Latavia’s aunt tells her as soon as she arrives in Sanctum, Alabama for the summer. Weird, but Latavia isn’t here to solve any scary small town mysteries; she’s here for six weeks and six weeks only, and then she’s off to college and won’t look back. Still, Sanctum has its perks—mainly, the cute girl who works at the local ice cream shop.
But Latavia can’t ignore how strange her aunt’s tiny town is. The residents are suspicious of her and at times hostile, and it’s clear she’s some kind of outsider. That’s proven when Latavia is dragged out of her house in the dead of night, into the forbidden Red Wood, and presented as a human sacrifice to an ancient monster.
Latavia won’t be eaten without a fight. She’ll do whatever she has to do to survive—even if that includes making a deal with the monster, endangering her crush and family, and even risk turning into a monster herself.
Expected publication: September 12, 2023 by Quirk Books
After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market.
It’s there that she connects with old high school flame Henry McCabe, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son, Skyler, went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure Skyler is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise. As she follows the thread of these visions, Madi discovers a terrifying nightmare waiting at the center of the labyrinth—and it’s coming for everyone she holds dear.
Combining supernatural horror with domestic suspense into a visceral exploration of parental grief, What Kind of Mother cements Clay McLeod Chapman's reputation as a “star” (Vulture) and “the twenty-first century’s Richard Matheson” (Richard Chizmar, Chasing the Boogeyman.)
What Stalks Among Us by Sarah Hollowell
Expected publication: September 12, 2023 by Clarion Books
From Sarah Hollowell, author of A Dark and Starless Forest, comes a spine-tingling, deliriously creepy YA speculative thriller about two best friends trapped in a corn maze with corpses that look just like them. Best friends and high school seniors Sadie and Logan make their first mistake when they ditch their end-of-year field trip to the amusement park in favor of exploring some old, forgotten backroads. The last thing they expect to come across is a giant, abandoned corn maze. But with a whole day of playing hooking unspooling before them, they make their second mistake. Or perhaps their third? Maybe even their fourth. Because Sadie and Logan have definitely entered this maze before. And again before that. When they stumble on the corpses in the maze, identical to them in every way (if you can ignore the stab and gunshot wounds)--from their clothes to their hidden scars to their dyed hair, to that one missing tooth--they quickly realize they’ve not only entered this maze before, they’ve died in it too. A lot. And no matter what they try, they can’t figure out what—or who —is hunting them. Deeply unnerving, clever, and atmospheric, this time-bending, mind-bending speculative horror is a poignant meditation on the lasting effects of trauma and the healing powers of connection and forgiveness—all while delivering more surprise twists and turns than a haunted corn maze.
Expected publication: September 26, 2023 by Del Rey
A small town is transformed by dark magic when a strange tree begins bearing magical apples in this new masterpiece of horror from the bestselling author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents.
It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something else is changing in the town besides the season.
Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: Strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black.
Take a bite of one of these apples and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing—and become darker.
This is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples… and what’s the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful?
And even if buried in the orchard is something else besides the seeds of this extraordinary tree: a bloody history whose roots reach back the very origins of the town.
But now the leaves are falling. The days grow darker. And a stranger has come to town, a stranger who knows Harrow’s secrets. Because it’s harvest time, and the town will soon reap what it has sown.
Get ready to pad your TBR, here are just a few of August's new releases! If you've missed the previous lists ( January , Februar...
This Month in Horror || August 2023
Get ready to pad your TBR, here are just a few of August's new releases!
If you've missed the previous lists (January, February, March, April, May, June, July) you can still check those out. And if you are looking for what's still to come, you can see the whole list for 2023 here.
If you have a book releasing this year and want to get on the list, click here and I'll get you added!
__________________________________________
The Apology by Jimin Han
Expected publication: August 1, 2023 by Little, Brown and Company
In South Korea, a 105-year-old woman receives a letter. Ten days later, she has been thrust into the afterlife, fighting to head off a curse that will otherwise devastate generations to come.
Jeonga Cha has always shouldered the burden of upholding the family name. When she sent her daughter-in-law to America to cover up an illegitimate birth, she was simply doing what was needed to preserve the reputations of her loved ones. How could she have known that decades later, this decision would return to haunt her—threatening to tear apart her bond with her beloved son, her relationship with her infuriatingly insolent sisters, and the future of the family she has worked so hard to protect?
Part ghost story and part family epic, The Apology is an incisive tale of sisterhood and diaspora, reaching back to the days of Japanese colonialism and the Korean War, and told through the singular voice of a defiant, funny, and unforgettable centenarian.
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